Likewise of the second pæon (⌣—⌣⌣) in the first foot, followed by four trochees (—⌣), as:—
‘Sŏ grēēdĭly̆ | lōng fōr, | knōw theĭr | tītĭll|ātiŏns.’”
In truth, he was no fonder of them than his brother dramatists who, like him, wrote for the voice by the ear. “To your” is still one syllable in ordinary speech, and “masculine” and “greedily” were and are dissyllables or trisyllables according to their place in the verse. Coleridge was making pedantry of a very simple matter. Yet he has said with perfect truth of Chaucer’s verse, “Let a few plain rules be given for sounding the final è of syllables, and for expressing the terminations of such words as ocëan and natiön, &c., as dissyllables,—or let the syllables to be sounded in such cases be marked by a competent metrist. This simple expedient would, with a very few trifling exceptions, where the errors are inveterate, enable any one to feel the perfect smoothness and harmony of Chaucer’s verse.” But let us keep widely clear of Latin and Greek terms of prosody! It is also more important here than even with the dramatists of Shakespeare’s time to remember that we have to do with a language caught more from the ear than from books. The best school for learning to understand Chaucer’s elisions, compressions, slurrings-over and runnings-together of syllables is to listen to the habitual speech of rustics with whom language is still plastic to meaning, and hurries or prolongs itself accordingly. Here is a contraction frequent in Chaucer, and still common in New England:—
“But me were lever than [lever ’n] all this town, quod he.”
Let one example suffice for many. To Coleridge’s rules another should be added by a wise editor; and that is to restore the final n in the infinitive and third person plural of verbs, and in such other cases as can be justified by the authority of Chaucer himself. Surely his ear could never have endured the sing-song of such verses as
“I couthe telle for a gowne-cloth,”
or
“Than ye to me schuld breke youre trouthe.”
Chaucer’s measure is so uniform (making due allowances) that words should be transposed or even omitted where the verse manifestly demands it,—and with copyists so long and dull of ear this is often the case. Sometimes they leave out a needful word:—
“But er [the] thunder stynte, there cometh rain,”
“When [that] we ben yflattered and ypraised,”
“Tak [ye] him for the greatest gentleman.”