Sometimes they thrust in a word or words that hobble the verse:—
“She trowed he were yfel in [some] maladie,”
“Ye faren like a man [that] had lost his wit,”
“Then have I got of you the maystrie, quod she,”
(Then have I got the maystery, quod she,)
“And quod the jugë [also] thou must lose thy head.”
Sometimes they give a wrong word identical in meaning:—
“And therwithal he knew [couthë] mo proverbes.”
Sometimes they change the true order of the words:—
“Therefore no woman of clerkës is [is of clerkës] praised”
“His felaw lo, here he stont [stont he] hool on live.”
“He that covèteth is a porë wight
For he wold have that is not in his might;
But he that nought hath ne coveteth nought to have.”
Here the “but” of the third verse belongs at the head of the first, and we get rid of the anomaly of “coveteth” differently accented within two lines. Nearly all the seemingly unmetrical verses may be righted in this way. I find a good example of this in the last stanza of “Troilus and Creseide.” As it stands, we read,—
“Thou one, two, and three, eterne on live
That raignast aie in three, two and one.”
It is plain that we should read “one and two” in the first verse, and “three and two” in the second. Remembering, then, that Chaucer was here translating Dante, I turned (after making the correction) to the original, and found as I expected
“Quell’ uno e due e tre che sempre vive
E regna sempre in tre e due ed uno.” (Par. xiv. 28, 29.)