These are all on a single page[20], and there are some to spare. How about the hiatus? On the same page I find,—
“Kar l’Ercëveskë i estoit—
Pur eus beneistre’ e enseiner.”
What was the practice of Wace? Again I open at random.
“N’osa remaindre’ en Normandië,
Maiz, quant la guerrë fu finië,
Od sou herneiz en Puille’ ala—
Cil de Baienës lungëment—
Ne il nes pout par forcë prendre—
Dunc la vilë mult amendout,
Prisons e preiës amenout.”[21]
Again we have the sounded final e, the elision, and the hiatus. But what possible reason is there for supposing that Chaucer would go to obscure minstrels to learn the rules of French versification? Nay, why are we to suppose that he followed them at all? In his case as in theirs, as in that of the Italians, with the works of whose two greater poets he was familiar, it was the language itself and the usages of pronunciation that guided the poet, and not arbitrary laws laid down by a synod of versemakers. Chaucer’s verse differs from that of Gower and Lydgate precisely as the verse of Spenser differs from that of Gascoigne, and for the same reason,—that he was a great poet, to whom measure was a natural vehicle. But admitting that he must have formed his style on the French poets, would he not have gone for lessons to the most famous and popular among them,—the authors of the “Roman de la Rose”? Wherever you open that poem, you find Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung following precisely the same method,—a method not in the least arbitrary, but inherent in the material which they wrought. The e sounded or absorbed under the same conditions, the same slurring of diphthongs, the same occasional hiatus, the same compression of several vowels into one sound where they immediately follow each other. Shakespeare and Milton would supply examples enough of all these practices that seem so incredible to those who write about versification without sufficient fineness of sense to feel the difference between Ben Jonson’s blank verse and Marlow’s. Some men are verse-deaf as others are color-blind,—Messrs. Malone and Guest, for example.
I try Rutebeuf in the same haphazard way, and chance brings me upon his “Pharisian.” This poem is in stanzas, the verses of the first of which have all of them masculine rhymes, those of the second feminine ones, and so on in such continual alternation to the end, as to show that it was done with intention to avoid monotony. Of feminine rhymes we find ypocrisië, famë, justicë, mesurë, yglisë. But did Rutebeuf mean so to pronounce them? I open again at the poem of the Secrestain, which is written in regular octosyllabics, and read,—
“Envië fet homë tuer,
Et si fait bonnë remuer—
Envië greve’, envië blecë,
Envië confont charitë
Envie’ ocist humilitë,—
Estoit en ce païs en vië
Sanz orgueil ere’ et sanz envië—
La glorieusë, damë, chierë.”[22]
Froissart was Chaucer’s contemporary. What was his usage?
“J’avoië fait en ce voiaigë
Et je li di, ‘Ma damë s’ai-je
Pour vous ëu maint souvenir’;
Mais je ne sui pas bien hardis
De vous remonstrer, damë chierë,
Par quel art ne par quel manierë,
J’ai ëu ce comencëment
De l’amourous atouchëment.’”
If we try Philippe Mouskes, a mechanical rhymer, if ever there was one, and therefore the surer not to let go the leading-strings of rule, the result is the same.