“And, for there is so great diversitë
In English, and in writing of our tong,
So pray I God[24] that none miswritë the
Ne the mismetre for defaut of tong,
And redde whereso thou be or ellës song
That thou be understood God I beseech.”
Yet more. Boccaccio’s ottava rima is almost as regular as that of Tasso. Was Chaucer unconscious of this? It will be worth while to compare a stanza of the original with one of the translation.
“Era cortese Ettore di natura
Però vedendo di costei il gran pianto,
Ch’era più bella ch’altra creatura,
Con pio parlare confortolla alquanto,
Dicendo, lascia con la ria ventura
Tuo padre andar che tulti ha offeso tanto,
E tu, sicura e lieta, senza noia,
Mentre t’aggrada, con noi resta in Troia.”[25]
“Now was this Hector pitous of naturë,
And saw that she was sorrowful begon
And that she was so faire a creaturë,
Of his goodnesse he gladed her anon
And said [saidë] let your father’s treason gon
Forth with mischance, and ye yourself in joy
Dwelleth with us while [that] you list in Troy.”
If the Italian were read with the same ignorance that has wreaked itself on Chaucer, the riding-rhyme would be on its high horse in almost every line of Boccaccio’s stanza. The same might be said of many a verse in Donne’s satires. Spenser in his eclogues for February, May, and September evidently took it for granted that he had caught the measure of Chaucer, and it would be rather amusing, as well as instructive, to hear the maintainers of the hop-skip-and-jump theory of versification attempt to make the elder poet’s verses dance to the tune for which one of our greatest metrists (in his philological deafness) supposed their feet to be trained.
I will give one more example of Chaucer’s verse, again making my selection from one of his less mature works. He is speaking of Tarquin:—
“And ay the morë he was in despair
The more he coveted and thought her fair;
His blinde lust was all his coveting.
On morrow when the bird began to sing
Unto the siege he cometh full privily
And by himself he walketh soberly
The imáge of her recording alway new:
Thus lay her hair, and thus fresh was her hue,
Thus sate, thus spake, thus span, this was her cheer,
Thus fair she was, and this was her manére.
All this conceit his heart hath new ytake,
And as the sea, with tempest all toshake,
That after, when the storm is all ago,
Yet will the water quap a day or two,
Right so, though that her forme were absént,
The pleasance of her forme was presént.”
And this passage leads me to say a few words of Chaucer as a descriptive poet; for I think it a great mistake to attribute to him any properly dramatic power, as some have done. Even Herr Hertzberg, in his remarkably intelligent essay, is led a little astray on this point by his enthusiasm. Chaucer is a great narrative poet; and, in this species of poetry, though the author’s personality should never be obtruded, it yet unconsciously pervades the whole, and communicates an individual quality,—a kind of flavor of its own. This very quality, and it is one of the highest in its way and place, would be fatal to all dramatic force. The narrative poet is occupied with his characters as picture, with their grouping, even their costume, it may be, and he feels for and with them instead of being they for the moment, as the dramatist must always be. The story-teller must possess the situation perfectly in all its details, while the imagination of the dramatist must be possessed and mastered by it. The latter puts before us the very passion or emotion itself in its utmost intensity; the former gives them, not in their primary form, but in that derivative one which they have acquired by passing through his own mind and being modified by his reflection. The deepest pathos of the drama, like the quiet “no more but so?” with which Shakespeare tells us that Ophelia’s heart is bursting, is sudden as a stab, while in narrative it is more or less suffused with pity,—a feeling capable of prolonged sustention. This presence of the author’s own sympathy is noticeable in all Chaucer’s pathetic passages, as, for instance, in the lamentation of Constance over her child in the “Man of Law’s Tale.” When he comes to the sorrow of his story, he seems to croon over his thoughts, to soothe them and dwell upon them with a kind of pleased compassion, as a child treats a wounded bird which he fears to grasp too tightly, and yet cannot make up his heart wholly to let go. It is true also of his humor that it pervades his comic tales like sunshine, and never dazzles the attention by a sudden flash. Sometimes he brings it in parenthetically, and insinuates a sarcasm so slyly as almost to slip by without our notice, as where he satirizes provincialism by the cock
“Who knew by nature each ascensiön
Of the equinoctial in his native town.”
Sometimes he turns round upon himself and smiles at a trip he has made into fine writing:—