If that mi love be withdrawe.’ (iv. 2677 ff.)
There is nothing remarkable about the sentiment or expression in these passages, but they are perfectly simple and natural, and run into rhyming verse without disturbance of sense or accent; but such technical skill as we have here is extremely rare among the writers of the time. Chaucer had wider aims, and being an artist of an altogether superior kind, he attains, when at his best, to a higher level of achievement in versification as in other things; but he is continually attempting more than he can perform, he often aims at the million and misses the unit. His command over his materials is evidently incomplete, and he has not troubled himself to acquire perfection of craftsmanship, knowing that other things are more important,
‘And that I do no diligence
To shewe craft but o sentence.’
The result is that the most experienced reader often hesitates in his metre and is obliged to read lines over twice or even thrice, before he can satisfy himself how the poet meant his words to be accented and what exactly was the rhythm he intended. In fact, instead of smoothing the way for his reader, he often deliberately chooses to spare himself labour by taking every advantage, fair or unfair, of those licences of accent and syllable suppression for which the unstable condition of the literary language afforded scope. The reader of Gower’s verse is never interrupted in this manner except by the fault of a copyist or an editor; and when we come to examine the means by which the smoothness is attained, we feel that we have to do with a literary craftsman who by laborious training has acquired an almost perfect mastery over his tools. The qualities of which we are speaking are especially visible in the more formal style of utterance which belongs to the speeches, letters and epitaphs in our author’s tales. The reply of Constance to her questioner (ii. 1148 ff.) is a good example of the first:
‘Quod sche, “I am
A womman wofully bestad.
I hadde a lord, and thus he bad,
That I forth with my litel Sone
Upon the wawes scholden wone,