There is hardly any use of the prefix y- (i-), but we have ybore, ii. 499.
vi. Dialect. Gower’s language is undoubtedly in the main the English of the Court, and not a provincial dialect. Making allowance for the influences of literary culture and for a rather marked conservatism in orthography and grammatical inflexions, we can see that it agrees on the whole with the London speech of the time, as evidenced by the contemporary documents referred to by Prof. Morsbach. At the same time its tendencies are Southern rather than Midland, and he seems to have used Kentish forms rather more freely than Chaucer. This is shown especially (1) in the more extensive use of the forms in which e stands for O. E. y̆, as senne, kesse, pet, hell, &c.; (2) in the frequent employment of ie, both in French and English words, to represent ẹ̄, a practice which can hardly be without connexion with the Kentish cliene, diepe, diere, hier, hield, niede, &c.; (3) in the use of -ende as the normal termination of the present participle. (The Ayenbite regularly has -inde.) Probably also the preference shown by Gower for the close sound of ē, from O. E. ǣ, may be to some extent due to Kentish influence. Other points of resemblance between the language of Gower and that of the Ayenbite (for example) are the free use of syncopated forms in the 3rd pers. sing. of verbs and the regular employment of ous for us.
vii. Metre, &c. The smoothness and regularity of Gower’s metre has been to some extent recognized. Dr. Schipper in Englische Metrik, vol. i. p. 279, remarks upon the skill with which the writer, while preserving the syllabic rule, makes his verse flow always so smoothly without doing violence to the natural accentuation of the words, and giving throughout the effect of an accent verse, not one which is formed by counting syllables. Judging by the extracts printed in Morris and Skeat’s Specimens (which are taken from MS. Harl. 3869, and therefore give practically the text of Fairfax 3), he observes that the five principal licences which he has noted generally in the English verse of the period are almost entirely absent from Gower’s octosyllabics, and in particular that he neither omits the first unaccented syllable, as Chaucer so often does (e.g. ‘Be it rouned, red or songe,’ Hous of Fame, ii. 214, ‘Any lettres for to rede,’ iii. 51, ‘Of this hill that northward lay,’ iii. 62), nor displaces the natural accent (as ‘Of Decembre the tenthe day,’ Hous of Fame, i. 111, ‘Jupiter considereth wel this,’ ii. 134, ‘Rounede everych in otheres ere,’ iii. 954), nor slurs over syllables.
To say that Gower never indulges in any of these licences would be an exaggeration. Some displacement of the natural accent may be found occasionally, even apart from the case of those French words whose accent was unsettled, but it is present in a very slight degree, and the rhythm produced does not at all resemble that of the lines cited above from Chaucer: e.g. i. 2296, ‘Wher that he wolde make his chace,’ 2348, ‘Under the grene thei begrave,’ 2551, ‘“Drink with thi fader, Dame,” he seide.’ Such as it is, this licence is nearly confined to the first foot of the verse, and is not so much a displacement of the natural accent of the words as a trochaic commencement, after the fashion which has established itself as an admitted variety in the English iambic. We may, however, read long passages of the Confessio Amantis without finding any line in which the accent is displaced even to this extent.
Again, as to slurring of syllables, this no doubt takes place, but on regular principles and with certain words or combinations only. There are hardly more than three or four lines in the whole of the Confessio Amantis where a superfluous syllable stands unaccounted for in the body of the verse, as for example,
iv. 1131, ‘Som time in chambre, som time in halle,’
v. 447, ‘Of Jelousie, bot what it is,’
v. 2914, ‘And thus ful ofte aboute the hals,’
v. 5011, ‘It was fantosme, bot yit he herde.’
The writer seems to have no need of any licences. The narrative flows on in natural language, and in sentences and periods which are apparently not much affected by the exigencies of metre or rhyme, and yet the verse is always smooth and the rhyme never fails to be correct. If this is not evidence of the highest style of art, it shows at least very considerable skill.