Mr. Guest, in his work, of which we hope erelong to give an account, brings to the story of English verse far more extensive research than had hitherto been bestowed upon it; and that special scholarship which was needed—the Anglo-Saxon language, learned in the new continental school of Rask and Grimm. His examination of our subject merges in a general history of the Language, viewed as a metrical element or material; and hence his exposition, which we rapidly collect seriatim, is plainly different in respect of both order and fulness from what it would have been, had the illustration of Chaucer been his main purpose. He follows down the gradual Extinction of Syllables; and in this respect, our anciently syllabled, now mute E, takes high place, and falls first under his consideration.
This now silent or vanished Vowel occurred heretofore, with metrical power, in adopted French Substantives, as—eloquenc-e, maladi-e; and in their plurals, as—maladi-es. And in Adjectives of the same origin, as—larg-e.
It remained from several parts of the Anglo-Saxon grammar.—From A, E, U, endings of Anglo-Saxon substantives—as nam-a, nam-e; tim-a, tim-e; mon-a, (the moon,) mon-e; sunn-e, (the sun,) sonn-e; heort-e, (the heart,) hert-e; ear-e, (the ear,) er-e; scol-u, (school,) scol-e; luf-u, lov-e; sceam-u, sham-e; lag-a, law-e; sun-u, (a son,) son-e; wud-u, (a wood,) wod-e.—(To Mr Guest's three vowels, add O:—as bræd-o (breadth) bred-e.)—From the termination THE; as—streng-the; yow-the.—From a few adjectives ending in e; as—getrew-e, trew-e; new-e, new-e.—From adverbs, formed by the same vowel from adjectives; as from beorht, (bright,) is made, in Anglo-Saxon, beorht-e, (brightly,) remaining with Chaucer, as bright-e.—Inflexion produces the final E. In substantives, the prevalent singular dative of the mother speech was in E. Chaucer, now and then, seems to present us with a dative; as in the second verse of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, from rot, (root,) rot-e. And Mr Guest thinks that he has found one instance of a genitive plural E from A; namely, from the earlier ath, (an oath,) genitive plural, ath-a; with Chaucer—oth, oth-e.
The German family of languages exhibits a fine and bold peculiarity—a double declension of its Adjectives, depending on a condition of syntax. The Anglo-Saxon adjective, in its ordinary (or, as grammarians have called it, Indefinite) declension, makes the nominative plural for all the genders in E; and this remains as the regular plural termination of the adjective to Chaucer. Thus we have, in the more ancient language—eald; plural, eald-e; with Chaucer—old; plural, old-e, &c.
The rule of the extraordinary (or Definite) declension, is thus generally given by Mr Guest for Chaucer. "When the adjective follows the definite article, or the definite pronoun, this, that, or any one of the possessive pronouns—his, her, &c.—it takes what is called its definite form."—(Vol. i. p. 32.) From the Anglo-Saxon definite declension (running through three genders, five cases, and two numbers,) remains, to the language that arose after the Conquest, one final E. E.g. Indefinite—strong; definite, strong-e;—indefinite—high; definite—high-e.
The Verb ends the first person singular, and the three persons plural, of the present tense, and makes imperative and infinitive, in E. The past tense generally ends in DE or EDE; (Mr Guest has forgotten TE;) sometimes in ED.
As for those two principal endings, the genitive singular in ES, which is the Anglo-Saxon termination retained, and the plural in ES, which is the Anglo-Saxon ending obscured—they happen hardly to fall under Mr Guest's particular regard; but it is easily understood that the Anglo-Saxon hlaford, (lord,) gen. sing. hlaford-es, had, in Chaucer's day, become lord, lord-es;—and that scur, (shower,) plural scur-as, of our distant progenitors had bequeathed to his verse—shour, shour-es.
Legitimate scepticism surely ceases when it thus appears that ignorance alone has hastily understood that this vowel, extant in this or that word, with a quite alien meaning and use, (—e.g. for lengthening a foregoing vowel—softening an antecedent consonant,)—or with none, and through the pure casualty of negligence or of error, might at any time be pressed irregularly into metrical service. Assuredly Chaucer never used such blind and wild license of straightening his measure; but an instructed eye sees in the Canterbury Tales—and in all his poetry of which the text is incorrupt—the uniform application of an intricate and thoroughly critical rule, which fills up by scores, by hundreds, or by thousands, the time-wronged verses of "the Great Founder" to true measure and true music.
To sum up in a few words our own views—First, if you take no account of the mute E, the great majority of Chaucer's verses in the only justifiable text—Tyrwhitt's Canterbury Tales—are in what we commonly call the ten-syllabled Iambic metre.
Secondly, if you take account of the metrical E, the great majority of them appear, if you choose so to call them, as eleven-syllabled Iambic verses, or as the common heroic measure with a supernumerary terminal syllable.