of a less balanced judgment, to take the
trouble, which, if it could but be believed, is by no means great, to
master the rules and usages of Chaucerian versification. These rules
and usages the present is not a fit occasion for seeking to explain.
(It may, however, be stated that they only partially connect themselves
with Chaucer's use of forms which are now obsolete--more especially of
inflexions of verbs and substantives (including several instances of
the famous final e), and contractions with the negative ne and other
monosyllabic words ending in a vowel, of the initial syllables of words
beginning with vowels or with the letter h. These and other variations
from later usage in spelling and pronunciation--such as the occurrence
of an e (sometimes sounded and sometimes not) at the end of words in
which it is now no longer retained, and again the frequent accentuation
of many words of French origin in their last syllable, as in French,
and of certain words of English origin analogously--are to be looked
for as a matter of course in a last writing in the period of our
language in which Chaucer lived. He clearly foresaw the difficulties
which would be caused to his readers by the variations of usage in
spelling and pronunciation--variations to some extent rendered
inevitable by the fact that he wrote in an English dialect which was
only gradually coming to be accepted as the uniform language of English
writers. Towards the close of his "Troilus and Cressid," he thus
addresses his "little book," in fear of the mangling it might undergo
from scriveners who might blunder in the copying of its words, or from
reciters who might maltreat its verse in the distribution of the
accents:--

And, since there is so great diversity
In English, and in writing of our tongue,
I pray to God that none may miswrite thee
Nor thee mismetre, for default of tongue,
And wheresoe'er thou mayst be read or sung,
That thou be understood, God I beseech.

But in his versification he likewise adopted certain other practices
which had no such origin or reason as those already referred to. Among
them were the addition, at the end of a line of five accents, of an
unaccented syllable; and the substitution, for the first foot of a line
either of four or of five accents, of a single syllable. These
deviations from a stricter system of versification he doubtless
permitted to himself, partly for the sake of variety, and partly for
that