of convenience; but neither of them is peculiar to himself, or of
supreme importance for the effect of his verse. In fact, he seems to
allow as much in a passage of his "House of Fame," a poem written, it
should, however, be observed, in an easy-going form of verse (the line
of four accents) which in his later period Chaucer seems with this
exception to have invariably discarded. He here beseeches Apollo to
make his rhyme

somewhat agreeable,
Though some verse fail in a syllable.

But another of his usages--the misunderstanding of which has more than
anything else caused his art as a writer of verse to be
misjudged--seems to have been due to a very different cause. To
understand the real nature of the usage in question it is only
necessary to seize the principle of Chaucer's rhythm. Of this
principle it was well said many years ago by a most competent
authority--Mr. R. Horne--that, it is "inseparable from a full or fair
exercise of the genius of our language in versification." For though
this usage in its full freedom was gradually again lost to our poetry
for a time, yet it was in a large measure recovered by Shakspere and
the later dramatists of our great age, and has since been never
altogether abandoned again--not even by the correct writers of the
Augustan period--till by the favourites of our own times it is resorted
to with a perhaps excessive liberality. It consists simply in SLURRING
over certain final syllables--not eliding them or contracting them with
the syllables following upon them, but passing over them lightly, so
that, without being inaudible, they may at the same time not interfere
with the rhythm or beat of the verse. This usage, by adding to the
variety, incontestably adds to the flexibility and beauty of Chaucer's
versification.)

With regard to the most important of them is it not too much to say
that instinct and experience will very speedily combine to indicate to
an intelligent reader where the poet has resorted to it. WITHOUT
intelligence on the part of the reader, the beautiful harmonies of Mr.
Tennyson's later verse remain obscure; so that, taken in this way the
most musical of English verse may seem as difficult to read as the most
rugged; but in the former case the lesson is learnt not to be lost
again, in the latter the tumbling is ever beginning anew, as with the
rock of Sisyphus. There is nothing that can fairly be called rugged in
the verse of Chaucer.

And fortunatel