Note 118 — FABLES.
Reading edition
Thomas Speght's edition of Chaucer was published in 1597 and 1602. The preface contains the passage which Dryden alludes to: "And for his (Chaucer's) verses, although, in divers places, they seem to us to stand of unequal measures, yet a skilful reader, who can scan them in their nature, shall find it otherwise. And if a verse, here and there, fal out a syllable shorter or longer than another, I rather aret it to the negligence and rape of Adam Scrivener, (that I may speake as Chaucer doth) than to any unconning or oversight in the author: For how fearful he was to have his works miswritten, or his verse mismeasured, may appeare in the end of his fift booke of "Troylus and Creseide," where he writeth thus:
"And for there is so great diversitie In English, and in writing of our tongue, So pray I God that none miswrite thee, Ne thee mismetre for defaut of tongue."
By his hasty and inconsiderate contradiction of honest Speght's panegyric, Dryden has exposed himself to be censured for pronouncing rashly upon a subject with which he was but imperfectly acquainted. The learned Tyrwhitt has supported Speght's position with equal pains and success, and plainly proves, that the apparent inequalities of the rhyme of Chaucer, arise chiefly from the change in pronunciation since his time, particularly from a number of words being now pronounced as one syllable, which in those days were prolonged into two, or as two syllables which were anciently three. These researches, in the words of Ellis, "have proved what Dryden denied, viz. that Chaucer's versification, wherever his genuine text is preserved, was uniformly correct, although the harmony of his lines has, in many cases, been obliterated by the changes that have taken place in the mode of accenting our language."—Specimens of the Early English Poets, Vol. I. p. 209.