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OBSERVATIONS ON ENGLISH METRE

Though I would not with Mr. Urry,1 the Editor of Chaucer, insert words and syllables, unauthorized by the oldest manuscripts, to help out what seems lame and defective in the measure of our ancient writers, yet as I see those manuscripts, and the first2 printed editions, so extremely inconstant in their manner of spelling one and the same word as to vary continually, and often in the compass of two lines, and seem to have no fixed orthography, I cannot help thinking it probable, that many great inequalities in the metre are owing to the neglect of transcribers, or that the manner of reading made up for the defects which appear in the writing. Thus the y which we often see prefixed to participles passive, ycleped, yhewe, &c. is not a mere arbitrary


1  See the Preface to Urry's Chaucer. Fol.
2  This inconstancy of the manner of spelling one and the same word is not confined to the first printed copies, but is found equally in the MSS. themselves. This is no wonder, for the Italians themselves, contemporary with Chaucer, writing in an age when literature began to flourish, and in a language more regular and grammatical than that of any neighbouring country, had yet no fixed orthography, as appears from the original manuscripts of Francesco Barberino, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, which are still preserved. (See Crescimbeni, Comentarj, l. 6.)


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