gton, a Fairfax,
before Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in
their nonage till these last appeared."

Strange to say, by the changing pronunciation of the language, there
grew with time upon the minds of men a doubt, whether or no the Father
of our Poetry _wrote verse_! The tone of Dryden, in the above passage,
when animadverting upon Speght, shows that that editor, in standing up
for ten syllables, put forth an unusual opinion; whilst the poet, in
alleging the deficiency, manifestly agrees with the opinion of the
antique versification that had become current in the world. _He_ taxes
Chaucer, it will be observed, with going wrong on the side of
deficiency, not of excess; nor does he blame the interchange even of
deficiency and excess, as if the syllables were often nine and often
eleven. His words leave no room for misconception of their meaning. They
are as definite as language can supply. "Thousands of the verses are
lame for want of half a foot, or of a whole one." In this sense, then,
he intends: "That equality of numbers, in every verse which we call
heroic, was either not known, or not always practised in Chaucer's age."

But as Dryden has been severely taken to task by some insignificant
writers of our day for the above passage, let us, not for his
vindication, but excuse, take a moment's glance at Speght's edition
(1602,) which, in Dryden's day, was in high esteem, and had been at
first published on the recommendation of Speght's "assured and
ever-loving friend," the illustrious Francis Beaumout. In his preface,
Speght says--"and his verses, although in divers places they may seem to
us to stand of unequal measures, yet a skilful reader that can scan them
in their nature, shall find it otherwise. And if a verse here and there
fal out a sillable shorter or longer than another, I rather aret it to
the negligence and rape of Adam Scrivener, that I may speak 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
appear in the end of his fifth book of Troilus and Cresside, 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'" &c.

How Speght made up the measure to his own satisfaction does not appear;
nor what those methods of pronunciation may