it be so at
its termination. That Chaucer admits the doubled ending we see by
numerous unequivocal instances from all moods of the verse, mirthful and
solemn; these show a versification friendly to the doubled ending; and
must go far to remove any scruple of admitting Tyrwhitt's conception of
it as generally hendecasyllabic.

Let the position of Chaucer in the history of his art be considered, and
it will be seen that those who maintain a systematic art in him have a
relief from objections greater than those who should enquire concerning
perhaps any other poet. In the formation of his verse, and the lifting
up of a rude language, more than Dante himself, a creator! What wonder,
then, if he should sometimes make mistakes, and that some
inconsistencies remain at last irreducible? If the method undertaken
draws the irreducible cases into a narrower and a narrower compass, that
sufficiently justifies the theory of the method against all gainsayers.

This copious, and, possibly, tedious grammatical display of this once
active metrical element, was forced from us as the only proper answer to
the doubt revived in our own day on the versification of Chaucer. We are
too prone to believe that our forefathers were as rude as their speech,
and their speech as they; but this multitude of grammatical delicacies,
retained for centuries after the subjection of the native language by
conquest, and systematically applied in the versification of the great
old poet, shows a feeling of language, and an authentic stamp of art,
that claim the most genial and sympathizing respect of a refined
posterity, to their not wholly unrefined, more heroic ancestors.

INDEX TO VOL. LVII.

About a bonnet, 242.

Aden, town of, 206.

Advice to an author, on the novel and the drama, 679.

AEsthetics of dress:
--A case of hats, 51
--No. II. about a bonnet, 242
--No. III. the cut of a coat and the good of a gown, 608
--No. IV. minor matters, 731.

Affliction of childhood, the, by the English Opium-Eater, 274.

Agriculture, Practical, 298.

Almaden, the quicksilver mines of, 186.

Anacreon's grave, from Goethe, 175.

Apparition of the Brocken, the, by the English Opium-Eater, 747.

Ariosto, remarks on, 404.

Arnold's history of Rome, vol. iii., review of, 752.

Betham's Etruria Celtica, review of, 474.

Blind girl, to a, 98.

Bonnet, about a, 242.

Book of the Farm, review of, 298.

Borodino, an ode, 30.

Bravo, c