A great deal too much fuss is made over the pronunciation and scansion of Chaucer.  After all, we are Englishmen, with an instinct for understanding the language we inherit; in the evolution of our language we move on the same lines as our fathers; and Chaucer’s English is at least no further removed from us than the Lowland dialect of Scott’s novels.  Moreover, we have in reading Chaucer what we lack in reading Scott—­the assistance of rhythm; and the rhythm of Chaucer is as clearly marked as that of Tennyson.  Professor Skeat might very well have allowed his admirable text to stand alone.  For his rules of pronunciation, with their elaborate system of signs and symbols, seem to me (to put it coarsely) phonetics gone mad.  This, for instance, is how he would have us read the Tales:—­

“Whan-dhat Aprill?/widh iz-shuurez soot? dh?-druuht’ ov-March?/hath persed too dh? root?, ?nd-baadhed ev’ri vein?/in-swich likuur, ov-which vertyy/enjendred iz dh? fluur....”

—­and so on?  I think it may safely be said that if a man need this sort of assistance in reading or pronouncing Chaucer, he had better let Chaucer alone altogether, or read him in a German prose translation.

* * * * *

April 6, 1895.

Why is Chaucer so easy to read?  At a first glance a page of the “Canterbury Tales” appears more formidable than a page of the “Faerie Queene.”  As a matter of fact, it is less formidable; or, if this be denied, everyone will admit that twenty pages of the “Canterbury Tales” are less formidable than twenty pages of the “Faerie Queene.”  I might bring several recent editors and critics to testify that, after the first shock of the archaic spelling and the final “e,” an intelligent public will soon come to terms with Chaucer; but the unconscious testimony of the intelligent public itself is more convincing.  Chaucer is read year after year by a large number of men and women.  Spenser, in many respects a greater poet, is also read; but by far fewer.  Nobody, I imagine, will deny this.  But what is the reason of it?

The first and chief reason is this—­Forms of language change, but the great art of narrative appeals eternally to men, and its rules rest on principles older than Homer.  And whatever else may be said of Chaucer, he is a superb narrator.  To borrow a phrase from another venerable art, he is always “on the ball.”  He pursues the story—­the story, and again the story.  Mr. Ward once put this admirably—­

“The vivacity of joyousness of Chaucer’s poetic temperament ... make him amusingly impatient of epical lengths, abrupt in his transitions, and anxious, with an anxiety usually manifested by readers rather than by writers, to come to the point, ’to the great effect,’ as he is wont to call it.  ‘Men,’ he says, ’may overlade a ship or barge, and therefore I will skip at once to the effect, and let all the rest slip.’  And he unconsciously