§ 16. This matter is best illustrated by referring, for a while, to the old black-letter editions; moreover, the whole matter will appear in a clearer light if we consider, at the same time, the remarkable argument put forward by Prof. Morley (Eng. Writers, v. 126) in favour of the genuineness of The Court of Love. [xxi]
'Chaucer (he says) could not have written verse that would scan without sounding in due place the final _-e_. But when the final _e_ came to be dropped, a skilful copyist of later time would have no difficulty whatever in making the lines run without it.... If Chaucer wrote--"But that I liké, may I not come by"[18]--it was an easy change to--"But that I like, _that_ may I not come by." With _so_ or _and_, or _well_, or _gat_, or _that_, and many a convenient monosyllable, lines that seemed short to the later ear were readily eked out.' He then proceeds to give a specimen from the beginning of the Canterbury Tales, suggesting, by way of example, that l. 9 can easily be made to scan in modern fashion by writing--'And when the small fowls maken melodye.'
Such a theory would be perfectly true, if it had any basis in facts. The plain answer is, that later scribes easily _might_ have eked out lines which seemed deficient; only, as a matter of fact, they _did not do so_. The notion that Chaucer's lines run smoothly, and can be scanned, is quite a modern notion, largely due to Tyrwhitt's common sense. The editors of the sixteenth century _did not know_ that Chaucer's lines ran smoothly, and did not often attempt to mend them, but generally gave them up as hopeless; and we ought to be much obliged to them for doing so. Whenever they actually make amendments here and there, the patching is usually plain enough. The fact is, however, that they commonly let the texts alone; so that if they followed a good MS., the lines will frequently scan, not by their help, but as it were in spite of them.
§ 17. Let us look for a moment, at the very edition by Stowe (in 1561), which contains the earliest copy of The Court of Love. The 9th line of the tales runs thus:--'And smale fowles maken melodie,' which is sufficiently correct. We can scan it now in the present century, but it is strongly to be suspected that Stowe could not, and did not care to try. For this is how he presents some of the lines.