IS "THE CUCKOW AND THE NIGHTINGALE" CHAUCER'S ? * MANY

students and lovers of Chaucer's minor poems must have been astonished and grieved on seeing that, in the first volume of Professor Skeat's valuable addition to Chaucer literature, this beautiful, and generally admitted genuine, poem was finally excluded from the works of their favourite poet. When such exquisite work as "The Cuckow and the Nightingale" has, from within a century of the poet's death, been allowed to be his, when not only, as Mr. Skeat admits, have some of the most ancient and reliable manuscripts given this charming poem as Chaucer's undoubted composition, but when such eminent experts in old English literature as Thomas Tyrwhitt, Robert Bell, and, if we may be per- mitted to say so without making invidious distinctions, the greatest of these scholars, whose recent death we are now deploring, the lamented Rev. Richard Morris, all agree in including this poem amongst Chaucer's genuine works, we think we may fairly arge that it ought not to be put aside as spurious, even by so high an authority as Pro- fessor Skeat, without some very conclusive reasons for so doing. If, after taking into account this considerable con- sensus of opinion in its favour, and the internal evidence of its age and parentage, we wonder to find it excluded from the rest of Chaucer's writings, that wonder is increased on find- ing that it is not even admitted amongst those minor poems which Professor Skeat, though doubtful about, admits that he is not prepared to exclude altogether; and we think at any rate we are justified in examining somewhat critically the reasons for this exclusion, and while comparing the reasons be gives for admitting some he has admitted, with those he gives for excluding this particular work, in asking whether these reasons are all well founded in fact.

Taking in the first place the oldest manuscript texts, we must, of course, rely a good deal on the statement of one who, like Mr. Skeat, has had long experience in the study -and deciphering of manuscript and great opportunities for bringing his natural gifts to that study. Many of these manuscripts are out of the reach of the ordinary reader, and if within his reach, he has not the time, or inclination, or sufficient knowledge to decipher them. Thus we are often obliged to accept as accurate a good deal that an expert in -these matters says; relying on his honesty and judgment. And if we find, in even one important instance, that an editor has gone wrong, or is inaccurate, we may legitimately doubt whether he may not also have gone wrong in other instances, where we have nob been able to verify his state- ments. Mr. Skeet, in what he curtly gives as a sort of apology for his arbitrary act of exclusion, admits that the poem in question is "not uncommon in manuscript," and that, amongst others, it is to be found in the "Folio Harleian MS. No. 7,333," in the British Museum. This w The Conwlete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited from numerous MS. by the Roy. Walter f3koat, Ltt.D., LL.D., 31 A. Vol. I. Oxford: Clarendon Press. mention of some manuscripts in which it is found, according to the old maxim, " expressio unius est exclueio alterius," must be taken to mean that he wishes hie readers to believe that it is not included in the many others which he quotes as authorities for other poems, and the many numerous manu- scripts which he has presumably examined in his researches.

We call attention to the very interesting MS. No. 7,333, in the British Museum, because it is one of those Mr. Skeat mentions when dealing with the poem under consideration, and one of those that the present writer has had an opportunity of examining. We have taken the trouble,— no small trouble,—to examine very carefully this manu- script, and we have no hesitation in saying that "The Cuckow and the Nightingale" is not there. The error most likely arises through following and mistaking a note to Mr. Morris's preface. In this note, and the text to which it refers, and which, if Mr. Skeet relies on it for his authority, he relies on without acknowledgment, Mr. Morris states that he takes his "Assembly of Fowles," and "The Cuckow and the Nightingale," from a Bodleian MS., and adds in the note "Collated with Harl. MS. 7,333," no doubt referring to" The Assembly of Fowles," which it does contain, "and Bodleian MS. Selden," presumably referring to "The Cuckow and the Nightingale," which that manuscript contains. May we not suspect, when we are thus able to show such want of care in an editor, that he may be equally careless when he fails to discover the presence of this poem in other manuscripts which we have not been able to search P But to return to the early manuscripts. Mr. Skeat, as we say, admits that the poem is found in five others, and four at least of these are well known to be amongst the best manu- scripts we have, as, for instance, that in the Cambridge University Library, and the Tanner MS. in the Bodleian; he admits that the rhymes are mostly Chaucerian, and that it is "more worthy of Chaucer than most of the others with which it has been proposed to burden his reputation," yet he says he can see "no sufficient reason for connecting him with it." We venture to think that the onus of disconnecting such a poem, which has, as any student of Chaucer who has studied it will admit, strong internal evidence of Chaucer's hand, and which has by so many authorities been received as his, is on the one who rejects it rather than on those who would still retain it.

Let us see what reasons Mr. Skeat brings for his opinion.

It has, he says, three faults of rhyme. In stanza 11 ," day" is made to rhyme with " arraye." In stanza 13, " green " rhymes with "been," and in stanza 40, " now " rhymes with " rescow." But did Chaucer never spell "day" with an " e " at the' end of it ? We think we could bring as many examples of its having been spelt in Chaucer's time with an as without, and in Mr. Morris's edition it is so spelt, and then the rhyme is right. It is easy to alter the spelling, and then say it does not rhyme. "Green," Mr. Skeat says, is in Chaucer always dissyllabic. If he means by this that Chaucer always meant it to be pronounced as a dissyllable, as though it had an accent over the final "e," we must beg leave, with great submission, to dissent from such a dictum. No doubt when "green" or " grene," as it was generally spelt, is a penultimate or antepenultimate it is very often, perhaps always, dissyllabic. As in "The Assembly of Fowles," lines 183 and 184 :— " A gardyn saw I ful of blossomed bowis, Upon a ryver in a green() mode ; " or in "The Legend of Good Women," lines 227.28 ;— "Y-clothed was this mighty God of Love

In silke embrouded full of greene groves ; "

and in many other lines which will at once occur to every reader of Chaucer, but to hold that it is always dissyllabic when it ends a line, would be to destroy the harmony and rhythm of innumerable lines. What would be thought of the following couplet, at lines 174 and 175 of "The Assembly of Fowles," if " grene" is dissyllabic ?— " Eche in his kinds of colour fresh and grene, As emeraude that joys was to sons."

Is " sene " there also to be dissyllabic ? But if " grene" is and " sene " is not, the verse does not rhyme ; if both are, the verse is inharmonious. So at lines 296, 298, and 299, where " grene " rhymes with " quene " and "shone," both words of one syllable, and in lines 328, 329 " grene" again rhymes with " sene." The same rhymes occur in "The Legend of Good. Women " over and over again, as in lines 213, 223, 242, 303, 841; while in lines 282, 283 we have- " Behind this God of Love upon the grene I saw coming of ladyes ninetene."

Let any reader try to pronounce " grene " here as a dis- syllable, and " ninetene " with an accent over the final "e," and he will see how the beauty of the verse is destroyed. We perhaps have said too much to disprove the Professor's theory that "grene" is always dissyllabic in Chaucer, and that because it is written once in "The Cuckow and the Night- ingale " as one syllable, and made to rhyme with "been," therefore this poem is not Chaucer's. His third and last objection is that, in stanza 46, " now " rhymes with " rescow."

According to the reading in Bell, and some other editors no doubt, the couplet runs :— "That thou haat liked me to rescow, And one avow to love make I now."

There the rhyme is correct, but the spelling is wrong, says Mr. Skeat, because " meow " is a gerund, and ought to be spelt " rescowe." Supposing this argument to be unanswer- able, although many instances could be given where, in the best of Chaucer's poems, spelling is frequently varied to suit the rhyme, or the metre, yet let us take the better reading of Mr. Morris's edition, and the objection altogether disappears. There it is :— " That thou haat lyked me thus to rescowe, And one avowe to love I wol allowe."

Such are the intrinsic grounds upon which Mr. Skeet rejects this poem. But inconsistently, we think, he admits "The Proverbe of Chaucer," although it contains such a rhyme as e copes" and " embrace,"— " Of al this world the wyde compas, Hit wol not in myn armee tweyne ; Who so mochel wol embrace, Litel thereof he shal distreyne."

There neither in spelling nor in sound, neither to the eye nor to the ear, is there rhyme.

Mr. Skeat not only rejects the poem, but he suggests that it was written by Hoccleve. The only reason for this violent suggestion is that in one manuscript (MS. Bodley 638) it is called "The Boke of Cupide, God of Love," while the same manuscript contains a poem, undoubtedly by Hoccleve, called "The Lettre of Cupide, God of Love." We need hardly remind students of old manuscript how frequently the Scribes took upon themselves to give fanciful titles, as well as authors, to the poems they were copying ; and the fact that the Scribe saw in the collection he was making, or copying, a poem entitled "The Book of Cupid," would be quite sufficient to induce him to head Chaucer's poem with a similar fantastical name, however unsuitable it might be. But let any one of ordinary taste or judgment compare "The Cuckow and the Nightingale" with this "Letter of Cupid," or any other of Hoccleve's poems, and he will not require many arguments to prove to him how utterly impossible it would be for the author of the one to have written any of the others.

Mr. Skeat is justly proud of being the first to edit the sweet poem which he found in a British Museum manuscript called "An Amorous Compleint." It is a responsibility, no doubt, to be the first to father an anonymous work upon Chaucer ; we do not complain of his having done so in this case, but we notice a circumstance which is much to our purpose. One of the reasons he gives for his opinion that the "Amorous Complaint" is Chaucer's, is that it has in its last stanza a direct reference to "The Parliament of Ponies" :— "This compleynt on Saint Valentyne's day When every foul (ther) chesen shall his make."

Now, in "The Cuckow and the Nightingale," there is a much more direct reference to "The Parliament of Poulos," where the birds, being asked by the gentle nightingale to hear her complaint against the cuckoo, decide that they "wol have a parliament" :— "And this shall be withouten nay The morrow after Saint Valentine's day, Under a maple that is faire and grene, Before the chamber window of the Queue At Woodstocke upon the grene lay."

Much, too, might be urged from this allusion to the Queen at Woodstock, and from Chaucer's well-known connection with the Court, but we think we have said enough to show that if, as Mr. Skeat says, it is "high time to exclude poems known to be by some other hand," yet, unless there are better grounds than those given by him for suspecting the genuine origin of such a poem as this, it ought not to be excluded.