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CHAUCER'S ENGLISH.--But we are to observe, finally, that Chaucer is the
type of progress in the language, giving it himself the momentum which
carried it forward with only technical modifications to the days of
Spenser and the Virgin Queen. The _House of Fame_ and other minor poems
are written in the octosyllabic verse of the Trouveres, but the
_Canterbury Tales_ give us the first vigorous English handling of the
decasyllabic couplet, or iambic pentameter, which was to become so
polished an instrument afterward in the hands of Dryden and Pope. The
English of all the poems is simple and vernacular.
It is known that Dante had at first intended to compose the Divina
Commedia in Latin. "But when," he said to the sympathizing Frate Ilario,
"I recalled the condition of the present age, and knew that those generous
men for whom, in better days, these things were written, had abandoned
(_ahi dolore_) the liberal arts into vulgar hands, I threw aside the
delicate lyre which armed my flank, and attuned another more befitting the
ears of moderns.


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