¹ J. W. H. Atkins has discussed evidence for an experimental attitude and awareness of literary principles among Chaucer's contemporaries: English Literary Criticism: The Medieval Phase (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1943), ch. 7.

² i, 255; cited by Caroline Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion, Chaucer Soc. Publications, 2nd Ser. (1914 ff.), ii, 223 f.

³ Stevens discussed the matter in a letter to Thomas Percy, Oct. 24,1796; cited by Spurgeon, i, 498 f. For the N & Q correspondence, see Spurgeon, iii, 54.

⁴ In his Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language, i, xli, cited by Spurgeon, iii, 75 f.

⁵ Rhythm in English Prose (Heidelberg, 1910), Anglistische Forschungen, Heft 29, p. 24.

⁶ A History of English Prose Rhythm (London, 1912), p. 70. Saintsbury also finds at the end of the first meter in Boethius “an echo of the elegiac meter of the original.” Meter 4 of Book i is divided into prose feet and scanned, p. 75; the symbols used, however, are those for the long and short syllables of classical verse, not the stressed and unstressed ones of ME.

⁷ Out of about 600 endings analyzed, I count about 90 with iambic conclusions and 110 with trochaic. The supposed preference for iambs was regarded by Saintsbury as an advance to a better dominant rhythm : “it may seem hardly extravagant to call it immense in its consequences and its symptomatic value.” I find this statement not only unclear but quite inaccurate.

⁸ The Rise of English Literary Prose (New York, 1915), pp. 4-10.

⁹ Die sprachliche Form der Chaucerschen Prosa (Halle a. S., 1910).

¹⁰ Die Wirkung des Rhythmus in der Sprache von Chaucer und Gower (Heidelberg, 1916), Anglistische Forschungen, No. SO.

¹¹ Der Einfluss der mittelalterlichen Rhetorik auf Chaucer s Dichtung (Bonn, 1929).

¹² Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (New York, 1928).

¹³ JEGP, xlv (1946), 38-42.

¹⁴ On Chaucer's general knowledge of rhetoric and rhetoricians, see Naunin, as cited in note 11; C. S. Baldwin in PMLA, XLII (1927), 106-112, and op. cit., pp. 289-296; J. M. Manly, Chaucer and the Rhetoricians, Proc. of the British Acad., Warton Lectures on English Poetry No. 17 (London, 1927).

¹⁵ On this subject see Eduard Norden, Die antike Kunslprosa, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1898), covering the periods from the sixth century B.C. to the Renaissance. Appendix ii outlines the history of cursus.

¹⁶ The lines disclaim knowledge of Cicero, but the modesty of the statement has been shown to be conventional. On citations of Chaucer's text, see note 32.

¹⁷ See HF 985 and CT, E 1732 for Chaucer's references to Capella. The passage on scanning prose is found in De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, Bk. v, ed. A. Dick (Leipzig, 1925), pp. 256 ff.: “his breviter intimatis pedes sunt asserendi quibus clausulae decenter aptentur.” Capella uses Cicero, Orator, par. 215 ff.

¹⁸ Instilutio Oratorio, ix, iv, par. 61; transi. H. E. Butler, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1922). For an elaborate discussion of late Roman practice see H. Bornecque, Les Clausules métriques latines (Lille, 1907).

¹⁹ Briefsteller und Formelbücher des elften bis sum vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (Munich, 1863-64). A brief account of dictamen is given by Baldwin, Med. Rhet., ch. 8. See also Atkins, op. cit., ch. 5.

²⁰ François Charles Eugène Thurot in Notices el Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Impériale, xxii (Paris, 1868), Part 2, p. 480. Quotations from Boncampagnus are taken from this and the following page.

²¹ I.e., stress or lack of stress. In this statement the text differs from most others, which do reckon with ictus effects.

²² Thurot, op. cit., p. 481 f.

²³ Ibid., loc. cit.

²⁴ The device of placing commas to show word divisions was used by Karl Polheim in Die lateinische Reimprosa (Berlin, 192S), in discussing the reinforcement of cursus by rime and near-rime, ch. 3.

²⁵ The system of numbering from the end, a distinct aid in concise description of cursus, was suggested by the article of M. W. Croll. See below, note 29.

²⁶ Excerpts from the Candelabrum, perhaps written by Bene of Florence, are given by Thurot, op. cit., pp. 482 ff.; there is a detailed summary by Baldwin, Med. Rhet., pp. 216221.

²⁷ For a full account of the minor forms, see Wilhelm Meyer, Abhandlungen zur mitlellat. Rhythmik, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1905), used by Polheim and others.

²⁸ Sprache und Stil englischer Mystik unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Richard Rolle von Hampole (Halle a. S., 1933), Studien zur englischen Philologie, Heft 76.

²⁹ An article by J. Shelly, “Rhythmical Prose in Latin and English”, Church Quarterly Review (April, 1912), based on the Collects of the English Prayer Book, suggested a number of further studies. Important criticism and elaboration of Shelby's work was offered by M. W. Croll, “The Cadence of English Oratorical Prose”, SP, xvi (1919), 1-55. Edward L. Parker worked out “The Cursus in Sir Thomas Browne”, PMLA, liii (1938), 1037-53. A good general text is by Norton R. Tempest, The Rhythm of English Prose (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1930).

³⁰ This statement is based on the findings of Olmes, op. cit. It contradicts Hope Emily Allen, The Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle (New York and London, 1927), who relied on A. C. Clark, author of Cursus in Medieval and Vulgar Latin (Oxford, 1910): “Professor Clark assures me however that Rolle (in the Latin quotations given by Horstmann) does not use the cursus, and that is what we should expect of an inspirational writer who left the academic life in early youth” (p. 80). Nevertheless Olmes found many examples of all cursus types in the Latin : for instance, 200 instances of planus out of 1100 endings examined, and she gives unquestionably valid examples of each.

³¹ PMLA, loc. cit., especially p. 1040. Tempest had already noted in his handbook the tendency of native English cadences to end in stressed syllables, as in armor of light, contempt of thy word, etc., quoted op. cit., p. 84 f.

³² F. N. Robinson ed., p. 338. All citations from Chaucer follow this text unless otherwise noted. Robinson includes Skeat's notation for line readings in the CT, and this is used here to facilitate reference to both texts. Skeat's glossary is the more helpful in locating verse contexts of words to determine stress by scansion.

³³ Works of Chaucer (Oxford, 1894), iii, 257.

³⁴ “The Mystical Lyrics of the Manuel des Péchiez”, RR, ix (1918), 154, especially p. 187 with n. 75.

³⁵ The Summa Dictaminis by Poncius of Provence advises a letter writer to make a punctum “vel super duos spondeos, dactilo précédente ut hic latorem presentium milto vobis, aut super dactilum, ut hic noscat vestra discretio presenti pagina” (Thurot, op. cit., p. 482).

³⁶ Op. cit., p. 891, note to HF 623. Robinson points to this sense of the word in the 15th century, as established by Eleanor Hammond in her English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey, p. 457. Curiously, Du Cange does not give the special rhetorical meaning for cadentia in Latin, nor for cursus either.

³⁷ J. L. Paetow, The Arts Course at Medieval Universities, Illinois Studies in Lang, and Lit. (TJrbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1910), iii, No. 7, pp. 81-85.

³⁸ See note 26.

³⁹ Paetow, op. cit., p. 74 and note.

⁴⁰ Ch.-V. Langlois, “Formulaires de lettres du xii^e, du xiii⁶ et du xiv^e siècle”, Notices et Extraits, xxxv, Pt. 2 (1897), pp. 427 ff.

⁴¹ For a sketch of his life and works, see Paetow, “Morale Scolarium of John of Garland”, Memoirs of the University of Berkeley, iv, No. 1; History, i, No. 1 (1927), 77-258.

⁴² Ed. G. Mari, Romanische Forschungen, xiii (1902), 883-965.

⁴³ See note 17.

⁴⁴ Rationes Dictandi Prosaice (12th cent.), ed. Rockinger, op. cit., I, 53-88.

⁴⁵ Cf. the distinctions made by D. S. MacColl for English: characteristic prose, with no predominating measure, even in cursus position; numerous or cadenced prose; verse invaded by prose emphasis; characteristic verse. See his “Rhythm in English Verse, Prose and Speech”, Essays and Studies of the English Association, v (Oxford, 1914), 7-50.

⁴⁶ Dorothy Everett has signalled Chaucer's ability to select the “tune” appropriate to any discourse being reported. She refers to echoes of alliterative verse, popular saints' lives, the garrulous colloquial speech of the Wife of Bath, etc., but not to reproduction of cursus patterns: “Chaucer's ‘Good Ear’”, RES, xxiii (1947), 201-208.

⁴⁷ Die Wirkungen des Rhythmus; cf. note 10.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 20, citing Morsbach, 75.

⁴⁹ Ruth Buchanan Mcjimsey, Chaucer's Irregular -e (New York: King's Crown Press lithoprint, 1942); J. G. Southworth, “Chaucer's Final -e in Rhyme”, PMLA, LXII (1947), 910-935; E. Talbot Donaldson, “Chaucer's Final ‘-e’”, PMLA, LXIII (1948), 1101-24. Donaldson refutes the too sweeping claims of Southworth for ubiquitous loss of -e, but does not modify the traditional position in respect to elision.

⁵⁰ See note 31.

⁵¹ have not attempted to take into account the additional patterns worked out by F. M. K. Foster in “Cadence in English Prose”, JEGP, xvi (1917), 456-462, based on 19th century specimens chiefly. Foster's cadences include all feet and combinations of feet containing a total of two stressed syllables.

⁵² Accentuation established by HF 622.

⁵³ The type 6-5'-2 somewhat resembles a planus but has not been so reckoned. ⁵⁴ Accent on the final syllable established by verse usage; cf. CT, C 7 and F 34 (in rime positions), also B 162. ⁵⁵ Two dactyls (if uppereste is trisyllabic); an unusual form in Chaucer.

⁶⁰ The Skeat text has out of your herte, which may be read as a planus.

⁵⁷ Possibly 5-1, a not unusual variation of Pa.

⁵⁸ May be read as velox if the verb is unstressed.

⁵⁹ Skeat's text has yourself.

⁶⁰ Unless thise is stressed.