Or feine things, or finde wordes new:
He may not spare, although he were his brother,
He mot as well say o word as another,
Christ spake himself full broad in holy writ,
And well ye wot no villany is it.
Eke Plato saith, who so that can him rede,
The wordes mote be cousin to the dede.
Yet if a man should have inquired of Boccace or of Chaucer, what need
they had of introducing such characters where obscene words were proper
in their mouths, but very indecent to be heard; I know not what answer
they could have made; for that reason, such tale shall be left untold
by me. You have here a specimen of Chaucer's language, which is so
obsolete, that his sense is scarce to be understood; and you have
likewise more than one example of his unequal numbers, [Footnote: The
lines have been corrected in the text, and may easily be seen to be
perfectly metrical.] which were mentioned before. Yet many of his
verses consist of ten syllables, and the words not much behind our
present English: as, for example, these two lines, in the description
of the carpenter's young wife:--
Wincing she was, as is a jolly colt,
Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt.
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