Scottish Text Society publications > New series > Kingis quair; together with A ballad of good counsel

INTRODUCTION.
XXIX
pronoun precedes. Observe myn eye (51). this wise (120),
my charge (120), my gyde (126), thy herte (128), your chance
(146), myn ere (152), the quhele (162), thy herte (170). Cf.
myn ey-en (8), hir ey-en (104).
(/) But here comes in a most curious result. Chaucer
does not, in general, use the final -e in adjectives occurring
in the singular and indefinitely. This is a refinement of
grammar to which James did not attain. It is the fate of
writers in an artificial dialect that they make mistakes of
this character, just as Spenser has perpetrated some extra¬
ordinary offences against grammatical propriety in his Fairy
Queen. Accordingly, we find the king wrongly adding a
final -e to indefinite adjectives in several places; he seems
to have regarded it as a poetical embellishment, to be
added or dropped at pleasure, a theory which had doubtless
great practical convenience. A clear instance of this false
usage occurs in st. 65, where we should read, “ With new-e
fresch-e suete and tender grene ”; the e in suete being elided
before the following vowel. Other examples are seen in
large (77), strange (135), hye (154), strange (163), lawe (164),
newe (13, 65, 165), glide (185). To these add longe (154),
faire (178, 1. 3), miswritten long and fair respectively. I
think we should also read rounde in st. 159,1. 2, to complete
the line. It may be observed that the final -e is permissible
(in Southern) in some of these words—viz., in the French
words large, strange, and in the words newe, swete, which
were naturally dissyllabic (A.S. mwe, swete), but the forms
hye, lawe, gude, longe, faire, as here used, are hardly defens¬
ible. They are not only not Northern ; they are not even
Chaucerian.
(g) Chaucer uses a final e to denote an adverbial use;
this is unknown to the Northern dialect. I do not find