Fifthly, if you consent to take account of this grammatical metrical E, no inconsiderable number of the verses--ten-syllabled or eleven-syllabled, by technical computation--acquire one or two supernumerary syllables distributed, if one may so speak, _within_ the verse--and to be viewed as enriching the harmony without distorting or extending the measure, after the manner of the _Paradise Lost_. Finally, (for the present,) whether the verses in general fall under our usual English scheme of the one-syllabled ending, or end, as the Italian for the most part do, dissyllabically, has been disputed by those who agree in the recognition of the metrical E. To wit--shall the final E of Mr Guest's rule, ending the verse, and where it would, consequently, make a hypercatalectic eleventh syllable, still be pronounced--as Tyrwhitt, although not anxiously, contends? If the grammatical rule is imperative within the verse, as much, one would think, must it be so at its termination. That Chaucer admits the doubled ending we see by numerous unequivocal instances from all moods of the verse, mirthful and solemn; these show a versification friendly to the doubled ending; and must go far to remove any scruple of admitting Tyrwhitt's conception of it as generally hendecasyllabic. Let the position of Chaucer in the history of his art be considered, and it will be seen that those who maintain a systematic art in him have a relief from objections greater than those who should enquire concerning perhaps any other poet. In the formation of his verse, and the lifting up of a rude language, more than Dante himself, a creator! What wonder, then, if he should sometimes make mistakes, and that some inconsistencies remain at last irreducible? If the method undertaken draws the irreducible cases into a narrower and a narrower compass, that sufficiently justifies the theory of the method against all gainsayers. This copious, and, possibly, tedious grammatical display of this once active metrical element, was forced from us as the only proper answer to the doubt revived in our own day on the versification of Chaucer. We are too prone to believe that our forefathers were as rude as their speech, and their speech as they; but this multitude of grammatical delicacies, retained for centuries after the subjection of the native language by conquest, and systematically applied in the versification of the great old poet, shows a feeling of language, and an authentic stamp of art, that claim the most genial and sympathizing respect of a refined posterity, to their not wholly unrefined, more heroic ancestors. INDEX TO VOL. LVII. About a bonnet, 242. Aden, town of, 206. Advice to an author, on the novel and the drama, 679. AEsthetics of dress: --A case of hats, 51 --No. II. about a bonnet, 242 --No. III. the cut of a coat and the good of a gown, 608 --No. IV. minor matters, 731. Affliction of childhood, the, by the English Opium-Eater, 274.