The verse of the _Book of the Duchesse_ is easy and flowing but not distinguished. The _Compleint unto Pitè_ shows a freedom and boldness in the use of the French seven-lined stanza which marks a new departure in English versification. Chaucer tries his hand at roundels and balades, at narrative poetry and love laments, and the result is that he attains a suppleness and melody unknown to his predecessors and unfortunately ignored by his immediate successors. The music of his verse is not the least of his contributions to a literature, whose exponents could placidly remark And trouthe of metre I sette also a-syde; For of that art I hadde as tho no guyde Me to reduce when I went a-wronge: I toke none hede nouther of shorte nor longe. Lydgate did not begin to write until after Chaucer's death, but the lines quoted above from the _Troy Book_ exactly express the point of view of the majority of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century poets. In 1372, as we have seen, Chaucer went to Italy, and the influence of Italian poetry upon him can hardly be exaggerated. Professor Ten Brink believes that the influence of Dante was largely responsible for a sudden quickening and deepening of religious feeling in Chaucer, and he attributes the A.B.C., the _Lyf of St. Cecyle_, and the translation of the _De Miseria Humanæ Conditionis_ to this period. Whether he is right or wrong in this respect (and Professor Skeat dates both the A.B.C. and the _Lyf of St. Cecyle_ before the Italian journey) there can be no question as to Chaucer's profound admiration for the author of the _Divina Commedia_. The _Inuocacio ad Mariam_ which prefaces the _Second Nonnes Tale_ is drawn from the concluding canto of the _Paradiso_, the most striking of all the Monk's tales Of him that stood in greet prosperitee And is y-fallen out of heigh degree Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly,