For though that the best harper upon live Would on the beste sounid jolly harpe That evir was, with all his fingers five Touch aie o string, or aie o warble harpe, Were his nailes poincted nevir so sharpe, It shoulde makin every wight to dull To heare is glee, and of his strokes full. This, like the other, becomes the perfect _ottava rima_ by the addition of a single line, which I have likewise marked in italics:-- For though that the best harper upon live Would on the beste sounid jolly harpe That evir was, with all his fingers five Touch aie o string, or aie o warble harpe, _And with Glaskyrion the Briton strive_, Were his nailes poincted nevir so sharpe, It shoulde makin every wight to dull To heare his glee, and of his strokes full. The addition refers to a celebrated ancient Welsh harper mentioned with honour by Chaucer himself in his _Boke of Fame_. I shall not further meddle by patchwork with the illustrious Father of English Poetry. But, as in the former case, by the addition of two lines and one word I could at once convert his stanza into that of Spenser. The _ottava rima_ was not then invented, nor for many years after Chaucer wrote, not having made its appearance until the days of Boiardo and Berni, nor been brought to perfection until the lyre was held by the master hands of Ariosto and Tasso. The secret of the great resemblance of this stanza as employed by Chaucer to that subsequently invented by his Italian successors is, that both delved in the same mine and wrought upon the same material--the Sicilian sonnet, first introduced and naturalized in Europe by Chaucer’s great contemporary, Petrarch. So perfect was this instrument, the sonnet, at its discovery, that the fine taste of Petrarch adhered to it throughout life with marvellous tenacity, and at this day Wordsworth has without change written nearly half his poetry in it. I believe Chaucer, who either copied or adapted many of his modes of versification from Petrarch, to have moulded his ballet-staves both of seven and eight, by squaring them with the first half of the Sicilian or Petrarcan sonnet, with which they are nearly identical. The Italian successors of Petrarch in the same way took the first half of the sonnet, transposing the first and second lines, and inserting another line between the fourth and fifth lines. Thus simply is derived the far-famed _ottava rima_.