language as that in which he wrote, evidently the older forms of inflexion might easily be kept up for literary purposes in verbs also, and used side by side with the later. Thus in the 1st pers. pl. of the present tense we find lison (lisoun) repeatedly in rhyme, and occasionally other similar forms, as soion 18480. The 1st pers. sing. of the present tense of several strong verbs is inflected with or without s at pleasure: thus from dire we have di, dy, as well as dis; faire gives fai or fais; by the side of suis (sum), sui or suy is frequently found; and similarly we have croy, say, voi. In the same part of first-conjugation verbs the atonic final e is often dropped, as pri, appell, mir, m’esmai, suppli. In the third person singular of[Pg xix] the preterite of i verbs there is a variation in the ending between -it (-ist) and -i (-y). Thus in one series of rhymes we have nasquit, s’esjoït (in rhyme with dit, &c.), 268 ff., in another s’esjoÿ, chery, servi (in rhyme with y), 427 ff.; in one stanza fuÿt, partist, 11416 ff., and in the next respondi, 11429; so chaït (chaïst) and chaÿ, obeït and obeï, &c. It may be doubted also whether such words as tesmoignal, surquidance, presumement, bestial (as subst.), relinquir, &c., owe their existence to any better cause than the requirements of rhyme or metre. In introducing ent, 11471, for the usual en the poet has antiquity on his side: on the other hand when he writes a repeatedly in rhyme for the Anglo-Norman ad (which, except in these cases, is regularly used) he is no doubt looking towards the ‘French of Paris,’ which naturally tended to impose itself on the English writers of French in the fourteenth century. By the same rule he can say either houre or heure, flour or fleur, crestre or croistre, crere or croire; but on the whole it is rather surprising how little his language seems to have been affected by this influence. [Pg xix] The later Anglo-Norman treatment of the terminations -é and -ée in past participles and in verbal substantives would seem to demand notice chiefly in connexion with rhyme and metre, but it is really a question of phonology. The two terminations, as is well known, became identified before the beginning of the fourteenth century, and it is needless to quote examples to show that in Gower’s metre and rhymes -ée was equivalent to -é. The result of this phonetic change, consisting in the absorption of the atonic vowel by the similar tonic which immediately preceded it, was that -é and -ée were written indiscriminately in almost all words with this ending, and that the distinction between the masculine and feminine forms was lost completely in pronunciation and to a very great extent
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