not needed to make him familiar with French literature, gave him opportunities for acquiring an acquaintance with the language and poetry of Italy, of which his works exhibit, in the face of all doubts that have been started, clear and numerous proofs.

7. The frequency of translations and imitations is a striking characteristic in the poetry of the middle ages. The grave reference, which the poets so frequently make, to books as their authorities for facts, was much more than a rhetorical flourish. A very large proportion of Chaucer's writings consists of free versions from the Latin and French, and perhaps also from the Italian; and in some of these he has incorporated so much that is his own, as to make them the most valuable and celebrated of his works. The originals which he chose were not the Chivalrous Romances, but the comic Fabliaux, (already very common in Latin as well as in living tongues,) and also an allegorical kind of poetry which the Trouvères now cultivated ardently, deriving its character in great part from the Troubadours. The Italian literature furnished him with models of a higher class, which, however, he put much more sparingly to use. Its poets, taking their first lessons from Provence, had recently founded a school of their own, equally great for invention and for skill in

art.

But the awful vision of Dante furnished to Chaucer nothing beyond a few allusions and descriptions; and he was too wise and sober-minded to be carried away by the lyrical abstractions of Petrarch, if he really knew much of them. He seems to have derived from fabliaux, or other French or Latin sources, those stories of his which are to be found among the prose novels of Boccaccio; whose metrical works, however, we cannot doubt that he studied and imitated.

Three of the largest of Chaucer's minor works are thus borrowed: the allegorical "Romance of the Rose," translated, with abridgment, from one of the most popular French poems of the preceding century; the Troilus and Cressida, avowedly a translation, but a very free one, if its original really was the Filostrato of Boccaccio; and The Legend of Good Women, a series of narratives, founded on Ovid's Epistles. The Troilus, certainly among his earliest poems, is one of his best, notwithstanding the disgusting tenor of the story. The same theme, it will be remembered, is handled by Shakspeare, in a drama adorned by some of his most brilliant flowers of imagination, and inspired throughout with deep though despondent reflection. The choice of such a subject by the later of these two great poets is less to be wondered at than its adoption by the other, who lived in a time that was much ruder, in sentiments as well as in manners.

Of the minor poems which appear to be entirely Chaucer's own, several, such as those which celebrate, in imaginative disguise, passages in the history of his royal patron, are, like most of the translations, chiefly interesting as proofs of the great mastery he had acquired over an imperfectly cultivated language. Nor, it must be said, would his fame be injured by the loss of any of them, except the fine allegorical inventions of The House of Fame, and the Flower and the Leaf; the former of which has received great injustice in its showy modernization by Pope, while the other also has suffered in the hands of Dryden. The structure of the latter of the two may serve to illustrate a kind of poetry, of which the Romance of the Rose was the most celebrated example, but which, throughout the latter part of the middle ages, was equally popular among the poets and among their readers. The piece could not well be described more aptly, than in the prose sentences, very slightly altered, which the author prefixed to it as an explanatory argument or analysis. "A gentlewoman, out of an arbour in a grove, seeth a great company of knights and ladies in a dance upon the green grass: the which being ended, they all kneel down and do honour to the Daisy, some to the Flower, and some to the Leaf. Afterwards this gentlewoman learneth by one of these ladies the meaning of the vision, which is this. They who honour the Flower, a thing fading with every blast, are such as look after beauty and worldly pleasure. But they that honour the Leaf, which abideth with the root, notwithstanding the frosts and winter-storms, are they which follow virtue and enduring qualities, without regard of worldly respects."

8. The poetical immortality of Chaucer rests on his Canterbury Tales, which are a series of independent stories, linked together by an ingenious device.

A party of about thirty persons, the poet being one, are bound on a pilgrimage from London, to the tomb of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. They meet at the inn of the Tabard, in Southwark, the host of which joins the cavalcade, and assumes the post of director. Each person is to tell two tales, the one in going, the other in returning: but we are allowed only to accompany the travellers on a part of the journey to Canterbury, and to hear twenty-four of their stories. The work is thus no more than a fragment; although its metrical part extends to more than seventeen thousand lines, being thus longer than the Iliad, and not far from twice as long as Paradise Lost. It contains allusions bringing us down to a date considerably beyond the poet's sixtieth year: but we can hardly suppose the whole to have been a fruit of old age. It is more probable that a good

many of the tales had been written separately, long before; while. others may have been added when the design of forming the collection was taken up, to be left uncompleted amidst the misfortunes which darkened the author's declining years.

The Prologue, which relates the occasion of the assemblage, and decribes the company, is in itself a poem of no small bulk, and of admirable merit. Here no allowance has to be made for obligations to preceding inventors; and a strength is manifest, which incomparably exceeds any that was put forth when the poet had foreign aid to lean on. He draws up the curtain from a scene of life and manners, such as the whole compass of our subsequent literature has not surpassed; a picture whose figures have been studied with the truest observation, and are outlined with the firmest, and yet most delicate pencil. The tone of sentiment, never rising into rapture or passion, is always unaffectedly cheerful and manly; while it frequently deviates on the one hand, into the keenest and most lively turns of humour, and, on the other, into intervals of touching seriousness; and, over the whole, the imagination of high genius has thrown the indescribable charm, which at once animates external nature with the spirit of human feeling, and brightens our dim thoughts of our own mental being with a light like that which illuminates the corporeal world around us.

After

A mere catalogue of the Pilgrims, who are thus vigorously described, would be an inventory of the English society of the day, in all ranks, except the very highest and the very lowest. There is a Knight, with his son, a young Squire. These two represent the chivalry of the times; and they are described, especially the latter, in the poet's best strain of gayly romantic fancy. They are attended by a Yeoman, a master of forest-craft. them in rank comes a Franklin or country-gentleman, who is a justice and has often been knight of the shire. The peasantry are represented by three men; a Ploughman, described briefly and kindly; a Miller, whose portrait is a wonderfully animated piece of rough satirical humour; and a Reeve or bailiff, whose likeness is an excellent specimen of quiet sarcasm, relieved by fine touches of rural scenery. There is a whole swarm of ecclesiastical persons, at whose expense the poet indulges his love of shrewd humour without any check. The Prioress of a convent, affected, mincing, and sentimental, is attended by a Nun and three Priests; the Benedictine Monk is already known familiarly to most of us, being the original of the self-indulgent Abbot of Jorvaulx in Ivanhoe: in contrast to him stands the coarse and popular Begging-Friar, "a wanton and a merry" and a Sompnour or officer of the church courts is yoked with a Pardoner or

seller of indulgences. Last among the members or retainers of the church, is to be named a poor Secular Priest from a country village, who is described with warmly affectionate respect. The learning of the times has three representatives: the Clerk of Oxford is a gentle student, silent, thoughtful, and unworldly; the Sergeant-of-law is sententious, alert, and affectedly immersed in important business; and the Doctor of Physic is fond of money, skilful in practice, and versed in all sciences except theology. The trading and manufacturing sections of the community furnish several figures to the picture.. Their aristocracy contains the Merchant, and the Wife of Bath, described with a keenness so inimitable: a meaner group is composed of the Haberdasher, Carpenter, Weaver, Dyer, the Tapestry-maker, with the Cook whom these have providently brought to attend them; and this part of the company is completed by a Shipman or mariner, and a Manciple or purveyor of one of the inns of court. These, with the Poet and the Host of the Tabard, are the world-renowned Pilgrims of Canterbury.

9. In some of the tales which follow, the tone rises from the familiar reality of the Prologue to the highest flight of heroic, reflective, and even religious poetry in others, it sinks not only into the coarseness of expression which deformed so much of our early literature, but into a positive licentiousness of thought and sentiment. Most of the humorous stories, and more than one of the scenes by which they are knit together, are quite unpresentable to young readers.

The series opens with the Knight's Tale of Palamon and Arcite, which, founded on an Italian poem of Boccaccio, has been modernized by Dryden, and made the groundwork of a striking drama sometimes attributed to Shakspeare. It is worthy of the delighted admiration with which poetical minds have always regarded it. It is the noblest of all chivalrous romances. Or, rather, it stands alone in our language, as a model of that which the romances might have been, but are not; symmetrical and harmonious, while they are undigested and harsh; full of clearness and brilliancy and suggestiveness, in its portraiture of adventures and characters which to the minstrels would have prompted only vague and indistinct sketches. This, a metamorphosed legend of Thebes and Athens, borrowing its first hints from the Latin poet Statius, is an instructive example of the manner in which the classical fables and history were disguised, in romantic trappings, by the poets of the middle ages. We shall learn something more in regard to it, when we come to this point in reviewing the progress of the English Language.

The Squire's Tale, a tantalizing fragment, traverses another

walk of romance, ushering us into a world of oriental marvels, some of which are identical with those of the Arabian Nights. Milton, whose fancy was keenly impressed by its picturesqueness, chooses it as his example of Chaucer's poetry; and he works up its figures into one of his most exquisite compositions of lyrical imagery. He wishes that it were possible, for the solace of his studious leisure,

"To call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,

That own'd the virtuous ring and glass;
And of the wondrous horse of brass,
On which the Tartar king did ride:
--And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of tourneys and of trophies hung,

Of forests, and enchantments drear,

Where more is meant than meets the ear."

The tale told by the Wife of Bath is a comic romance, the scene of which is laid at the court of King Arthur, and adorned with fairy transformations. The hero is required, on pain of death, to answer correctly a question proposed by the queen, what it is that women most desire; and he is taught by his wife to say, that they desire most of all to rule their husbands. Here the chivalrous recollections of the Round Table are used only as the occasion of one of those satires on the female sex, which abound so much in the Gesta, (the original of the story,) and in all the lighter compositions of the monks. Accordingly, it may not unfairly be regarded as the poet's protest against the popular tastes for the wilder of the romantic fictions. The same spirit becomes yet more decided in the rhyme of Sir Topas, the story which he supposes to be his own contribution to the common stock. It is a spirited parody on the romances, expressed chiefly in their own forms of speech; and the humour is heightened by the indignation with which the host, intolerant of attacks on the literature he best understood, arbitrarily puts a stop to its recitation. It tells us how the hero, a knight fair and gentle, fell in love with the queen of Fairyland; and how he rode through many a wild forest, ready to fight with giants if he should meet with any. The rude interruption prevents us, unluckily, from learning whether he was fortunate enough to find an opportunity of proving his valour.

The learned and gentle Clerk relates the story of Griselda, which used to be made known to all of us in our nursery-libra