lover in pursuing and obtaining the object of his desires are the literal argument of this poem. This design is couched under the argument of a rose, which our lover after frequent obstacles gathers in a delicious garden. He traverses vast ditches, scales lofty walls, and forces the gates of adamantine and almost impregnable castles. These enchanted fortresses are all inhabited by various divinities; some of which assist, and some oppose, the lover's progress." ."* The entire poem consists of no fewer than 22,734 verses, of which only 4,149 are the composition of William of Lorris. All this portion has been translated by Chaucer, and also about half of the 18,588 lines written by De Meun his version comprehends 13,105 lines of the French poem. These, however, he has managed to comprehend in 7701 (Warton says 7699) English verses: this is effected by a great compression and curtailment of De Meun's part; for, while the 4149 French verses of De Lorris are fully and faithfully rendered in 4432 English verses, the 8956 that follow by De Meun are reduced in the translation to 3269. Warton, who exhibits ample specimens both of the translation and of the original, considers that Chaucer has throughout at least equalled De Lorris, and decidedly surpassed and improved De Meun.

No verse so flowing and harmonious as what we have in this translation, no diction at once so clear, correct, and expressive, had, it is probable, adorned and brought out the capabilities of his native tongue when Chaucer began to write. Several of his subsequent poeins are also in whole or in part translations; the Troilus and Creseide, the Legend of Good Women (much of which is borrowed from Ovid's Epistles), and others. But we must pass over these, and will take our first extract from his House of Fame, no foreign original of which has been discovered, although Warton is inclined to think that it may have been translated or paraphrased from the Provençal. Chaucer, however, seems to appear in it in his own person; at least the poet or dreamer is in the course of it more than once addressed by the name of Geoffrey. And in the following passage he seems to describe his own occupation and habits of life. It is addressed to him by the golden but living Eagle, who has carried him up into the air in his talons, and by whom the marvellous sights he relates are shown and explained to him :

First, I, that in my feet have thee,
Of whom thou hast great fear and wonder,

* Hist. Eng. Poetry, ii. 209.

:

Far.
Nevertheless.

Am dwelling with the God of Thunder,
Which men ycallen Jupiter,

That doth me flyen full oft fer1
To do all his commandement;

6

And for this cause he hath me sent
To thee; harken now by thy trouth;
Certain he hath of thee great routh,*
For that thou hast so truely
So long served ententifly 3
His blinde nephew Cupido,
And the fair queen Venus also,
Withouten guerdon ever yet;
And natheless hast set thy wit
Althoughe in thy head full lit is
To make bokes, songs, and dittes,
In rhime or elles in cadence,
As thou best canst, in reverence
Of Love and of his servants cke,
That have his service sought and sce
And painest thee to praise his art,
Although thou haddest never part;
Wherefore, so wisely God me bless,
Jovis yhalt it great humbless,
And virtue eke, that thou wilt make
Anight full oft thine head to ache
In thy study, so thou ywritest,
And ever more of Love enditest,
In honour of him and praisings,
And in his folkes furtherings,
And in their matter all devisest,
And not him ne his folk despisest,
Although thou may'st go in the dance
Of them that him list not avance:
Wherefore, as I now said, ywis,
Jupiter considreth well this,
And als, beau sire, of other things,
That is, that thou hast no tidings
Of Loves folk if they be glade,
Ne of nothing else that God made,
And not only fro8 fer countree
That no tidinges comen to thee,
Not of thy very neighebores,
That dwellen almost at thy dores,
Thou hearest neither that ne this;
For, when thy labour all done is,

2 Ruth, pity.

5 Jove held.

7 Fair sir.

3 Attentively.

6 O'nights, at night s From.

And hast made all thy reckonings,
Instead of rest and of new things,
Thou goest home to thine house anon,
And, all so dumb as any stone,
Thou sittest at another book,
Till fully dazed is thy look,

And livest thus as an hermit,
Although thine abstinence is lit;
And therefore Jovis, through his grace,

Will that I bear thee to a place

Which that yhight the House of Fame, &c.

From the mention of his reckonings in this passage, Tyrwhitt conjectures that Chaucer probably wrote the House of Fame while he held the office of Comptroller of the Customs of Wools, to which he was appointed in 1374. It may be regarded, therefore, as one of the productions of the second or middle stage of his poetical life, as the Romaunt of the Rose is supposed to have been of the first. The House of Fame is in three books, comprising in all 2190 lines, and is an exceedingly interesting poem on other accounts, as well as for the reference which Chaucer seems to make in it to himself, and the circumstances of his own life. In one place, we have an illustration drawn from a novelty which we might have thought had hardly yet become familiar enough for the purposes of poetry. The passage, too, is a sample of the wild, almost grotesque imagination, and force of expression, for which the poem is remarkable :

What did this Eolus? but he

Took out his blacke trompe of brass,
That fouler than the devil was,

And gan this trompe for to blow
As all the world should overthrow.
Throughout every region

Ywent this foule trompes soun,
As swift as pellet out of gun
When fire is in the powder run:
And such a smoke gan out wend

Out of the foule trompes end,

Black, blue, and greenish, swartish, red,
As doeth where that men melt lead,

Lo all on high from the tewel:1
And thereto one thing saw I well,
That aye the ferther that it ran
The greater wexen it began,
As doth the river from a well;
And it stank as the pit of hell.

1 Funnel.

The old mechanical artillery, however, is alluded to in another passage as if also still in use:—

And the noise which that I heard,
For all the world right so it fered
As doth the routing of the stone
That fro the engine is letten gone.

Through such deeper thinking and bolder writing as we have in the House of Fame, Chaucer appears to have advanced from the descriptive luxuriance of the Romaunt of the Rose to his most matured style in the Canterbury Tales. This is not only his greatest work, but it towers above all else that he has written, like some palace or cathedral ascending with its broad and lofty dimensions from among the common buildings of a city. His genius is another thing here altogether from what it is in his other writings. Elsewhere he seems at work only for the day that is passing over him; here, for all time. All his poetical faculties put forth a strength in the Canterbury Tales they have nowhere else shown; not only is his knowledge of life and character greater, his style firmer, clearer, more flexible, and more expressive, his humour more subtle and various, but his fancy is more nimblewinged, his imagination far richer and more gorgeous, his sensibility infinitely more delicate and more profound. And this great work of Chaucer's is nearly as remarkably distinguished by its peculiar character from the great works of other poets as it is from the rest of his own compositions. Among ourselves at least, if we except Shakespeare, no other poet has yet arisen to rival the author of the Canterbury Tales in the entire assemblage of his various powers. Spenser's is a more aerial, Milton's a loftier song; but neither possesses the wonderful combination of contrasted and almost opposite characteristics which we have in Chaucer:-the sportive fancy, painting and gilding everything, with the keen, observant, matter-of-fact spirit that looks through whatever it glances at; the soaring and creative imagination, with the homely sagacity, and healthy relish for all the realities of things; the unrivalled tenderness and pathos, with the quaintest humour and the most exuberant merriment; the wisdom at once and the wit; the all that is best, in short, both in poetry and in prose, at the same time.

The Canterbury Tales is an unfinished, or at least, as we have it, an imperfect work; but it contains above 17,000 verses, besides more than a fourth of that quantity of matter in prose. The Tales (including the two in prose) are twenty-four in 1 Fared, proceeded.

2 Roared.

number; and they are interspersed with introductions to each, generally short, called prologues, besides the Prologue to the whole work, in which the pilgrims or narrators of the tales are severally described, and which consists of between 800 and 900 lines. The Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale is fully as long. All the twenty-four tales are complete, except only the Cook's Tale, of which we have only a few lines, the Squire's Tale, which remains "half-told," and the burlesque Tale of Sir Thopas, which is designedly broken off in the middle. Of the nineteen complete tales in verse, the longest are the Knight's Tale of 2250 verses, the Clerk's Tale of 1156, and the Merchant's Tale of 1172. The entire work, with the exception of the prose tales and the Rime of Sir Thopas (205 lines), is in decasyllabic (or hendecasyllabic) verse, arranged either in couplets

or in stanzas.

The general Prologue is a gallery of pictures almost unmatched for their air of life and truthfulness. Here is one of

them :

There was also a nun, a Prioress

3

That of her smiling was full simple and coy,
Her greatest oathe n'as but by Saint Loy;
And she was cleped Madame Eglantine.
Full well she sange the service divine,
Entuned in her nose full sweetely;
And French she spake full fair and fetisly
After the school of Stratford atte Bow,
For French of Paris was to her unknow.4
At meate was she well ytaught withal;
She let no morsel from her lippes fall,
Ne wet her fingers in her sauce deep;
Well could she carry a morsel and well keep
Thatte no droppe ne fell upon her breast:
In curtesy was set full much her lest."
Her over-lippe wiped she so clean
That in her cuppe was no ferthing seen
Of grease when she drunken had her draught.
Full seemely after her meat she raught.7
And sickerly she was of great disport,
And full pleasant and amiable of port,
And pained her to counterfeiten cheer
Of court, and been estatelich of manere,

8

1 That is, Saint Eloy or Eligius. Oathe here, according to Mr. Guest is the old genitive plural (originally atha), meaning of oaths.

3

2 Called.

Neatly.

5 Pleasure.

7 Reached.

4 Unknown.
6 Smallest spot.
8 Surely.

9 Took pains.