that he succeeded with an admirable dexterity in harmonizing the ruder sounds of his vernacular tongue; so successfully, indeed, that it may be safely asserted that very few poets in any modern language are more exquisitely and uniformly musical than Chaucer. Indeed, he has been accused, and in rather severe terms, of having naturalized in English "a waggon-load of foreign words."

In 1380 we find Chaucer appointed to the office of Clerk of the Works at Windsor, where he was charged with overlooking the repairs about to made in St. George's Chapel, then in a ruinous condition.

In 1383 Wickliffe completed his translation into the English language of the Bible, and his death, in the following year, seems to have been the signal for the commencement of a new and gloomy phase in the fortunes of the poet. Chaucer returned to England in 1386, and, the party to which he belonged having lost its political influence, he was imprisoned in the Tower, and deprived of the places and privileges which had been granted to him. Two years afterwards he was permitted to sell his patents, and in 1389 he appears to have been induced to abandon, and even to accuse, his former associates, of whose treachery towards him he bitterly complains.

In reward for this submission to the government, we afterwards find him restored to favour, and made, in the year 1389, Clerk of the Works at Westminster. It is at this period that he is supposed to have retired to pass the calm evening of his active life in the green shades of Woodstock, where he is related to have composed his admirable Canterbury Tales.' This production, though, according to many opinions, neither the finest nor even the most characteristic of Chaucer's numerous and splendid poems, is yet the one of them all by which he is now best known: it is the work which has handed his name down to future generations as the earliest glory of his country's literature; and as such it warrants us in appealing, from the perhaps partial judgments of isolated critics, to the sovereign tribunal of posterity. The decisions of contemporaries may be swayed by fashion and prejudice; the criticism of scholars may be tinged with partiality; but the unanimous voice of four hundred and fifty years is sure to be a true index of the relative value of a work of genius.

Beautiful as are many of his other productions, it is the 'Canterbury Tales' which have enshrined Chaucer in the penetralia of England's Glory Temple; it is to the wit, the pathos, the humanity, the chivalry of those Tales that our minds recur when our ear is struck with the venerable name of Chaucer. In 1390 we find the poet receiving the honourable charge of Clerk of the Works at Windsor; and, two years later, a grant from the Crown of 207. and a tun of wine annually. Towards the end of the century which his illustrious name had adorned, he appears to have fallen into some

distress; for another document is in existence securing to the poet the protection of the Crown (probably against importunate creditors); and in 1399 we find the poet's name inserted in the lease of a house holden from the Abbot and Chapter of Westminster, and occupying the spot upon which was afterwards erected Henry VII's Chapel, now forming one of the most brilliant ornaments of Westminster Abbey. In this house, as is with great probability conjectured, Chaucer died, on the 25th of October, 1400, and was buried in the Abbey, being the first of that long array of mighty poets whose Dones repose with generations of kings, warriors, and statesmen beneath the "long-drawn aisles" of our national Walhalla.

In reading the works of this poet the qualities which cannot fail to strike us most are-admirable truth, freshness, and livingness of his descriptions of external nature; profound knowledge of human ife in the delineation of character; and that all-embracing humanity of heart which makes him, as it makes the reader, sympathise with all God's creation, taking away from his humour every taste of bitterness and sarcasm. This humour, coloured by and springing from universal sympathy, this noblest humanity-we mean humanity in the sense of Terence's: "homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto❞—is the heritage of only the greatest among mankind; and is but an example of that deep truth which Nature herself has taught as, when she placed in the human heart the spring of Laughter fast by the fountain of Tears.

We shall now proceed to examine the principal poems of Chaucer, in the hope of presenting to our readers some scale or measure of the gradual development of those powers which appear, at least to us, to have reached their highest apogee or exaltation in the 'Canterbury Tales.'

In the first work to which we shall turn our attention, Chaucer has given us a translation of a poem esteemed by all French critics the noblest monument of their poetical literature anterior to the time of Francis I. This is the 'Romaunt of the Rose,' a beautiful mixture of allegory and narrative, of which we shall presently give an outline in the words of Warton. The 'Roman de la Rose' was commenced by William de Lorris, who died in 1260, and completed, in 1310, by Jean de Meun, a witty and satirical versifier, who was one of the ornaments of the brilliant court of Charles le Bel. Chaucer has translated the whole of the portion composed by the former, together with some of Meun's continuation; making, as he goes on, innumerable improvements in the text, which, where it harmonizes with his own conceptions, he renders with singular fidelity. "The difficulties and dangers of a lover, in pursuing and obtaining the object of his desires, are the literal argument of the poem. This design is couched under the allegory 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 castles. These enchanted holds are all inhabited by various divinities; some of which assist, and some oppose, the lover's progress. The English poem is written, like the French original, in the short rhymed octosyllabic couplets so universally adopted by the Trouvères, a measure well fitted, from its ease and flowingness, for the purpose of long narratives. We have said that the translation is in most cases very close; Chaucer was so far from desiring to make his works pass for original when they had no claim to this qualification, that he even specifies, with great care and with even a kind of exultation, the sources from whence his productions are derived. Indeed, at such early periods in the literature of any country, writers seem to attach as great or greater dignity to the office of translator than to the more arduous duty of original composition; the reason of which probably is, that in the childhood of nations as well as of men learning is a rarer, and therefore more admired, quality than imagination.

The allegorical personages in the 'Romaunt of the Rose' are singularly varied, rich, and beautiful. Sorrow, Envy, Avarice, Hate, Beauty, Franchise, Richesse, are successively brought on the stage. As an example of the remarks we have just been making, we will quote a short passage from the latter part of Chaucer's trans. lation, i. e. from that portion of the poem composed by John of Meun: it describes the attendants in the palace of Old Age: we will print the original French beside the extract:

Here Chaucer's improvements are plainly perceptible; the introduction of Death, standing armed at the gate, is a grand and sublime thought, of which no trace is to be found in the comparatively flat original; not to mention the terrible distinctness with which Chaucer enumerates Old Age's Senators, Pain, Distress, Sickness, Ire, and Melancholy; and her grim chamberlains, Groaning and Grudging.

The next poem which we shall mention is the love-story entitled Troilus and Cresseide,' founded on one of the most favourite legends of the Middle Ages, and which Shakspeare himself has dramatized in the tragedy of the same name. The anachronism of placing the scene of such a history of chivalric love in the heroic age of the Trojan War is, we think, more than compensated by the pathos, the nature, and the variety which characterize many of the ancient romances on this subject. Chaucer informs us that his au

thority is Lollius, a mysterious personage very often referred to by the writers of the Middle Ages, and so impossible to discover and identify that he must be considered as the Ignis Fatuus of antiquaries. “Of Lollius,” says one of these unhappy and baffled investigators, "it will become every one to speak with deference." The whole poem is saturated with the spirit not of the Ionian rhapsodist, but of the Provençal minstrel. It is written in the rhymed ten-syllabled couplet, which Chaucer has used in the greater part of his works. In the midst of a thousand anachronisms, of a thousand absurdities, this poem contains some strokes of pathos which are invariably to be found in everything Chaucer wrote, and which show that his heart ever vibrated responsive to the touch of nature.

Though we propose, in a future volume, to give such specimens and extracts of Chaucer as may suffice to enable our readers to judge of his manner, we cannot abstain from citing here a most exquisite passage it describes the bashfulness and hesitation of Cressida before she can find courage to make the avowal of her love :—

"And as the newe-abashed nightingale
That stinteth first, when she beginneth sing,
When that she heareth any herdis tale,
Or in the hedgis any wight stirring,
And after siker doth her voice outring;
Right so Cresseide, when that her drede stent,
Opened her herte and told him her entent.'

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We may remark here the extraordinary fondness for the song birds exhibited by Chaucer in all his works. There is not one of the English poets, and certainly none of the poets of any other nation, who has shown a more intense enjoyment for this natural music: he seems to omit no opportunity of describing the "doulx ramaige" of these feathered poets, whose accents seem to be echoed in all their delicacy, their purity and fervour, in the fresh strains of “our Father Chaucer:"

"Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass!"

We have mentioned the anachronism of plan in this poem; it abounds in others no less extraordinary. Among these, he represents Cresseide as reading the Thebaid of Statius (a very favourite book of Chaucer), which he calls 'The Romance of Thebis;' and Pandarus endeavours to comfort Troilus with arguments of predestination taken from Bishop Bradwardine, a theologian nearly contemporary with the poet.

The 'House of Fame,' a magnificent allegory, glowing with all the "barbaric pearl and gold" of Gothic imagination, is the next

work on which we shall remark. Its origin was probably Provencal, but the poem which Chaucer translated is now lost. We will condense the argument of this poem from Warton :-"The poet, in a vision, sees a temple of glass decorated with an uncountable number of golden images. On the walls are engraved stories from Virgil's Eneid and Ovid's Epistles. Leaving this temple, he sees an eagle with golden wings soaring near the sun. The bird descends, seizes the poet in its talons, and conveys him to the Temple of Fame, which, like that of Ovid, is situated between earth and sea. He is left by the eagle near the house, which is built of materials bright as polished glass, and stands on a rock of ice. All the southern side of this rock is covered with engravings of the names of famous men, which are perpetually melting away by the heat of the sun. The northern side of the rock was alike covered with names; but, being shaded from the warmth of the sun, the characters here remained unmelted and uneffaced. Within the niches formed in the pinnacles stood all round the castle

'All manere of minstrellis,

And gestours, that tellen tales
Both of weping and eke of game;'

and the most renowned harpers-Orpheus, Arion, Chiron, and the Briton Glaskeirion. In the hall he meets an infinite multitude of heralds, on whose surcoats are embroidered the arms of the most redoubted champions. At the upper end, on a lofty shrine of carbuncle, sits Fame. Her figure is like those of Virgil and Ovid. Above her, as if sustained on her shoulders, sate Alexander and Hercules. From the throne to the gates of the hall ran a range of pillars with respective inscriptions. On the first pillar, made of lead and iron, stood Josephus the Jewish historian, with seven other writers on the same subject. On the second, made of iron, and painted with the blood of tigers, stood Statius. On another, higher than the rest, stood Homer, Dares Phrygius, Livy, Lollius, Guido of Colonna, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, writers on the Trojan story. On a pillar of 'tinnid iron clere' stood Virgil; and next him, on a pillar of copper, appeared Ovid. The figure of Lucan was placed upon a pillar of iron wrought full sternly,' accompanied by many Roman historians. On a pillar of sulphur stood Claudian. The hall is filled by crowds of minor authors. In the mean time crowds of every nation and condition fill the temple, each presenting his claim to the queen. A messenger is sent to summon Eolus from his cave in Thrace, who is ordered to bring his two clarions Slander and Praise, and his trumpeter Triton. The praises of each petitioner are then sounded, according to the partial or capricious appointment of Fame; and equal merits obtain very different success. The poet then enters the house or labyrinth of Rumour. It was built of wilLow twigs, like a cage, and therefore admitted every sound. From

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