PIERS PLOUGHMAN. Y-bounden about; He bar by his side, On his hat setten, Signs of Sinai And shells of Galice, And many a crouch2 on his cloak For men shold know Fro whennes he come : "And from our Lord's sepulchre : In Bethlem and in Babiloyn, I have been in both; In Armony and in Alisandre, For my soul's health." "Knowestow" aught a corsaint 43 3 Miraculous picture Interrogated. 6 Armenia. 7 Knowest Couldst. 10 Teach. 11 Man. 12 Man. 13 Naturally. Contemporary with Petrarch in Italy, and, indeed, heralding the dawn of the intellectual day, was Geoffrey Chaucer (b. 1328, d. 1400), who is sometimes called the father of English poetry, and who, if properly understood, will be found to be one of the most compact, nervous, wise, and musical of English poets. He was a courtier, learned, thoughtful, and good, and attended the courts of Edward III. and Richard II., between the years 1360 and 1400. He was a man of very extensive knowledge, and determinately opposed to the priests, hating, with a fair, honest, open hatred, their ways, their hypocrisy, their domination, and avariciousness; and ready to herald, not the utter subversion of faith, but the Reformation, which after many years took place. Beyond all this, Chaucer is a painter of English character, equal to in generality, and surpassing in truth and finish, Mr. Dickens of our own 2 Showed. Securely. 3 Labour. 4 Sowed. s Tended. day. He is quite as amusing, and just as fresh; to an immeasurably higher degree, a poet,—and it is certain that Dickens is a true poet; besides, he is free from that terrible fault, the perpetual tendency to caricature, which that author possesses. In reading Chaucer, there comes as vividly before the mental eye as Mr. Wackford Squeers, and John Browdie, in "Nicholas Nickleby," or the exaggerated cockneys of " Pickwick," the honest, open-hearted, every-day Englishman of four hundred years ago. One can travel to Canterbury to perform a pilgrimage at the shrine of that cunning plottersaint (?), Thomas-à-Becket; one can pray with the good parson, jest with the man who sold pardons from Rome and did not believe in them, drink with the Abbot, laugh with the Abbess, and sing love-songs to the Nun. There they all are, with the Miller, the Sompnour, the Man of Law, and the whole of the company, as much alive as any of Dickens's or Anthony Trollope's characters now. Chaucer is therefore, viewed in this light, an historical poet; and he is as superior to the ordinary historian as a troop of soldiers is to a regiment of wax-works. Read Hume's history of Richard II., and it is very possible that the reader will not be much impressed with it, although the historian has told it as well as any of his dry-as-dust brethren can; but read of the Pilgrimage to Canterbury, the meeting at the Tabard Inn, the bustling host who gets up to wake the company, and from whom emanates the idea of telling tales to pass the time of the journey pleasantly, in which whosoever acquits himself well, to him are the others to contribute for a supper at their journey's end, the trotting forth of the nags, the drunkenness of the "Coke," the foppishness of the Squire, the purse-pride of the well-fed Abbot, and we feel in the midst of a living creation. In the Miller's Tale we can shut our eyes and see the parish clerk with his smart shoes, his well-combed hair, and his scented breath and linen, making love to the carpenter's wife. Even the animals painted by Chaucer seem to live. The pictures of the horse bolting away to the fen where the wild mares are, of the fox lying in wait, and of the cock strutting and crowing are just as accurately delineated as they could be by the closest observer of the present day; so vivid, so true, so real are they. A student will do well to supplement history with Chaucer. Moreover, he is unquestionably a first-class poet, and lastly, he will be of rare use to the students of language, who will, in his pages, perceive how our words have changed, both in meaning and spelling, as well as in weight and accent. Here are a few lines from one of his poems to exhibit some of the changes, which in this instance are given with the Anglo-Saxon characters. The passage is from the "Pardoneres Tale," where the three "riotours"-or fast young men, as we should now call them-meeting an old man, ask disdainfullyWhy lyvest pou, so longe, in so gret age? This oldé man 'gan looke on his visage And saidé þus, For þat I cannot finde A man þough pat I walked into Inde, Neiper in cité noon, ne in village, That wol chaungé his youpé for myn age; And perfore moot I have myn agé stille As longé tyme as it is Goddés wille. Here, beside the Saxon characters, we find a terminal and accented é before consonants, and the genitive case of a noun, Goddes, now only marked by our modern sign of ', thus-God's. MARCHAUNDES TALE. 47 That woman was not without her champions in Chaucer's time is plain from the following extract, taken from the "Marchaundes Tale :" A wyf is Goddes gifte verrayly; As landes, rentes, pasture, or comune, He which hath no wif I hold him schent; And herken why, I say not this for nought, O fleisch thay ben, and on blood as I gesse, 1 Yielding, obedient. |