entrusted to none other than a poet; the draughts of the young immortal must be from a pure fountain head. He must sit at the feet of the great departed, and drink in the wisdom of their "reverend antiquity." He must compare and contrast the throbs of their hearts with his own, till at the last he will, by companionship with them, be elevated more nearly to their level. And his reason must be

"Ripened by years of toil and studious search,

And watch of Nature's silent lessons "-BRYANT.

Like a young eaglet, the youthful poet will dare to fly, while he can only flutter; and his daring spirit must not be held in charge by one who would fain clip his wings and fetter his pinions. He needs direction rather than governing. With a singular fatuity our colleges and universities will not waste a thought upon fostering and nurturing poets. Bending to the utilitarianism of our age and nation, their stereotype productions are lawyers, physicians and clergymen ; and a professorship of poetry is a thing as yet unheard of in an American college. Therefore it is also, that instead of concentrating the attention of their charges upon the mighty men of old who gave consistency to our noble language -or upon any single point of mental discipline-they are content with dragging their listless victims into unwilling discussions upon Greek and Latin trivialties; and with causing them to dabble, now in Mathematics, now in Philosophy, now in Jurisprudence, until the literary character of an inmate of one of our colleges is aptly described by the apophthegm," Sicut canis ad Nilum, bibens et fugiens." This too, while our own noble language, the language of Shakspeare and Milton, is less thoroughly understood, and its manifold beauties less appreciated, than those of any other that is taught; and while it teems with treasures neither deftly nor deeply hidden.

Chief among the throng with whom we burn to have our people familiar, and whose imperishable writings should make each name seem like the blast of a trumpet, are these: the father of English song, Chaucer; Milton's master, "the sage and serious Spenser;" Sidney, the Hero-Poet; "Rare old Ben" Jonson; and Chapman, and Marlowe, and Surrey, and Raleigh; Beaumont and Fletcher, and Carew and Herrick. These are some of the mighty men whose lips are unsealed to a

scanty few, when each nation that calls the Saxon tongue its own, should sit at their feet and drink in the harmony and wisdom.

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Not anything has been done to introduce the writers above mentioned to the acquaintance of our reading public, save the publication about a year ago of " Lowell's Conversations," and more recently the re-publication of Leigh Hunt's "Fancy and Imagination," Lamb's " Selections," and Hazlitt's" Lectures." All of these, in accordance with the design of their several authors, cover considerable ground, and though they are glowing and highly meritorious critiques, are yet insufficient for the practical purposes of exemplars; for before one is fairly introduced to an author, they must part. With the view of filling a part of the vacuum which exists, the editor of this compilation has determined to introduce to his countrymen Geoffry Chaucer, one as far from being universally known as any, and yet the one whom all poets delight to honor as the founder of English poetry. And at the same time, he would earnestly pray those who may favor these pages with their attention, not to be satisfied therewith, but to study the great poet, from whose exuberance these choice gems have been plucked.

TO THE READER OF CHAUCER.

DUE attention to the following remarks, by Tyrwhitt, upon the pronunciation and accent of words used by Chaucer, and their seeming metrical irregularity, will enable us to read him with ease and pleasure.

And first, with regard to such offences against metre, as arise from a superfluity of syllables:

"With respect to this first species of irregularity, I have not taken notice of any superfluities in Chaucer's verses, but what may be reduced to just measure by the usual practices of modern poets. They may all, I think, be comprehended in our language under this one general principle, that an English verse, though chiefly composed of feet of two syllables, is capable of receiving feet of three syllables in every part of it, provided only one of the three syllables be accented."

Secondly, with reference to such offences as arise from the deficiency of a syllable or two:

"In some of these, perhaps the defect may still be supplied from MSS., but for the greatest part I am persuaded no such assistance is to be expected; and, therefore, supposing the text in these cases to be correct, it is worth considering whether the verse may not also be made correct, by adopting in certain words a pronunciation, different indeed from modern practice, but which, we have reason to believe, was used by the author himself.

"For instance, in the genitive case singular and the plural number of nouns, there can be no doubt that such words as shoures, croppes, shires, lordes, &c., were regularly pronounced as consisting of two syllables.

"In like manner, we may be sure that ed, the regular termination of

the past tense and its participle, made, or contributed to make, a second syllable in the words, perced, bathed, loved, wered, &c.

"But nothing will be found of such extensive use for supplying the deficiencies of Chaucer's metre as the pronunciation of the e feminine ;1 and as that pronunciation has been for a long time antiquated it may be proper here to suggest some reasons for believing that the final e in our ancient language was very generally pronounced, as the e feminine is at this day by the French.

"With respect to words imported directly from France, it is certainly quite natural to suppose, that, for some time, they retained their native pronunciation; whether they were nouns substantive, as hosle, face: adjectives, as large, strange: or verbs, as grante, preche, &c. And it cannot be doubted that in these and other similar words in the French language, the final e was always pronounced, as it still is, so as to make them dissyllables.

"We have not indeed so clear a proof of the original pronunciation of the Saxon part of our language; but when we find that a great number of those words which in Chaucer's time ended in e, originally ended in a, we may reasonably presume that our ancestors first passed from the broader sound of a to the thinner sound of e feminine, and not at once from a to e mute.

"We may also presume, that in words terminated, according to the Saxon form, in en, such as the infinitive modes and plural numbers of verbs, and a great variety of adverbs and prepositions, the n only was at first thrown away, and the e, which then became final, continued for a long time to be pronounced as well as written. We may, therefore, safely conclude, that what is generally considered as an e mute in our language, either at the end or in the middle of words, was anciently pronounced, but obscurely, like the e feminine of the French."

Thirdly, with reference to the misapplication of accents:

"We must be cautious of concluding too hastily that Chaucer accented the syllables that we do. On the contrary, I am persuaded that in his French words he most commonly laid his accent according to the French custom (upon the last syllable or the last but one, in words ending in e

1 "The true e feminine is always to be pronounced with an obscure, evanescent sound, and is incapable of bearing any stress or accent."-Tyrwhitt.

feminine), which, as is well known, is the very reverse of our practice. Thus he uses licoúr, for líquour; coráges, for coúrages; coráge, for courage; resón, for réason; viáge, for voyage; viságe, for vísage; manére, for mánner; laboúre, for lábour; prelát, for prélate; langáge, for lánguage; muriáge, for marriage; contrée, for country; and so through the whole work.

"In the same manner he accents the last syllable of the participle present, as wedding, coming, for wedding, cóming; living, for living; crying, for crying; brenning, for brénning, &c., and as he does this in words of Saxon as well as of French growth, I should suppose that the old participle of the present tense, ending in and, was originally accented upon that syllable, as it certainly continued to be by the Scottish poets a long time after Chaucer."-Tyrwhitt's Essay on Lang. and Versif. Chaucer, sec. 13 to 17, inclusive.

Concurrent with the above are Hazlitt's remarks upon Chaucer's versification. Says he: "Chaucer's versification, considering the time at which he wrote, and that versification is a thing in a great degree mechanical, is not one of his least merits. It has considerable strength and harmony, and its apparent deficiency in the latter respect arises chiefly from the alterations which have since taken place in the pronunciation or mode of accenting the words of the language. The best general rule for reading him is to pronounce the final e, as in reading Italian.”—Lectures on Eng. Poets, art. Chaucer and Spenser.