says he preferred it to all other sports and diversions. He lived within himself, neither desirous to hear nor busy to concern himself with the affairs of his neighbours. His course of living was temperate and regular; he went to rest with the sun, and rose before it; and by that means enjoyed the pleasures of the better part of the day, his morning walk and fresh contemplations. This gave him the advantage of describing the morning in so lively a manner as he does everywhere in his works. The springing sun glows warm in his lines, and the fragrant air blows cool in his descriptions; we smell the sweets of the bloomy haws, and hear the music of the feathered choir, whenever we take a forest walk with him. The hour of the day is not easier to be discovered from the reflection of the sun in Titian's paintings, than in Chaucer's morning landscapes. .. His reading was deep and extensive, his judgment sound and discerning. . . . In one word, he was a great scholar, a pleasant wit, a candid critic, a sociable companion, a steadfast friend, a grave philosopher, a temperate economist, and a pious Christian."

..

Chaucer's most important poems are "Troilus and Cressida," "The Romaunt of the Rose," and "The Canterbury Tales." Of the first, containing 8246 lines, an abridgment, with a prose connecting outline of the story, is given in this volumepages 247-274. With the second, consisting of 7699 octosyllabic verses, like those in which "The House of Fame" is written, it was found impossible to deal in the present edition. The poem is a curtailed translation from the French "Roman de la Rose"-commenced by Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, after contributing 4070 verses, and completed, in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, by Jean de Meun, who added some 18,000 verses. It is a satirical allegory, in which the vices of courts, the corruptions of the clergy, the disorders and inequalities of society in general, are unsparingly attacked, and the most revolutionary doctrines are advanced; and though, in making his translation, Chaucer softened or eliminated much of the satire of the poem, still it remained, in his verse, a caustic exposure of the abuses of the time, especially those which discredited the Church.

The Canterbury Tales are presented in this edition with as near an approach to completeness as regard for the popular character of the volume permitted. The 17,385 verses, of which the poetical Tales consist, have been given without abridgment or purgation-save in a single couplet; but, the main purpose of the volume being to make the general reader acquainted with the "poems" of Chaucer and Spenser, the Editor has ventured to contract the two prose Tales-Chaucer's Tale of Melibus, and the Parson's Sermon or Treatise on Penitence-so as to save about thirty pages for the introduction of Chaucer's minor pieces. At the same time, by giving prose outlines of the omitted parts, it has been sought to guard the reader against the fear that he was losing anything essential, or even valuable. It is almost needless to describe the plot, or point out the literary place, of the Canterbury Tales. Perhaps in the entire range of ancient and modern literature there is no work that so clearly and freshly paints for future times the picture of the past; certainly no Englishman has ever approached Chaucer in the power of fixing for ever the fleeting traits of his own time. The plan of the poem had been adopted before Chaucer chose it; notably in the "Decameron" of Boccaccio-although, there, the circumstances under which the tales were told, with the terror of the plague hanging over the merry company, lend a grim grotesqueness to the narrative, unless we can look at it abstracted from its setting. Chaucer, on the other hand, strikes a perpetual key-note of gaiety whenever he mentions the word "pilgrimage ;" and at

1 See the opening of the Prologue to "The Legend of Good Women," page 282; and the poet's account of his habits in "The House of Fame," page 235.

1

every stage of the connecting story we bless the happy thought which gives us incessant incident, movement, variety, and unclouded but never monotonous joyousness. The poet, the evening before he starts on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury, lies at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark, curious to know in what companionship he is destined to fare forward on the morrow. Chance sends him "nine and twenty in a company," representing all orders of English society, lay and clerical, from the Knight and the Abbot'down to the Ploughman and the Sompnour. The jolly Host of the Tabard, after supper, when tongues are loosened and hearts are opened, declares that "not this year" has he seen such a company at once under his rooftree, and proposes that, when they set out next morning, he should ride with them and make them sport. All agree, and Harry Bailly unfolds his scheme: each pilgrim, including the poet, shall tell two tales on the road to Canterbury, and two on the way back to London; and he whom the general voice pronounces to have told the best tale, shall be treated to a supper at the common cost-and, of course, to mine Host's profit—when the cavalcade returns from the saint's shrine to the Southwark hostelry. All joyously assent; and early on the morrow, in the gay spring sunshine, they ride forth, listening to the heroic tale of the brave and gentle Knight, who has been gracefully chosen by the Host to lead the spirited competition of story-telling.

To describe thus the nature of the plan, and to say that when Chaucer conceived, or at least began to execute it, he was between sixty and seventy years of age, is to proclaim that The Canterbury Tales could never be more than a fragment. Thirty pilgrims, each telling two tales on the way out, and two more on the way back-that makes 120 tales; to say nothing of the prologue, the description of the journey, the occurences at Canterbury, "and all the remnant of their pilgrimage," which Chaucer also undertook. No more than twenty-three of the 120 stories are told in the work as it comes down to us; that is, only twenty-three of the thirty pilgrims tell the first of the two stories on the road to Canterbury; while of the stories on the return journey we have not one, and nothing is said about the doings of the pilgrims at Canterbury-which would, if treated like the scene at the Tabard, have given us a still livelier "picture of the period." But the plan was too large; and although the poet had some reserves, in stories which he had already composed in an independents form, death cut short his labour ere he could even complete the arrangement and connection of more than a very few of the Tales. Incomplete as it is, however, the magnum opus of Chaucer was in his own time received with immense favour; manuscript copies are numerous even now-no slight proof of its popularity; and when the invention of printing was introduced into England by William Caxton, The Canterbury Tales issued from his press in the year after the first English-printed book, "The Game of the Chesse," had been struck off. Innumerable editions have since been published; and it may fairly be affirmed, that few books have been so much in favour with the reading public of every generation as this book, which the lapse of every generation has been rendering more unreadable.

Apart from "The Romaunt of the Rose," no really important poetical work of Chaucer's is omitted from or unrepresented in the present edition. Of "The Legend of Good Women," the Prologue only is given-but it is the most genuinely Chaucerian part of the poem. Of "The Court of Love," three-fourths are here presented; of "The Assembly of Fowls," "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," "The Flower and the Leaf," all; of "Chaucer's Dream," one-fourth; of "The House of Fame," two-thirds; and of the minor poems such a selection as may give an idea of Chaucer's power in the "occasional" department of verse. Necessarily, no space whatever could be given to Chaucer's prose works-his translation of Boethius' Treatise

LIFE OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

on the Consolation of Philosophy; his Treatise on the Astrolabe, written for the use of his son Lewis; and his "Testament of Love," composed in his later years, and reflecting the troubles that then beset the poet. If, after studying in a simplified form the salient works of England's first great bard, the reader is tempted to regret that he was not introduced to a wider acquaintance with the author, the purpose of the Editor will have been more than attained.

The plan of the volume does not demand an elaborate examination into the state of our language when Chaucer wrote, or the nice questions of grammatical and metrical structure which conspire with the obsolete orthography to make his poems a sealed book for the masses. The most important element in the proper reading of Chaucer's verses-whether written in the decasyllabic or heroic metre, which he introduced into our literature, or in the octosyllabic measure used with such animated effect in "The House of Fame," "Chaucer's Dream," &c.-is the sounding of the terminal "e" where it is now silent. That letter is still valid in French poetry; and Chaucer's lines can be scanned only by reading them as we would read Racine's or Molière's. The terminal "e" played an important part in sign of the infinitive-the "n" being dropped from the end; at other times it grammar; in many cases it was the pointed the distinction between singular and plural, between adjective and adverb. The pages that follow, however, being prepared from the modern English point of view, necessarily no account is taken of those distinctions; and the now silent "e" has been retained in the text of Chaucer only when required by the modern spelling, or by the exigencies of metre. In the latter case, which occurs in almost every line, the Editor has followed the plan adopted in Mr Nimmo's Library Edition of The Canterbury Tales, by marking with the sign of diæresis (as "") the terminal mute "e" that should be sounded; for example, in these five lines from the opening of The Canterbury Tales :—

"When Zē | phyrūs | čke with his swoo | tě | breath,
Inspired hath | In every hōlt | and heath

The tender crop | pes, and | the yōun | gễ sūn
Hath in the Rām | his hāl | fe course | y-run,
And smalle fōw | les ma | ke mě | lõdỹ.”

е was

Before a word beginning with a vowel, or with the letter "h," the final " almost without exception mute; and in such cases, in the plural forms and infinitives of verbs, the terminal "n" is generally retained for the sake of euphony. The only other mark employed in this edition is the acute accent, used to show where the accentuation of Chaucer's time differed from that of ours-as in the words "Natúre," "" courage," creature," to signify that the termination of such words as "natión,” “salvatión," "opinión," ," "mannére " (manner), "sciénce," &c. ; and should be pronounced as a dissyllable. No reader who is acquainted with the French language will find it hard to fall into Chaucer's accentuation; while, for such as are not, a simple perusal of the text according to the rules of modern verse, with attention to the nowise formidable accentual marks, should remove every difficulty.

THE

POEMS OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

THE CANTERBURY TALES.

THE PROLOGUE.

WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot,1
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licóur,
Of which virtúe engender'd is the flower;
When Zephyrus eke with his swootë breath
Inspired hath in every holt and heath
The tender croppës, and the youngë sun
Hath in the Ram 4 his halfë course y-run,
And smallë fowlës makë melody,

That sleepen all the night with open eye,
(So pricketh them natúre in their coráges ");
Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seekě strangë strands,
To ferne hallows couth7 in sundry lands;
And specially, from every shirë's end

Of Engleland, to Canterbury they wend,

The holy blissful Martyr for to seek,

Of sundry folk, by áventure y-fall
In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all,
That toward Canterbury wouldë ride.
The chambers and the stables were wide,
And well we weren eased at the best. 10
And shortly, when the sunnë was to rest,
So had I spoken with them every one,
That I was of their fellowship anon,
And made forword 11 early for to rise,
To take our way there as I you devise.12
But natheless, while I have time and space,
Ere that I farther in this tale pace,
Me thinketh it accordant to reason,
To tell you allë the condition

Of each of them, so as it seemed me,

And which they weren, and of what degree;
And eke in what array that they were in :
And at a Knight then will I first begin.

A KNIGHT there was, and that a worthy man,

That them hath holpen, when that they were That from the time that he first began

sick.

Befell that, in that season on a day,
In Southwark at the Tabard as I lay,
Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devout coráge,
At night was come into that hostelry
Well nine and twenty in a company
I Sweet. 2 Grove, forest.

3 Twigs, boughs.
4 Tyrwhitt points out that "the Bull" should be read
here, not "the Ram," which would place the time of
the pilgrimage in the end of March; whereas, in the
Prologue to the Man of Law's Tale, the date is given as
the "eight and twenty day Of April, that is messenger
to May."

5 Hearts, inclinations.

To riden out, he loved chivalry,

Truth and honoúr, freedom and courtesy.
Full worthy was he in his Lorde's war,
And thereto had he ridden, no man farre,13
As well in Christendom as in Heatheness,
And ever honour'd for his worthiness.
At Alisandre 14 he was when it was won.
All-Hallows-All-Saints'-Day. "Couth," past partici-
ple of "conne" to know, exists in "uncouth."

8 The Tabard-the sign of the inn-was a sleeveless
coat, worn by heralds. The name of the inn was, some
three centuries after Chaucer, changed to the Talbot.
9 Who had by chance fallen into company. In
"y-fall," "y" is a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon " ge"
prefixed to participles of verbs; it is used by Chaucer
merely to help the metre. In German, "y-fall,” or
"y-falle," would be "gefallen;" "y-run," or "y-ron-
ne," would be "geronnen,"

10 And we were well accommodated with the best.
11 Foreword, covenant, promise.
12 Describe, relate.
13 Farther.

6 Dante, in the "Vita Nuova," distinguishes three classes of pilgrims: palmieri, palmers, who go beyond sea to the East, and often bring back staves of palmwood; peregrini, who go to the shrine of St Jago in Galicia; Romei, who go to Rome. Sir Walter Scott, however, says that palmers were in the habit of passing from shrine to shrine, living on charity; pilgrims, on 14 Alexandria, in Egypt, captured by Pierre de Luthe other hand, made the journey to any shrine only signan, king of Cyprus, in 1365, but abandoned immeonce, and immediately returned to their ordinary avo-diately afterwards. Thirteen years before, the same cations. Chaucer uses "palmer" of all pilgrims. prince had taken Satalie, the ancient Attalia, in Ana

7 To distant saints known, renowned, in sundry lands.tolia; and in 1367, he won Layas, in Armenia, both "Hallows" survives, in the meaning here given, in places named just below.

B

Full often time he had the board begun
Aboven allë natións in Prusse.1

In Lettowe had he reysed, and in Russe,
No Christian man so oft of his degree.
In Grenade at the siege eke had he be
Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie.
At Leyes was he, and at Satalie,

So hot he loved, that by nightertale 12
He slept no more than doth the nightingale.
Courteous he was, lowly, and serviceable,
And carv'd before his father at the table. 13

A YEOMAN had he, and servants no mo'
At that time, for him list ride so ;14

When they were won; and in the Greatë Sea 3 And he was clad in coat and hood of green.
At many a noble army had he be.
At mortal battles had he been fifteen,
And foughten for our faith at Tramissene a
In listës thriës, and aye slain his foe.
This ilke worthy knight had been also
Some time with the lord of Palatie,
Against another heathen in Turkie:
And evermore he had a sovereign price.5
And though that he was worthy he was wise,
And of his port as meek as is a maid.
He never yet no villainy ne said
In all his life, unto no manner wight.
He was a very perfect gentle knight.
But for to telle you of his array,

His horse was good, but yet he was not gay.
of fustian he weared a gipon,
Alle besmotter'd with his habergeon,7
For he was late y-come from his voyage,
And wente for to do his pilgrimage.

A sheaf of peacock arrows 15 bright and keen
Under his belt he bare full thriftily.
Well could he dress his tackle yeomanly:
His arrows drooped not with feathers low;
And in his hand he bare a mighty bow.
A nut-head 16 had he, with a brown visage :
Of wood-craft coud 17 he well all the usage:
Upon his arm he bare a gay bracér, 18
And by his side a sword and a buckler,
And on that other side a gay daggere,
Harnessed well, and sharp as point of spear:
A Christopher 19 on his breast of silver sheen.
An horn he bare, the baldric was of green:
A forster 20 was he soothly 21 as I guess.

There was also a Nun, a PRIORESS,
That of her smiling was full simple and coy;
Her greatest oathë was but by Saint Loy;22
And she was cleped 23 Madame Eglentine.
Full well she sang the service divine,

With him there was his son, a youngë SQUIRE, Entuned in her nose full seeměly; 24
A lover, and a lusty bacheler,

11

With lockës crulle 8 as they were laid in press.
Of twenty year of age he was I guess.
Of his statúre he was of even length,
And wonderly deliver, and great of strength.
And he had been some time in chevachie,10
In Flanders, in Artois, and Picardie,
And borne him well, as of so little space,'
In hope to standen in his lady's grace.
Embroider'd was he, as it were a mead
All full of freshë flowers, white and red.
Singing he was, or fluting all the day;
He was as fresh as is the month of May.
Short was his gown, with sleeves long and wide.
Well could he sit on horse, and fairë ride.
He couldë songës make, and well indite,
Joust, and eke dance, and well pourtray and write.

1 Been placed at the head of the table, above knights of all nations, in Prussia, whither warriors from all countries were wont to repair, to aid the Teutonic Order in their continual conflicts with their heathen neighbours in "Lettowe" or Lithuania (German, "Litthauen "), Russia, &c.

2 Journeyed, ridden, made campaigns; German, "reisen," to travel.

3 Algesiras, taken from the Moorish king of Grenada, in 1344: the Earls of Derby and Salisbury took part in the siege. Belmarie is supposed to have been a Moorish state in Africa; but "Palmyrie" has been suggested as the correct reading. The Great Sea, or perhaps the Greek sea, is the Eastern Mediterranean. Tramissene, or Tremessen, is enumerated by Froissart among the Moorish kingdoms in Africa. Palatie, or Palathia, in Anatolia, was a fief held by the Christian knights after the Turkish conquests-the holders paying tribute to the infidel. Our knight had fought with one of those lords against a heathen neighbour.

4 Ilke, same; compare the Scottish phrase "of that ilk,"-that is, of the estate which bears the same name as its owner's title.

5 He was held in very high esteem. 6 Nothing unbecoming a gentleman.

And French she spake full fair and fetisly 25
After the school of Stratford attë Bow,
For French of Paris was to her unknow.
At meate was she well y-taught withal;
She let no morsel from her lippës fall,
Nor wet her fingers in her sauce deep.
Well could she carry a morsel, and well

keep,

That no droppe ne fell upon her breast.

In courtesy was set full much her lest. 26
Her over-lippö wiped she so clean,

That in her cup there was no farthing 27 seen
Of grease, when she drunken had her draught;
Full seemely after her meat she raught: 28
And sickerly she was of great disport,29
And full pleasant, and amiable of port,
And pained her to counterfeitě cheer

7 He wore a short doublet, all soiled by the contact of his coat of mail. 8 Curled. 9 Wonderfully nimble.

10 Engaged in cavalry expeditions or raids into the enemy's country.

11 Considering the short time he had had.
12 Night-time.

13 It was the custom for squires of the highest degree to carve at their fathers' tables.

14 For it pleased him so to ride.

15 Large arrows, with peacocks' feathers. 16 With nut-brown hair; or, round like a nut, the hair being cut short. 17 Knew.

18 Shield for an archer's arm, still called a "bracer," from the French "bras," arm.

19 A figure of St Christopher, used as a brooch, and supposed to possess the power of charming away danger. 20 Forester. 21 Certainly. 22 St Eligius, or Eloy. 23 Called. 24 In seemly fashion. 25 Properly; Chaucer sneers at the debased AngloNorman then taught as French in England. 26 Pleasure. 27 Not the least speck. 28 Reached out her hand. 29 Assuredly she was of a lively disposition.