How wide a range of society and how great a variety of portraiture his scheme afforded to the poet, the preceding list will show. The vigour and originality with which he has sketched his characters, and the skill with which, in the several links of the subsequent tales, they are made to unfold their personality,* place him, at one bound, far beyond the painstaking, plain-sailing chroniclers and translators, his predecessors and contemporaries. It was an excursion into the delineation of real life such as they, trammelled by convention and tradition, had never contemplated. The following quotation will testify how naturally the device for telling the stories originates. The Host, of whom we are told that he was—

For to han been a marschal in an halle;

A large man he was with eyghen stepe,

A fairere burgeys was there noon in Chepe,'

mirthful at the goodly company assembled, after remarking that '-trewely comfort ne mirthe is noon

To ryde by the weye domb as a stoon [stone],'

announces that he has a proposal to make to them if they will fall in with it. They assent:

"Lordynges," quoth he, "now herkneth for the beste;

But taketh it not, I praye you, in disdayn;

This is the poynt, to speken schort and playn,

That ech of yow to schorte with youre weie

In this viage, schal telle tales tweye,

To Caunterburi-ward, I mene it so,

And hom-ward he schal tellen othere tuo,

Of aventures that whilom han bifalle.

And which of yow that bereth him best of alle,

That is to seyn, that telleth in this caas

Tales of best sentence and most solas,

Schal han a soper at youre alther cost
Here in this place sittynge by this post,
Whan that we come ageyn from Canturbury.
And for to maken you the more mery,

I wol myselven gladly with you ryde,

Right at my owen cost, and be your gyde.

And whoso wole my juggement withseie

Schal paye al that we spenden by the weye."'†

The guests then draw lots as to who shall begin. The duty devolves upon the Knight, who leads off with a tale of chivalry. The drunken Miller,-you may know it by his soun,'-breaks in next with a characteristically coarse story; the Reeve follows, and * See Appendix A, Extract XV. † Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.

the others in their turn tell tales suited to their respective ranks and avocations.* There are only twenty-four tales, and it will be evident from the outline of the Host, that a much larger number would be required to complete his plan. In all probability, death overtook the poet at the work which he had designed as the labour of his old age.

Still, unfinished though they be, the Canterbury Tales stand out prominently in English literature. As there had been nothing like them before they were written, so for years after there was nothing to compare with them. Indeed, Shakespeare excepted, '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 aërial, 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 prose, at the same time.' The same writer further says that in none of our poetry is there either a more abounding or a more bounding spirit of life, a truer or fuller natural inspiration. He [Chaucer] may be said to verify, in another sense, the remark of Bacon, that what we commonly call antiquity was really the youth of the world: his poetry seems to breathe of a time when humanity was younger and more joyous-hearted than it now is.'†

As compared with that of Langland, the language of Chaucer is of the court and city rather than of the provinces. His dialect is mainly the East Midland, and this he may be said to have made national, giving it at once 'in compass, flexibility, expressiveness, grace, and all the higher qualities of poetical diction . . . . the utmost perfection which the materials at his hand would admit of.' He was, in truth, what his imitator Lydgate styles him :

....

Into the still debated question of his metre and versification our space will not allow us to enter. Posterity has not endorsed Dryden's

See Appendix B: Note to the Canterbury Tales.

† Craik, Eng. Lit. and Language, 1871, i. 313, 291.

Marsh, Lectures on the English Language, 1862, ix. 381; v. also Skeat's Chaucer, vol. vi. and Prof. T. R. Lounsbury's Studies, ii, chap. vi. p. 429, &c., ed. 1892. 8 Falls of Princes.

sneer at his ' unequal numbers.' On the contrary, if due regard be taken to contemporary habits of accentuation, often diametrically opposed to our own, he will certainly be found a most highly competent and cultivated metrist. Rather than attribute to Chaucer the fault of what we cannot explain, it will surely be preferable to lay it to the addition, omission, or mistranscription of some longlocked and long-eared 'Adam Scrivener', like him whose 'necligence and rape' the poet so pathetically bewails:

'Adam Scrivener, if ever it thee befalle,

Boece or Troilus for to write newe,

Under thy longe lockes maist thou have the scalle,
But after my making thou write more trewe!

So oft a day I mote thy werke renewe,

It to correct and eke to rubbe and scrape;

And all is thorow thy necligence and rape.

These verses may stand as an example of the seven-line stanza so popular with Chancer and his followers. It was a modification of the ottava rima, first used by Boccaccio in his Teseide, being in fact that measure with the fifth line omitted. As giving some faint idea of the changes of pronunciation above referred to, the following lines from the beginning of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, written by Mr. A. J. Ellis as they would have been spoken in Chaucer's time, may prove of service; but, lest the reader should fail to recognise them in their phonetic form, the corresponding verses are subjoined :

'Beefel' dhat, in dhat sai'zoon' on a dahy,

At Soothwerk at dhë Tab'ard' as Ee lahy,
Redee toh wenden on mee pilgrimah'jë
Toh Kan'terber'ee with ful devoot' kohrah'jë,
At nikht was koom in'toh' dhat ostelree'ë
Well neen and twentee in a kumpanee'ë,
Of sündree folk, bee ah'ven'tuir' ifal'ë

In fel'ahw'sheep', and pilgrimz wair dhahy allë,
Dhat tohwerd Kan'terber'ee wolden reede;
Dhe chahmbrez and dhë stahb'lz wairen weede
And wel wai wairen aized atë bestë.'

[Byfel that, in that sesoun on a day,
At Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay,
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canturbury with ful devout corage,
At night was come into that hostelrie
Wel nyne and twenty in a companye,

* Ten Brink's Chaucers Sprache und Verskunst, 1884, deals elaborately with the poet's metres; cf. also Lounsbury ii., and Skeat vi. Ten Brink (§ 347) traces the seven-line stanza to Provençal poets; Skeat to the direct influence of Machault, d. 1377.

Of sondry folk, by aventure i-falle

In felawschipe, and pilgryms were thei alle,
That toward Canturbury wolden ryde;

The chambres and the stables weren wyde
And wel we weren esed atte beste.]*

18. Mandeville, Wiclif, Trevisa.-Chaucer also finds a place among prose writers by reason of the works already referred to (p. 36, s. 17); but by far the most popular prose work of the century was that of a writer known as 'Sir John Mandeville' (1300 ?-1372), reputed a native of St. Albans. A wanderer in the East for thirty-four years, he is said to have returned in 1356–7, and to have then written an account of his travels in Latin, French, and finally in English, 'that every Man of my Nacioun may understand it.' This ingenious, if not ingenuous, writer has, after the vein of Geoffrey of Monmouth, mingled with what seems to be the record of real travels' monsters out of Pliny, miracles out of Legends, and strange stories out of... Romances,' † to quote Mr. Halliwell; while with a Defoe-like realism he boldly writes in the first person of travels he had only made through the pages of other authors. The English knight's name seems but a mask, and the original work -perhaps that of De Bourgogne, a Flemish doctor-was in French, our version being a xv. century translation, of which 'the terseness, the simplicity, the quaintness, together with the curiosity of the subject-matter, will always make delightful reading, but the title "Father of English prose must... be now transferred [from Mandeville] to Wiclif' ‡ a writer whose influence upon his time is not to be measured by his literary productions alone. John Wiclif, the Reformer (1324-1384), besides writing many treatises and sermons in Latin and English, undertook, in his retirement at Lutterworth, the first English version of the entire Scriptures, said to have been completed the year before his death. In this labour he was assisted by a priest named Nicholas Hereford. Hereford translated from Genesis to Baruch, Wiclif the remainder. Wiclif's translation, intended for the people, and couched 'in the familiar speech of the English heart in the reign of Edward III.,' § is of the highest importance both to literature and religion, and may be regarded as the basis of all subsequent versions || (see p. 45, s. 26). John of Trevisa (d. 1412?), Vicar of Berkeley, is the only other prose writer of any importance during Chaucer's time. His chief

Clar. Press edition of the Prologue. See also Appendix A, Extract XIV.
See Appendix A, Extract X.

Ency. Britan. 9th ed. An article by E. B. Nicholson and Col. Yule.
Marsh, Lectures on the English Language, 1863, v. p. 112.

See Appendix A, Extract XII.

work was a translation,* executed circa 1387, of the Latin Polychronicon, or Universal History, of Ralph Higden (died 1364), a Benedictine monk of Chester (see also p. 43, s. 23.)

19. Occleve, Lydgate.-Whether it be attributed to the disturbing influence of the Wars of the Roses or to the absorbing interest of the Reformation, it is certain that, notwithstanding the invention of printing, for more than a century after the death of Chaucer a barren interval occurs in the history of English literature. Allegorists, such as Hawes and Barklay, satirists of the Skelton type, sonneteers like Surrey and Wyatt, prose writers like Pecock and More, are all we have to oppose to Chaucer and Wicliff. Scotland, indeed, had her Dunbar and Lyndsay, the former a poet of no mean order. In England, however, the poets succeeding Chaucer were distinctly of inferior class. His two immediate imitators never rose above fluent mediocrity. They had acquired from their master the mechanism of verse; but poetical genius was denied to them. The first of these, Thomas Occleve (1370?-1450?), a clerk of the Privy Seal, was the author of a long poem, in the seven-line stanza, entitled De Regimine Principum, compiled from a book of that name by Guido de Colonna, from Aristotle, and from the Game of Chess of Jacobus de Cessolis. The second, John Lydgate (1370?— 1451?), styled the 'Monk of Bury,' was a learned and indefatigable, if not imaginative, writer. His chief works are the Falls of Princes, a translation, through a French medium, of Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium; the Troy Book, a version of the Historia Trojana of Colonna; and the Storie of Thebes, a supplementary Canterbury Tale based upon the Thebais of Statius. To Lydgate is also ascribed the Complaint of the Black Knight, long printed as Chaucer's.

20. James of Scotland. To the son of Robert III. (13941437) we owe a poem, which, apart from the creative merit which raises it above the labours of mere translators like Lydgate and Occleve, possesses a somewhat romantic interest. The King's Quhair (Quire or Book), written by the ill-fated monarch while a prisoner in the Round Tower of Windsor Castle, relates (allegorically) his love for the daughter of the Earl of Somerset, Jane Beaufort, whom he afterwards married, and whom he had first seen much as, in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, Palamon sees Emelye, from the window of his prison. The poem is in the seven-line stanza, henceforth known as rhyme Royal (see p. 39, s. 17). Two shorter See Appendix A, Extract XIII.