GEOFFREY CHAUCER is properly designated the Father of English Poetry. He acquires his right to that title not only on the ground of being our earliest poet, but because the foundations he laid still support the fabric of our poetical literature and will outlast the vicissitudes of taste and language. His greatest contemporaries and successors have recognized and confirmed his claim to this distinction. Lydgate calls him the "chief poete of Bretayne," and the "lode-sterre" (leading-star) of our language and says, that he was the first to distil and rain the gold dewdrops of speech and eloquence into our tongue; Occleve calls him "the fynder of our fayre langage; " Roger Ascham describes him as the "English Homer" and considers "his sayinges to have as much authority as eyther Sophocles or Euripides in Greke;" and Spenser speaks of him as "the pure wellhead of poetry" and "the well of English undefiled." ROB. BELL in the "Introduction" to his Edition of the "Poetical Works of G. Ch." London 1854. CANTERBURY TALES. THE STORY OF PATIENT GRISILDE. [THAT the original of this story was older than Boccaccio's novel admits of no doubt. Petrarch was acquainted with it many years before it was related by Boccaccio, whom he had himself, probably, supplied with the chief incidents. But, while we have many subsequent forms of it, the novel in the Decameron is the earliest now known to exist. The French are entitled to the credit of having first introduced it to the stage, a play on the subject having been produced at Paris in 1393, about nineteen years after Petrarch's death. Dramas were afterwards founded upon it in Italy, Germany, and England. Chaucer's tale is the earliest narrative in our language of the woes and virtues of Patient Grissell, since rendered familiar to the English reader by the prominent place it occupies in our ballad literature. Few stories enjoy so wide a popularity. The incredible resignation of the heroine may be said to have passed into a proverb. Although Chaucer was indebted to Petrarch for his materials, the story acquires originality in his hands from the sweetness and tenderness of expression he has infused into the relation. Charles James Fox, who had never seen Petrarch's version, describes with accuracy the character of this poem when he observes, in one of his letters to Lord Holland, that it closely resembles the manner of Ariosto.] THER is at the west ende of Ytaile, A marquys whilom duellid in that lond, Therwith he was, as to speke of lynage, A fair persone, and strong, and yong of age, Only that poynt his poeple bar so sore, (Or ellis that the lord wolde best assent That we to yow may telle oure hevynesse; “And have I nought to doon in this matere Save oon thing, lord, if that your wille be, Than were your poeple in sovereign hertes rest. Which that men clepe spousail or wedlok; "And though your grene youthe floure as yit, In crepith age alway as stille as stoon, And deth manasith every age, and smyt In ech estat, for ther ascapith noon. That we schuln deye, as uncerteyn we alle And we wil, lord, if that ye wil assent That thurgh your deth your lignage schuld aslake, Her meeke prayer and her pitous chere "Ye wolde," quod he, "myn owne poeple deere, That selden tyme is founde in mariage; "But natheles I se youre trewe entent, To wedde me, as soon as ever I may. To chese me a wyf, I wol relese That choys, and pray yow of that profre cesse. Unlik her worthy eldris hem bifore; Bounte cometh al of God, nought of the streen 1 Of which thay ben engendrid and i-bore. I trust in Goddes bounte, and therfore 1 Virtue comes from God, and not from the streen, or strain (race) from which men are descended. |