court of Charles le Bel. Chaucer has translated the whole of the portion composed by the former, together with some of Meun's continuation; making, as he goes on, innumerable improvements in the text, which, where it harmonizes with his own conceptions, he renders with singular fidelity. "The difficulties and dangers of a lover, in pursuing and obtaining the object of his desires, are the literal argument of the poem. The design is couched under the allegory of a rose, which our lover, after frequent obstacles, gathers in a delicious garden. He traverses vast ditches, scales lofty walls, and forces the gates of adamantine castles. These enchanted holds are all inhabited by various divinities; some of which assist, and some oppose, the lover's progress.' The English poem is written, like the French original, in the short rhymed octosyllabic couplets so universally adopted by the Trouvères, a measure well fitted, from its ease and flowingness, for the purpose of long narratives. We have said that the translation is in most cases very close; Chaucer was so far from desiring to make his works pass for original when they had no claim to this qualification, that he even specifies, with great care and with even a kind of exultation, the sources from whence his productions are derived. Indeed, at such early periods in the literature of any country, writers seem to attach as great or greater dignity to the office of translator than to the more arduous duty of original composition; the reason of which probably is, that in the childhood of nations as well as of men learning is a rarer, and therefore more admired, quality than imagination.

The allegorical personages in the Romaunt of the Rose' are singularly varied, rich, and beautiful. Sorrow, Envy, Avarice, Hate, Beauty, Franchise, Richesse, are successively brought on the stage. As an example of the remarks we have just been making, we will quote a short passage from the latter part of Chaucer's translation, i. e. from that portion of the poem composed by John of Meun: it describes the attendants in the palace of Old Age: we will print the original French beside the extract:

"Travaile et douleur la hébergent,

Mais ils la lient et la chargent,
Que Mort prochaine luy présentent,
En talant de se repentir;
Tant luy sont de fléaux sentir;
Adoncq luy vient en remembraunce,
En cest tardifve présence,

Quand il se voit foible et chenue."

"With her, Labour and eke Travaile
Lodgid bene, with sorwe and wo,
That nevir out of her court go.
Pain and Distress, Sekenesse and Ire,
And Melancholie that angry sire,
Ben of her palais Senatoures;
Groning and Grutching her herbegeors,
The day and night her to tourment,
With cruel death they her present,
And tellen her erliche and late,
That Deth standith armid at her gate."

Here Chaucer's improvements are plainly perceptible; the introduction of Death, standing armed at the gate, is a grand and sublime thought, of which no trace is to be found in the com

paratively flat original; not to mention the terrible distinctness with which Chaucer enumerates Old Age's Senators, Pain, Distress, Sickness, Ire, and Melancholy; and her grim chamberlains, Groaning and Grudging.

The next poem which we shall mention is the love-story entitled 'Troilus and Cresseide,' founded on one of the most favourite legends of the Middle Ages, and which Shakspeare himself has dramatized in the tragedy of the same name. The anachronism of placing the scene of such a history of chivalric love in the heroic age of the Trojan War is, we think, more than compensated by the pathos, the nature, and the variety which characterize many of the ancient romances on this subject. Chaucer informs us that his authority is Lollius, a mysterious personage very often referred to by the writers of the Middle Ages, and so impossible to discover and identify that he must be considered as the Ignis Fatuus of antiquaries. "Of Lollius," says one of these unhappy and baffled investigators, "it will become every one to speak with deference." The whole poem is saturated with the spirit not of the Ionian rhapsodist, but of the Provençal minstrel. It is written in the rhymed ten-syllabled couplet, which Chaucer has used in the greater part of his works. In the midst of a thousand anachronisms, of a thousand absurdities, this poem contains some strokes of pathos which are invariably to be found in everything Chaucer wrote, and which show that his heart ever vibrated responsive to the touch of nature.

Though we propose, in a future volume, to give such specimens and extracts of Chaucer as may suffice to enable our readers to judge of his manner, we cannot abstain from citing here a most exquisite passage: it describes the bashfulness and hesitation of Cressida before she can find courage to make the avowal of her love:

"And as the newe-abashed nightingale
That stinteth first, when she beginneth sing,
When that she heareth any herdis tale,

Or in the hedgis any wight stirring,

And after siker doth her voice outring;

Right so Cresseidé, when that her drede stent,
Opened her herte and told him her entent."

We may remark here the extraordinary fondness for the song of birds exhibited by Chaucer in all his works. There is not one of the English poets, and certainly none of the poets of any other nation, who has shown a more intense enjoyment for this natural music: he seems to omit no opportunity of describing the "doulx ramaige" of these feathered poets, whose accents seem to be echoed in all their delicacy, their purity and fervour, in the fresh strains of 66 our Father Chaucer:"

"Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was

Joyous and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass!"

We have mentioned the anachronism of plan in this poem; it abounds in others no less extraordinary. Among these, he represents Cresseide as reading the Thebaid of Statius (a very favourite book of Chaucer), which he calls 'The Romance of Thebis;' and Pandarus endeavours to comfort Troilus with arguments of predestination taken from Bishop Brad wardine, a theologian nearly contemporary with the poet.

"The

The House of Fame,' a magnificent allegory, glowing with all the "barbaric pearl and gold" of Gothic imagination, is the next work on which we shall remark. Its origin was probably Provençal, but the poem which Chaucer translated is now lost. We will condense the argument of this poem from Warton:poet, in a vision, sees a temple of glass decorated with an unaccountable number of golden images. On the walls are engraved stories from Virgil's Eneid and Ovid's Epistles. Leaving this temple, he sees an eagle with golden wings soaring near the sun. The bird descends, seizes the poet in its talons, and conveys him to the Temple of Fame, which, like that of Ovid, is situated between earth and sea. He is left by the eagle near the house, which is built of materials bright as polished glass, and stands on a rock of ice. All the southern side of this rock is covered with engravings of the names of famous men, which are perpetually melting away by the heat of the sun. The northern side of the rock was alike covered with names; but, being shaded from the warmth of the sun, the characters here remained unmelted and uneffaced. Within the niches formed in the pinnacles stood all round the castle

All manere of minstrellis,

And gestours, that tellen tales
Both of weping and eke of game :'

and the most renowned harpers-Orpheus, Arion, Chiron, and the Briton Glaskeirion. In the hall he meets an infinite multitude of heralds, on whose surcoats are embroidered the arms of the most redoubted champions. At the upper end, on a lofty shrine of carbuncle, sits Fame. Her figure is like those of Virgil and Ovid. Above her, as if sustained on her shoulders, sate Alexander and Hercules. From the throne to the gates of the hall ran a range of pillars with respective inscriptions. On the first pillar, made of lead and iron, stood Josephus the Jewish historian, with seven other writers on the same subject. On the second, made of iron, and painted with the blood of tigers, stood

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Statius. On another, higher than the rest, stood Homer, Dares Phrygius, Livy, Lollius, Guido of Colonna, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, writers on the Trojan story. On a pillar of tinnid iron clere' stood Virgil; and next him, on a pillar of copper, appeared Ovid. The figure of Lucan was placed upon a pillar of iron wrought full sternly,' accompanied by many Roman historians. On a pillar of sulphur stood Claudian. The hall is filled by crowds of minor authors. In the mean time crowds of every nation and condition fill the temple, each presenting his claim to the queen. A messenger is sent to summon Eolus from his cave in Thrace, who is ordered to bring his two clarions Slander and Praise, and his trumpeter Triton. The praises of each petitioner are then sounded, according to the partial or capricious appointment of Fame; and equal merits obtain very different success. The poet then enters the house or labyrinth of Rumour. It was built of willow twigs, like a cage, and therefore admitted every sound. From this house issue tidings of every kind, like fountains and rivers from the sea. Its inhabitants, who are eternally employed in hearing or telling news, raising reports, and spreading lies, are then humorously described: they are chiefly sailors, pilgrims, and pardoners. At length our author is awakened by seeing a venerable person of great authority; and thus the vision abruptly terminates." From the few lines we have quoted, it may be seen that this poem, like the 'Romaunt of the Rose,' is written in the octosyllabic measure. Though full of extravagances, exaggerations of the already too monstrous personifications of Ovid, this work extorts our admiration by the inexhaustible richness and splendour of its ornaments; a richness as perfectly in accordance with Middle Age art, as it is extravagant and puerile in the tinsel pages of the Roman poet. That multiplicity of parts and profusion of minute embellishment which forms the essential characteristic of a Gothic cathedral is displaced and barbarous when introduced into the severer outlines of a Grecian temple or a Roman amphitheatre.

It now becomes our delightful duty to speak of the 'Canterbury Tales;' and we can hardly trust ourselves to confine within reasonable limits the examination of this admirable work, containing in itself, as it does, merits of the most various and opposite kinds. It is a finished picture, delineating almost every variety of human character, crowded with figures, whose lineaments no lapse of time, no change of manners, can render faint or indistinct, and which will retain, to the latest centuries, every stroke of outline and every tint of colour, as sharp and as vivid as when they came from the master's hand. The Pilgrims of Chaucer have traversed four hundred and fifty years-like the Israelites wandering in the Wilderness-arid periods of neglect and ignorance,

sandy flats of formal mannerism, unfertilised by any spring of beauty, and yet "their garments have not decayed, neither have their shoes waxed old."

Besides the lively and faithful delineation-i. e. descriptive delineation of these personages, nothing can be more dramatic than the way in which they are set in motion, speaking and acting in a manner always conformable to their supposed characters, and mutually heightening and contrasting each other's peculiarities. Further yet, besides these triumphs in the framing of his Tales, the Tales themselves, distributed among the various pilgrims of his troop, are, in almost every case, masterpieces of splendour, of pathos, or of drollery.

Chaucer, in the Prologue to the 'Canterbury Tales,' relates that he was about to pass the night at the "Tabarde" inn in Southwark, previous to setting out on a pilgrimage to the far-famed shrine of St. Thomas of Kent-i. e. Thomas à Becket—at Canterbury. On the evening preceding the poet's departure there arrive at the hostelry—

"Wel nine and twenty in a compagnie

Of sondry folk, by ávanture y-falle

In felawship, and pilgrimes wer they alle,
That toward Canterbury wolden ride."

The poet, glad of the opportunity of travelling in such good company, makes acquaintance with them all, and the party, after mutually promising to start early in the morning, sup and retire

to rest.

Chaucer then gives a full and minute description, yet in incredibly few words, of the condition, appearance, manners, dress, and horses of the pilgrims. He first depicts a knight, “brave in battle, and wise in council," courteous, grave, religious, experienced; who had fought for the faith in far lands, at Algesiras, at Alexandria, in Russia; a model of the chivalrous virtues :

"And though that he was worthy, he was wise,
And of his port as meke as is a mayde.

He was a veray parfit gentle knight.”

He is mounted on a good, though not showy, horse, and clothed in a simple gipon or close tunic, of serviceable materials, characteristically stained and discoloured by the friction of his armour.

This valiant and modest gentleman is accompanied by his son, a perfect specimen of the damoyseau or "bachelor" of this, or of the graceful and gallant youth of noble blood in any period. Chaucer seems to revel in the painting of his curled and shining locks-"as they were laid in presse"-of his tall and active person, of his already-shown bravery, of his "love-longing," of his youthful accomplishments, and of his gay and fantastic dress. His talent for music, his short embroidered gown with long wide