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"The notion which most people have of Chaucer," says Craik, "is merely that he was a remarkably good poet for his day, but that both from his language having become obsolete, and from the advancement which we have since made in poetical taste and skill, he may now be considered as fairly dead and buried in a literary, as well as in a literal, sense. Now, instead of this, the poetry of Chaucer is really in all essential respects about the greenest and freshest in our language. He may be said to verify 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. The sire of a nation's minstrelsy, he has looked upon the glorious face of Nature unveiled. It is he alone who has conversed with her directly and without an interpreter, and received upon his heart the perfect image of what she is. Succeeding poets are but imitators in a greater or less degree. They are the fallen race, who have been banished from the immediate presence of the divinity; he is the first man, who has seen God walking in the garden, and communed with him face to face."

A serious obstacle to the general appreciation of the works of this great poet is the now obsolete dialect in which he wrote.

It has been remarked, and with truth, that "if Chaucer's poems had been written in Hebrew, they would have been a thousand times better known, for they would have been translated." Many educated persons and scholars are repelled by his antiquarian English," that strange costume of diction, grammar, and spelling, in which his thoughts are clothed, and which," it has been aptly said, "flutter about them like the rags upon a scarecrow." Yet to those who have the patience to master the difficulties of the antiquated English, which though not a dead can scarcely be said to be a living language, Chaucer's poems will yield an abundant reward. Chaucer was

born in the reign of Edward III., it is supposed about the year 1328, and educated at Oxford, where it is said he made a rapid progress in the scholastic sciences as they were then taught; but "the liveliness of his parts and the native gayety of his disposition soon recommended him to the patronage of that magnificent monarch of whose reign, as well as of that of his successor, Richard II., he was the most illustrious ornament."

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Chaucer was a man of the world. He frequently visited France and Italy under the advantages of a public charFamiliar with the practices and diversions of courtly life, he was enabled to enrich his works with those descriptions of splendid processions and gallant carousals with which they abound. Enabled by his travels to cultivate the Italian and Provençal languages, "he polished and enriched his native versification with loftier cadences and a more copious and various phraseology." Since he first taught his countrymen to write English, and by naturalizing words from the Provençal (then the most polished dialect of any in Europe), formed a style, he may claim to be the father of English composition. Chaucer was an universal reader; and it has been remarked that "his learning is sometimes mistaken for genius." His chief sources were the French and Italian poets. His Knight's Tale is a translation, or imitation, from the Italian of Boccaccio. In passing through his hands it has received new beauties. His "Romaunt of the Rose" is from the French, and highly esteemed by them as one of the most valuable pieces of their old poetry. Chaucer is thought greatly to have improved the original, and to have enriched the allegorical figures in the poem, parts of which owe all their merit to the translator. Chaucer's poem on the subject of Troilus and Cressida has been greatly admired. The fine passage in which "Cresside makes an avowal of her

love has been much quoted and praised. His version of the legend of Ariadne displays in many fine strokes his delicate poetic insight, as when Ariadne awakening from her swoon to find herself forsaken by Theseuspoet says of her,

"After a time she rose, and kissed with care

His footmarks on the sand, which she found there."

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Poor Ariadne! We rejoice at last when the poet tells us that

"The throned gods on her their pity took ;

And in the sign of Taurus, if you look,

You may behold her starry crown shine clear."

For Chaucer's "House of Fame" no foreign original has been discovered, although Warton supposes it may have been translated or paraphrased from the Provençal. It is in three books, comprising in all twenty-one hundred and ninety lines. The reference which Chaucer is supposed to make in this poem to the circumstances of his own life and the various learning and knowledge with which it is interspersed, such as an explanation of the doctrine of gravitation, and a discourse on the production and propagation of sound,- make it an exceedingly interesting poem. Its strong delineation of crowded and variegated dramatic life is praised. It is in "The Canterbury tales" of Chaucer that we behold the fully rounded and ripened poet. This great work forms the ever-enduring monument of his genius, and, as has been aptly remarked, "towers above all else that he has written like some palace or cathedral ascending with its broad and lofty dimensions from among the common buildings of a city." Chaucer is supposed to have been about sixty years of age when he composed "The Canterbury tales." Let us then not fear the bugbear age, which is but another name for development.

The work has this origin: A company of pilgrims, consisting of twenty-nine, meet together in fellowship at an inn, all being bent on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. These pilgrimages are represented as scenes of much enjoyment and hilarity; the devotees, having at the outset thwarted the Evil One, did not consider it necessary to resist him by the way, and might therefore consistently put aside any religious strictness or restraint. They all sup together, and after great cheer the Landlord proposes that they shall travel together to Canterbury; and to shorten their way, that each shall tell two tales, both in going and returning, and whoever told the best should have a supper at the expense of the rest.

Mine host, "both bold of speech, wise and welltaught," is appointed judge and reporter of the stories. The work, as we can readily infer from the plan, which if carried out would have afforded us no less than a hundred and twenty tales, is unfinished; but it contains twenty-four tales, including two in rhythmical prose. These tales are interspersed with prologues, besides the prologue to the whole work, in which the pilgrims are severally described. This general prologue has been pronounced “ a gallery of pictures almost unmatched for their air of life and truthfulness."

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I borrow a few of these pictures from Horne's "Chaucer Modernized," a work to which Powell, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, and Mrs. Browning have contributed. In the antiquated English Chaucer is indeed not generally appreciated, though one of his admirers has expressed a wish to retain him in that ancient costume "for himself and a few friends."

OF A CLERK.

A CLERK there was from Oxford, in the press,
Who in pure logic placed his happiness.

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His horse was lean as any garden rake;
And he was not right fat, I undertake,
But hollow lookèd, and sober and ill fed.
His uppermost shirt cloak was a bare thread,
For he had got no benefice as yet,

Nor for a worldly office was he fit.

For he would rather have at his bed's head

Some twenty volumes, clothed in black and red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy,

Than richest robes, fiddle, or psaltery.
But though a true philosopher was he,
Yet had he little gold beneath his key;
But every farthing that his friends e'er lent,
In books and learning was it always spent;
And busily he prayed for the sweet souls
Of those who gave him wherewith for the schools.
He bent on study his chief care and heed;
Not a word spake he more than there was need,
And this was said with firm and gravest stress,
And short and quick, full of sententiousness.
Sounding in moral virtue was his speech;

And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.

Scott must have found here the model for his Dominie Sampson.

Equally well drawn is this familiar picture of a good parson :

"A good man of Religion did I see,

And a poor parson of a town was he;

But rich he was of holy thought and work.

He also was a learned man, a clerk,

And truly would Christ's holy gospel preach,

And his parishioners devoutly teach.
Benign he was, and wondrous diligent

And patient when adversity was sent;

Such had he often proved, and loath was he
To cruse for tythes and ransack poverty.
But rather would he give, there is no doubt,
Unto his poor parishioners about,

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