He was a shepherd, and no mercenary,
which is the only warrant the text afforded for these beautiful lines in
the paraphrase of Dryden:
The prelate for his holy life he prized;
The worldly pomp of prelacy despised.
His Saviour came not with a gaudy show,
Nor was his kingdom of the world below.
Patience in want, and poverty of mind, }
These marks of church and churchmen he designed, }
And living taught, and dying left behind. }
The crown he wore was of the pointed thorn;
In purple he was crucified, not born.
They who contend for place and high degree,
Are not his sons, but those of Zebedee.
Having gained so much from the masculine and buoyant genius of Dryden,
the newly fashioned tales took their rank as independent works, and were
rather valued for their want of resemblance to Chaucer than because they
were a true reflection of him. There are defects in the modern version.
The language is sometimes too colloquial, and there are many careless
lines; but in the main the verse bounds and dances along with equal
strength, facility, and grace, exhibiting one of the most wonderful
specimens in literature of the power, spirit, and abundance of the
simplest English when moulded by a master. The Flower and the Leaf,
which might have been written in the fairy land it describes, is
pre-eminent above the rest for its bright unceasing flow of delicious
poetry, for its chaste yet luxuriant diction, for its sustained and
various melody, for its lovely pictures both earthly and ethereal, for
its pure, refined, and elevating sentiment.
"By Dryden's Fables," says Johnson, "which had then been not long
published, and were much in the hands of poetical readers, Pope was
tempted to try his own skill in giving Chaucer a more fashionable
appearance, and put January and May, and the Prologue of the Wife of
Bath into modern English." January and May, which the poet says was
translated when he was sixteen or seventeen, was not published till he
was nearly twenty-one, having first appeared on May 2, 1709, in the
sixth volume of Tonson's Miscellany. He imitated Dryden in abridging
Chaucer, but his only addition of any moment to the Merchant's Tale is
in the description of the fairies, which was borrowed from Dryden
himself. His attempt was substantially limited to epitomising the
original in refined language, and musical numbers. In this he succeeded,
and more could not be expected of a youth. If he had aspired higher he
could not at twenty have competed with his mighty predecessor. Dryden's
tales are the productions of a great poetic genius. The January of Pope
is the production of a clever versifier. The relative position which
their respective translations of Chaucer occupy in their works accords
with the difference in their execution. The adaptations of Dryden are
commonly numbered among his choicest effusions. The versions of Pope
hold a subordinate place among his writings, and are hardly taken into
account in the estimate of his powers. The result vindicates the opinion
of Lord Leicester, that in the conversion of Chaucer into modern
English the loss exceeds the gain. Pope was not insensible to the
dramatic qualities of his author. "I read him still," he said to Spence,
"with as much pleasure as almost any of our poets. He is a master of
manners, of description, and the first tale-teller in the true enlivened
natural way." But in polishing him, something of the nature and
liveliness was inevitably obliterated. He was, in many of his stories,
an admirable novelist in verse, and he adopted a familiar style which
permitted him to relate in rhyme, with the freedom of prose, the common
talk of common men. His traits are in the highest degree colloquial,
individual, and life-like, and his strong strokes are weakened, and his
dramatic vivacity tamed down, when he is turned into smooth, harmonious,
elegant poetry. The refinement in the form is not a compensation for the
sacrifices in the substance, especially when the antique form is itself
essential to teach us how our forefathers spoke, thought, and acted five
hundred years ago. Every touch which renders the picture more modern,
makes it less true. The translation of Pope is skilfully executed, but
it is inferior in raciness and interest to an original which can be read
by any educated Englishman. A few gratuitous defects have been imported
into the modernised January and May. "Chaucer," says Dryden, "followed
nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her." Pope has
sometimes overstepped the limits. He has here and there exaggerated his
original, and the truth and keeping of the characters are invariably
injured by the change.
"I have confined my choice," said Dryden, "to such tales of Chaucer as
savour nothing of immodesty. If I had desired more to please than to
instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the Shipman, the Merchant, the Sumner,
and above all the Wife of Bath, in the prologue to her tale, would have
procured me as many friends and readers, as there are beaus and ladies
of pleasure in town. But I will no more offend against good manners. I
am sensible as I ought to be of the scandal I have given by my loose
writings, and make what reparation I am able by this public
acknowledgment." Both the pieces which Pope selected were among the
number which Dryden put under a ban, and the younger poet, perhaps,
considered that when he had purified them from part of their coarseness,
the objection would no longer apply. The apology which Chaucer urged for
his plain speaking was that in telling a tale he must repeat it
correctly, and not surrender truth to delicacy. "Yet if a man," replies
Dryden, "should have enquired of him what need he had of introducing
such characters where obscene words were proper in their mouths, but
very indecent to be heard, I know not what answer he could have made."
None was possible. The offence, nevertheless, was not what Dryden
assumes. The same Chaucer who, in his carefulness to keep to nature,
will have all his _dramatis personae_ talk according to their rank and
callings, assuredly did not violate nature when he represented the
religious and refined prioress, together with the other high-bred and
decorous members of the party, as willing auditors of the broad and
uncompromising language of their ruder companions. The presence of
ladies and ecclesiastics was not the slightest check upon the tongues of
the pilgrims, and it is evident that in ordinary social life, there was
hardly any limit to the freedom of expression. But in every age a
latitude is allowed in conversation which would be condemned in books,
and Chaucer merely excused himself for recording in poetry the common
colloquial terms of his day. Usage had rendered them inoffensive, and in
themselves they argued no more impurity of thought than the equivalent
circumlocutions of our own generation. The greater or less plainness of
speech which has prevailed at different eras is often rather a question
of manners than of morality. If Pope or Dryden had retained, in this
particular, the phraseology of Chaucer, the adherence to the letter of
the original would have completely falsified its spirit, just as words
which are uttered with innocence by rustics in a cottage would be an
evidence of the utmost depravity when spoken by a man of education in a
drawing-room. The intention influences the effect, and the grossness of
our early writers has not the taint to a reader of the present day which
would attach to similar language when employed by corrupt minds in
civilized times. All the expurgations of Pope were insufficient to make
his version as little exceptionable in the eighteenth century as was the
original of Chaucer to the world of the fourteenth century. A merchant
in the reign of Queen Anne would not have ventured to recite the
modernised story in a mixed company, where ladies like the prioress and
the nuns were present. The tone of the work is even lowered in places.
In the looser literature of Pope's youth, and especially in comedies,
adultery in a wife only furnished food for laughter against the husband.
This is the aspect which is imparted to the translation of January and
May, and it cannot be denied that Chaucer himself in some of his other
stories, is open to the charge of treating vice as a jest. But he did
not fall into the error in the Merchant's Tale, where the supposed
narrator, in accordance with his character, reprobates the criminal
conduct of the treacherous squire and the faithless wife, at the same
time that he exposes the doating folly of the amorous knight.