The Wife of Bath is the other piece of Chaucer which Pope selected to
imitate. One cannot but wonder at his choice, which perhaps nothing but
his youth could excuse. Dryden, who is known not to be nicely
scrupulous, informs us, that he would not versify it on account of its
indecency. Pope, however, has omitted or softened the grosser and more
offensive passages. Chaucer afforded him many subjects of a more sublime
and serious species; and it were to be wished Pope had exercised his
pencil on the pathetic story of the patience of Griselda, or Troilus and
Cressida, or the complaint of the Black Knight; or, above all, on
Cambuscan and Canace. From the accidental circumstance of Dryden and
Pope having copied the gay and ludicrous parts of Chaucer, the common
notion seems to have arisen, that Chaucer's vein of poetry was chiefly
turned to the light and the ridiculous. But they who look into Chaucer
will soon be convinced of this prevailing prejudice, and will find his
comic vein, like that of Shakespeare, to be only like one of mercury,
imperceptibly mingled with a mine of gold. Mr. Hughes withdrew his
contributions to a volume of Miscellaneous Poems, published by Steele,
because this Prologue was to be inserted in it, which he thought too
obscene for the gravity of his character. "The extraordinary length,"
says Mr. Tyrwhitt, "of the Wife of Bath's Prologue, as well as the vein
of pleasantry that runs through it, is very suitable to the character of
the speaker. The greatest part must have been of Chaucer's own
invention, though one may plainly see that he had been reading the
popular invectives against marriage, and women in general, such as the
Roman de la Rose, Valerius ad Rufinum de non ducenda uxore, and
particularly Hieronymus contra Jovinianum. The holy Father, by way of
recommending celibacy, has exerted all his learning and eloquence, and
he certainly was not deficient in either, to collect together and
aggravate whatever he could find to the prejudice of the female sex.
Among other things he has inserted his own translation (probably) of a
long extract from what he calls, Liber Aureolus Theophrasti de Nuptiis.
Next to him in order of time was the treatise entitled, Epistola Valerii
ad Rufinum de non ducenda uxore. It has been printed, for the similarity
of its sentiments I suppose, among the works of St. Jerome, though it is
evidently of a much later date. Tanner, from Wood's MSS. Collection,
attributes it to Walter Mapes. I should not believe it to be older; as
John of Salisbury, who has treated of the same subject in his Polycrat.
l. viii. c. xl. does not appear to have seen it. To these two books Jean
de Meun has been obliged for some of the severest strokes in his Roman
de la Rose; and Chaucer has transfused the quintessence of all the three
works upon the subject of matrimony, into his Wife of Bath's Prologue
and Merchant's Tale."
The lines of Pope in the piece before us are spirited and easy and have,
properly enough, a free colloquial air. The tale, to which this is the
prologue, has been versified by Dryden, and is supposed to have been of
Chaucer's own invention; as is the exquisite vision of the Flower and
the Leaf, which has received a thousand new graces from the spirited and
harmonious Dryden. It is to his Fables, (next to his Music Ode,) written
when he was above seventy years old, that Dryden will chiefly owe his
immortality; and among these, particularly to the well-conducted tale of
Palamon and Arcite, the pathetic picture of Sigismunda, the wild and
terrible graces of Theodore and Honoria, and the sportive pleasantry of
Cymon and Iphigenia. The warmth and melody of these pieces has never
been excelled in our language; I mean in rhyme. It is mortifying and
surprising to see the cold and contemptuous manner in which Dr. Johnson
speaks of these capital pieces, which he says "require little criticism,
and seem hardly worth the rejuvenescence, as he affectedly calls it,
which Dryden has bestowed upon them." It is remarkable, that in his
criticisms he has not even mentioned the Flower and Leaf.
These pieces of Chaucer were not the only ones that were versified by
Pope. Mr. Harte assured me, that he was convinced by some circumstances
which Fenton, his friend, communicated to him, that Pope wrote the
characters, that make the introduction to the Canterbury Tales,
published under the name of Betterton.--WARTON.
Dr. Warton thinks, "one cannot but wonder at Pope's choice from Chaucer
of these stories, when so many more are to be found in him more
poetical." His observation on Chaucer's poems is very just, but the fact
is, Pope by this very selection showed the bent of his mind,--that it
was rather turned to satire and ridicule, than to the more elevated
strains of poetry.--BOWLES.
The imitations of Chaucer's January and May, and Wife of Bath's
Prologue, are executed with a degree of freedom, ease, and spirit, and
at the same time with a judgment and delicacy which not only far exceeds
what might have been expected from so young a writer, but which leave
nothing to be wished for in the mind of the reader. The humour of
Chaucer is translated into the lines of Pope, almost without suffering
any evaporation.--ROSCOE.
Pope's version of the Prologue of the Wife of Bath first appeared in a
volume of Poetical Miscellanies, published by Steele, in 1714. The
portrait of this repulsive woman is drawn by Chaucer with a vigorous
hand. She is a wealthy cloth manufacturer, with a bold countenance, and
more than masculine freedom of speech. She dresses ostentatiously, rides
with spurs, and, glorying in her shame, openly boasts of the vices which
less impudent women would carefully conceal. Her two predominant
characteristics are an inordinate self-will which makes her resolve to
rule her husbands with an absolute despotism, and an inordinate
sensuality which has completely absorbed every finer sentiment. She not
only avows her propensities, but exults in the deceit, the tricks, and
the violence which she has employed to gratify them as so many
testimonies to her cleverness and power. She has no compunctious
visitings for the frauds she has practised, and the misery she has
inflicted upon her deceased husbands. She speaks of the dead as of the
living with brutal insensibility, and would think it a weakness to be
swayed by a human feeling. The impersonation of domineering, heartless
selfishness, her pride is to prevail by tyranny instead of by the gentle
graces of feminine tenderness, and her pleasure is to indulge in worldly
gaiety, and the gross gratifications of sense. Even her jovial good
humour is hardly a redeeming feature in her character, for it mainly
proceeds from her keen relish for physical enjoyments, and turns to
temper the instant she is thwarted. It is difficult to conceive that
anybody could be injured by reading her confessions, which have nothing
alluring, but with Warton, we must condemn the taste which could select
the story as a ground-work for the embellishments of modern verse. The
character may exist in every generation. The unblushing candour with
which it displays itself belonged to more outspoken times than our own.
Chaucer painted from the life, and this portrait of a coarse,
voluptuous, defiant woman of the citizen class, finds a place in his
gallery, because she had a prominent place in the society of the middle
ages. There was no rational motive for tricking her out in the newest
fashion of a period to which she did not belong, and she might with
advantage have been allowed to remain in her primitive place and garb.
The indelicacy of the pieces he translated from Chaucer was, however,
one of their recommendations to Pope, and they may have had a further
attraction for him from the fact, that they held wives up to odium. His
deformed and insignificant person was an antidote to love, and the court
he paid to women met with a cold return. He retaliated with his pen for
the mortification to which they exposed him, and he almost always
represented them in a frivolous or degrading light. He may not
improbably have had a pleasure in reproducing from Chaucer the caustic
sentiments which were congenial to his own, and may have found some
satisfaction for his wounded spirit in revenging indifference by
satire.
Warton says that Pope has softened the more offensive passages in the
Wife of Bath's Prologue, but his version, on the other hand, is often
less decorous than the original. He has not justified his choice of the
subject by his skill in the treatment of it. The adaptation is much
inferior to the companion piece of January and May, and appears to have
been thrown off in haste. There are a few, a very few, happy lines and
expressions, but the bulk of the versification is not much above
mediocrity, and is frequently below it. He has failed in the substance
still more than in the form. Roscoe was of opinion that the humour of
Chaucer had hardly suffered any evaporation. The admirers of the
original have arrived at a different conclusion, and have contended,
with almost one voice, that hardly any of the humour has been preserved.
The genuine Prologue is alive with manners, passions, idiomatic
conversations, and natural incidents. The copy is by comparison a dead,
insipid dissertation. The mode in which Pope has abridged the narrative
is one of many proofs that he only cared for characters in their broad
outline, and had either no perception of the subtler workings of the
mind, or no appreciation of them. If ever a reader masters the full
sense of an author it must be when he translates him, and yet Pope has
overlooked or rejected many of the happiest traits in Chaucer, and has
falsified others, to the invariable injury of the story, and sometimes
with a total disregard to consistency. Particular deficiencies are of
little moment in the midst of general excellence, but in the present
instance there is nothing to redeem the blots, and the narrative from
first to last is a pale and feeble reflection of the original.
Warton asserts, on the authority of Harte, that Fenton believed that the
version of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, which appeared in
Lintot's Miscellany under the name of Betterton, was the work of Pope,
and Johnson adds that "Fenton made Pope a gay offer of five pounds if he
would show the characters in Betterton's hand." The celebrated actor
certainly left some literary papers behind him, if we may assume that a
letter from Caryll to Pope, and which was published by the poet himself,
is a genuine production. "I am very glad," Caryll writes, May 23, 1712,
"for the sake of the widow, and for the credit of the deceased, that
Betterton's remains are fallen into such hands, as may render them
reputable to the one, and beneficial to the other." In a note Pope
states that the remains were the modernised portions of Chaucer
contained in the Miscellany of Lintot. There was no apparent motive for
deception on the subject, and the internal evidence supports the
conclusion that Betterton composed the translation, and that Pope merely
revised it. It is a bald, worthless production, with a few lines or
couplets which seem to have proceeded from a more practised versifier
than the novice who put together the bulk of the work. The choicest
parts are very little better than bad; for Pope was a provident poet,
and he did not decorate Betterton with feathers which would have shone
with lustre in his own plumage. The great actor, on his side, has
signally failed in the point where his art might have been expected to
teach him better. He who had such a deep insight into the characters he
personated, and who gave voice, action, and gesture to all the passions
with such fidelity and power, has pared away the dramatic vivacity of
Chaucer and left only a vapid, hybrid compound which is neither modern
nor mediaeval. The sketch of the good parson is omitted altogether,
doubtless because Dryden had already tried his hand upon it, and it was
thought imprudent to provoke a comparison with his masterly paraphrase.