If the skirt is to be ample, the body should be confined to the natural

shape of the human frame; and the more nearly it is so, the more graceful

and effective will it become. Do what we will, distort the sleeves and

waist as much as we may, we shall never come up to the symmetry of Dame

Nature; she is a better milliner than any in Regent Street; and if the

ladies would have their corsages made after her pattern in all cases, they

would find their clothes fitting better, pinching less, and keeping them

much warmer. Women assert--and we are not competent to dispute the point

with them--that they need an enveloping support for the body; in fact,

that they must have corsets: be it so: there is no harm in the article

itself, provided the utility of it can be clearly proved; but there is

much harm in it, if, by an abuse of its powers, this same thing is made to

distort the body, and to injure the internal organization of the human

frame. As far as beauty of form is concerned, whatever intrenches on the

proportion of natural shape is intrinsically contradictory to it: let no

woman imagine that she has a fine figure, if she can lace herself into a

diameter of nine or ten inches; for by so doing, she disturbs the harmony

of all the curves--all the lines of beauty, as Hogarth calls them--with

which she has been so richly endowed; she fails of her effect, and,

instead of beauty, produces only absurdity. Still the corsage of her dress

should fit close; and for this to be possible, there must be a

well-fitting corset beneath; but it need not pinch or squeeze the least in

the world; let it fit close; that is enough. It is no doubt uncommonly

convenient for a lusty alderman's wife of forty to reduce herself to the

proportions of "fair seventeen;" but she ought to be able to reduce the

whole frame in the same ratio; otherwise to pull in at the waist till the

idea of suffocation is painfully evident to the most careless beholder,

and yet to leave the bust with the symmetry of Minerva Victrix, is a gross

and palpable absurdity. Far from being the [Greek: to chalon], this is the

[Greek: to chachon] of all female decoration.

And, if the waist should not be metamorphosed into unnatural smallness, so

the sleeves should not be puffed out into preternatural enlargement. Those

abominable gigot-sleeves, so well named from our old familiar

family-joint--they were utter abominations; and those bishop's

sleeves--they were foolish caricatures. Ladies are doing much better now:

either, in the evening, they trust to nature herself to set off their arms

as she pleases, or else, in the morning, they envelope them in a covering

that hardly destroys the beauty of their form. This is as it should be:

one of the principal characteristics of female grace consists, as any

sculptor can tell you, in the narrowness of the shoulders--just as of male

dignity, in their breadth. What, then, could ever have made ladies suppose

that they were ornamenting themselves by extending the upper portions of

their sleeves until they measured full three feet in a direct transversal

line? We are now witnesses of better ideas; the neck, the shoulders, and

the arms are allowed to make a continuous series of curves. The corsage is

simple in its form, and the only attempt at enrichment is the pendant

border of lace, or other material, that gives due relief, without

destroying the harmony of the outline.

As for form, then, we congratulate the ladies on having attained and

preserved so much excellence in their habiliments. We have only to

recommend, that they do not rashly try to innovate upon what they now

delight in; or rather, if new ideas are to be introduced, that they

control them by a perpetual reference to the form and framework of nature,

as their best, indeed their only, guide to what is true and beautiful.

Thanks to the manufacturing skill of European nations in general, and of

our own more particularly, there is no lack of material for women to

choose their dresses from. The loom teems with all kinds of substances;

and every requirement of climate, every caprice of fancy, can now be

gratified at a reasonable rate. One of the best symptoms of taste amongst

Englishwomen is the increasing use of the finer woollen fabrics. They are

well suited to the climate, and they are calculated to make graceful

habiliments in whatever manner they are employed. But cotton is an immense

boon for the mass of the population; and, by contributing to the

cleanliness of the lower orders, has been of great value to the health of

the community. The fact is, that it is of little consequence what an

elegant woman wears, as far as her appearance is concerned. All clothes

require, as the French say, to be _bien portes_. An awkward woman will

never look well in any thing, however fine. Let ladies consult their own

comfort, their own purposes, and the material they hit upon will certainly

become them. We have now, too, ample means of decoration: furs, and lace,

and ribands, and embroidery, are gradually coming within the grasp of

large classes of society; we have to fear rather a deluge of ornament than

the opposite; and, if caution is to be used in any direction, it is in

this. The true secret of female ornament is, that it should be genuine: no

sham flowers; no make-believe lapels; no collars only stitched on to the

edge of the gown; no bows that do not untie; no ribands without some

positive use; all false ornament should be avoided as the direct contrary

to what is tasteful and becoming. If lace is worn, let it be of thread or

silk--not of cotton; if fur, let it be from the real animal--not dyed or

imitated; if jewels, let them be few but good, and set in real gold--no

abominable sham decoration.

And what are we to say about cloaks, and pelisses, and shawls, and the

other preservers of gowns, that correspond to the outward comforters of

man? They flutter about in shop windows, thick as gnats in a summer

sunbeam: many of them are elegant; not a few useful; some are quite

loves!--witness the polka-pelisse--others are frumpy and old-fashioned;

such as the cloak with a deep cape of ever-to-be-respected maternal

memory. But there are two which we single out as simple and unspoiled, and

indeed unspoilable, items of dress, which ought to be in fashion as long

as women love pretty things. One is the Spanish mantilla; that plain black

scarf which forms the sweetest disguisement a woman can put on: by its

simplicity, and its obvious utility, it claims our approbation at the

first glance. The other is the Indian shawl; that marvellous product of

the mountain loom, fit for any climate, for any temperature, for any

complexion, and for any purpose; women may rack their inventions for ever,

but they never will invent a garment more generally useful, more

constantly becoming, than this.

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.

NO. IV.

DRYDEN ON CHAUCER.

Nothing is gained by attempting to deny or to disguise a known and plain

fact, simply because it happens to be a distasteful one--Time has

estranged us from Chaucer. Dryden and Pope we read with easy, unearned

pleasure. Their speech, their manner of mind, and their facile verse, are

of our age, almost of our own day. The two excellent, graceful, and

masterly poets belong, both of them, to THIS NEW WORLD. Go back a little,

step over an imperceptible line, to the contemporary of Dryden, Milton,

and you seem to have overleaped some great chronological boundary; you

have transported yourself into THAT OLD WORLD. Whether the historical

date, or the gigantic soul, or the learned art, make the separation, the

fact is clear, that the poet of the "Paradise Lost" stands decidedly

further off; and, more or less, you must acquire the taste and

intelligence of the poem. Why, up to this hour, probably, there are

three-fifths of the poem that you have not read; or, if you have read all,

and go along with all, you have yourself had experience of the progress,

and have felt your capacity of Milton grow and dilate. So has it been with

your capacity for Shakspeare, or you are a truant and an idler. To

comprehend with delight Milton and Shakspeare as poets, you need, from the

beginning, a soul otherwise touched, and gifted for poesy, than Pope

claims of you, or Dryden. The great elder masters, being original, require

of you springs of poesy welling in your own spirit; while the two latter,

imitative artists of luxury, exact from you nothing more, in the way of

poetical endowment, than the gusto of ease and luxurious enchantment. To

prefer, for some intellectual journey, the smooth wafture of an

air-gliding ear--to look with pleasure upon a dance of bright-hued

images--to hear more sweetness in Philomela's descant than in a Turkish

concert--to be ever so little sensible to the bliss of dreams--ever so

little sick of reality, and ever so little glad to be rid of it for an

hour--is qualification enough to make you a willing and able reader of

verse in the latter school. But if you are to prefer the style of the

antecessors, other conditions must come in. It is, then, not a question

merely whether you see and love in Imogen the ideal of a wife in love with

her husband, or take to the surpassing and inimitable portraiture of the

"lost archangel" in Satan; but whether you feel the sweetness of Imogen's

soul in the music of her expressions--whether you hear the tones of the

Will that not the thunder has quelled, in that voice to which all "the

hollow deep of hell resounded." If you do, assuredly you will perceive in

yourself that these are discernments of a higher cast, and that place you

upon a higher degree when critics on poetry come to be ranked, than when

you had nothing better to say for yourself than that your bosom bled at

the Elegy on an Unfortunate Young Lady, or that you varied with Alexander

to the varying current of the Ode of St Cecilia's Day.

We call Chaucer the Father of our Poetry, or its Morning Star. The

poetical memory of the country stretches up to him, and not beyond. The

commanding impression which he has made upon the minds of his people dates

from his own day. The old poets of England and Scotland constantly and

unanimously acknowledge him for their master. Greatest names, Dunbar,

Douglas, Spenser, Milton, carry on the tradition of his renown and his

reign.

In part he belongs to, and in part he lifts himself out of, his age. The

vernacular poetry of reviving Europe took a strong stamp from one

principal feature in the manners of the times. The wonderful political

institution of Chivalry--turned into a romance in the minds of those in

whose persons the thing itself subsisted--raised up a fanciful adoration

of women into a law of courtly life; or, at the least, of courtly verse,

to which there was nothing answerable in the annals of the old world. For

though the chief and most potent of human passions has never lacked its

place at the side of war in the song that spoke of heroes--though two

beautiful captives, and a runaway wife bestowed by the Goddess of Beauty,

and herself the paragon of beauty to all tongues and ages, have grounded

the _Iliad_--though the Scaean gate, from which Hector began to flee his

inevitable foe, and where that goddess-born foe himself stooped to

destiny, be also remembered for the last parting of a husband and a

wife--though Circe and Calypso have hindered homebound Ulysses from the

longing arms of Penelope--and Jason, leading the flower of a prior and yet

more heroic generation, must first win the heart of Medea before he may

attain the Golden Fleece--though the veritable nature of the human being

have ever thus, through its strongest passion, imaged itself in its most

exquisite mirror, Poetry--yet there did, in reawaking Europe, a new

love-poetry arise, distinctively characterised by the omnipotence which it

ascribed to the Love-god, legitimating in him an usurped supremacy, and

exhibiting, in artificial and wilful excess, that passion which the older

poets drew in its powerful but unexaggerated and natural proportions.

Thenceforwards the verse of the South and of the North, and alike the

forgotten and the imperishable, all attest the predominancy of the same

star. Diamond eyes and ruby lips stir into sound the lute of the

Troubadours and the Minnesingers. Famous bearers of either name were

knights distinguished in the lists and in the field. And who is it that

stole from heaven the immortal fire of genius for Petrarch? Laura. Who is

the guide of Dante through Paradise? Beatrice. In our own language, the

spirit of love breathes, more than in any other poet, in Spenser. His

great poem is one Lay of Love, embodying and associating that idealized,

chivalrous, and romantic union of "fierce warres and faithful loves." It

hovers above the earth in some region exempt from mortal footing--wars

such as never were, loves such as never were--and all--Allegory! One

ethereal extravagance! A motto may be taken from him to describe that

ascendancy of the love-planet in the poetical sky of renewed Europe. It

alludes to the love-freaks of the old Pagan deities upon earth, in which

the King of the Gods excelled, as might be supposed, all the others.

"While thus on earth great Jove these pageants play'd,

_The winged boy did thrust into his throne_;

And scoffing thus, unto his mother sayde,

'_Lo! now the heavens obey to me alone

And take me for their Jove, now Jove to earth is gone_.'"

The pure truth of the poetical inspiration which rests upon Spenser's

poems, when compared to the absolute departure from reality apparent in

the manners of his heroes and heroines, and in the physical world which

they inhabit, is a phenomenon which may well perplex the philosophical

critic. You will hardly dare to refuse to any true poet the self-election

of his materials. Grant, therefore, to Spenser knight-errantry--grant him

dragons, and enchanters, and enchanted gardens, satyrs, and the goddess

Night on her chariot--grant him love as the single purpose of human

life--a faery power, leading with a faery band his faery world! But while

you accept this Poem as the lawful consummation and ending of that

fabulous intellectual system or dream which had subsisted with authority

for centuries, it is wonderful to see how, in the very day of Spenser, the

STAGE recovers humanity and nature to poetry--recalls poetry to nature and

humanity! Shakspeare and Spenser, what contemporaries! The world that

_is_, and the world that _is not_, twinned in time and in power!

This exaggeration of an immense natural power, Love--making, one might

almost say, man's worship of woman the great religion of the universe, and

which was the "amabilis insania" of the new poetry--long exercised an

unlimited monarchy in the poetical mind of the reasonable Chaucer. See the

longest and most desperate of his Translations--which Tyrwhitt supposes

him to have completed, though we have only two fragments--seven thousand

verses in place of twenty-two thousand--the "ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE,"

otherwise entitled the "Art of Love," "wherein are shewed the helps and

furtherances, as also the lets and impediments, that lovers have in their

suits." Then comes the work upon which Sir Philip Sydney seems to rest the

right of Chaucer to the renown of an excellent poet having the insight of

his art--the five long books which celebrate the type of all true lovers,

Troilus, and of all false traitresses, Creseide. Then there is "The

Legende of GOODE Women," the loving heroines, fabulous and historical, of

Lempriere's dictionary. The first name is decisive upon the signification

of "_goode_"--Cleopatras, Queene of Egypt--Tisbe of Babylon--Dido, Queene

of Carthage--Hipsiphile and Medea, betrayed both by the same "root of

false lovers, Duk Jason"--Lucrece of Rome--Ariadne of

Athens--Philomen--Phillis--Hypermnestra.

The "Assemblee of Foules" is all for love and allegory. Chaucer has been

reading Scipio's dream. Whereon he himself dreams that "Affrican" comes to

him, and carries him away into a sort of Love's Paradise. There were trees

with leaves "grene as emeraude," a garden full of "blossomed bowis,"

running waters in which small fishes light, with red fins and

silver-bright scales, dart to and fro, flowers of all tinctures, all

manner of live creatures, and a concert commingled of stringed

instruments, of leaves murmuring to the wind, and of singing-birds. Under

a tree, beside a spring, was "Cupide our Lord" forging and filing his

arrows--his daughter (_who is she?_) assisting, and tempering them to

various effects. A host of allegorical persons are in attendance of

course; and there, too, stands a Temple of Venus, described from the

Teseida of Boccaccio. But the principal personage whom Chaucer encounters,

and the most busily engaged, is the great goddess, NATURE. It is St

Valentine's Day, whereon all the birds choose their mates for the coming

year. The particular business to which _this_ anniversary of the genial

Saint is devoted was intelligible, no doubt, to the quick wits of

Chaucer's age, if to the dull ones of ours a little perplexing. Nature

held in her hand "a formell eagle, of shape the gentillest," benign,

goodly, and so full of every virtue, that "Nature herself had blisse to

looke on her, and oft her beeke to kisse." The question is, who shall be

her mate? Three "tercell eagles" offer themselves, and eagerly plead their

claims. The four orders of fowl, those "of ravine," those that feed on

insects, the water-fowl, and those that eat seed, are by nature required

to elect each a delegate that shall opine on the matter. The birds of prey

depute "the tercelet of the faucon." He gives the somewhat startling if

otherwise plausible advice, that the worthiest of knighthood, and that has

the longest used it, and that is of the greatest estate, and of blood the

gentlest, shall be preferred, leaving the decision of those merits to the

lady eagle. The goose, on the behalf of the water-fowl, merely advises

that he who is rejected shall console himself by choosing another love;

which ignominious and anserine suggestion is received by the "gentill

foules" with a general laugh. The "turtle-dove," for the seed-eating

birds, indignantly protests against this outrageous and impracticable

proposal. The cuckoo, for the worm-eaters, provided that he may have his

own "make," is willing that the three wooers shall live each solitary and

sullen. The "sperhawke," the "gentle tercelet," and the "ermelon,"

severally reply in high scorn to the goose, to the duck, who seconds the

goose, and to the cuckoo. Dame Nature ends the plea by referring the

choice to the "formell eagle" herself, who begs a year's respite, which is

granted her. The rest, for the day is now well spent, choose their

mates--an elect choir sing a roundel in honour of Nature; and at the

"shouting" that, when the song was done, the fowls made in flying away,

the Poet awoke! Amongst the hard points of this enigmatical love-allegory

are, that when the first lover, a "royal tercell," has ended his plea, the

"formell eagle" _blushes_! as does afterwards the turtle upon the proposal

made of changing an old love for a new, and that the duck swears by his

_hat_. Be the specific intent what it may, the general bearing speaks for

itself, namely, the unmeasured lifting-up of Love's supremacy--though we

cannot help feeling how much nearer Chaucer was to the riddling days of

poetry than we are. Did the old Poet translate from plain English into the

language of Birds, and expect us to re-translate? Or are these blushes and

this knighthood amongst birds merely regular adjuncts in any fable that

attributes to the inferior creation human powers of reason and speech? It

is curious that the _rapacious_ fowls are presented as excelling in high

and delicate sentiment! They are the aristocracy of the birds, plainly;

yet an aristocracy described as of "ravine" seems to receive but an

equivocal compliment.

The HOUSE OF FAME is in Three Books. The title bespeaks Allegory; and the

machinery which justifies the allegory, as usual is a Dream. But the title

does not bespeak, what is nevertheless true, that here, too, love steals

in. During the entire First Book, the poet dreams himself to be in the

temple of Venus, all graven over with AEneas's history, taken point by

point from the Mantuan. The history belongs properly to its place; not

because AEneas is the son of Venus, but because the course of events is

conducted by Jupiter consonantly to the prayer of Venus. Why the House of

Venus takes up a third part of the poem to be devoted to the House of Fame

is less apparent. Is the poet crazed with love? and so driven against

method to dream perforce of the divinity who rules over his destiny, as

she did over her son's? Or does the _fame_ conferred by Virgil upon AEneas

make it reasonable that the dream should proceed by the House of one

goddess to that of the other? Having surveyed the whole, the poet goes out

to look in what part of the world he is, when Jupiter's eagle seizes upon

him, and carries him up to the city and palace of Fame, seated above the

region of tempests, but apparently below the stars, and there sets him

down. The Second Book is spent in their conversation during their flight.

Some singular inventions occur. Every word spoken on earth, is carried up

by natural reverberation to the House of Fame; but, there arrived, puts on

the likeness of the wight, in his habit as he lives, that has uttered it.

The palace itself stands upon a rock of ice, inscribed with names. Those

on the southern face are nearly melted away by the heat of the sun; those

on the northern stand sharp and clear. Some of the minstrels--Orpheus of

old, and the later Breton Glaskirion, he hears playing yet. The great

Epopeists are less agreeably occupied. 'Omer,' and aiding him, 'Dares,'

'Titus,' 'Lolius,' 'Guido' the Colempnis, that is, of Colonna, and English

Galfrida, standing high upon a pillar of iron, 'are busie to bear up Troy'

upon their shoulders. Virgil, upon a pillar 'of tinned iron clere,'

supports 'the fame of pius AEneas.' Near, upon a pillar of iron, 'wrought

full sternly,' the 'grete poete, Dan Lucan' bears upon his shoulders the

'fame of Julius and Pompee.' An innumerable company kneel before the

goddess herself, beseeching her for renown. She deals out her favours

capriciously--to one company of well-deservers, utter silence and

oblivion--to another, like meritorious, loud slanders and infamy--to

another assembly, with similar claims, golden, immortal praises. A fourth

and a fifth company have done good for the pure sake of goodness, and

request of her to hide their deeds and their name. To the one set she

readily grants their asking. To the other not--but bids her trumpet

"Eolus" ring out their works so that all the world may hear, which happens

accordingly. Another throng have been sheer idlers on the earth, doers of

neither good nor ill. They desire to pass for worthy, wise, good, rich,

and in particular for having been favourably regarded by the brightest

eyes. The whole of this undeserved reputation is instantaneously granted

them. Another troop follow with like desert and with like request. Eolus

takes up as bidden his "black clarioun," and blazons their dishonour. A

troop of evil-doers ask for good fame. The goddess is not in the humour,

and takes no notice of them. The last comers of all are delighters in

wickedness for its own sake, and request their due ill fame. Amongst them

is "that ilke shrewe that brente the temple of Isidis in Athenes." This

is, no doubt, the gentleman who burned the Temple of Diana at Ephesus for

that laudable purpose. The goddess is complaisant, and grants them exactly

their desire.

There stands by the first, a second House of Fame of a strange sort. It is

built cage-like of twigs, is sixty miles in length, whirls incessantly

about, and is full of all imaginable noises--the rumours of all events,

private and public, that happen upon earth, including murrains, tempests,

and conflagrations. The eagle gets the dreamer in, and he notes the

humours of the place. This is most remarkable, that as soon as any one of

the innumerable persons, in press, there hears a tiding, he forthwith

whispers it with an addition to another, and he, with a further eking, to

a third, until in a little while it is known every where, and has attained

immeasurable magnitude--as from a spark the fire is kindled that burns

down a city. The tidings fly out at windows. A true and a false tiding

jostled in their way out, and after some jangling for precedency, agreed

to fly together. Since which time, no lie is without some truth, and no

truth without some falsehood. An unknown person of great reverence and

authority making his appearance, the poet, apparently disturbed with awe,

awakes, wonders, and falls to writing his dream.

The criticism of so strange a composition is hardly to be attempted. It

shows a bold and free spirit of invention, and some great and poetical

conceiving. The wilful, now just, now perverse dispensing of fame, belongs

to a mind that has meditated upon the human world. The poem is one of the

smaller number, which seems hitherto to stand free from the suspicion of

having been taken from other poets. For Chaucer helped himself to every

thing worth using that came to hand.

The earlier writings of Chaucer have several marks that belong to the

literature of the time.

First, an excessive and critical self-dedication of the writer to the

service of LOVE, this power being for the most part arrayed as a sovereign

divinity, now in the person of the classical goddess Venus, and now of her

son, the god Cupid. Secondly, an ungovernable propensity to allegorical

fiction. The scheme of innumerable poems is merely allegorical. In others,

the allegorical vein breaks in from time to time. Thirdly, a Dream was a

vehicle much in use for effecting the transit of the fancy from the real

to the poetical world. Chaucer has many dreams. Fourthly, interminable

delight in expatiating upon the simplest sights and sounds of the natural

world. This overflows all Chaucer's earlier poems. In some, he largely

describes the scene of adventure--in some, the desire of solace in field

and wood leads him into the scene. Fifthly, a truly magnanimous

indifference to the flight of time and to the cost of parchment, expressed

in the dilatation of a slender matter through an infinite series of

verses. You wonder at the facility of writing in the infancy of art. It

seems to resemble the exuberant, untiring activity of children, prompted

by a vital delight which overflows into the readiest utterance; and, in

proportion to its display, achieving the less that is referable to any

purpose of enduring use. Even the admired and elaborately-written

_Troilus_ and _Creseide_ is a great specimen. The action is nearly null;

the discoursing of the persons and of the poet endless. It is not, then,

simply the facility of the eight-syllabled couplet, as in that

interminable _Chaucer's Dreme_, that betrays; there is a dogged purpose of

going on for ever.

Of the poems expressly of Love, are, "The Romaunt of the Rose--Troilus and

Creseide--The Legende of Goode Women--The Assemblee of Foules--Of Queen

Annelida and False Arcita--The Complaint of the Blacke Knight--The

Complaint of Mars and Venus--Of the Cuckou and the Nightingale--The Court

of Love--Chaucer's Dreme--The Flour and the Leaf--The First Book of the

House of Fame"--and, if you choose, the "Boke of the Duchess," which is

John of Gaunt's mourning for his lost wife. There must be something like

thirty thousand verses, long, short, in couplets or stanzas, which may be

said to be dedicated to LOVE!

And of them all, only the four following Poems tread the plain

ground--have their footing upon the same earth that we walk--Troilus and

Creseide, The Legende of Goode Women, Queen Annelida and False Arcita,

the Complaint of the Blacke Knight. We grant them for human and real,

notwithstanding that most of the persons are of a very romantic and

apocryphal stamp--because they are not presented in dreams or visions, and

are not allegorical creations of beings out of the air, Impersonations of

Ideas. They are offered as men and women, downright flesh and blood, and

so are to be understood. Nevertheless even here, when Chaucer is nearest

home, taking his subject in his own day, and putting his own friend and

patron in verse, there is a trick of the riddling faculty, since the

Blacke Knight lodging, during the love-month of May, in the greenwood, and

bemoaning all day long his hard love-hap, represents, it is presumed, old

stout John of Gaunt in love, who might utter his passion, uncertain of

requital,

"In groans that thunder love, in sighs of fire;"

but who, most assuredly, did not build himself a forest bower, and

annually retire from court and castle, to spend there a lovesick May.

Of absolutely fanciful creations are, as we have seen, the "Assemblee of

Foules," and the "Complaint of Mars and Venus," which the poet overhears a

fowl singing on St Valentine's Day ere sunrise. "Of the Cuckou and

Nightingale:" the poet, between _waking and sleeping_, hears the bird of

hate and the bird of music dispute against and for love. When the

nightingale takes leave of him, he wakes. "The Court of Love." The poet,

at the age of eighteen, is summoned by Mercury to do his obeisance at the

Court of Love, "a lite before the Mount of Citheree," called further on

Citheron. He is, on this occasion, not asleep at all, but dreams away like

any other poet, with his eyes open, in broad daylight.

In Chaucer thus we find every kind of possible allegory. There is the

thoroughly _creative_ allegory, when thoughts are turned into beings, and

impersonated abstract ideas appear as deities, and as attendants on

deities. This is the unsubstantial allegory, which has, it must be owned,

a different meaning to different climes and times. For example, to the

belief of the old Greeks, Aphrodite and Eros, albeit essentially thoughts,

had flesh that could be touched, wounded even, and veins, in which for

blood ran ichor. In the verses of our old poet and his contemporaries,

Venus and Cupid are as active as they were with Homer and Anacreon; only,

that now their substance has imperceptibly grown attenuate. So that in the

"Assemblee of Foules," for example, these two celestial potentates are

upon an equal footing, for subsistency and reality, with the great goddess

Dame Nature, who seems to be more of modern than of ancient invention, and

with Plesaunce, Arrai, Beautee, Courtesie, Craft, Delite, Gentlenesse, and

others enow, whom the poet found in attendance upon the Love-god and his

mother. With or without belief, this belongs to all the ages of poetry,

from the beginning to the consummation of the world.

Then there is the _disguising_ allegory--for by no other appellation can

it be described--which may be of a substantial kind. For example, the

Black Knight, as we have seen, forlorn in love, builds himself a lodge in

the wild-wood, to which he resorts during the month of May, and mourns the

livelong day under the green boughs. If the conjecture which Tyrwhitt

throws out, but without much insisting upon it, that John of Gaunt, wooing

his Duchess Blanche, is here figured, this is a _disguising_ allegory of

the lowest ideal idealization. The conjecture of Tyrwhitt, whether exact

or not, quite agrees to the art of poetical invention in that age.

That old and deeply-rooted species of fable, which ascribes to the

inferior animals human mind and manners, was another prevalent allegory.

Usually, the picture of humanity so conveyed is of a general nature. But

if, as has been guessed, the first and noblest of the Three Tercels that

woo the "formell eagle," in the Assemblee of Foules, be the same John of

Gaunt wooing the same Blanche, here would be two varieties of

allegory--the disguising of particular persons and events, and the veiling

of human actions and passions, under the semblance of the inferior

kinds--mixed in this part of the poem, which, in as much as it also

introduces wholly ideal personages, would, if the key to the enigma has

been truly found, very fully exemplify the allegorizing genius of the old

poetry.

Certainly, many of the old poems, unless they are interpreted to allude,

in this manner, to particular persons and occurrences, appear to want due

meaning, such as this Complaint of the nameless Black Knight, this Wooing

of the Three Tercels, and the faithless Hawk whom Canace hears. We may

often feel ourselves justified in presuming an allusion, although in

regard to the true import of the allusion it may be that Time has first

locked the door, and then thrown the key over the wall.

Of one Poem, to which we have hitherto but alluded, we feel ourselves now

called on to give an analysis, both for sake of its own exquisite beauty

and surpassing loveliness, and for sake of Dryden's immortal

paraphrase--THE FLOURE AND THE LEAF.

There is in the plan of "The Floure and the Leaf," a peculiarity which is

not easily accounted for. In the other poems of Chaucer, which are thrown

into the form of an adventure or occurrence personal to the relater, he

relates in person his own experience. Here the parts of experiencing, and

of relating an adventure, are both transferred to an unknown person of the

other sex. It is also remarkable that this difference in the personality

of the relater does not appear until the very close of the poem, and then

incidentally, one of the imaginary persons addressing the relater as

"Daughter." In the adventure, which is simply the witnessing a Vision,

there is nothing that might not as well have happened to Chaucer himself

as to dame or damsel.

In a sweet season of spring, a lady who, for some cause unknown to

herself, cannot sleep, rises at the peep of day, and wanders out into a

lofty and pleasant grove, where a slender unworn path, not easily seen,

leads her to a fair arbour of elaborate workmanship, and so framed as that

the sitter within sees, unseen, whatsoever passes without; adjoining which

is a singularly beautiful medlar-tree in full blossom. A goldfinch leaps

from bough to bough, eating buds and blossoms his fill, and then sings

most 'passing sweetly,' and is answered by an unseen nightingale, in a

note 'so merry' that all the wood rang again. Whilst the lady adventuress

sits upon the turfed seat listening, a new burst, as if of angelical

voices, is heard. The harmony proceeds from "a world of ladies," who march

out from a neighbouring grove, clad in richly-jewelled surcoats of white

velvet, each wearing on her head a chaplet of green leaves, laurel, or

woodbine, or Agnus Castus. They dance and sing soberly, surrounding one

who wears on her head a crown of gold, has a branch of Agnus Castus in her

hand, excels them all in beauty, appears to be their queen, and sings a

roundel having some allusion to the Green Leaf, and advance, dancing and

singing, into a meadow fronting the arbour. The song is not given--its

name is in half unintelligible French. Now a thundering of trumpets is

heard: and innumerable "men of arms" issue from the grove from which the

ladies came. Trumpets, kings-of-arms, heralds, and pursuivants clad in

white, and wearing chaplets of leaves, ride foremost. Then follow Nine

Knights magnificently armed, excepting that on their unhelmed heads are

set crowns of laurel. Upon each three henchmen attend, clad in white, with

green chaplets, and severally carrying the casque, the shield, and the

lance of him they serve. Last, issue a great rout of knights,

well-mounted, wearing chaplets, and bearing boughs of oak, laurel,

hawthorn, woodbine, and other kinds. They joust gallantly for an hour or

more: the laurel-wearers overbearing all opposition. At last, the whole

company dismount, and move by two and two towards the ladies, who, at

their approach, break off song and dance, and go to meet them. Every lady

takes a knight by the hand, and in this fashion they pace towards a fair

laurel, of such prodigious amplitude as that a hundred persons might rest

at ease under the shadow of its diffused branches. All incline with

obeisance to the tree; and then sing and dance around it; ever a lady and

a knight going together. All these are, (but as is only afterwards at the

close made known to the spectatress of these occurrences,) as you may

easily surmise, the homagers of the Leaf. Now the homagers of the Flower

enter upon the stage. From the depth of the wide champaign there come

roaming in a great company, ladies and knights, and ever a knight and a

lady hand in hand. They are all richly clad in green, and wear chaplets of

flowers; green-robed minstrels, with instruments of all sorts, and wearing

variegated chaplets of flowers precede. They dance up to a great tuft of

flowers in the midst of the mead; about which they incline reverently, and

one sings the praise of the "Margarete" or Daisy, the others answering in

chorus; meanwhile the hour grows to noon; the sun waxes hot; the

unsheltered flowers wither; the ladies and the knights of the Flower are

scorched with his rays; then the wind rises, and furiously blows down all

the flowers; then comes on a terrible storm of mixed hail and rain; wets

the knights and ladies of the Flower to the skin, and at last blows over.

But the white-habited servants of the Leaf have stood under their laurel,

shaded from the fiery noon beams, and shrouded from the tempest; and now,

moved with ruth and pity, come forwards to tender their aid. The Queen of

the Leaf greets, with loving sisterly compassion, the Queen of the Flower.

The party of the Leaf proceed to more effectual relief than soothing

words--hewing down boughs and trees to make "stately fires" for drying

their wet clothes, and searching the plain for virtuous herbs to make for

the blistered and drouthy sufferers salves and salads. She of the Leaf now

invites Her of the Flower to supper, who accepts as courteously. The Leaf

company, at the bidding of their mistress, provide horses for the Flower

company. At this juncture the Nightingale, who all day long, sitting

hidden in the laurel, sang "the service longing to May," flies to the hand

of the Leaf-queen, and sings on as diligently as before--the Goldfinch,

whom the heat had forced from his blossom of "medle-tree" into the cool

bushes, betakes himself in like manner to his Flower-queen's hand, and

sings there; and fast by the arbour, where our spectatress has remained

all the while seeing and unseen, ladies and knights ride along and away.

Only one lady in white rides alone after the rest. To her she comes out,

and enquires what the wandering show means. The answer, given with

courteous explicitness, imports in sum that those who wear chaplets of

Agnus Castus are virgins; the laurel wearers, knights who were never

conquered; the Nine most distinguished knights being the Nine Worthies;

with whom are the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne, and many "knightes olde" of

the Garter. Those who wear woodbine

"Be such as never were

To love untrewe in word, thoghte, ne dede."

They wear the Leaf, because the beauty of the Leaf lasts. But the

followers of the Flower are "those that loved idlenesse and not delite of

no besinesse, but for to hunte and hawke and pley in medes, and many other

such idle dedes." They wear the perishable Flower accordingly. The

informant ends with enquiring of her auditress, whether she will, for the

years to come, serve the Leaf or the Flower; who in answer vows her

observance to the Leaf. The deep implication of the ancient mythology in

the reviving poetry, here again discovers itself. It appears the lady of

the Leaf is the goddess Diana; the lady of the Flower, Flora in person.

The invention is remarkably well purposed, and well carried through. The

division of the world into those who follow virtue and those who pursue

their own delight, is a good general poetico-ethical view, and the

delicate emblems happily chosen for expressing the contrast. The heat and

the tempest which overwhelm the dainty voluptuaries, and are harmless to

the deed-worthy, express the true wisdom of virtue, even for this world,

which moves not at our will; and the gentle healing kindness of the wiser

to the less wise, whom they equalize with themselves, might almost seem

profoundly to signify the recovery to the better wisdom of those who had

set out with choosing amiss--a gracious hidden Christian lesson of charity

and penitence. The contact of the simply human spectatress with beings

brought from the world of imagination, is boldly designed. Here is no

Dream. She walks down from her own house into the wood, and the vision

comes and goes, in all the strength of true flesh and blood. The

solitariness of her stealing out from a sleepless bed, "about the

springing of the day, long or the brighte sonne uprisen was"--therefore,

whilst common mankind lie buried in sleep--is all the saving partition

that the poet has deigned betwixt the coarse and harsh Real and the

splendid Unreal. As for the poetical working-out--the descriptive

narrative--it is elaborate and full of beauty. The natural scene is

painted with exquisite sensibility to the influences of nature, and with

such determinate strokes as show a conversant eye. For example, the mixed

and illuminated spring-foliage, the

----"levis new

That sprongin out _agen the sonne shene_:

Some _very rede_, and some a _glad light_ grene,"

would seem fresh and vivid from the hand of Coleridge or Tennyson--and the

----"path of _litil brede_,

----that _gretly had not usid be_,

For it _forgrowin was with gras and wede_,"

--which beguiles the foot of the vision-favoured away from the usual beat

of men, leading her into the unvisited sequestration due to the haunting

of an embodied Allegory--might, in its old simplicity, pass for well

invented by whichsoever Priest of Imagination in our day can the best

read, in the Sensible, the symbolized Spiritual and Invisible.

You wonder withal, if Chaucer was the poet, how the spectator was turned

into a spectatress; and you are somewhat concerned at finding an unwilling

word of the judicious Tyrwhitt's, which owns to a doubt on the authorship

of the most beautiful minor poem, admitted into the volume of Chaucer.

Dryden felt the effusion of beauty, and has rendered and enhanced it. One

may question the fitness of a material alteration which he has ventured

upon. The allegory of the old Poem is pure. Dryden has changed the Knights

and Ladies, collectively, into Fairies; for any thing that appears,

indeed, of good human stature. The thought came to him apparently as

making the beauty more beautiful, and possibly as obtaining, to an

otherwise indefinite sort of imaginary beings, a known character and a

recognized hold upon poetical--succeeding to popular--belief. A

contradiction is--that the company of the Leaf have, in emphatic and

chosen terms, been described as INNUMERABLE. The laurel is of such

enormous diffusion, that A HUNDRED persons might repose under it. Yet IT

SHELTERS THEM ALL FROM THE STORM.

It is also singular to us, that the Margarete or Daisy should suffer any

slight from Chaucer, seeing the reverence with which he elsewhere regards

it. It is here, too, no doubt raised into reverence by the observance of

the Flower party; but then it suffers disparagement inasmuch as they are

disparaged.

Truly does the amiable Godwin say--"In a word, the Poem of Dryden,

regarded merely as the exhibition of a soothing and delicious luxuriance

of fancy, may be classed with the most successful productions of human

genius. No man can read it without astonishment, perhaps not without envy,

at the cheerful, well-harmonized, and vigorous state of mind in which the

author must have been at the time he wrote it."

"Now turning from the wintry signs, the sun

His course exalted through the Ram had run

And whirling up the skies, his chariot drove

Through Taurus, and the lightsome realms of love,

Where Venus from her orb descends in showers

To glad the ground, and paint the fields with flowers;

When first the tender blades of grass appear,

And buds, that yet the blast of Eurus fear,

Stand at the door of life, and doubt to clothe the year;

Till gentle heat, and soft repeated rains,

Make the green blood to dance within their veins:

Then, at their call, embolden'd, out they come

And swell the gems, and burst the narrow room;

Broader and broader yet their blooms display,

Salute the welcome sun, and entertain the day.

Then from their breathing souls the sweets repair

To scent the skies, and purge the unwholesome air.

Joy spreads the heart, and with a general song,

Spring issues out, and leads the jolly months along.

"In that sweet season, as in bed I lay,

And sought in sleep to pass the night away,

I turn'd my weary side, but still in vain,

Though full of youthful health, and void of pain.

Cares I had none to keep me from my rest,

For love had never enter'd in my breast;

I wanted nothing fortune could supply,

Nor did she slumber till that hour deny.

I wonder'd then, but after found it true,

Much joy had dried away the balmy dew:

Seas would be pools, without the brushing air

To curl the waves, and sure some little care

Should weary nature so, to make her want repair.

"When Chanticleer the second watch had sung,

Scorning the scorner sleep, from bed I sprung;

And dressing by the moon, in loose array,

Pass'd out in open air, preventing day,

And sought a goodly grove, as fancy led my way.

Straight as a line in beauteous order stood

Of oaks unshorn, a venerable wood;

Fresh was the grass beneath, and every tree,

At distance planted in a due degree,

Their branching arms in air with equal space

Stretch'd to their neighbours with a long embrace;

And the new leaves on every bough were seen,

Some ruddy-colour'd, some of lighter green.

The painted birds, companions of the spring,

Hopping from spray to spray, were heard to sing.

Both eyes and ears received a like delight,

Enchanting music, and a charming sight.

On Philomel I fix'd my whole desire,

And listen'd for the queen of all the quire;

Fain would I hear her heavenly voice to sing,

And wanted yet an omen to the spring.

"Attending long in vain, I took the way,

Which through a path, but scarcely printed, lay;

In narrow mazes oft it seem'd to meet,

And look'd as lightly press'd by fairy feet.

Wand'ring I walk'd alone, for still methought

To some strange end so strange a path was wrought;

At last it led me where an arbour stood,

The sacred receptacle of the wood;

This place unmark'd, though oft I walk'd the green,

In all my progress I had never seen;

And seized at once with wonder and delight,

Gazed all around me, new to the transporting sight.

'Twas bench'd with turf, and goodly to be seen,

The thick young grass arose in fresher green:

The mound was newly made, no sight could pass

Betwixt the nice partitions of the grass;

The well-united sods so closely lay,

And all around the shades defended it from day;

For sycamores with eglantine were spread,

A hedge about the sides, a covering over head.

And so the fragrant briar was wove between,

The sycamore and flowers were mix'd with green,

That nature seem'd to vary the delight,

And satisfied at once the smell and sight.

The master workman of the bower was known

Through fairylands, and built for Oberon;

Who twining leaves with such proportion drew,

They rose by measure, and by rule they grew;

No mortal tongue can half the beauty tell,

For none but hands divine could work so well.

Both roof and sides were like a parlour made,

A soft recess, and a cool summer shade.

The hedge was set so thick, no foreign eye

The persons placed within it could espy;

But all that pass'd without with ease was seen,

As if nor fence nor tree was placed between.

'Twas border'd with a field; and some was plain

With grass, and some was sow'd with rising grain,

That (now the dew with spangles deck'd the ground)

A sweeter spot of earth was never found.

I look'd, and look'd, and still with new delight,

Such joy my soul, such pleasures fill'd my sight;

And the fresh eglantine exhaled a breath,

Whose odours were of power to raise from death.

Nor sullen discontent, nor anxious care,

Even though brought thither, could inhabit there;

But thence they fled as from their mortal foe;

For this sweet place could only pleasure know.

Thus as I mused, I cast aside my eye,

And saw a medlar-tree was planted nigh.

The spreading branches made a goodly show,

And full of opening blooms was every bough:

A goldfinch there I saw with gaudy pride

Of painted plumes, that hopp'd from side to side,

Still pecking as she pass'd; and still she drew

The sweets from every flower, and suck'd the dew.

Sufficed at length, she warbled in her throat,

And tuned her voice to many a merry note,

But indistinct, and neither sweet nor clear,

Yet such as sooth'd my soul and pleased my ear.

"Her short performance was no sooner tried,

When she I sought, the nightingale, replied;

So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung,

That the grove echo'd and the valleys rung;

And I so ravish'd with her heavenly note--

I stood entranced, and had no room for thought,

But all o'erpower'd with ecstasy of bliss,

Was in a pleasing dream of Paradise;

At length I waked, and looking round the bower,

Search'd every tree, and pry'd on every flower,

If any where by chance I might espy

The rural poet of the melody;

For still methought she sung not far away:

At last I found her on a laurel spray,

Close by my side she sate, and fair in sight,

Full in a line against her opposite;

Where stood with eglantine the laurel twined,

And both their native sweets were well conjoin'd.

"On the green bank I sat, and listen'd long;

(Sitting was more convenient for the song:)

Nor till her lay was ended could I move,

But wish'd to dwell for ever in the grove.

Only methought the time too swiftly pass'd,

And every note I fear'd would be the last.

My sight, and smell, and hearing were employ'd,

And all three senses in full gust enjoy'd.

And what alone did all the rest surpass,

The sweet possession of the fairy place;

Single, and conscious to myself alone,

Of pleasures to the excluded world unknown;

Pleasures which nowhere else were to be found,

And all Elysium in a spot of ground."

The Lake poets--Heaven bless them!--have one and all--Wordsworth,

Coleridge, Southey--loudly and angrily denied to Dryden a poetical eye for

nature, quoting in proof some inflated passage or another from his rhyming

plays. Pope, too, according to them, was blind, and had never seen the

moon and stars. Where, we ask, in all the poetry of the Lakes and Tarns,

is there such a strain--so rich and so sustained--as that yet ringing in

your ears? And "the ancient woman seated on Helmcrag" answers--"where?"

True, the imagery is all in Chaucer. But had not Dryden's heart 'rejoiced

in nature's joy,' not thus could he have caught the spirit of his master.

Ay--the spirit; for there it is, in spite of the difference of

manner--transfused without evaporation or other loss, from the 'rhime

roial' in which Chaucer rejoiced, into the couplet in which Dryden, in his

old age, moved like a giant refreshed with gulps of the dewy morn.

Again:--

"The ladies left their measures at the sight,

To meet the chiefs returning from the fight,

And each with open arms embraced her chosen knight.

Amid the plain a spreading laurel stood,

The grace and ornament of all the wood;

That pleasing shade they sought, a soft retreat

From sudden April showers, a shelter from the heat.

Her leafy arms with such extent were spread,

So near the clouds was her aspiring head,

That hosts of birds, that wing the liquid air,

Perch'd in the boughs, had nightly lodging there:

And flocks of sheep beneath the shade from far

Might hear the rattling hail, and wintry war;

From heaven's inclemency here found retreat,

Enjoy'd the cool, and shunn'd the scorching heat;

A hundred knights might there at ease abide,

And every knight a lady by his side:

The trunk itself such odours did bequeath

That a Moluccan breeze to these was common breath.

The lords and ladies here, approaching, paid

Their homage, with a low obeisance made,

And seem'd to venerate the sacred shade.

These rites perform'd, their pleasures they pursue,

With songs of love, and mix with measures new:

Around the holy tree their dance they frame,

And ev'ry champion leads his chosen dame.

"I cast my sight upon the farther field,

And a fresh object of delight beheld.

For from the region of the west I heard

New music sound, and a new troop apppear'd,

Of knights and ladies mix'd, a jolly band,

But all on foot they march'd, and hand in hand

"The ladies dressed in rich symars were seen,

Of Florence satin, flower'd with white and green,

And for a shade betwixt the bloomy gridelin.

The borders of their petticoats below

Were guarded thick with rubies in a row;

And every damsel wore upon her head

Of flowers a garland blended white and red.

Attired in mantles all the knights were seen,

That gratified the view with cheerful green:

Their chaplets of their ladies' colours were,

Composed of white and red, to shade their shining hair.

Before the merry troop the minstrels play'd,

All in their masters' liveries were array'd,

And clad in green, and on their temples wore

The chaplets white and red their ladies bore.

Their instruments were various in their kind,

Some for the boy, and some for breathing wind;

The sawtry, pipe, and hautboy's noisy band,

And the soft lute trembling beneath the touching hand.

A tuft of daisies on a flowery lea

They saw, and thitherward they bent their way;

To this both knights and dames their homage made,

And due obeisance to the daisy paid.

And then the band of flutes began to play,

To which a lady sang a virelay;

And still at every close she would repeat

The burden of the song, _The daisy is so sweet_.

_The daisy is so sweet_, when she begun

The troop of knights and dames continued on.

The concert and the voice so charm'd my ear,

And sooth'd my soul, that it was heaven to hear."

O bardlings of Young England! withhold, we beseech you, from winsome

_Maga_, your verse-offerings, while thus the sons of song, evoked from the

visionary land, coming and going like shadows, smile to let drop at her

feet the scrolls of their inspiration. Poetry indeed! "You lisp in

numbers, for the numbers come." But in big boobies a lisp is only less

loathsome than a burr. Some of you have both, and therefore deserve to

die. Readers beloved! prefer you not such sweet, strong strains as these

sounded by Dryden, when he had nearly counted threescore and ten? "Yet was

not his natural force abated"--while his sense of beauty, instructed and

refined by meditations that deepen amongst life's evening shades, became

holier within sight of the grave. You will thank us for another quotation;

for much do we fear, O lady fair! that thou hast no copy of Dryden in thy

_boudoir_, and yet life is fast flowing on with thee, for thou art--nay,

there's no denying--yea, thou art--in thy twentieth year--and _if you

continue to refuse our advice_--will soon be an old woman.

"The Lady of the Leaf ordain'd a feast,

And made the Lady of the Flower her guest:

When lo! a bower ascended on the plain,

With sudden seats adorn'd, and large for either train.

This bower was near my pleasant arbour placed,

That I could hear and see whatever pass'd:

The ladies sat with each a knight between,

Distinguish'd by their colours, white and green;

The vanquish'd party with the victors join'd,

Nor wanted sweet discourse, the banquet of the mind.

Meantime the minstrels play'd on either side,

Vain of their art, and for the mastery vied.

The sweet contention lasted for an hour,

And reach'd my secret arbour from the bower.

The sun was set; and Vesper, to supply

His absent beams, had lighted up the sky:

When Philomel, officious all the day

To sing the service of th' ensuing May,

Fled from her laurel shade, and wing'd her flight

Directly to the queen array'd in white;

And hopping, sat familiar on her hand,

A new musician, and increased the band.

"The goldfinch, who, to shun the scalding heat,

Had changed the medlar for a safer seat,

And hid in bushes 'scaped the bitter shower,

Now perch'd upon the Lady of the Flower;

And either songster holding out their throats,

And folding up their wings, renew'd their notes;

As if all day, preluding to the fight,

They only had rehearsed, to sing by night.

The banquet ended, and the battle done,

They danced by starlight and the friendly moon:

And when they were to part, the laureat queen

Supplied with steeds the lady of the green,

Her and her train conducting on the way,

The moon to follow, and avoid the day."

Whatsoever merit of thought or of poetry may be found in the poems of

which we have spoken, the world has rightly considered the CANTERBURY

TALES as the work by which Chaucer is to be judged. In truth, common

renown forgets all the rest; and it is by the Canterbury Tales only that

he can properly be said to be known to his countrymen. Here it is that he

appears as possessing the versatility of poetical power which ranges from

the sublime, through the romantic and the pathetic, to the rudest

mirth--choosing subjects the most various, and treating all alike

adequately. Here he discovers himself as the shrewd and curious observer,

and close painter of manners. Here he writes as one surveying the world of

man with enlarged and philosophical intuition, weighing good and evil in

even scale. Here, more than in any other, he is master of his matter,

disposing it at his discretion, and not carried away with or mastered by

it. Here he is master, too, of his English, thriftily culling the fit

word, not effusing a too exuberant stream of description. Here he has

acquired his own art and his own style of versification, which is here to

be studied accordingly. Well therefore, and wisely, did Tyrwhitt judge,

when undertaking to rescue the "mirrour of Rethoures alle" from the dust

and rust of injurious time, he laid out his long and hard, but not

uncheerful labour upon the Canterbury Tales alone.

Every soul alive knows something of them--but not very many more than

Stothard, in his celebrated Picture, has informed their eye withal. Their

plan ranks them among works which are numerous, early and late, but which

rather belong to early literature. East and West such are to be found, but

they belong rather to the Oriental genius. A slender narrative, the

container of weightier ones--a technical contrivance, which gave to a

number of slighter compositions, collectively taken, the importance of a

greater work--which prolonged to the tale-teller who had once gained the

ear of his auditory his right of audience--and which, in a world where the

tongue was more active in the diffusion of literature than the quill,

afforded to each involved tale a memorial niche that might save it from

dropping entirely away into oblivion.

To Chaucer, the scheme serves a higher purpose of art, which of itself

allies him to the higher poets. By it he is enabled to comprehend, as if

in one picture, a more diversified and complete representation of

humanity. The thought is genial and sprightly. A troop of riders, who have

been stirred severally from their firesides by the searching spirit of

spring, have casually fallen into company, and who pace along, breathing

an air which "sweet showers" have embalmed--exhilarated by the brightening

radiance of "the young sun," and made loquacious by the very power which

pours out the song of the glad birds from the newly-leaved boughs by the

long wayside.

And who are the riders? And what is the charm that has drawn together a

company of thirty to ride on the same road at the same hour of the same

day? The suddenly-spun band of a union that will be as hastily dissolved,

squares happily with the large purpose of the poet, by unforcedly bringing

together persons of both sexes, and of exceedingly diverse conditions,

high, low, learned, unlearned, military, civil, religious, from city and

from country, land and sea, of unlike occupations, buoyant with youth,

grave with years. The momentary tie has poetical vitality, from the fact

that it is borrowed from the heart of the time and of England. They are

Pilgrims from all quarters to the shrine of England's illustrious and

favourite Saint, the martyr of Canterbury. They have gradually mustered

into cavalcade in coming up from the shires to the metropolis, one

excepted--the Poet. He falls into their party, by the hap of sleeping the

night preceding the journey out from the capital at the same inn, in the

suburb towards Canterbury--Southwark.

The specific incitement of the Tale-telling is thus invented in a natural

spirit, and aptly to the vivacity of the whole conception. Mine host of

the Tabard, Henry Bailey, a hearty fellow no doubt, since Chaucer has

thought his name worthy of his immortalizing, contrives the proceeding,

and this half in good fellowship, and half in the way of his trade. To

shorten the tediousness of the road, he proposes that each of them shall

tell, on the way to Canterbury, one tale, and on the way back,

another--or, for here the poem a little disagrees with itself, two tales

going and two returning; and that he or she who tells the best tale shall

have, on their return, a supper, for which all the others shall pay, and

which of course, he, Henry Bailey, shall provide. Upon these terms he

will, without fee, perform the part of their conductor to Canterbury and

back again. In assenting, the Pilgrims constitute him the judge of the

tales; and thus mine host, with his joyous temper, courtesy, where

courtesy needs, worldly sense, rough, sharp, and ready wit, and

unappealable dictatorship in all matters of the commonwealth, becomes a

dramatic person of the very first consequence, the animating soul of the

poetical action; and who, continually stepping in between the finishing of

one tale and the beginning of the next, organically links together the

otherwise disunited and incomposite Series.

The General Prologue contains, as was unavoidable, besides the scheme of

the poem, the description of the several Pilgrims, and constitutes in

itself, by the versatile feeling with which the portraits are seized, by

the strength, precision, peculiarity, liveliness, rapidity, and number of

the strokes with which each is individualized--a masterpiece of poetical

painting. One lost generation of Old England moves before us in the warmth

and hues of life.

The Knight, his son the Squire, his servant the good Yeoman--a gallant

three--the Clerke of Oxenford, the "poure Person of a toun," and his

brother the Ploughman, are, each in his estate, of thorough worthiness,

and are all, accordingly, drawn in a spirit of full affection. The

Prioress and the Franklin are laughed at a little--she for the pains she

gives herself to display her _imitative_ high breeding, and for--only

think it!--A.D. 1489--her SENTIMENTALITY!--he for his love of a

plenteously-spread board, and for his "poignant sauces!" But the two are

good at heart; and the satire of the poet leaves to them undisturbed their

place in your good esteem. His other men of some condition--the Monk, the

Friar, the "Sergeant of the Lawe," the Merchant, the "Doctour of

Physike"--he lashes with a more vigorous wrist. But not like a

farce-monger, who, to gain your laugh, must utterly abase his characters,

and make them merely ridiculous. The hunting Monk wants nothing but his

hood off to be a distinguished country squire. He is "_a manly man_ to be

an abbot able!" and, if he keeps greyhounds, they are "as swift as fowl of

flight." And look but at his horse's points and condition! The rascal of a

"Frere," if, by his perseverance and persuasiveness in begging, he

impoverishes the county, is a noble post of his order, and well beloved

and familiar with franklins, and with worthy women. The Merchant has an

assumed air of importance--magnifies his gains--thinks the protection of

the sea betwixt the ports from which his vessels run the first duty of

civilized governments--and keeps his wit set upon the main chance. But

that is the worst of him--"For sothe he was _a worthy man_ withalle." The

Lawyer is at the top of his profession--wise, witty, perfect in statutes

and in precedents, high in honours. What are his faults? You can hardly

tell. There is a slight ostentation of wisdom. He has got a deal of money

together--he is full of business--but he "_seems_ yet busier than he is."

The Doctor, too, is an excellent physician. He calls the stars in to his

aid. But that may be Chaucer's belief, not his mirth. He knows the

disease, and has the remedy at command. To be sure, he and his

apothecaries understand one another. He is learned in a thousand books;

but not in THE BOOK. Gold is of high esteem in medicine as a cordial.

Therefore he loves gold.

Why go on? Like Shakspeare, Chaucer portrays men in a spirit of humanity.

He paints his fellows; and, if he is amused with our follies, he prefers

showing the fairer side of our nature. Even the merry, warm-blooded Wife

of Bath, with her five wedded husbands, earns some goodwill of us by her

joyous and invincible spirit. Imagine the daring, the vigour, and the

stirring wit of the west-country cloth-manufacturess, who cannot rest easy

till she has been three times in pilgrimage to Jerusalem!

There is a visible purpose of keeping up the RESPECTABILITY of the

company. If the MILLER, the COKE, the REVE, and the SOMPNOUR, stand on a

somewhat low step of the social stair--the HABERDASHER, the CARPENTER, the

WEBBE (Weaver)--the DYER and the TAPISER--who are lumped in the poet's

description--

"Were al yclothed in ye liveree,

_Of a solempne and gret fraternitee_.

* * * *

_Wel semed ech of hem a fayr burgeis_,

_To sitten in a gild halle_, ON THE DEIS."

They are of wisdom qualifying them to stand for Aldermen of their wards.

Their wives are 'ycleped Madame'--take precedency in going to vigils--and

have

----"A mantel reallich (_i.e._ royally) yborne."

Even our honest friend the Southwark innkeeper, Henry Bailey, has an air

of dignity thrown over him. He was

"A semely man--

For to have ben _a marshal in an halle_.

_A large man_ he was, with eyen stepe,[30]

_A fairer burgeis is ther non in Chepe_.

Bold of his speche, and wise and _wel ytaught_,

And of manhood him lacked righte nought."

Moreover, even that chief of poetical Taverns, the TABARD, is designated

as

"This _gentil_ hostelrie."

No wonder! since

"The _chambres and the stables weren wide_,

And _wel we weren esed_ ATTE BESTE."

The Tales are, in some respect, like an extension of the Prologue. They

carry out the characters, or the spirit of the characters, there drawn.

Thus, if the chivalry of the time is impersonated, in respect of its

valour, honour, and courteous demeanour, in the Knight, in his Tale it

mounts into poetical aspiration, and shines out in regal splendour. The

contrast, due to the different years of the father and the son, is in part

disappointed by the cross destiny which has

----"left half-told

The story of Cambuscan bold."

The youthful fancy, dipped or drenched in romance, of the twenty-year old

Squire, shows itself, indeed, in the two sections which we have of his

chivalrous narrative. The Sword, which, with its edge, hews through all

armour, and with its "plat" heals the else incurable wounds of its own

inflicting--the Mirror, which discloses the plotting of the kingdom's

enemies, the truth or disloyalty of a distant lover--the Ring, which

enables its wearer to understand the "leden" of all birds, and to answer

them in the same--and the marvellous Horse of Brass, which, with turning

of a pin, and with a whisper in the ear, carries his rider whither he

would through the air, vanishes and comes with a wish, and, farthermore,

behaves and comports himself wholly after the best fashion of a

horse;--these four gifts from the King of Arabie and Inde to the Tartar

king and his daughter, transport us, as with a flight of the magical

courser himself, into the deep, wild, and mystical heart of that region,

unplaced by geographers, explored by the host of dreamers, Romance. So,

the love-story of the forsaken Bird, with whom the Ring brings the

Princess acquainted, is Eastern, is amorous, is high-fantastical, fit for

the 'lover and lusty bacheler,' who

----"Coude songes make, and well indite,

Juste and eke dance"--

and stands off in complete distinction from the love-debate, with

argumentation and with arms, of Palamon and Arcite. What is it, then, that

we would have more? Truly, we fear, that for once we are half

unreasonable. The Tale, with beginning, middle, and end, to satisfy the

heart of Aristotle, in the Knight's mouth--and the finely-begun fragment

in the Squire's--are, by their temper, allied and opposed, quite up to the

dramatic propriety of the two speakers. What would we have more? Simply

this, that Chaucer, by carrying to an end the unfinished fiction in the

tone in which he has begun it, should have demonstrated himself the master

of his art, which, by his project, he seems to be. The Knight's is a

love-tale, as well; but there is, in the love-story, an involving of

political interests, which, together with the known historical names, or

such as are so reputed, tempers the romantic, confers a gravity, and mixes

in a tone of the world's business that suits the sedate reason, and the

various observation of the veteran warrior, tried in high services. It

would have been a pleasant feat of poetical understanding and skill,

especially for that unpractised day, if a second equally gallant recital

of love and war--long and complex it would, by the intimations thrown out,

have been--could have been pursued throughout its natural evolutions and

vicissitudes, as resolutely as thus far it is, upon its own meet

self-sustained wing. It would have been! Oh, vex not the shade of the true

Maker with saucy doubts and fears! "Call up Him!" Yes--were there

evocations of such potency; but "call Him" in the simplicity of your soul,

because he has moved in you the lawful desire of hearing--because you

long, insatiably, to know what was done, found, suffered, enjoyed, by

Cambalo, Algarsif, Canace: which none other segger, disour, maker, harper

and carper, that shall ever arise shall have wit to tell you--not because

you would fain sit in the chair of criticism, awarding or withholding the

palm of dramatic skill, claimed by Dan Geffrey. Ay! "call up Him!" But

call up no substitute for Him.

The Sergeant of Laws' Tale, and the Clerke of Oxenford's, have an

affinity. Each describes a tried wife, an exemplar for all her sex, two

perfectly pure-souled women. And nothing is more honourable to Chaucer

than the love with which he has dwelt upon the story of both. Both suffer

to extremity; but Custance, the Sergeant's heroine, under the hand of

Providence, who proves her with strange calamities, and when she has

well-endured the ordeal, restores her to deserved happiness. For the

loving wife, whom the Clerke of Oxenford praises, a loving husband is

pleased to devise a course of sharp assaying, which might have been

conveniently spared. The manner of telling in the two stories is marked

with a difference. In both it is somewhat of the copious kind; and it may

be observed, generally, that the style of the narrative, in the

seven-lined stanza, or "rime roiall," is more diffuse than in the

couplets. There is a difference between the two which appears to belong to

the characters of the speakers. The Man of Law has not a few passages of

exclamatory and apostrophical moral and sentimental rhetoric. They compel

you to recollect his portrait--

"Discret he was, and of gret reverence

He _seemed_ swiche, his _wordes were so wise_."

The Clerk has nothing of the kind. The largeness in his manner of

relating, is rather an explicit and lucid fulness in representing an

interesting subject, than what is properly called diffuseness. Chaucer has

said of him--

"Not a word spake he more than was nede;"

and you will see accordingly, that although he _details_ his narrative,

every word, in its place, is pertinent and serviceable. He ends with a

freak, which carries him, you are disposed to think, out of his character.

He has related, after Petrarch, the story of patient Griseldis, with

beautiful earnestness and simplicity. He has conducted her through all the

trials which the high-born lord thought good to lay upon the low-born

wife, has displayed and rewarded her inimitable "wifly pacience," and then

confesses, that not being imitable, neither is it intended that it should

be imitated. In short, he "stints of ernestful matere;" and to "gladen"

his audience, ends with "saying them a song," in six quaintly-rhymed

stanzas, in which he counsels the wives to stand upon the defensive

against their husbands, and take all natural care of themselves--

"Be ay of chere as light as lefe on linde,

And let _him_ care, and wepe, and wringe, and wail."

The ironical counsel does not belie the moral of the story; but it comes

unexpectedly from him whom the Hoste has called upon for his tale, with

remarking, that he "rides as still and coy as a maid newly espoused sits

at her bord."

The Franklin has at home a graceless cub and heir of his own. If good

living were one and the same thing with holy living, this should the less

easily have happened. The Franklin is wonderfully captivated with our

young Squire's breeding, grace, and eloquence. The contrast brings his own

"burdane" painfully into his mind, and wrings from him a mortified

exclamation. The old man, with his sanguine complexion, and his beard

"White as is the dayesie,"

has--notwithstanding the sharp censorship which he exercises over his

cook--a heart in his bosom. The pleasure with which he has heard the

Squire, vouches as much; and more decisively so does the story, which he

himself tells from the old Breton lays; another story of a virtuous wife,

strangely tried, of all the three the most strangely. Her husband, a

knight, is on a voyage, and she takes a horror of the perilous rocks that

edge their own shore. Meanwhile, a youthful squire pursues her with love.

One day, in a mockery, she promises to grant him his suit if he will

remove all the rocks in a morning. After some perplexity of thought he

resorts to an able magician at Orleans; who, for the consideration of a

thousand pounds, undertakes, and accomplished the feat. Who is now hard

bestead, but the lady? She, in her strait, consults her husband, who has

returned; and the honourable husband says--you must keep your word. The

squire comes for his guerdon. "My husband says that I must keep my word."

"Indeed!--and shall a squire not know how to do a 'gentil dede,' as well

as a knight? I release you your promise."--He carries L500--all of the

agreed sum that he can muster to the conjurer, and prays of him time for

the rest. "Have I performed my undertaking?" "Yes!"--"And the lady

hers?"--The squire is obliged to relate the sequence of events.--"And is a

clerk," exclaims the master, "less able to do a gentil dede, than squire

and knight? Keep thy money, Sir Squire!"

That is a creditable tale for a country gentleman--

"Whose table dormant in the halle alway

Stood redy covered alle the longe day."

There is much feeling in the detail of the story, and the magical shows,

by which the enchanter, before striking his bargain, demonstrates his

competency, and by which he afterwards executes his engagement, are

dressed out with vivid imagination.

But now it is really high time that you should hear Dryden on Chaucer. For

is not this Number IV. of our Specimens of the British Critics?

"With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue; from Chaucer the

purity of the English tongue began. The manners of the poets were not

unlike: both of them were well bred, well natured, amorous, and

libertine, at least in their writings; it may be also in their lives.

Their studies were the same--philosophy and philology. Both of them

were knowing in astronomy; of which Ovid's _Books of the Roman

Feasts_, and Chaucer's _Treatise of the Astrolabe_, are sufficient

witnesses. But Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil,

Horace, Persius, and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and

clearness; neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the

Grecian fables, and most of Chaucer's stories were taken from his

Italian contemporaries, or their predecessors--Boccace his

'Decameron' was first published; and from thence our Englishman has

borrowed many of his 'Canterbury Tales.' Yet that of _Palamon and

Arcite_ was written, in all probability, by some Italian wit, in a

former age, as I shall prove hereafter. The tale of _Grisilde_ was

the invention of Petrarch; by him sent to Boccace, from whom it came

to Chaucer. _Troilus and Cressida_ was also written by a Lombard

author, but much amplified by our English translator, as well as

beautified; the genius of our countrymen, in general, being rather to

improve an invention than to invent themselves, as is evident not

only in our poetry but in many of our manufactures. I find I have

anticipated already, and taken up from Boccace before I come to him;

but there is so much less behind; and I am of the temper of most

kings, who love to be in debt, are all for present money, no matter

how they pay it afterwards; besides, the nature of a preface is

rambling, never wholly out of the way, nor in it. This I have learned

from the practice of honest Montaigne, and return at my pleasure to

Ovid and Chaucer, of whom I have little more to say. Both of them

built on the inventions of other men; yet since Chaucer had something

of his own, as _The Wife of Bath's Tale_, _The Cock and the Fox_,

which I have translated, and some others, I may justly give our

countryman the precedence in that part; since I can remember nothing

of Ovid which was wholly his. Both of them understood the manners;

under which name I comprehend the passions, and in a larger sense the

descriptions of persons, and their very habits. For an example, I see

Baucis and Philemon as perfectly before me as if some ancient painter

had drawn them; and all the pilgrims in the _Canterbury Tales_, their

humours, their features, and their very dress, as distinctly as if I

had supped with them at the Tabard, in Southwark. Yet even there,

too, the figures of Chaucer are much more lively, and set in a better

light; which, though I have not time to prove, yet I appeal to the

reader, and am sure he will clear me from partiality. The thoughts

and words remain to be considered in the comparison of the two poets,

and I have saved myself one-half of that labour by owning that Ovid

lived when the Roman tongue was in its meridian; Chaucer, in the

dawning of our language; therefore, that part of the comparison

stands not on an equal foot, any more than the diction of Ennius and

Ovid, or of Chaucer and our present English. The words are given up,

as a post not to be defended in our poet, because he wanted the

modern art of fortifying. The thoughts remain to be considered; and

they are to be measured only by their propriety; that is, as they

flow more or less naturally from the persons described on such and

such occasions. The vulgar judges, which are nine parts in ten of all

nations, who call conceits and jingles wit, who see Ovid full of

them, and Chaucer altogether without them, will think me little less

than mad, for preferring the Englishman to the Roman. Yet, with their

leave, I must presume to say, that the things they admire are only

glittering trifles, and so far from being witty, that in a serious

poem they are nauseous, because they are unnatural. Would any man who

is ready to die for love, describe his passions like Narcissus; would

he think of _inopem me copia fecit_, and a dozen more of such

expressions, poured on the neck of one another, and signifying all

the same thing? This is just John Littlewit, in 'Bartholomew Fair,'

who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a

miserable conceit. On these occasions, the poet should endeavour to

raise pity; but, instead of this, Ovid is tickling you to laugh.

Virgil never made use of such machines when he was moving you to

commiserate the death of Dido; he would not destroy what he was

building. Chaucer makes Arcite violent in his love, and unjust in the

pursuit of it; yet when he came to die, he made him think more

reasonably: he repents not of his love, for that had altered his

character; but acknowledges the injustice of his proceedings, and

resigns Emilia to Palamon. What would Ovid have done on this

occasion? He would certainly have made Arcite witty on his

deathbed;--he had complained he was farther off from possession by

being so near, and a thousand such boyisms, which Chaucer rejected as

below the dignity of the subject. They who think otherwise, would by

the same reason prefer Lucan and Ovid to Homer and Virgil, and

Martial to all four of them. As for the turn of words, in which Ovid

particularly excels all poets, they are sometimes a fault, and

sometimes a beauty, as they are used properly or improperly; but in

strong passions always to be shunned, because passions are serious,

and will admit no playing. The French have a high value for them; and

I confess they are often what they call delicate, when they are

introduced with judgment; but Chaucer writ with more simplicity, and

followed nature more closely, than to use them. I have thus far, to

the best of my knowledge, been an upright judge betwixt the parties

in competition, not meddling with the design nor the disposition of

it; because the design was not their own; and in the disposing of it

they were equal. It remains that I say something of Chaucer in

particular.

"In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold

him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or

the Romans Virgil. He is a perpetual fountain of good sense; learned

in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects. As he

knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence

which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the

ancients excepting Virgil and Horace. One of our late great poets is

sunk in his reputation because he could never forgive any conceit

which came in his way, but swept like a drag-net great and small.

There was plenty enough, but the dishes were ill sorted; whole

pyramids of sweetmeats for boys and women, but little of solid meat

for men. All this proceeded, not from any want of knowledge, but of

judgment. Neither did he want that in discerning the beauties and

faults of other poets, but only indulged himself in the luxury of

writing; and perhaps knew it was a fault, but hoped the reader would

not find it. For this reason, though he must always be thought a

great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten

impressions which his works have had in so many successive years, yet

at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth;

for as my last Lord Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, 'Not

being of God, he could not stand.'

"Chaucer followed nature every where, but was never so bold to go

beyond her; and there is a great difference of being _poeta_ and

_nimis poeta_, if we may believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a

modest behaviour and affectation. * * *

"He must have been a man of most wonderful comprehensive nature,

because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the

compass of his _Canterbury Tales_ the various manners and humours (as

we may now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age. Not a

single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally

distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations,

but in their very physiognomies and persons. Baptista Porta could not

have described their natures better, than by the marks which the poet

gives them. The matter and manner of their tales, and of their

telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours, and

callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth.

Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their

several sorts of gravity; their discourses are such as belong to

their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of

them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some

virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and

some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is

different; the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are several men, and

distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady Prioress,

and the broad-speaking gap-toothed Wife of Bath. But enough of this;

there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am

distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. It is

sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's

plenty. We have our forefathers and great-granddames all before us,

as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still

remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by

other names than those of monks, and friars, and canons, and

lady-abbesses, and nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing

lost out of nature, though every thing is altered. May I have leave

to do myself the justice, (since my enemies will do me none, and are

so far from granting me to be a good poet, that they will not allow

me so much as to be a Christian, or a moral man,) may I have leave, I

say, to inform my reader, that I have confined my choice 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 beaux and ladies of pleasure in the 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. If any

thing of this nature, or of profaneness, be crept into these poems, I

am so far from defending it, that I disown it, _totum hoc indictum

volo_. Chaucer makes another manner of apology for his broad speaking

and Boccace makes the like; but I will follow neither of them."

An English reader is likely to have held his way through the Palamon and

Arcite of Dryden, ere arriving at the knight's Tale of Chaucer. It will

not easily happen that he overleaps that Version, so full of the fire and

vigorous grace which he delights in, and couched in the very choicest of

that English on which his ears habitually feed, to introduce himself all

at once to the antique and to him obsolete Original. The pure impression,

therefore, with which he would read the Tale in its proper place, if he

there first got acquainted with it, is hardly to be obtained. No matter!

Forget Dryden, and plunge yourself into Chaucer.

Be surprised, if you can, as you surely will be amused, at encountering

the inextricable commixture of manners, usages, tones, thinkings, and

speakings, which time and space have done their best at keeping

asunder--the chivalry of modern Europe, and of the middle ages,

transplanted into the heroic age of old Greece, and to the Court of

Theseus, "Duk of Athenes." Be surprised and amused, but do not therefore

lay the book out of your hand, or laugh the old master to scorn, or do him

other than reverent and honourable justice. Take rather the story to

pieces, convince yourself step by step how strangely at every turn the old

world and the new, the Christian and the Heathen, are confounded together,

and feel at every step how the vitality which the good poet has infused

into his work, reconciles and atones discordancies and discrepancies; and

in spite of the perplexing physiognomy, how that must needs be one body

which is informed and actuated, through all its joints and members, by one

spirit.