That seynt Petér haddé, whan that he wente He was in churche a noble ecclesiaste. Now have I told you soothly in a clause And al the remenaunt of oure pilgrimage. 700 710 720 A largé man he was with eyghen stepe, ye be merye, I yeve you myn heed. Hold up youre hondes withouté moré speche." Oure counseil was not longé for to seche; Us thoughte it nas nat worth to make it wise, And graunted him withouté more avise, 760 770 780 730 And bad him seie his verdite, as him leste. 2 Latoun, French "laiton," a sort of brass; a composition of 70 parts copper and 30 zinc. Its later form was "latten." There is a fable that Shakespeare stood godfather to a child of Ben Jonson's, and as Ben Jonson prided himself upon his scholarship, Shakespeare said, “I will give my godchild a dozen latten spoons, and thou shalt translate them." 3 Rette, impute. Old Norse "retta." Here, their. First-English "hira," of them. 5 Euerich a, every one. The a is "an" the numeral, and used emphatically. 6 Us leste, it pleased us. I wol myselven gladly with you ryde, In heygh and lowe; and thus by oon assent A morwe whan the day bigan to sprynge, And forth we riden a litel more than paas,1 And telle he moste his tale as was resoún, By forward and by composicioún, 820 As ye han herd; what needeth wordes moo? 850 Shal paye for al that by the weye is spent. Anon to drawen every wight bigan, And shortly for to tellen as it was, Were it by aventúre, or sort, or cas, The soth is this, the cut fel to the knight, Of which ful blithe and glad was every wight; 1 Pans, a foot-pace. 840 So the series of tales is opened with the Knight's Tale of Palamon and Arcite, a story suited to the teller. This was a condensed version of Boccaccio's "Teseide," made by Chaucer some years before his famous story-book was planned. 2 For the woodcuts showing some of the sketches of Chaucer's Pilgrims which illustrate the Ellesmere MS. I am indebted to the Chaucer Society, which has published coloured fac-similes of the whole series, and also woodcuts of them in drawing without colour. Of the selection here given, five are from casts of the woodcuts made for the Society; the others are fresh copies from the coloured pictures. The Ellesmere MS. is a folio on vellum with illuminated capitals, as well as a coloured drawing of each of the pilgrims, faithfully presenting them in the dress of Chaucer's time. The Rev. Henry John Todd, in his "Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer" (1810), gave a copy from this MS. of the figure of Chaucer, and described the MS., brought from the Duke of Bridgewater's library at Ashridge, and then belonging to the Marquis of Stafford, as of unequalled beauty, and in a handwriting of the fifteenth century. Its present possessor is the Earl of Ellesmere. Let me take this opportunity of paying honour to the Chaucer Society for the noble work it has done in producing not only the text of the Ellesmere MS., but the texts also of five other good MSS. of Chaucer, six in all-three from private, and three from public libraries-upon broad pages side by side. Such While the pilgrims are on their journey, Chaucer describes himself, through Harry Bailly the host, as one who looked on the ground as he would find a hare; seemed elvish by his countenance, for he did unto no wight dalliance; yet was stout, for, says the host, "he in the wast is shape is as wel as I." These thirty-one were the pilgrims, but on the way they were overtaken at Boughton-under-Blean, seven miles on the London side of Canterbury, by a Canon's Yeoman and his master, who addressed them with great courtesy, the Yeoman saying that he had seen them in the morning leave their hostelry, and told his master, who rode after to join them, because, said the Yeoman at that first accost of the pilgrims, his master was full of mirth and jollity. The Canon wore his white surplice under his black cloak and hood, and between his hood and his head had a burdock leaf for sweat, to keep his head from heat. He came in mad haste, on a dapple-grey hack, and "it semed he hadde priked myles thre." He was a ragged, joyless alchemist, at home in a thieves' lane of a town suburb, making no gold but what he could extract from men whom he persuaded that he knew by his art how to turn one gold piece into two. He and his hungry man will try so much of the alchemist's art upon some soft-headed member of this large and promising company of pilgrims. The Yeoman represents his master's coming after them to be for his disport, because he loveth dalliance, and "can of mirth and eke of jollity not but enough. Next he informs the pilgrims that his master has such subtilty, "That all this ground on which we ben riding With Together with these two statements comes the Yeoman's assertion that he had seen the pilgrims ride out of their inn-yard that morning. excellent dramatic instinct, Chaucer represents the Yeoman's opening upon his game; his finding that the birds will not be caught; and, as the homethrusts of Harry Bailly, the host, knock over his story and spoil his prospect of turning a penny, his rapid slide out of allegiance to his unprofitable master into a more promising state of fellowship with other folk who might do him some good. This Canon, said his Yeoman, after other flourishing, a reproduction makes it possible to learn, in most cases with reasonable certainty, not how Chaucer spelt, which is of little consequence, but what were the words he wrote, and in what order he placed them. In collating another printed text of the Prologue with the text given by the Chaucer Society of these six MSS., I have found it necessary to make many corrections that restore the poet's music or improve his meaning. No student of English literature, however often he may differ from Mr. Furnivall in matters of criticism, can ever fail to be grateful to him for the large body of literature which he has made available for study by the printing of MSS., edited either by himself or by scholars to whom he has given the first impulse, and for whom, in the various publishing societies established by him, be has created fields of labour. The Chaucer Society has also published valuable essays by several good scholars upon points illustrative of Chaucer's text, has printed also the originals of tales by him, or other pieces having some relation to them. Of the six-text edition an independent issue to the public would be a substantial service to good literature. could pave all their road to Canterbury with silver and gold. "I wonder, then," said Harry Bailly, "that your lord is so sluttish, if he can buy better clothes. His overslop is not worth a mite, it is all dirty and torn." The home-thrust at the poverty of which he knows the pinch, causes the Yeoman to begin his slide. This, although swift, is natural, and is characterised with Chaucer's genuine dramatic instinct : "Why?" quoth this Yeoman, "wherto ask ye me? So doth my lord, and that me grieveth sore." Presently the Host asked, "Where dwellen ye, if it to tellen be?" "In the suburbs of a town,” said the Yeoman, "lurking in corners and blind lanes, "Where as these robbers and these thieves by kind, Holden their privy fearful residence, As they that dare not shewen their presènce; 'Why," asked the Host again, "is your face so discoloured?" "That is with constant blowing in the fire. We blunder ever, and pore in the fire; and for all that we fail of our desire. We borrow gold of men who think that of a pound we can make two. "Yet is it false; and aye we have good hope It for to doon, and after it we grope." The Canon, who had drawn near, suspicious of the conversation, overhead his Yeoman, and cried at him as a slanderer, who was discovering what he should hide. The Host bade the Yeoman tell on, and not mind his master. The Yeoman said that he did not mind him. The Canon fled away for very sorrow and shame; upon which his Yeoman said he was glad to be quit of him, for he had dwelt with him seven years, and lost all that he had, yet never until now had he been able to leave him. Hereupon the Yeoman, before telling a tale, speaks his mind at length concerning his experience of alchemy. Harry Bailly, also called Henry Bailif, the host, was fit to be the marshal in a hall-large, deep-eyed, bold of speech, shrewd, manly, well-informed. He had a big-armed, blabbing shrew for his wife, who brought him the great clubbed staves when he beat his boys, and cried, "Slay the dogs every one, and break them back and bone." She ramped in his face and cried at him as a milksop who would not avenge her, if any neighbour failed to bow to her in church; and he must bear with her, unless he would fight her, which he dared not do. Some day she would be driving him, he said, to slay a neighbour, and 1 The, thrive. First-English "theon." then go his way, for he is dangerous with knife in hand. No wonder that the Host was ready for a pilgrimage to Canterbury while his wife stayed by the "Tabard." After the Knight has told his tale of chivalry, the Monk is asked for the next story, but the Miller is drunk and, with oaths and loud voice, thrusts in his offer of what he declares to be a noble tale. As the tale bears hard on a carpenter, and Oswald the Reeve was bred a carpenter, he takes his revenge at once by matching it with a tale that bears hard on a miller. In these two tales the coarser side of life is shown, and Chaucer, with a sense of purity that takes a form unknown in any other writer of his time, declares beforehand to his reader that these two men are churls, gives its plain name to the matter of their story-telling, and says: -Whoso list it not to hear, Turn over the leaf and choose another tale, For he shall find enow both great and small Of storial thing that teacheth gentilesse And eke morality and holiness. Yet the coarser of the two stories so introduced with warning to the reader, the Reeve's, was the sixth novel in the ninth day of the "Decameron,' where it is told to a circle of ladies by the polite Pamfilo at bidding of Emilia, queen for the day. The temper of "The Canterbury Tales" has been already illustrated in this Library by the Clerk's Tale of the Patience of Griselda.1 The whole range of life is in them, from purest religious aspiration to the grosser humours of the flesh, but whoever reads "The Canterbury Tales" straight through is left with a most healthy sense of human fellowship, knit by a sense of the true beauty of womanhood, and of the true source of strength in man. The Squire's Tale, to which both Spenser and Milton have referred, is of the Tartar Cambys Kan, or Cambuscan, who warred with Russia, and who had two sons, Algarsif and Camballo, and a daughter Canace. When Cambuscan had ruled for twenty years, he kept the feast of his nativity "at Sarra in the lond of Tartarie." To that feast the King of Arabia and India sent as gifts a flying horse of brass, able to carry its rider to any place where so he list within four-and-twenty hours; a mirror in which coming adversity or enmity would show itself, or falsehood in a lover; and a ring that gave the power to converse with birds and know the healing virtue of each herb. The mirror and ring were for Canace. The King of Arabia gave also a naked sword which would cut through all armour, and inflict a wound that the sword itself only could heal, by stroking over with the flat side of the blade. The ignorant people doubted, dreaded, As lewéd peple demeth comunly Of thingés that ben maad more subtily 1 See "Shorter English Poems," pages 38-50. After supper the strange knight who brought these gifts told how to set the horse in motion by turning a pin in its ear, and saying where it was to go. Canace, who did not wish on the morrow to look pale or unfit for festival, went early to rest; but, delighting in her ring and mirror, awoke after her first sleep, before all her women, and roused ten or twelve of them to walk abroad with her. In her walk she saw on a dead tree a fair falcon, that seemed a peregrine from strange lands, shrieking, beating herself with her wings, and tearing herself with her beak. She offered help and comfort to the bird, which fell in swoon. She took it in her lap, and, when the bird revived, it spoke to her; began, with a line which occurs more than once in Chaucer's poetry That pitee renneth sone in gentil herte,2 to tell how she was bred in a rock of grey marble, and exchanged her plighted love with a false tercelet, and, flying away from her, gave his love to a kite and left her forlorn. Canace took the falcon home, healed her with herbs, made a mew for her near her own bed's-head, covered with blue velvet "in sign of trouth that is in woman sene": And al without the mew is peinted grene, In which were peinted al thise falsé foules As bene thise tidifes, tercelettes and owles, with pies beside to cry and chide at them. Now, says the poet, he will leave this part of his tale To speke of aventures and of batailles, That fought in listés with the brethren two And ther I left I wol againe beginne. Here the tale is left unfinished, with stately promise of a sage and solemn tune, which afterwards suggested to Milton the wish that divinest Melancholy would raise Museus or Orpheus, Or call up him that left half-told That owned the virtuous ring and glass, Il Penseroso" represents the thoughtful side of a man's nature; and our old master-poet was named rightly in such context by Milton, who could recognise the deep religious earnestness that lay at the heart of Chaucer's verse. 2 In the Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women," the God of Love says to the poet : "Thou hast deservéd soré for to smart, "Confessio Amantis.” CHAPTER IV. GOWER'S "CONFESSIO AMANTIS." ORAL Gower, as Chaucer called his friend in his Own "Troilus and Cressida," was a gentleman with property in more than one county, and a home-he was signing a deed there in 1373-at From the Harleian MS. of Gower's Otford, where the valley of the Darent opens upon meadows and thick woodlands of south-western Kent. He wrote three great poems, one in each of the languages then used in England. In Latin "Vox Clamantis," in seven parts, a review of the corruptions of society, which filled the state with disease; this was suggested to him by the Jack Straw rebellion of 1381. In French "Speculum Meditantis," divided into twelve parts, and treating of the vices and virtues, and of the various degrees of his age, and of the way by which a sinner should return to the knowledge of the Creator. This book, called also "Speculum Hominis" (" The Mirror of Man"), has been lost. The third book was in English octosyllabic verse, "Confessio Amantis" ("The Confession of a Lover"), and was begun in 1393, when his age was between sixty and seventy. Like Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," it was a collection of stories in verse, joined by the setting in which they were placed. Gower's genius is unmixed Anglo-Saxon, closely allied to that of the literature before the Conquest, in the simple earnestness of a didactic manner leavened by no bold originality of fancy. In his Latin verse Gower writes easily and, having his soul in his theme, forcibly. But he tells that which he knows, and invents rarely. He does not see as he writes, and so write that all they who read see with him. But in his own way he puts his soul into his work. Thus, in the "Vox Clamantis," he asked that the soul of his book, not its form, be looked to; and spoke through Latin the truest English in such sentences as that "the eye is blind and the ear deaf, that convey nothing down to the heart's depth; and the heart that does not utter what it knows is as a live coal hid under ashes. If I know little, there may be another whom that little will help. Poor, I give of my scanty score, for I would rather be of small use than of none. But to the man who believes in God no power is unattainable if he but rightly feels his work; he ever has enough whom God increases." This is the old spirit of Cadmon and of Bede, in which are laid, while the earth lasts, the strong foundations of our literature. It was the strength of such a temper in him that made Gower strong. "God knows," he says again, "my wish is to be useful; that is the prayer that directs my labour." And while he thus touches the root of his country's philosophy, the form of his prayer that what he has written may be what he would wish it to be, is still a thoroughly sound definition of good English writing. His prayer is that there may be no word of untruth, and that "each word may answer to the thing it speaks of, pleasantly and fitly; that he may flatter in it no one, and seek in it no praise above the praise of God. Give me," he asks, "that there shall be less vice and more virtue for my speaking." It was the strength of this aspiration shown in the "Vox Clamantis," that caused Chaucer in his Troilus and Cressida"-before Gower's English poem had appeared to give to his friend the epithet, that his countrymen agreed thereafter in fastening upon him, as "the moral Gower." Gower's English poem, the "Confessio Amantis,” or "Lover's Confession," abounds in tales connected by a story in the way made popular by the "Decameron. But while professing to amuse the idle with discourse of love, it is as earnest as it could be made by a writer hampered with the working of a fashionable piece of intellectual machinery for which, writing also when aged and in ill-health, he did not really care. To the best of his power Gower uses the device of this poem as a sort of earthwork, from behind which he sets himself the task of digging and springing a mine under each of the Seven Deadly Sins. There are a prologue and eight books. Prologue repeats briefly the Cry of the "Vox Clamantis." The Eight Books are, one for each of the seven deadly sins, with one interpolated book, seventh in the series, which rhymes into English a "Tresor" of the physical and political science and philosophy of the time, from the "Secretum Secretorum," that includes an argument, applied covertly to Richard, on the state and duties of a king. This is the PROLOGUE. Of hem, that writen us to-fore, And write a boke betwene the twey 1 Tho, then. 2 Beleve, remain, German "bleiben." The |