Was nowhere heard yet half so sweet,
Nor of accord yet half so meet.

For there was none of them that feigned
To sing, for each of them him pained
To find out merry crafty notes.
They ne spared not their throats."

Then the decorations of his chamber are described, and how as he lay admiring the bird concert and the bright beams streaming through the painted window, he heard a hunter try his horn, and footsteps of men, horses, and hounds, and confused talk of hunting. He got up, and rode to the forest, finding out by the way that the hunter was the Emperor Octavian. By-and-by the hounds are at fault, and as the poet is loitering about, an incident happens that conducts to the main subject of the poem.

1 Path.

"I was go walked fro my tree,

And as I went, there came by me
A whelp that fawned me as I stood,
That had y-followed and could no good:
It came and crept to me as low
Right as it hadde me y-know;

Held down his head and joined his ears
And laid all smoothë down his hairs.
I would have caught it, and anon
It fledde, and was fro me gone.
And I him followed, and it forth went
Down by a flowery greene went1
Full thick of grass, full soft and sweet,
With flowerës fel2 fair under feet,
And little used, it seemed thus;

For both Flora and Zephyrus,

They two that maken flowrës grow

Had made their dwelling there I trow.
For it was on to behold

As though the earth envyë wold

To be gayer than the heaven,

To have more flowrës suchë seven 3

As in the welkin starrës be.

It had forgot the poverty

2 Many.

3 Seven such, seven times as many.

That winter through his coldë morrows
Had made it suffer; and his sorrows-
All was forgotten, and that was seen,
For all the wood was waxen green :
Sweetness of dew had made it wax."

While looking at the beasts that were roaming through the wood, more in number than Argus could have counted, he became aware of a knight in black, sitting with his back against a huge oak-tree. This knight is supposed to represent the mourning Duke of Lancaster; and thus, through the story of Ceyx and Alcyone, and the various scenes and incidents of the May morning, we reach the main subject of the poem.

III. THE CHIEF QUALITIES OF HIS POETRY.

It is not unlikely that our impressions of the chief qualities of Chaucer's poetry are different in some respects from those felt by his contemporaries. In all probability we pass lightly over many things that fascinated them, and admire many things that they received with comparative indifference. Their captivating novelties have become our commonplaces, their impressive reflections have become trite; and, on the other hand, many passages that would doubtless have seemed tame and commonplace to them, strike us with all the freshness of reawakened nature, or with the strange interest of things exhumed after long ages of burial.

We cannot recover, with any assurance of certainty, the feelings of Richard II.'s courtiers when first they were charmed by the English language in the compositions of a great poet. We cannot imagine how his descriptions of fair women, fine buildings, flowers, trees, and bird-singing, were heard or read by those familiar with the "Romance of the Rose;" nor how his 'Canterbury Tales' affected minds that knew such plots and incidents by the hundred. We know what a master of language can do with the most

C

familiar materials; we know how fervently Chaucer's power was acknowledged, not only among his countrymen, but also on the other side of the Channel: but how they felt his power, which of its elements appealed to them most irresistibly, must ever remain matter for speculation.

Archaisms of word and inflection cannot but be inseparable elements in the sum total of the effects of Chaucer's poetry on us. Single words have changed their associations very materially since the days of Chaucer; and there are many that signify nothing to the present generation, many that are empty sounds, whose meaning may be attained only by dim approximation through glossarial synonyms. Words faintly picked up from a glossary have not the same power as the words of our mother-tongue. Even if we have a literary familiarity with them, the matter is not altogether mended. In all cases we may be sure that a passage with obsolete words in it does not move us as it moved contemporary readers. What may have been the effect of the passage when its words were hung about with the associations of the time, we cannot realise either by patient study or impatient flash of imagination: it is a dead thing, that no intellectual alchemy can resuscitate. We only know that it must have been different from what we experience. A phrase in a modern poem, even, does not go with equal power to the heart of every reader. Chance associations are fruitful sources of colouring peculiar to the individual. But to none of us can an obsolete word of Chaucer's have the same associations that it bore to men in whose mouths and ears it was a familiar visitor.

The natural effect of archaisms on pathetic passages is to make them sweeter and simpler by making them more childlike. Such lines as—

or

"The newë green, of jolif ver the prime

And sweetë smelling flowerës white and red;"

"And as I could this freshë flower I grette,
Kneeling alway, till it unclosed was
Upon the smallë, softë, sweetë grass,

That was with flowerës sweet embroided all

come to us like the prattle of childhood, and fill us with the freshness of spring as no modern words could do. Even lines that are not so appropriate in the infantile mouth, are made prettier by their archaic garb. Take the following:

"She was not brown ne dun of hue,
But white as snow y-fallen new.
Her nose was wrought at point devise,
For it was gentle and tretis,

With eyen glad and browes bent;
Her hair down to her heelës went,

And she was simple as dove of tree;
Full debonaire of heart was she."

These lines, particularly the two about the nose, are such as a modern reader would apply to a beautiful pet; they probably carried a more elevated sentiment when first written.

Look now at a passage that, apart from the quaintness of the language, should carry the sense of splendour-the march of Theseus upon Thebes.

"The red statue of Mars with spear and targe

So shineth in his white banner large,
That all the fieldës glitterin up and doun :
And by his banner borne was his pennoun
Of gold full rich, in which there was y-beat
The Minotaur which that he wan in Crete.
Thus rid this duke, thus rid this conquerour,
And in his host of chivalry the flower,
Till that he came to Thebes and alight
Fair in a field there as he thought to fight."

The archaic inflections and turn of language give this a quaint unction, as if it were the imperfect utterance of an astonished child. The influence of the diction co-operates largely in reminding us that the splendour is a thing of bygone times, strange and wonderful in our imaginations. In the following astrological passage, matter and manner go together in the same way. It is the reflection of the “Man of Law” on the infatuated passion of the Soldan for Constance.

'Paraventure, in thilkë largë book

Which that men clepe the Heaven, y-written was
With starrës, when that he his birthë took,
That he for love should have his death, alas!
For in the starrës, clearer than is glass,
Is written, God wot, whoso could it read
The death of every man withouten dread.
In starrës many a winter there beforn
Was written the death of Hector, Achilles,
Of Pompey, Julius, ere they were born;
The strife of Thebes, and of Hercules,
Of Sampson, Turnus, and of Socrates
The death; but mennës wittës been so dull
That no wight can well read it at the full."

Later on in the same tale, there is another astrological passage an impassioned appeal to the starry destinieswhen Constance is setting sail for the East to the marriage that proves so fatal.

"O firstë moving cruel firmament!

With thy diurnal sweigh that crowdest aye
And hurlest all fro East to Occident
That naturally would hold another way!
Thy crowding set the heaven in such array
At the beginning of this fierce voyage,

That cruel Mars hath slain this marriage."

In this passage the archaic trappings, and particularly the bit of dogma about the natural course of the firmament, are rather in the way-interfering with our perception of the dignity and passion of the apostrophe.

The archaic diction makes itself felt with peculiar harmony in the narrative of supernatural manifestations, such as were ascribed to devils and magicians. Sir Walter Scott might have envied the following account of the ritual of Arcite in the temple of Mars, and the answer to his prayer :

"The prayer stint of Arcita the strong :
The ringes on the temple door that hong,
And eke the doorës clattereden full fast,
Of which Arcita somewhat him aghast.