somewhat corpulent towards the end of his life, at which time the Canterbury Tales were written. These peculiarities of personal appearance, as well as some others, giving indications of his manners and character, are also alluded to by the poet himself in the Tales themselves. When Chaucer is in his turn called upon by the host of the Tabard, himself represented as a large man,” and a “faire burgess," to contribute his story to the amusement of the pilgrims, he is rallied by honest Harry Bailey on his corpulency, as well as on his studious and abstracted air: 66 "What man art thou?" quod he, "Thou lokest as thou woldest fynde an hare; For ever on the ground I se the stare. Approach nere, and loke merrily. Now ware you, sires, and let this man have space. He in the wast is shape as wel as I: This were a popet in an arm to embrace, For any womman, smal and fair of face. For unto no wight doth he daliaunce." The good-nature with which the poet receives these jokes, and the readiness with which he commences a new story when uncourteously cut short, all seem to point to the gentlemanly and sociable qualities of an accomplished man of the world. § 5. The literary and intellectual career of Chaucer seems to divide itself naturally into two periods, closely corresponding with the two great social and political tendencies which meet in the fourteenth century. The earlier productions of Chaucer bear the stamp and character of the Chivalric, his later and more original creations of the Renaissance literature. It is more than probable that the poet's visits to Italy, then the fountain and centre of the great literary revolution, brought him into contact with the works and the men by whose example the change in the taste of Europe was brought about. Dante, it is true, died before the birth of Chaucer; and though his influence as a poet, a theologian, and a metaphysician, may not yet have fully reached England, yet Chaucer must have fallen under it in some degree. There is a third element in the character of Chaucer's writings, besides the imitation of the decaying Romance and the rising Renaissance literature, which must be taken into account by all who would form a true conception of his intellect; and this is the religious element. It is difficult to ascertain how far the poet sympathized with the bold doctrines of Wicliffe, who, like himself, was favored and protected by John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III. It is, however, probable, that though he sympathized - as is shown by a thousand satirical passages in his poems - with Wicliffe's hostility to the monastic orders and abhorrence of the corruptions of the clergy, and the haughty claims of papal supremacy, the poet did not share in the theological opinions of the reformer, then regarded as a dangerous heresiarch. Chaucer probably remained faithful to the creed of Catholicism, while attacking with irresistible satire the abuses of the Catholic ecclesiastical administration. How intense that satire is, may be gathered from the contemptible and odious traits which he has lavished on nearly all his portraits of monastic personages in the Canterbury Tales; and not less clearly from the strong contrast he has made between the sloth, sensuality, and trickery of these persons, and the almost ideal perfection of Christian virtue which he has associated with his Persoune, the only member of the secular or parochial clergy he has introduced into his inimitable gallery. It is by no means to be understood that the principal works of this great man can be ranged chronologically under the two strongly marked categories just specified; or that all those bearing manifest traces of the Provençal spirit and forms were written previously, and those of the Renaissance or Italian type subsequently, to any particular epoch in the poet's life; but only that his earlier productions bear a general stamp of the one, and his later of the other literary tendency; while the greatest and most original of all, the Canterbury Tales, may be placed in a class by itself. § 6. A brief critical examination of Chaucer's works may serve to point out, however imperfectly, the boundless stores of imagination and pathos, of wisdom and of wit, which the father of English poetry has embodied in language that has never been surpassed, and seldom equalled, for harmony, variety, and picturesqueness. I shall reserve to the last the more detailed analysis of the Canterbury Tales. On a rough general inspection of the longer works which compose the rather voluminous collection of Chaucer's poetry, it will be found that about eight of them are to be ascribed to a direct or indirect imitation of purely Romance models, while three fall naturally under the category of the Italian or Renaissance type. Of the former class the principal are the Romaunt of the Rose, the Court of Love, the Assembly of Fowls, the Cuckow and the Nightingale, the Flower and the Leaf, Chaucer's Dream, the Boke of the Duchesse, and the House of Fame. Under the latter we must range the Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Creseide, Anelyda and Arcyte, and above all the Canterbury Tales. (i.) The Romaunt of the Rose is a translation of the famous French allegory Le Roman de la Rose, which forms the earliest monument of French literature in the thirteenth century. The original is of inordinate length, containing, even in the unfinished state in which it was left, 22,000 verses, and it consists of two distinct portions, the work of two very different hands. It was begun by Guillaume de Lorris, who completed about 5000 lines, and was continued after his death by the witty and sarcastic Jean de Méun: the former of these authors died in 1260, and the latter probably about 1318, which will make him nearly the contemporary of Dante. The portion composed by Lorris has great poetical merit, much invention of incident, vivid character-painting, and picturesque description; the allegorical coloring of the whole, though wire-drawn and tedious to our modern taste, was then highly admired, and gave the tale immense popularity. The continuation by Meun, though following up the allegory, diverges into a much more satirical spirit, and abounds in what were then regarded as most audacious attacks on religion, social order, the court, and female reputation. Even at this distance of time it is impossible not to admire the boldness, the vivacity, and the severity of the satire. According to the almost universal practice of the old Romance poets, the story is put into the form of a dream or vision; and the principal allegoric personages introduced, as Hate, Felony, Avarice, Sorrow, Elde, Pope-Holy, Poverty, Idleness, &c., are of the same kind as usually figure in the poetical narratives of the age. Lover, the hero, is alternately aided and obstructed in his undertakings, the principal of which is that of culling the enchanted rose which gives its name to the poem, by a multitude of beneficent or malignant personages, such as Bel-Accueil, Faux-Semblant, Danger, Male-Bouche, and Constrained-Abstinence. Chaucer's translation, which is in the octosyllabic Trouvère measure of the original, and consists of 7699 verses, comprehends the whole of the portion written by Lorris, together with about a sixth part of Méun's continuation; the portions omitted having either never been translated by the English poet in consequence of his dislike of the immoral and anti-religious tendency of which they were accused, or left out by the copyist from the early English manuscripts. The translation gives incessant proof of Chaucer's remarkable ear for metrical harmony, and also of his picturesque imagination; for though in many places he has followed his original with scrupulous fidelity, he not unfrequently adds vigorous touches of his own. Thus, for example, in the description of the Palace of Elde, a comparison between the original and the translation will show us a grand image entirely to be ascribed to the English poet: Travail et Douleur la herbergent, With hir Labour and Travaile Gronyng and Grucchyng hir herbejeours, That Deth stondith armed at hir gate. (ii.) The Court of Love is a work bearing, both in its form and spirit, strong traces of that amorous and allegorical mysticism which runs through all the Provençal poetry, and which seems to have been developed into substantive institutions in the Cours d'Amour of Picardy and Languedoc, whose arrêts form such a curious example of the refining scholastic subtleties of mediæval theology transferred to the fashions of chivalric society. It is written in stanzas of seven lines, each line being of ten syllables; the first and third rhyming together, as do the second, fourth, and fifth, and again the sixth and seventh. It is written in the name of "Philogenet of Cambridge," clerk (or student), who is directed by Mercury to appear at the Court of Venus. The above designation has induced some critics to suppose that the poet meant under it to indicate himself, and have drawn from it a most unfounded supposition that Chaucer had studied at Cambridge. The poet proceeds to give a description of the Castle of Love, where Admetus and Alcestis preside as king and queen. Philogenet is then conducted by Philobone to the Temple, where he sees Venus and Cupid, and where the oath of allegiance and obedience to the twenty commandments of Love is administered to the faithful. The hero is then presented to the Lady Rosial, with whom, in strict accordance with Provençal poetical custom, he has become enamoured in a dream. We then have a description of the courtiers, two of whom, Golden and Leaden Love, seem to be borrowed from the Eros and Anteros of the Platonic philosophers. The most curious part of the poem is the celebration of the grand festival of Love on May-day, when an exact parody of the Catholic Matin service for Trinity Sunday is chanted by various birds in honor of the God of Love. (iii.) In the Assembly of Fowls we have a poem not very dissimilar in form and versification to the preceding. The subject is a debate carried on before the Parliament of Birds to decide the claims of three eagles for the possession of a beautiful formel (female or hen) of the same species, which perches upon the wrist of Nature. The principal incidents of this poem were probably borrowed from a fabliau to which Chaucer has alluded in another place, and the popularity of which is proved by the existence of several versions of the same subject, as for instance, Hueline et Eglantine, Le Jugement d'Amour, and Florence et Blancheflor. (iv.) The Cuckow and the Nightingale, though of no great length, is one of the most charming among this class of Chaucer's productions: it describes a controversy between the two birds, the former of which was among the poets and allegorists of the Middle Ages the emblem of profligate celibacy, while the Nightingale is the type of constant and virtuous conjugal love. In this poem we meet with a striking example of that exquisite sensibility to the sweetness of external nature, and in particular to the song of birds, which was possessed by Chaucer in a higher degree, perhaps, than by any other poet in the world; as witness the following inimitable passage: : "There sat I downe among the faire floures, There as they rested hem alle the night; They were so joyful of the dayes light, They began of May for to done honoures. They coude that service al by rote; There was many a lovely note! They proyned hem, and maden hem right gay, And evermore two and two in fere, And the rivere that I sat upon, That mighte ben yheard of any man." 66 (v.) The Flower and the Leaf is, like the preceding poems, an allegory related in the form of a chivalric and pastoral adventure. A lady, unable to sleep, wanders out into a forest on a spring morning - an opening or mise en scène which often recurs in poems of this age- and seating herself in a delicious arbor, listens to the alternate song of the goldfinch and the nightingale. Her reverie is suddenly interrupted by the approach of a band of ladies clothed in white, and garlanded with laurel, agnus-castus, and woodbine. These accompany their queen in singing a roundel, and are in their turn interrupted by the sound of trumpets and by the appearance of nine armed knights, followed by a splendid train of cavaliers and ladies. These joust for an hour, and then advance to the first company, and each knight leads a lady to a laurel to which they make an obeisance. Another troop of ladies now approach, habited in green and led by a queen, who do reverence to a tuft of flowers, while the leader sings a bargaret," or pastoral song, in honor of the daisy, "si douce est la Marguerite." The sports are broken off, first by the heat of the sun which withers all the flowers, and afterwards by a violent storm of thunder and rain, in which the knights and ladies in green are pitifully drenched; while the white company shelter themselves under the laurel. The queen and ladies in white then comfort and refresh the green band, and the whole retire to sup with the party of the white; the nightingale, as they pass along, flying down from the laurel to perch upon the hand of the white queen, while the goldfinch settles upon the wrist of the leader of the green party. Then follows the explanation of the allegory: the white queen and her party represent Chastity; the knights the Nine Worthies; the cavaliers crowned with laurel the Knights of the Round Table, the Peers of Charlemagne, and the Knights of the Garter, to which illustrious order, then recently founded, the poet wished to pay a compliment. The queen and ladies in green represent Flora and the followers of sloth and idleness. In general the flower typifies vain pleasure, the leaf, virtue and industry; the former being "a thing fading with every blast," while the latter "abides with the root, notwithstanding the frosts and winter storms." The poem is written in the seven-lined stanza, and contains many curious and beautiful passages. (vi., vii.) The two poems entitled Chaucer's Dream, and the Book of the Duchess, though now found to be separate and distinct works, were long confounded together. This error was caused by the similarity of |