person who reduced the whole to its present form that first introduced the tale of Gamelyn to fill up what he supposed a lacuna, but whence he obtained this tale it is difficult to conjecture. Tyrwhitt is so entirely wrong in saying that this tale is not found in any manuscript of the first authority, that it occurs in the Harleian MS., from which the present text is taken, and which I have no hesitation in stating to be the best and oldest manuscript of Chaucer I have yet met with. The style of Gamelyn would lead us to judge that it is not Chaucer's, but we can only reconcile this judgment with its being found so universally in the manuscripts, by means of the supposition of the posthumous arrangement of the Canterbury Tales, and its insertion by the arranger. I have printed the tale of Gamelyn from the same Harleian MS. which has been the base of my text of the remainder of the poem; but I have distinguished it from the rest by printing it in smaller type, both on account of the apparently well-founded doubts of its being a genuine work of Chaucer, and in order not to interfere with the numbering of the lines in Tyrwhitt's edition, which I have thought it advisable to preserve.

After the Cookes Tale, the order of the tales differs very much in different manuscripts, until we arrive at the tale of the Maniciple, with which,

and the Parson's Tale, they all conclude. In the present text, I have strictly followed the Harleian manuscript, which agrees nearly with the order adopted by Tyrwhitt. The Man of Lawes Tale is not connected by its prologue with the tale which precedes it; and the Wyf of Bathes Tale evidently wants a few introductory lines, which Chaucer would have added had he lived to complete the poem. It is not improbable that in the state in which he left it, the Wife of Bath's prologue was the beginning of a portion of manuscript which contained the tales of the Wife of Bath, the Friar, and the Sompnour; and perhaps those of the Clerk, the Merchant, and the Squier, formed another portion. This latter portion appears to have been left unfinished, for the Squieres Tale breaks off abruptly in the middle, which is the more to be regretted, as it is one of Chaucer's best stories, and it is a story not found elsewhere. It appears by its prologue, that the Frankeleynes Tale was intended to follow the Squieres Tale. The Second Nonnes Tale, or the life of St. Cecilia, has no prologue, and appears to be in the same form in which it was originally written for separate publication. The prologue to the Chanones Yemannes Tale shews that this latter was intended to follow the life of St. Cecilia. These two tales are placed, in Tyrwhitt's edition, after the tale of

the Nun's Priest.

Of the tales of the Doctour and the Pardoner we can only say that they were clearly intended to come together, though they are differently placed in manuscripts with respect to those which precede and follow. The tales of the Shipman, the Prioress, Chaucer's two tales of Sir Thopas and Melibeus, the Monk's tale, and the tale of the Nun's Priest, are all connected together by their prologues, and appear to have occupied another portion of Chaucer's manuscript, which also was apparently defective at the end, the prologue which was to have connected it with the next tale being unfinished. The prologue to the tale of the Manciple contains no reference to a preceding tale, but from the way in which the Cook is introduced in it, it would seem to have been composed at a time when Chaucer did not intend to introduce the Cook's tale after that of the Reve. The Parson's tale is connected by its prologue with that of the Manciple, and follows it in all the manuscripts. The old printed editions after 1542, inserted between these a poem, which was evidently misplaced, under the title of the Plowman's Tale, but on what authority it was placed there we are totally ignorant. The "retractation," at the end of the Parsones Tale, was perhaps introduced by the person who arranged the text after Chaucer's death.

With the tale, or rather discourse, of the Parson, Chaucer brings his pilgrims to Canterbury; but his original plan evidently included the journey back to London. Some writer, within a few years after Chaucer's death, undertook to continue the work, and produced a ludicrous account of the proceedings of the pilgrims at Canterbury, and the story of Beryn, which was to be the first of the stories told on their return. These are printed by Urry from a manuscript of which I have not been able to trace the subsequent history, and, if it should not previously be found, I shall reprint them from Urry's edition, correcting the more apparent errors, for Urry's faithlessness to his manuscript is quite extraordinary.

The immense popularity of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is proved by the number of manuscript copies still remaining. It was one of the first books printed in England, and went through a

considerable number of editions before the seventeenth century. For the information of those who are interested in the biographical portion of a subject like this, I give Tyrwhitt's history of the printed editions of the Canterbury Tales, omitting some of the notes.

"The art of printing had been invented and exercised for a considerable time, in most countries of Europe, before the art of criticism was called

in to superintend and direct its operations. It is therefore much more to the honour of our meritorious countryman, William Caxton, that he chose to make the Canterbury Tales one of the earliest productions of his press, than it can be to his discredit that he printed them very incorrectly. He probably took the first MS. that he could procure to print from, and it happened unluckily to be one of the worst in all respects that he could possibly have met with. The very few copies of this edition which are now remaining,* have no date, but Mr. Ames supposes it to have been printed in 1475 or 6.

"It is still more to the honour of Caxton, that when he was informed of the imperfections of his edition, he very readily undertook a second, 'for to satisfy the author,' (as he says himself,) whereas tofore by ignorance he had erred in hurting and diffaming his book.' His whole account of this matter, in the preface to this second edition, is so clear and ingenuous, that I shall insert it below

* "The late Mr. West was so obliging as to lend me a complete copy of this edition, which is now, as I have heard, in the King's Library. There is another complete copy in the library of Merton College, which is illuminated, and has a ruled line under every printed one, to give it the appearance, I suppose, of a MS. Neither of these books, though seemingly complete, has any preface or advertisement.”