much later and highly refined age; and it may startle us to suspect, that what is readable in the gravest and even the most scrupulous circles in our own day, may not be altogether so a hundred years hence. Allusions and phrases which are thought harmless now, and that from habit really are so, may then appear in as different a light as those which we are astonished to think our ancestors could endure. Nay, opinions and daily practices exist, and are treated with respect, which may be regarded by our posterity as the grossest and cruellest barbarisms. We may, therefore, cease to wonder at the apparently unaccountable spectacle presented by such writers as Chaucer, who combine a license the most indelicate with the utmost refinements of thought and feeling.

When Chaucer is free from this taint of his age, his humor is of a description the most thoroughly delightful; for it is at once entertaining, profound, and good-natured. If this last quality be thought a drawback by some, as wanting the relish of personality, they may supply even that (as some have supplied it), by supposing that he drew his characters from individuals, and that the individuals were very uncomfortable accordingly. I confess I see no ground for the supposition beyond what the nature of the case demands. Classes must of course be drawn, more or less, from the individuals composing them; but the unprofessional particulars added by Chaucer to his characters (such as the Merchant's uneasy marriage, and the Franklin's prodigal son), are only such as render the portraits more true, by including them in the general category of human kind. The gangrene which the Cook had on his shin, and which has been considered as a remarkable instance of the gratuitous, is, on the contrary (besides its masterly intimation of the perils of luxury in general), painfully in character with a man accustomed to breathe an unhealthy atmosphere, and to be encouraging bad humors with tasting sauces and syrups. Besides, the Cook turns out to be a drunkard.

Chaucer's comic genius is so perfect, that it may be said to include prophetic intimations of all that followed it. The liberalthinking joviality of Rabelais is there; the portraiture of Cervantes, moral and external; the poetry of Shakspeare; the learning of Ben Jonson; the manners of the wits of Charles the

Second; the bonhomie of Sterne; and the insidiousness, without the malice, of Voltaire. One of its characteristics is a certain tranquil detection of particulars, expressive of generals; as in the instance just mentioned of the secret infirmity of the Cook. Thus the Prioress speaks French; but it is "after the school of Stratford at Bow." Her education was altogether more showy than substantial. The lawyer was the busiest man in the world, and yet he "seemed busier than he was." He made something out of nothing, even in appearances.

Another characteristic is his fondness for seeing the spiritual in the material; the mind in the man's aspect. He is as studious of physiognomy as Lavater, and far truer. Observe, too, the poetry that accompanies it,—the imaginative sympathy in the matter of fact. His Yeoman, who is a forester, has a head "like a nut." His Miller is as brisk and healthy as the air of the hill on which he lives, and as hardy and as coarse-grained as his conscience. We know, as well as if we had ridden with them, his oily-faced Monk; his lisping Friar (who was to make confession easy to the ladies); his carbuncled Summoner or Church-Bailiff, the grossest form of ecclesiastical sensuality; and his irritable money-getting Reve or Steward, with his cropped head and calf-less legs, who shaves his beard as closely as he reckons with his master's tenants.

The third great quality of Chaucer's humor is its fair play,the truth and humanity which induces him to see justice done to good and bad, to the circumstances which make men what they are, and the mixture of right and wrong, of wisdom and of folly, which they consequently exhibit. His worst characters have some little saving grace of good-nature, or at least of joviality and candor. Even the Pardoner, however impudently, acknowledges himself to be a "vicious man." His best people, with one exception, betray some infirmity. The good Clerk of Oxford, for all his simplicity and singleness of heart, has not escaped the pedantry and pretension of the college. The Good Parson seems without a blemish, even in his wisdom; yet when it comes to his turn to relate a story, he announces it as a "little" tale, and then tells the longest and most prosing in the book,—a whole sermonizing volume. This, however, might be an expression of

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modesty; since Chaucer uses the same epithet for a similar story of his own telling. But the Good Parson also treats poetry and fiction with contempt. His understanding is narrower than his motives. The only character in Chaucer which seems faultless, is that of the Knight; and he is a man who has been all over the world, and bought experience with hard blows. The poet does not spare his own person. He describes himself as a fat, heavy man, with an elvish" (wildish?) countenance, shy, and always staring on the ground." Perhaps he paid for his genius and his knowledge with the consequences of habits too sedentary, and a vein, in his otherwise cheerful wisdom, of hypochondriacal wonder. He also puts in his own mouth a fairy-tale of chivalry, which the Host interrupts with contempt, as a tiresome commonplace. I take it to have been a production of the modest poet's when he was young; for in the midst of what looks like intentional burlesque, are expressions of considerable force and beauty. This self-knowledge is a part of Chaucer's greatness; and these modest proofs of it distinguish him from every other poet in the language. Shakspeare may have had as much, or more. It is difficult to suppose otherwise. And yet there is no knowing what qualities, less desirable, might have hindered even his mighty insight into his fellow-creatures from choosing to look so closely into himself. His sonnets are not without intimations of personal and other defects; but they contain no such candid talking as Chaucer.

The father of English poetry was essentially a modest man. He sits quietly in a corner, looking down for the most part, and meditating; at other times eyeing everything that passes, and sympathizing with everything;-chuckling heartily at a jest, feeling his eyes fill with tears at sorrow, reverencing virtue, and not out of charity with vice. When he ventures to tell a story himself, it is as much under correction of the Host as the humblest man in the company; and it is no sooner objected to, than he drops it for one of a different description.

I have retained the grave character of the Knight in the selection, because he is leader of the cavalcade.

The syllables that are to be retained in reading the verses are marked with the brief accent. The terminating vowels thus

distinguished were certainly pronounced during one period of our language, otherwise they would not have been written; though, by degrees, the comparative faintness of their utterance, and disuse of them in some instances, enabled writers to use them as they pleased; just as poets in our own day retain or not, as it suits them, the e's in the final syllable of participles and past tenses ;—such as belov'd, belovèd; swerv'd, swervèd, &c. The French in their verses use their terminating vowels at this moment precisely as Chaucer did; though they drop them in conversation. I have no living Frenchman at hand to quote, but he writes in this respect as Boileau did :—

Elle dit; et du vent de sa bouchě profaně

Lui souffle avec ces mots l'ardeur de la chicaně;

Le Prélat se reveille; et, plein d'émotion,

Lui donne toutefois la benediction.

(Discord waking the Dean in the Lutrin.)

CHARACTERS OF PILGRIMS.

Whanně that April with his shourès sote
The droughte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veine in swiche licòur,
Of whiche vertùe engendred is the flour;1
Whan Zephirus ekě with his sotě brethe
Enspired hath in every holt and hethe
The tendre croppĕs, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smalě foules maken melodie,
That slepen alle night with open eye,
So priketh hem natùre in her coràges,
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes
To servě halwes couthe in sundry londes;

When April with his sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root, and bathed every vein in the balm that produces flowers; when Zephyr too, with his sweet breath, has animated the tender green buds in the woods and on the heaths; and the young sun has run half his course in the Ram; and the little winged creatures, that sleep all night with their eyes open, begin their music (so irresistible in their hearts is Nature), then do people long to go on pilgrimages, and palmers to seek foreign shores in

And specially from every shire's ende
Of Englelond to Canterbury they wende,
The holy blissful martyr for to seke.

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.
Befelle that in that seson on a day,

In Southwerk at the Tabard3 as I lay,
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devoute courage,
At night was come into that hostelrie
Wel nine-and-twenty in a compagnie
Of sondry folk, by àventure yfalle

In felawship, and pilgrimes were they alle
That toward Canterbury wolden ride.
The chambres and the stables weren wide,
And wel we weren esěd attě beste.

And shortly, when the sonne was gon to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everich on,
That I was of hir felawship anon,

And made forword erly for to rise,

To take oure way ther, as I you devise.

But nathělěs while I have time and space,
Or that I forther in this tale

pace,
Me thinketh it accordant to resòn
To tellen you alle the condition

Of eche of hem, so as it seměd me,

And whiche they weren, and of what degre
And eke in what araie that they were inne;
And at a knight than wol I firste beginne.

order to worship at famous shrines; and, above all, people crowd from every shire's end in England to that of the holy martyr at Canterbury, who has helped them when they were sick.

Now, at this season, it happened one day, while I was at the Tabard in Southwark, ready to set forth on my own devout journey to Canterbury, that there came into the inn a matter of nine-and-twenty people, who had joined company, and were all bound on the same visit. There was plenty of room in the place both for man and horse, and we were all very comfortable

By sunset I had spoken with every one of these persons, and become one of the party so I agreed to be up early in the morning, in order to lose no time.

While thus waiting between sunset and sunrise, it is but reason, methinks, that the reader should be told what sort of people my fellow-travellers were; of what rank in life, what characters, and even how they were dressed. And I will begin first with a knight.