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Second Edition, 1870) places beside the elegy over Sir Lancelot, quoted at p. 237 (Extract XVII.)

""Naught may the woful spirit in myn herte
Declare a poynt of alle my sorwes smerte

To you, my lady, that I love most;
But I byquethe the service of my gost
To you aboven every creature,

Syn that my lyf ne may no lenger dure.
Allas, the woo! allas, the peynes stronge,
That I for you have suffred, and so longe!
Allas, the deth! allas myn Emelye!
Allas, departyng of our companye!
Allas! myn hertes queen! allas, my wyf
Myn hertes lady, endere of my lyf!

What is this world? what asken men to have?
Now with his love, now in his colde grave

Allone, withouten eny companye.
Farwel! my swete foo! myn Emelye
And softe tak me in your armes tweye,
For love of God, and herkneth what I seye.
I have heer with my cosyn Palamon
Had stryf and rancour many a day i-gon,
For love of yow, and for my jelousie.
And Jupiter so wis my sowle gye [guide],
To speken of a servaunt proprely,

With alle circumstaunces trewely,

That is to seyn, truthe, honour, and knighthede
Wysdom, humblesse, estaat, and hey kynrede,
Fredam, and al that longeth to that art,
So Jupiter have of my soule part,

As in this world right now ne knowe I non
So worthy to be loved as Palamon,
That serveth you, and wol don all his lyf
And if that evere ye schul ben a wyf,
Foryet not Palamon, the gentil man."
And with that word his speche faile gan;
For fro his feete up to his breste was come
The cold of deth, that hadde him overcome.'

[11.1907-1942

Dryden has paraphrased this tale under the title of Pal and Arcite.

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II. MELLERE'S TALE.-The Miller, who is drunk, tells a broad tale, for which no original has been traced, of the mischances of a carpenter.

III. REEVE'S TALE.-The Reeve, a carpenter by trade, and withal 'a sklendre colerik man,' retorts with an equally injurious tale of a miller, based upon a French fabliau, De Gombert et des deux Clers.

IV. COOK'S TALE begins as a story of a disorderly London prentice; and breaks off after some fifty lines. Then generally follows the Tale of Gamelyn, of which the plot resembles Shake

speare's As You Like It (see p. 252). This tale is rejected as spurious by the Chaucer Society.'

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V. SERGEANT OF LAWE'S TALE is the story of Constance from Gower's Confessio Amantis, Book ii., told with very little variation.'

VI. SCHIPMAN'S TALE is in the Decameron (D. viii., N. i.), and shows how a good-for-nothing Monk used the money he had borrowed from a merchant to ruin his wife.

VII. PRIORESSE'S TALE tells how the Jews murdered a Christian child, who, dead and cast in a pit, by miracle:

"Ther he with throte i-corve lay upright,

He Alma redemptoris gan to synge

So lowde, that al the place bigan to rynge.'*

VIII. CHAUCER'S TALES.-When called upon for his tale, Chaucer commences a parody of the Metrical Romances, entitled the Rime of Sir Thopas, 'full of phrases taken from Isumbras, Li beaus desconus, and other Romances in the same style' (Tyrwhitt). Being cut short by the frank disapprobation of the Host, who bids him tell

'som what atte lest

In which ther be som merthe or doctrine,'

he relates, in prose, a highly edifying Tale of Melibeus and his wife, Prudence, from a French original. The prologue to Sir Thopas contains that description of the Poet's appearance which has been already referred to (see p. 34, s. 17).

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Oure host to jape began,

And than at erst he loked upon me

And sayde thus, "What man art thou?" quod he;

"Thou lokest as thou woldest fynde an hare

For ever upon the ground I se the stare;

Approche ner, and loke merily.

Now ware you, sires, and let this man have space

He in the wast is schape as wel as I;

This were a popet in an arm to embrace
For any womman, smal and fair of face.
He semeth elvisch by his countenaunce
For unto no wight doth he daliaunce.'

6

IX. MONK'S TALE.-The Monk follows with a number of doleful tragedies of illustrious men, of which he has an hundred in his cell,' until his audience stop him, the Host saying plainly that 'therein is no disport, ne game.'

X. NONNE PRESTE'S TALE is that of The Cock and the Fox, paraphrased by Dryden, and derived probably from a fable by Marie of France, printed by Tyrwhitt.

* Cf. Extract V., Appendix A, as to the doings of the Jews of Norwich.

XI. DOCTOUR OF PHISIK'S TALE is the story of Appius and Virginia, as telleth Titus Livius.' It is also in the Confessio Amantis, Book VII.

XII. PARDONER'S TALE, from the Cento Novelle Antiche, is the story of three comrades who find a treasure. To keep it, two of them kill the third, but afterwards die from drinking wine that he, on his part, had poisoned.

XIII. WIF OF BATHE'S TALE.-After a lengthy prelude, which has been modernised by Pope, the Wife of Bath tells the story, afterwards paraphrased by Dryden, of a Knight who married an old woman out of gratitude. Such a tale is told by Gower, Confessio Amantis, Book i., and the ancient ballad of the Marriage of Sir Gawaine has a similar subject.

XIV. FRERE'S TALE is a malicious story of an arbitrary Summoner, who was carried away by the Fiend.

XV. SOMPNOUR'S TALE is, of course, a retaliation. It recounts the story of a covetous Friar, who was baffled and humiliated by a sick husbandman, whose goods he desired.

XVI. CLERK'S TALE.-The clerk then tells the beautiful story of patient Griselda, perhaps the most admired of all the Tales, which he (the Clerk) says he

'Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,

Fraunces Petrark, the laureat poete

whos rethorique swete

Enlumynd al Ytail of poetrie.'

This story is told in the Decameron, D. x., N. x. Chaucer, however seems to have taken it from a Latin translation made by Petrarch from Boccaccio, in 1373. That he received it orally from Petrarch (1304-74), during one of his missions to Italy, as has been conjectured, rests upon no satisfactory evidence.

XVII. MARCHAUNT'S TALE is supposed to have been derived from a Latin fable. It is the old story of an old husband and a young wife. Pope has paraphrased it in January and May.

XVIII. SQUYER'S TALE is the 'half-told' story of Cambuscán, King of Tartary :

:

'Of Camball, and of Algarsife,

And who had Canace to wife,

That own'd the virtuous ring and glass;

And of the wondrous horse of brass

On which the Tartar king did ride.' *

XIX. FRANKELEYN'S TALE.-Taken, he says, from a 'Breton lai,'

*Il Penseroso. Milton writes Cambúscan.

but told also by Boccaccio (D. x., N. v.) is the story of Dorigen, a virtuous wife.

XX. SECOND NONNE'S TALE relates the life of Saint Cecilia, from the Latin of Jacob Januensis, author of the Legenda Aurea.

XXI. CANON YEMAN'S TALE relates how a priest was hoaxed by a pretended Alchemist.

XXII. MAUNCIPLE'S TALE is the fable of the White Crow turned black, from Ovid's Metamorphoses (see also p. 32, s. 16).

XXIII. PERSOUN'S TALE, in prose, is a long professional discourse de Irâ, de Superbiâ, de Avaritiâ, &c., said to have been suggested by some portions of the French original of the Ayenbite of Inwit (see p. 27, s. 14).

The following passage forms a fitting tail-piece to the foregoing particulars: The Canterbury Tales, while presenting us with graphic pictures of mediæval costume and manners, contain delineations of humours and passions that reappear in every age, and are of universal interest. No doubt Chaucer lacks the higher qualities of Shakespeare, his depth of passion, subtile and profound reflectiveness, and peerless creative imagination. Yet Chaucer's poetical genius is not only dramatic, but broadly and variously dramatic, including a wide range of keen observation, truthful portraiture, aud effective incident. The Canterbury Tales are in substance, if not in form, a diversified, though unfinished drama. The descriptions of the Monk and Prioress, the Reeve and Franklin, the Friar and Pardoner, of Dame Alison and the Wife of Bath, are wellknown masterpieces. Some of the lighter tales, such as those of the Miller and the Reeve, are short comedies full of genuine humour; while others, such as those of the Nun Priest and the Manciple, abound with well-directed strokes of incisive irony, and keen but quiet satire. Again, the picture of the wave-tossed Constance "mazed in the sea,” and after a brief gleam of happiness, committed again with her weeping infant to its cruel mercies [Sergeant of Laws' Tale], and that of the much-enduring Griselda's parting and reunion with her children [Clerk's Tale], may rank as pathetic images with those of the wildered Ophelia distributing her floral gifts, and the footsore heart-wearied Imogen passing dream-like through the wild in the one thought of her absent lord.'*

* Edinburgh Review, July, 1870, 2 (cxxxii.)

APPENDIX C.

THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE.

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THE respective and separate QUARTO editions of Shakespeare's Plays, it has been said (see p. 64, s. 40), appeared between 1597 and 1622-the latter being the date of the publication of Othello. The first FOLIO was published in the following year; and the editors, John Heminge and Henry Condell, in their Address* to the great Variety of Readers,' while lamenting the deceased Author's inability to superintend the publication of his writings, professed, nevertheless, to give the 'diverse stolne and surreptitious copies,' which had been 'maimed' and 'deformed' by various issuers, 'cur'd, and perfect of their limbes'; and,-in addition to these correct texts, all the rest [i.e. of Shakespeare's plays] absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them.' 'Who,' they go on to say, 'as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse that we have scarse received from him a blot in his papers.' It was these words that elicited Ben Jonson's oft-quoted, Would he had blotted a thousand!' That (as Jonson is careful to explain in his Timber) the words were not malevolent, is clear from his lines under the Droeshout portrait, and from the noble commendatory verses, 'to the memory of my beloved, the Author,' which were prefixed to this very First Folio:

'Looke how the father's face

Lives in his issue, even so the race

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Of Shakespeares minde and manners brightly shines

In his well-torned and true-filed lines,

In each of which, he seemes to shake a lance,

As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance.

Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were

To see thee in our waters yet appeare,

And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames

That so did take Eliza and our James!'

*This Address illustrates one of the features of the Elizabethan Stage (see p. 59, s. 37):-' And though you [the reader] be a Magistrate of wit, and sit on the Stage at Black-Friers, or the Cock-pit to arraigne Playes dailie,' &c.

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