EXERCISES ON CHAPTER III. 1. Scan extracts (a) and (d) on p. 48. Thus : And though that hé | was worth | y hé | was wys | 2. Scan extract (o) on p. 50, like the above. 3. Learn by heart extract (p). 4. Learn by heart extract (q). 5. Prepare the notes on extracts (o) and (p). 6. Prepare the notes on extract (q). 7. Prepare the notes on the Parish Priest. 8. Turn into modern English the first half of extract (q). 9. Annotate the last half of extract (q), taking especial notice of the words and phrases which differ from our nineteenth century English. 10. Write out a list of the French words in Chaucer's description of the Parish Priest on p. 54. 11. Write out a list of the English words in the same passage which have changed their form. Thus: 14th century. Ther Toun Werk 19th century. There Town Work 12. Write a short criticism on some of the phraseology in Dryden's lines on p. 55. 13. Write a short comparison on the two passages on pp. 58 and 59taking couplet by couplet, or line by line. 14. (Chaucer has been accused, on insufficient grounds, of overloading his English with French words.) In the lines on the Parish Priest, select all the words of French origin, underline those which are now obsolete, and state the proportion of these to those still in use. 15. Do the same with the passage from the Prioress's Tale. 16. Turn into modern verse the stanza (p. 58) beginning "Nought wist." It will not be necessary to alter any of the rhymes. 17. Turn into modern verse the first ten lines from The Nonne Prestes Tale. 18. Write out the rhymes in which Wordsworth has differed from Chaucer; and, where you can, give the reason. Thus : Wordsworth could not make learning rhyme to sing, because the accent is not, as it was in Chaucer's time, on the ing in learning. Primére would have been unintelligible to a modern reader. THE NONNE PRESTES TALE. CHAUCER. A pore wydow, somdel stope1 in âge, And exercise, and hertës suffisaunce. The goute lette 13 hir nothing for to daunce. 1. Connected with step. The phrase is advanced in years. 2. That same. 3. Property and income. 4. Found. 5. Cows. 6. There were only two rooms in the house: the bower, the inner room; and the hall, the outer. There was no chimney, and the smoke found its way through the crevices of the roof. 7. Sauce. From Latin, sal=salt. 8. Never a drop. 9. Dainty. 10. Her diet was as modest as her house (cottage). 11. Repletion. 12. Temperate. 13. Hindered her not. We have this meaning still in the phrase without let or hindrance. DRYDEN. There lived, as authors tell, in days of yore, And pinched herself, and eke her daughters two, The cattle in her homestead were three sows, On which full many a slender meal she made; 1. We should now say husbanding. 2. Which, understood. 3. Now brindled. 19. Compare the version of Dryden with the original, somewhat in this fashion :- (a) Dryden has kept much closer to his original in this passage than in his description of The Parish Priest. He has, however, in some places enlarged too much, and departed from the simplicity of the original. Since last she laid her husband in the ground, is not so simple or so homely as and so on. Syn thilke day that sche was last a wif; (b) The verbal alterations are perhaps too numerous. In days of yore is too strong a translation of whilom. On whom my tale I found is a little clumsy. 1. CHAPTER IV. CHAUCER'S CONTEMPORARIES. HE greatest of Chaucer's contemporaries were, 2. JOHN DE WICLIF (or Wyclif, or Wycliffe) was born at the village of Hipswell, near Richmond, in Yorkshire, in the year 1324. He studied at Oxford, and rose to be Master of Baliol and Warden of Canterbury Hall. He was afterwards made Vicar of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire. Like Chaucer, he attacked-but more directly and with greater boldness-the abuses of monasteries, the habits of the mendicant friars, and the tribute paid to the pope. He was often persecuted, but, again like Chaucer, he was protected by John of Gaunt. He was the first Englishman who made a complete translation of the Scriptures into his mother tongue. This great work was completed in the year 1383—the year before his death. He died quietly, in his vicarage at Lutterworth, in 1384. Exactly one hundred years after (and ten years after Caxton had set up his printing press in Westminster), his bones were taken up from the chancel of his church in Lutterworth, burnt to ashes, and thrown into the river Swift. "This brook," says Fuller, "conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over." Besides his translation of the Bible, he wrote a number of theological works. He was assisted in his translation by Nicholas Hereford. The style of the translation of the New Testament is more modern than that of the Old; and both contain a large number of French words. Both versions are very easy to read. The following are fair examples from the Gospel of St. Mark : 1. Jhesus seith to hem: Hoole 1 man han no nede to a leche, but thei that han 2 yvele; forsothe I cam not for to clepe 8 juste men, but synners.— ii. 17. 2. And a womman that hadde suffride many thingis of ful many lechis, and spendid alle hir thingis,5 and no-thing prophitide, but more hadde worse, whanne she hadde herd of Jhesu, she cam in the cumpanye byhynde, and touchide his cloth.-v. 26. 3. JOHN DE TREVISA was born in Cornwall-was chaplain to Thomas Lord Berkeley, and was also appointed vicar of Berkeley in Gloucestershire. He is said to have written a translation of the Scriptures; but nothing is now known of it. His best known work is a translation of the Polychronicon (Universal History) of Ralph or Ranulph Higden. This translation was completed in 1387. The following passage witnesses to the dialectic character of the English language-a character which, in its spelling, at least, it has not yet lost. 10 The forseyde Saxon tongue ys deled a 9 thre, and ys abyde scarslych with feaw uplondysch men, and ys grete wondur; for men of the est with men of the west, as hyt were under the same party 11 of The aforesaid Saxon tongue is divided into three, and is (has) remained scarcely with few country people, and is great wonder; for men of the east with men of the west, as it were under the same part 1 Hoole, the right spelling, from heal. The w in whole is a modern error. 2 Han contracted for haven. 3 Clepe 4 Lechis= leeches; i.e., doctors. As the chief function of physicians was to bleed, the name was afterwards given to the animal. 5 Thingis goods, or property. • Prophitide, plainly an erroneous spelling for profited. 7 For example, weald, wold, and wood, are the same word, pronounced (and then spelled) in the Southern, Northern, and Midland fashion. 8 Deled given out. = divided. Hence deal = wood divided or sawed. Dole, a share 9A, a form of the preposition on, still found in afoot, aboard, ashore, etc. 10 Uplondysch. Up here means away from the sea. Up the country is a similar phrase. 11 Party, or partie, as Chaucer spells it, is the form in which the word came into our language from the French. E |