The Romaunt of the Rose' is a translation from the celebrated French poem of William de Lorris and John de Meun. It is a long and somewhat tedious allegory of the difficulties and dangers a lover encounters in the pursuit of the object of his desires, figured under the emblem of a Rose, which he at length gathers in a beautiful garden. The difficulties he encounters in scaling walls, forcing the impregnable castles and strong holds of various deities, being personifications of the passions and affections of the mind; and the opposition or assistance they render him form the tissue of the fable. Chaucer has translated all that part of the poem which was written by William de Lorris, but only part of the continuation by John de Meun, which is very much inferior to the former part. The poem furnishes a great variety of beautiful descriptions and allegorical personifications, most of which are admirably translated by Chaucer, and some of them in the latter part of the poem so judiciously heightened and enriched as to owe all their merit to him.

Troilus and Cresseide is for the most part a translation of the Filostrato of Boccaccio, but with many variations and large additions, amounting to no less than two thousand seven hundred verses. It is singular that Chaucer should say

I me excuse

That of no sentement I this indite
But out of Latin in my tongue it write.

And in another place,

As write mine author called Lollius;

for nothing can be more certain than that Boccaccio was his original; the fable and characters are the same in both poems, and numerous passages of the Filostrato are literally translated. Lydgate, in his prologue to The Fall of Princes,' tells us that

Chaucer translated ' a booke which is called Trophe,'

"In Lombard tongue, as men may rede and see.'

How Boccaccio should have acquired the name of Lollius, and the Filostrato the title of Trophe, are points which even Mr. Tyrwhitt confesses himself unable to explain.

The story of the poem is too simple and destitute of incident for its length, being, as Warton says, almost as long as the Æneid; but it is full of passages of the most exquisite and tender pathos. The description of Cresseide's first avowal of her love is thus exquisitely illustrated:

And as the new abashed nightingale,

That stinteth first when she beginneth sing,
When that she heareth any herdes tale,
Or in the hedges any wight stirring,
And after siker doth her voice out-ring;
Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent
Open'd her heart, and told him her intent1.'

"The House of Fame' is known to all readers by the elegant imitation Pope has given of it. Warton thinks it is of Provençal origin. It is an allegorical vision, the work of a fantastic and fertile imagination. 'The poet fancies himself snatched up to heaven by

4 A very curious rhyming Latin version of the two first books of this poem was printed at Oxford in 1635, which has been pronounced by a competent judge to be the best specimen of Latin in modern metre.' It is by Sir Francis Kynaston, who was physician and one of the Squires of the Body to King Charles the First. He published also an English poem, called Leoline and Sydanis.' In the printed copies the two first books of Troilus and Cresseide' only are given without notes, but the three remaining books, together with Henryson's Testament of Cresseide,' exist in manuscript, accompanied with a very curious commentary in Latin and English. This manuscript was in the hands of the late Mr. Waldron until his death, and is now in the library of the present writer. As the reader may be pleased to see a spe

a large eagle, who addresses him in the names of St. James and the Virgin Mary; and, in order to quiet his fears of being carried up to Jupiter like another Ganymede, or turned into a star, like Orion, tells him, that Jove wishes him to sing of other subjects than love and 'blind Cupido,' and has therefore ordered that Dan Chaucer should be brought to behold the House of Fame.'

6

"The Flower and the Leaf,' that exquisite piece of fairy fancy,' has also been perpetuated by Dryden's skilful modernisation of it. One of the most delightful examples of Chaucer's powers in the description of rural scenery is to be found at the opening of this poem; it has a local truth and freshness, which gives the very feeling of the air, the coolness or moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects are thus made to have a fellow-feeling in the interest of the story; and render back the sentiment of the speaker's mind. He describes the delight of a young beauty shrouded in her bower, and listening in the morning of the year to the singing of the nightingales; while her joy rises with the rising song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne along with the full tide of pleasure, and still increases, and repeats, and prolongs itself, and knows no ebb. The coolness of the arbour, its retirement, the early time of the day, the sudden starting up of the birds in the neighbouring bushes, the eager delight with which they devour

cimen of this singular performance, the version of the beautiful stanza quoted above is here subjoined: it has been hitherto unpublished.

Ut nova Philomela vere læta
Desistit cum incœperit cantare,
Ut audiit bubulci per vepreta
Vocem aut septis aliquem sonare,
Et postea solet cantum elevare,
Sic Cresseidæ cum metus vanescebat,
Aperuit cor, et dixit quæ volebat.

and rend the opening buds and flowers, are expressed with a truth and feeling which make the whole appear like the recollection of an actual scene.'

To The Canterbury Tales' Chaucer principally owes his fame; and it is a remarkable circumstance that they were his latest work, and were not commenced until he had reached his sixtieth year, a period in the life of ordinary men when the imaginative faculties are at rest, if not on the decline. It is in this respect that they may be considered one of the most extraordinary monuments of human genius. When Boccaccio wrote his Decameron he was also past the meridian of life. Chaucer has very much improved upon the design of his model, for his plan has given him a wide field for the delineation of character, in which he particularly excelled, while Boccaccio's polished company of ladies and gentlemen of Florence have but minute shades of difference in their individual character. It is true that the time and place of narration seem better chosen in the Decameron, in the quiet and retirement of a delicious garden or a splendid palace; while the miscellaneous troop of pilgrims in Chaucer, in number twenty-nine, tell their tales on horseback by the way. But this objection is feeble when compared with the advantages which result from the introduction of such a motley assemblage, each conjured up in his habit as he lived, and consequently of appropriating to each a characteristic tale. The delineation of these characters in the prologue is executed in such a masterly manner, with such minute and discriminative touches of painting, that Dryden might well say, 'I see every one of the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales as distinctly as if I had supped with them 5. Chau

5 So incapable are French critics of appreciating this natural style of painting, and those fiue shades which give reality

cer's plan was probably to bring forward all his various characters, to make them act and speak in such a manner as to completely develope their peculiarities of disposition, but the remainder of his life was not sufficient for the completion of the ' remenant of their pilgrimage.'

The tales are not all of equal merit, and we are ignorant what portion of them are original inventions. One of the most splendid monuments of Chaucer's genius, The Knightes Tale,' is an abridgment of part of the Teseide of Boccaccio, as I have already observed. 'In passing through Chaucer's hands it has received many new beauties. Not only those capital fictions and descriptions, the temples of Mars, Venus, and Diana, with their allegorical paintings, but the figures of Lycurgus and Emetrius, with their retinue, are so much heightened by the bold and spirited manner of the British bard' that they are indeed 'striking, grand, and full of terrible beauty.' That magic poem, "The Squieres Tale,' which Milton invokes the shade of the poet to finish, is full of noble invention and a rich strain of poetry. It has all the wild mystery of Arabian fiction, which betrays its

to the characters in Chaucer's prologue, that M. Ginguené, in some respects a judicious and well informed writer, is quite horror-struck that the Germans should give the preference to the English poet over Boccaccio in this respect. 'Je voudrais qu'on nous eût donné de meilleures preuves qu'un certain portrait d'une None, rempli de traits tels que ceux-ci :

At mete was she well ytaughte withalle,
She let no morcel from hire lippes falle,
Ne wette hire fingers in hire sauce depe.

Ce sont de ces peintures de caractères, ou plutôt de ces caricatures très frequentes dans les poètes Anglais et Allemands, et qu'on ne trouve guère, il est vrai, dans les Italiens, si ce n'est dans le genre Bernesque. Il n'est pas sûr que le bon goût ait droit de les blamer.' Hist. Littér. de l'Italie, tom.iii. P. 110.