gestours in all its pinnacles. There were Orpheus, Arion,

and other great harpers,

"And smalé harpers with hir gleës,

Saten under hem in seës [seats],
And gonne on hem upward to gape,
And countrefete hem as an ape,

Or as craft countrefeteth kind [nature]."

There, with many more who are described, were—

"The pursevauntés and heraudes
That crien riché folkés laudes."

The arms on their coats,

"Men mighté make of hem a bible

Twenty foot thikke as I trowe."

The temple was plated half a foot thick with the best of gold; of which, says the poet, "too lite all in my pouche is." In the Hall of Fame sat, on a carbuncle, the goddess herself, changing in form so that from being but a cubit's length she rose till her head touched heaven. Her feet were winged, and she was many-eyed, and many-eared, and many-tongued, and on her shoulder she displayed the arms of Alexander and Hercules. The Muses were there, who sang eternally the song of Fame. Upon metal pillars, in the Hall of Fame, there stood Josephus, who bore up the fame of Jewry; Statius, who bore up the name of Thebes upon his shoulders; and, wondrous high upon a pillar of iron, Homer with Dares and Titus (Dictys);

"and eke he, Lollius,

And Guido eke de Columpnis,
And English Gaufride eke ywis,
And each of these, as I have joye,

Was besy for to bere up Troye."

Boccaccio here reappears, by virtue of his tale of Troy in "Troilus and Cressida." Guido de Colonna was the Sicilian

P-VOL. V.

author of a "Historia Trojana." English Gaufride, Geoffrey of Monmouth, connected the story of Troy with that of England by his chronicle of Brutus, grandson of Ascanius, the son of the Trojan Æneas, whom Diana sent with his Trojans to found a new Troy in our Albion, and whom Geoffrey made progenitor of a long line of British kings. That genealogy made Englishmen seem to be natural partisans of Troy, so that Homer might be suspected among them, as Chaucer says he was, of

"Feyninge in his poetries,

And was to Grekés favoráble."

On other pillars of the Hall of Fame were Virgil, Ovid, Lucan.

There blows an air from Dante through much of this book.

Where there is no direct copying of any incident or phrase, the recollection seems not indistinct in such a passage as that naming

"The Tholasan that highté Stace

That bar of Thebés up the fame

Upon his shuldres, and the name
Also of cruel Achilles." *

Then there were divers companies that knelt before the Queen for boons. Nine successive companies by their petitions represented so many distinct classes of men,—

"And somme of hem she graunted sone,

And somme she wernéd wel and faire,
And somme she graunted the contraire
Of hir axing utterly."

"Tanto fu dolce mio vocale spirto,

Che Tolosano a se mi trasse Roma,

Dove mertai le tempie ornar di mirto.
Stazio la gente ancor di là mi noma:

Cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille.”

"Del Purgatorio." Canto XXI., II. 88-92.

Some, who asked fame for their good works, were denied good or bad fame. Others who had deserved well were trumpeted not by that clarion of Eolus "clepéd clearé laude," but by his trump "that is yclepéd sclaunder light." Others obtained their due reward. Some, who had done well, desired their good works to be hidden, and had their asking. Others made like request but had their deeds trumpeted through the clarion of gold. Some, who had done nothing, asked and had fame of deeds only to be done by labour; others who had asked like favour were jested at through the black clarion. Wicked men came, asking for good renown, and had it. Others who did evil and sought good reward of fame, were denounced by Æolus through the black trumpet.

Then the poet was taken to the house of Dædalus, the labyrinth, with as many chinks and holes and open doors as there are leaves on a tree. This was the House of Rumour, shaped like a cage, sixty miles long; an unsubstantial house of twigs, yet built to last.

His friend the eagle slipped the poet in at a window of this whirling house. When he was in, it seemed to stand firm, and to be so full that there was not a foot-breadth of space :

"And every wight that I saw there
Rownéd ech in otheres eere

A newé tiding prively,

Or elles told al openly

Right thus, and seydé, 'Nost nat thou
That is betiddé, lo, right now?'

'No,' quod he, 'tellé me what?'
And than he tolde him this and that,
And swor therto that hit was soth,
Thus hath he said,—and thus he doth,—
And this shal be,-thus herde I say,—
That shal be found, that dar I lay."

Opposing rumours-"a lesing and a sad soth sawe"

-jostled one another as they sought to fly out by one hole,
and agreed to fly together. Every rumour flew first straight
to Fame, who gave it name and duration. The House of
Rumour was full of reports and lies shaped as shipmen and
pilgrims, pardoners, runners, and messengers. In a corner of
the hall where men told of love-tidings there was a great noise :
"And I gan thitherward behold,

For I saw renninge every wight,
As faste as that they hadden might,
And everich cryed, 'What thing is that?'
And some said, 'I not never what.'
And whan they were alle on a hepe,
Tho behindé gonne up lepe,

And clamben up on other faste,
And up the nose and eyen caste,

And troden faste on otheres heles,

And stampe, as men done after eles.
Atté laste I saugh a man

Whiché that I nought ne can,

But he seméd for to be

A man of greet auctorité."

The noise in the dream awoke the poet, who remembered how high and far he had been in the spirit, and bent himself to his work again :

"Wherefore to study and rede alway

I purpose to do day by day."

When asked to make his petition to the Goddess, Chaucer had disclaimed, on his own part, desire of fame, saying—

But he had fame in his lifetime, and might have seen himself mirrored in the man who seemed to be of great

authority, about whom the noisy crowd pressed in the corner where love-tales were told.

Relation of "The House of Fame" to the "Divine Comedy."

All closer study of "The House of Fame" leads to a deepening of the sense of the strong evidence it gives of the influence of Dante upon Chaucer. Professor ten Brink * even suggests that Chaucer had a deliberate intention to produce, in comic form, a piece upon the lines of the "Divine Comedy," its three books answering to the Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, and the Eagle taken for guide in the place of Virgil. He does not, of course, dwell too heavily upon the lines of such comparison; the relation between one poem and other is, he says, like that of the light capricious moods of Fame to giusta vendetta de Dio. Elsewhere also he rightly observes that some analogies can better be felt than specified. Professor ten Brink finds the Temple of Venus in place of the wood at the opening of the Inferno. He points out that Dante's invocation in the second canto of the Inferno is paraphrased by Chaucer in the opening of the second book of "The House of Fame";† and when Dante presently

* "Chaucer Studien zur Geschichte seiner Entwickelung und zur Chronologie seiner Schriften." 1870. The discussion of "The House of Fame" in this volume, and of its relation in time of production to "Troilus" and the "Legend of Good Women" (pp. 88-130) is the most valuable and interesting part of this first section of Chaucer Studies, which left the "Canterbury Tales " for later consideration.

"O Muse, o alto ingegno, or m' aiutate:

O mente, che scrivesti cio ch' io vidi,

Qui si parrà la tua nobilitate."

"And ye me

Helpeth that on Parnaso dwelle,

Inf., c. ii., 11. 7-9.

O thought that wrote al that I mette [dreamed].

*

now shal men see,

If any vertu in thee be

To tellen al my dreme aright,

Now kythé thyn engýne and might."