his naïve humor even when he was bitterly complaining of the emptiness of his purse, but he was none the less "sory" for his lack of the yellow coins that his necessities humbled him to beg. It was he who cried out in view of the insufficiency of worldly happiness, "Here is none home,· her nys but wildernesse;" and it was he who bewailed the death of Pity, and said, "Thus for youre dethe I may wel wepe and pleyne With herte sore, al ful of busy peyne." Chaucer could rebuke pretty sharply, and threaten as vigorously as a sterner man when his poor scrivener, Adam, made errors in his work. We have remarked that Chaucer's prose was neither inconsiderable in amount nor inferior in style. It exhibits few of the traits most commonly attributed to him as an author, and is the work of a translator, who, however, felt free to enlarge, compress, or alter his original 'n accordance with his object or his taste. Chaucer's treatment of the ecclesiastics accords in most respects with the fashion of the day, as seen especially in the "Vision of Piers he Plowman" and the works of Wiclif, though THE POET'S GENIUS. XC1 he paints in glowing colors the virtues of the Parson, and enlivens the whole subject with his hearty mirth. The Wife of Bath speaks with exquisite irony of "The grete charite and preyeres Of lymytours and other holy freres," who are the only incubuses in the land, and the "holy" men are in many passages made the butts of "japes " which a coarse social sentiment only would permit the recital of. For woman Chaucer has many harsh or slighting words, such as his age called for, such as every age demanded until man's helpmate had become free from some of her disabilities and been given a fair share in the production and criticism of literature, but he compensated for the rudeness, in some measure at least, by making dame Prudence, in his tale on the pilgrimage, stand rather above her sweet-named husband, as his worthy adviser, as well as by his formal apology in the "Legende of Goode Women." If the latter was a perfunctory performance, it can hardly be supposed 'hat anything but a hearty faith prompted the tulogy of matrimonial bliss in the Merchant's Tale. The sympathetic tears must have trickled down his cheeks as he traced the lines describing the pitiful resignation of Griselda when she laid on her lap the little child she was about to lose, "And lulled it, and after gan it blisse." It was no anchorite and no trifling humorist who wrote the tender passage setting forth the life of pious Custance, and depicted her parting from her babe : "Hir litel child lay wepyng in hir arm, And knelynge, pitously to hym she seyde, And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste, And in-to hevene hire eyen up she caste." It was no stickler for conventionalities who made righteousness the standard of "gentleness" (nobility) and anticipated Thomas Dekker in pointing to Jesus Christ as "The first true gentleman who ever breathed." Chaucer's character is best studied in his works, but the student must have an acquaintance with his times and with the active share that the poet took in the national movements. When all is considered, Chaucer will be found a well-rounded man, respectful to his fellows and reverential to his God, child-like in his simplicity, and manful in his championship of the Truth. CAMBRIDGE, May, 1879. ON READING CHAUCER. MANY readers unfamiliar with Early English find themselves repelled from Chaucer by the difficulties they see in the ancient construction and orthography, who would be able to derive pleasure from his works if they had a few easy rules to guide them. If the poems be modernized the charm is lost, as any one learns when he masters the subject, and no thorough student of Chaucer whom we have known has been willing either to reduce his orthography to uniformity, or to write his poems over in the fashion of to-day. He It is true that Dryden thought it necessary to translate" Chaucer into what he called the refined English of his time, though he confessed that "something must be lost in all transfusion, that is, in all translations." considered Chaucer a "rough diamond" which needed to be polished before it would shine, that it was necessary to add to the " dignity" of Chaucer's productions by omitting some of his "trivialities " and redundancies. Dryden had been translating Ovid, and considered that he was doing the same sort of work when he gave a seventeenth-century form to a poet who wrote in the fourteenth century. Let us see how he succeeded. Take ten lines from the Knight's Tale in his recension and com pare them with Chaucer. Dryden gives us, "In days of old there lived, of mighty fame, A valiant Prince, and Theseus was his name; We turn to Chaucer and read, "Whilom, as oldè stories tellen us, Ther was a duc that hightè Theseus ; |