work its incomplete and fragmentary character. The arrangement of the Tales in the various MSS. varies considerably, and hence Tyrwhitt found it necessary in his edition to consider the question of order, and to do his best to make a satisfactory arrangement. The order which he finally adopted is easily expressed by using the names already given to the Groups, only Group B must be subdivided into two parts (a) and (b), the first of these containing the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale only, and the second all the rest of the Tales, &c. in the Group. This premised, his result is as follows: viz. Groups A, B (a), D, E, F, C, B (b), G, H, I. The only two variations between the two lists are easily explained. In the first place, Group C is entirely independent of all the rest, and contains no note of time or place, so that it may be placed anywhere between A and G; in this case therefore the variation is of no importance. In the other case, however, Tyrwhitt omitted to see that the parts of Group B are really bound together by the expressions which occur in them. For, whereas the Man of Law declares in l. 46, Group B— 'I can ryght now no thrifty tale seyn,' the Host, at the beginning of the Shipman's Prologue, 1. 1165, is pleased to give his verdict thus This was a thrifty tale for the nones' and proceeds to ask the Parson for a tale, declaring that 'ye learned men in lore,' i. e. the Man of Law and the Parson, know much that is good: whence it is evident that B (b) must be advanced so as to follow B (a) immediately; and the more so, as there is authority for this in MS. Arch. Seld. B 14 in the Bodleian Library; while the Harleian MS. hints at a similar arrangement. The correctness of this emendation is proved by the fact that it is necessary for the mention of Rochester in B (b) to precede that of Sittingbourne in D. It deserves to be mentioned further, that, of the four days supposed to be consumed on the way, some of them are inadequately provided for. This furnishes no real objection, because the unwritten tales of the Yeoman, Haberdasher, Carpenter, Weaver, Dyer, Tapiser, and Ploughman, would have helped in some degree to fill up the gaps which have been noticed above. The whole of Group A is so admirably fitted together, and its details so well worked out, that it may fairly be looked upon as having been finally revised, as far as it goes; and I am disposed accordingly to look upon the incomplete Cook's Tale as almost the last portion of his great work which the poet ever revised. There is, in this Group A, only one flaw, one that has often been noted, viz. the mention of three Priests in the Prologue (l. 164), whereas we know that there was but one Nun's Priest, his name being Sir John. At the same place there is a notable omission of the character of the Nun, and the two things together point to the possibility that Chaucer may have drawn her character in too strong strokes, and have then suddenly determined to withdraw it, and to substitute a new character at some future time. If we suppose him to have left the line 'That was hire chapelleyn' unfinished, it is easy to see how another hand would have put in the words 'and prestes thre' for the mere sake of the rime, without having regard to reason. We ought to reject those three words as spurious. That Chaucer's work did receive, in some small degree, some touching-up, is rendered yet more probable by observing how Group A ends. For here, in several of the MSS., we come upon an additional fragment which, on the face of it, is not Chaucer's at all, but a work belonging to a slightly earlier period; I mean the Tale of Gamelyn. Some have supposed, with great reason, that this tale occurs among the rest because it is one which Chaucer intended to recast, although, as a fact, he did not live to re-write a single line of it. This is the more likely because the tale is a capital one in itself, well worthy of having been rewritten even by so great a poet; indeed, the plot bears considerable resemblance to that of the favourite play known to us all by the title of As You Like It. But I cannot but protest against the stupidity of the botcher whose hand wrote above it 'The Cokes Tale of Gamelyn.' That was done because it happened to be found next after, the Cook's Tale, which, instead of being about Gamelyn, is about Perkin the reveller, an idle apprentice. The fitness of things ought to shew at once that this Tale of Gamelyn, a tale of the woods, in the true Robin-Hood style, could only have been placed in the mouth of him who bare a mighty bow,' and who knew all the usage of woodcraft; in one word, of the Yeoman. (Gandelyn is the name of an archer in Ritson's Ancient Songs, i. 82). And we get hence the additional hint, that the Yeoman's Tale was to have followed the Cook's Tale, a tale of fresh country-life succeeding one of the close back-streets of the city. No better place can be found for it. There is yet one more Tale, found only in some of the earlier printed editions, but in none of the MSS., viz. the Ploughman's Tale. This is admittedly spurious, in the sense that it is not Chaucer's; but it is a remarkable poem in its way. The author never intended it for an imitation of Chaucer, nor pretended any disguise about it; on the contrary, he says plainly that he was the author of the well-known poem in alliterative verse commonly known as Pierce the Ploughman's Crede. It can only have been inserted by inadvertence, but we need not blame Thynne for doing this, since otherwise the poem would not have been preserved at all, no MS. of it being now in existence. The next question that presents itself is this-Have we any means of telling which of the Tales are of early, and which of late workmanship? In reply to this, we may note, in the first place, the following facts and probabilities. The Knight's Tale was almost certainly re-written from beginning to end. In the first instance Chaucer took a good deal of it from Boccaccio's Teseide, and gave it in the name of Palamon and Arcite; see Prologue to Legende of Good Women, 1. 420. This he would naturally do just after or just before writing his Troilus1, in which he follows the same author, and 1 Several lines are common to Troilus and to the Knight's Tale, shewing that the former and Palamon and Arcite' were probably in hand together. he would naturally employ the seven-line stanza. But this is not all, for it is obvious upon comparison (though I do not remember to have seen it pointed out before) that Chaucer also pressed into his service, when writing the Knight's Tale, a poem also in the seven-line stanza, which has been preserved under the title 'Of Queen Annelida and False Arcite.' In this. poem, after three introductory stanzas, he quotes three lines from Statius, beginning—' Iamque domos patrias,' &c.; and it is not a little remarkable that the very same three lines reappear as a heading at the beginning of the Knight's Tale in many of the MSS. It is interesting to note the traces of resemblance between this poem and the Knight's Tale, but it must be admitted that they are very few, such as these :— • With Emely her yonge suster schene'— which reappears in the Knight's Tale, l. 114; with a few similar phrases. For example, the first three lines of the prologue run O thou fiers God of armes, Mars the rede, which may be compared with the Knight's Tale, 1111-1115. The It must next be noted that Mr. Furnivall, who has drawn up, ten'atively, a list of Chaucer's works in their supposed order, puts down amongst the works of the Second Period,' i. e. prior to the Canterbury Tales, that Tale which is now known as the Second Nun's, though formerly called by Chaucer himself the Life of Saint Cecile. Of this result there has never been a doubt; Tyrwhitt says expressly, 'The Tale of the Nonne is almost literally translated from the Life of St. Cecilia in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus Januensis. It is mentioned by Chaucer as a separate work in his Legende of Good Women, 1. 426, under the title of the Life of Seint Cecile, and it still retains evident marks that it was not originally composed in the form of a Tale to be spoken by the Nonne. It is, then, little more than a translation, and it is in seven-line stanzas. Mr. Furnivall assigns to this Second Nun's Tale the conjectural date of 1373; now this is the very year when Chaucer met Petrarch at Padua (see note to E 27), and learnt from him the tale of Griseldis, now known as the Clerk's Tale. This tale is, for the most part, a translation, and it is in seven-line stanzas. The Prioress's Tale has a Proem much better suited for a formal poem than for a Tale to be told, being much in the same strain as one of the author's other poems, known as Chaucer's A. B. C. Moreover, it is (by an oversight) still called a song ; see B 1677. This poem is also in seven-line stanzas. The Monk's Tale is in a very peculiar metre, which appears nowhere else in Chaucer, except in the above-mentioned poem called the A. B. C. (perhaps written before A.D. 1369), and in some of Chaucer's latest but very short poems, such as the Envoy to Bukton, and the Ballad of the Visage 2 without Painting; so that, considered with reference to metre, this Tale may be of any date. The main part of it shews no great originality, and seems to me rather early than late. Having premised these considerations, I wish now boldly to state that we have, in fact, one test of earliness or lateness on which we may rely, I believe, with some confidence. It is a test so obvious that it is a wonder to me that no one, as far as I know, has pointed it out before; I mean the test of rhythm. The canon I propose is simply this. Nearly all of Chaucer's 1 In the Proem, the Nun calls herself an unworthy son of Eve.' 2 Oddly spelt Vilage in the MSS.; but the poem is imitated from Boethius, and has special reference to the passage-'This ilke Fortune hath departyd and vncoueryd to the bothe the certeyn visages, and eke the dowtos visages of thy felawes'; Chaucer's Boethius, ed. Morris, |