THE difference between the accomplishments' of a lady of the time of Chaucer and of the time of Mr. Tennyson, is an amusing thing to reflect upon. When Othello, buffeted to and fro between reminiscences of his wife's attractions and the recurring suggestions of his own supposed wrongs, is enumerating, by snatches, the things for which he had loved and admired her, he mentions, among other things, her skill with her nee

So delicate with her needle.' A man of distinction

would not think, in modern times, of his wife's needlework whilst he was torn with jealousy, or on any high occasion whatever, not only because the accomplishment of the needle is cheap and common and quasimenial, but because the products of skill with the needle seldom come before us now in such connexions as Mr. Matthew Arnold calls 'grandiose.' In an earlier day it was obviously different. The art of the embroideress was in requisition for the adornment of high places of all kinds altars, thrones, footstools, chairs of state, and the hangings of castles and palaces. When the lady of a castle, with the help of her maidens, protégées, daughters of retainers, foster-children, poor sisters, girl cousins, or what not, embroidered the story of Theseus and Ariadne for the arras that kept the wind out in the hall of state of her husband's castle, or for the king's chamber, perhaps, by way of tribute, it was natural enough to speak of the art of the needle as a high accomplishment. In a day when high-born lady abbesses worked samplers, it was something to say of a charming wife, that she was so delicate with her needle;' but now-a-days when walls and doors and windows are air-tight, and the decorator and the painter have parted company, and house-ornament is easy to be had, and pictures are plentiful, we do not think of the white hands of ladies in bower or nunnery using their needles to beautify our homes and brighten their walls with

heroic story in coloured thread-work.

This single change is so significant that it may stand for a thousand, in approaching some of the types of women given us by Chaucer.

II. It is noticeable that Chaucer has never painted the common housewife in her place. The Wife of Bath is scarcely a housewife; we do not see her in that capacity at all events; and of the wife of the merchant, nothing kindly and home-like is said by the poet. The virtuous wife is quite another figure, -her, we find in, perhaps, every poet that has painted character; but the house-wife, the figure so familiar to us all in chap. xxxi. of the Book of Proverbs, is nowhere to be seen in Chaucer. For this there may have been a hundred reasons besides the obvious and sufficient ones which lie upon the surface. In the first place, the modern style of painting life, the Dutch manner applied to interior details,—was not then regnant; and, in the second, a house-wife was scarcely a figure that could be made heroic in the days of the Romaunt of the Rose. A wife might be brought upon the scene, like Griselda, to exhibit the woman, in the shameful spirit of the age and of other ages, as the appendage and feudatory of the man; or, in contrast with the mistress, present on the canvas, or presumed to be there, as in the Franklin's Tale, where a question fit for the Courts of Love is raised by the fidelity of the lady and the preposterous' chivalry' of her

husband. But, realist as Chaucer was, it did not occur to him to paint a house-wife.

If, however, we have not in Chaucer a house-wife painted with loving, domestic touches, we have a maiden, painted in such colours, that all she wanted was a husband to make her such a housewife. There are no words which a little attention will not make out in the description of the damsel Virginia, in the Doctor's Tale; and it is truly beautiful, closing with a domestic reference which, if not very high pitched, is sufficient::

'This mayde was of age twelf yer and tway,

In which that nature hath suche delite.
For right as sche can peynte a lili white
And rody a rose, right with such peynture
Sche peynted hath this noble creature
Er sche was born, upon her limes fre,
Wheras by right such colours schulde be;
And Phebus deyed hadde hire tresses grete,
I-lyk to the stremes of his borned hete.
And if that excellent was hir beaute,
A thousand-fold more vertuous was sche.
In hire ne lakketh no condicioun,
That is to preyse, as by discrecioun.
As wel in body as goost chaste was sche;
For which sche floured in virginite,
With alle humilite and abstinence,
With alle attemperaunce and pacience,
With mesure eek of beryng and array.
Discret sche was in answeryng alway,
Though sche were wis as Pallas, dar I sayn.
Her facound eek ful wommanly and playn;

VOL. I.

N

Noon countrefeted termes hadde sche
To seme wys; but after hir degre

Sche spak, and alle hire wordes more or lesse
Sounyng in vertu and in gentilesse.

Schamefast sche was in maydenes schamfastnesse,
Constant in hert, and ever in besynesse,

To dryve hire out of idel slogardye.'

Against this lovely child-woman of fourteen years old, the Prioress, who may be taken as the nearest picture in Chaucer of the gentlewoman of his day, shows very poorly. Instead of the simplicity of Virginia, we have affectation and self-consciousness-the Prioress is of her smiling full simple and coy.' She talks indifferent French: she knows how to behave at table, keeping her fingers dry, and not dropping her meat from her knife-because forks, of course, were unknown. She affected courtly manners; and had the usual false sentiment of over-accomplished women in any age she would weep if she saw a mouse in a trap, if it were dead or wounded, otherwise it would serve for a pet, like a bird in a cage. She had her pet dogs with her, which she fed with morsels from the table. If one of them happened to get hit by somebody's walking-stick, she cried. Her wimple covers her head, and hides her hair, but she has a well-marked forehead. Of her dress we are told little, because there was not much to tell of the attire of a religious person; but the lady had taken care to have her cloak well made. She wears a chaplet (called a pair') of beads