to be much assisted in appreciating the characteristic genius and merits of the father of our poesy-even in this, the most popular and the most accessible of his voluminous works. And they who would form any adequate idea even of the Canterbury Tales, must turn with a student's patient eye to the collated text and elaborate Glossary of Mr. Tyrwhitt, and be thankful for the assistance he has furnished, for unravelling the obscurities of an antiquated diction, and still more obsolete spelling.

With respect to all the other remains of the venerable bard, those whose eyes cannot be readily familiarised with the black letter of the editions of 1532 and 1542, or who cannot avail themselves of the more laborious luxury of collating the extant MSS. dispersed in antiquarian libraries, have no other resource but the perplexing, corrupted, and arbitrarily innovated edition of Mr. Urry, who has marred by injudicious interpolations the rhythmus he pretended to amend, counting his fingers to the distraction of his ears (the common vice of all mechanical editors)—who has perverted in many instances the very meaning of his author by conjectural readings, and has still further perplexed the orthography, by a mode of spelling which is neither that of the days of Chaucer, of our own, or of any intermediate age with which we are acquainted.

We proceed, however, with our endeavours to open a "royal road" at least to the more general apprehension of the peculiar merits of our author, and ultimately, we trust, to facilitate the endeavours of those who are so inclined to enter into and enjoy those merits in the text of the existing old editions; an effect that can scarcely fail to result from comparing the modified quotations we from time to time present with the text of the copies referred to, and observing, as the necessary result of such comparison, how little is requisite to render the language and versification of Chaucer intelligible to the modern apprehension, and satisfactory to the modern ear, beyond reducing the spelling to the present standard, attending to the dyssyllabic pronunciation of certain classes of words now universally treated as monosyllabic, and the more polysyllabic pronunciation of others, which it is now the habit (by our frequent elisions of the vowel) to compress.

In our former article we particularly alluded to the circumstance of Chaucer having given the first exemplifications of genuine dramatic character and invention exhibited in our language; or, in other words, of his having been the first who "shewed the way how Comedy should be constructed, and its characters grouped and diversified." We proceed to shew, that although the state of society, during the age which he illustrated, occasioned him to have taken his station among

those who have dramatised for the closet, nor for the scene, that he is not therefore the less to be regarded as the Father of English Comedy as well as of English Poetry in general; a statement that may be fully substantiated, both from the structure and execution of what has descended to us of that comprehensive and yet unrivalled production, the Canterbury Tales; which, when duly analyzed, will be found to have embraced and exemplified every essential requisite of the Comic Drama.

In that most indispensable of all the attributes of dramatic genius, in particular, the delineation, grouping, and sustainment of diversified character, he may be proudly placed by the side of Shakspeare himself; nor has any equal to them yet appeared to fill out a triumvirate.

How finely, for example, does that admixture of the observant and the creative faculty-that harmony of faithful transcript and imaginative conception, which constitutes the very essence of poetic nature and dramatic verisimilitude, manifest itself in the inimitable character of the Host! who, though he sustains, as has been justly observed throughout, a function similar to that of the Chorus in the ancient drama, has yet an attribute of higher and more connective merit, inasmuch as he is at once the contriver and conductor of the plot or main action of the fable, and an essential part of the action itself; and is endowed with a peculiarity of appropriate humour, which gives him not only the truth and consonance of personal identity, but also a necessary connexion with the whole, which the ancient Choruses could seldom boast. He does not seem to be placed among the other actors merely to predicate and moralize upon characters and incidents as they pass before him he is the master spirit-the motive principle that puts every thing in action-the life and soul of all. His character is so admirably kept up throughout the whole journey, with such unabated wit and spirit, that he retains, to the very last, all that freshness of originality which at the outset seizes upon the imagination; and of which familiarity rather increases than abates the interest.

From this character that of "mine host of the garter" in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," is obviously derived and that even our immortal dramatist should, in his copy, have been far from surpassing the original, is surely the highest of imaginable tributes to the triumphant genius of Chaucer.

The sketch of this important character, as first introduced in the prologue, after a description of the group of pilgrims assembled at the Tabard, is so spirited that the reader will perhaps be gratified in being presented with it, just so far modernised as to render it intelligible without the assistance of

a glossary; and at the same time leave the quaintness of antiquity, and the characteristic style of the author, unimpaired.*

“Great chēēr † made our host us every one,

And to the supper set he us anon:

* It may not be amiss to remind the reader of the rule we laid down in our former article, with respect to our mode of quotation; namely, “wherever the rhyme and the structure of the verse permit, to reduce the spelling as near as possible to the modern standard, and endeavour to accommodate it to the modern pronunciation: but with this especial reservation-that wherever the terminative vowels are preserved, except where they are followed by an initial vowel, they must be so pronounced as to preserve a syllabic quantity. Wherever an exception necessarily occurs to this rule, we mark the mute vowel by an italic."

+ Cheer: a monosyllable with a dissyllabic quantity. Shakspeare used this liberty occasionally; or, rather, this mode of pronouncing with an inflective dipthong certain of our monosyllables was, in his time, very far from being extinct-if practically it can be said to be so even now; and it has been a great stumbling-block in the way of his finger-counting commentators. There is one instance, in particular-a passage of great beauty, in the third part of Henry VI. (Act 2, sc. 5,) in which the syllable "hour" occurs no less than seven times, always with a dissyllabic quantity, and fills out the foot so completely and so naturally, and with such a perfectness of harmony on the ear, that no reader, uninfected with the disease of finger-counting, would suspect that there are but nine syllables in the respective lines. The passage is part of the beautiful soliloquy of Henry while sitting on the molehill, apart from the battle-field of Towton; and is as follows:

O God! methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run:
How many make the hour full complete,
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the times :
So many hours must I tend my flock;
So many hōūrs must I take my rest ;
So many hours must I contemplate;
So many hours must I sport myself;

So many days my ewes have been with young;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean;

And serv-ed

us with victuals + of the best.

Strong was the wine, and well to drink us lest. ‡

So many years ere I shall sheer the fleece:

So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years,
Passed over to the end they were created,

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave."

In the idiomatic pronunciation of Scotland several monosyllables still continue to be so pronounced, and some even which have no dipthongal indication in their mode of spelling; and the northern bards to this day, when writing in their provincial dialect, make no scruple accordingly of so adapting them to the cadence of their verse. Witness the following, among the many that might be produced from the poems of Burns:

66

My riches a's

my penny fee An' I maun guide it canny-o!

But warld's geer is nought to me

My thoughts are a' my Nanny-o!"

Again, in one of his satyric songs:

"Down Lowrie's burn he took his turn,

And Carlton did ca' man."

In both these instances the now customary monosyllabic quantity, (warld's or world's in the former, Carb, in the latter) without protracted circumflex accent, would reduce the lines to absolute prose, and the first even to very harsh and hobbling prose: for even prose must have some attention to prosodical quantities, or measured cadence, to make it flow with smoothness and facility from the organs to the earor, as Shakspeare expresses it," trippingly upon the tongue." Nor will it be questioned by any observant critic, that we have still, even on our side of the Tweed, many syllables to which, in the emphasis even of our prose pronunciation, we occasionally give this dissyllabic quantity; and some few (as chasm, prism, &c. and still more particularly when used in the plural) which so imperiously demand it, that no poet who writes from his ear, or consults the ear of his reader, would, in common or dissyllabic measures, intrude another syllable with them into the same foot or bar. Indolent carelessness on the one hand, and false principles of pedantic criticism on the other, have, indeed, progressively abridged this prosodial licence, as it may perhaps be called; and indeed the whole tendency of progressive innovation so obviously inclines to render our pronunciation thin and fine, as it is called, instead of full and sonorous, that we must expect to have something to combat with in our present habits of utterance, before we can do full justice in appreciating the metrical harmony, not only of the venerable Chaucer, but even of all the English Poets who wrote before the period of "the Restoration," and the wire-drawn Gallicism of pronunciation which seems about that time to have been introduced.

A seemly man our host-e was with all
For to han been a marshal in a hall.

A larg-e man he was with ey-en steep, §
A fairer burgess is there none in Cheap:

Bold was his speech, and wise, and well ytaught,
And of manhood him lacked rightly naught.
Eke, thereto, was he a right merry man,
And, after supper, playful he began,
When that we hadden made our reckonings,
And spake of mirth amongest other things;
And said he thus: "Now lordings trew-e-ly
Ye been to me right welcome heartily :
For, by my troth, if that I shall not lie
This year I saw not such a company

*Serv-ed. It ought not to have been necessary to insert any indication of the dissyllabic pronunciation of this word; nor would have been but for the present typographical absurdity of preserving the vowel in such instances, where it is not, as well as where it is, to be pronounced; instead of indicating the abbreviation (serv'd) as the wiser custom used to be.

+ Vitaille is the better, though obsolete, spelling of Chaucer. The c, which we do not pronounce, and the terminative sibilant, have been introduced by our lexicographers in compliment to the French; but we see no reason why we should not have derived it from the Italian vittovaglia, as likely as from the French victuailles-from the Italian priest, as from the Norman courtier. It is strange how little credit is given to our priests, who, for a considerable time after the Conquest, were almost all Italian, for the importation of foreign words in the structure of our composite or Anglo-Norman language. But the French was always at hand; the Italian language is but just beginning to be one of the studies of the English literati; as the study proceeds, it may correct some of our etymologies, and perhaps improve our euphony.

I "And wel to drinke us leste." Pleased us well to drink :—it was of a good flavour.

§ "His eyen stepe" Mr. Tyrwhitt thinks that by stepe is meant deep, or hollow. If so, it is curious that both here, and in the description of his fat and goodly monk

"His eyen stepe, and rolling in his hed,"

Chaucer should have considered hollow eyes as a physiognomical indication of jollity. Perhaps by stepe may be meant looking boldly upwards. We are not aware that the word steep has ever been used to indicate mere hollowness, independently of any reference to acclivity or declivity, though it is used with reference to ascent or descent indifferently.