Troilus and Cressida, the Flower and the Leaf, the Complaint of the Black Knight, and indeed, the generality of the more serious productions of Chaucer had been previously composed,* the marvellous adventures, sufferings, and wanderings of a Roman princess

"Of the Emperor's daughter dame Custance,"

who had been given in marriage to the "Soudan of Surrie," previously converted to Christianity by the rumour of her charms: but who is exposed to the consequent hatred and vengeance of a wicked Soudanness, (the mother of the sultan)-thus described, in language that requires no glossary, and in numbers that require no departure from the pronunciation of our own days, except in the solitary instance of shifting the impulse from the first to the second syllable of a single word.

"O Soudanness, root of iniquitee,

Virago thou Semyramee the second,

O serpent under femininitee,

Like to the serpent deep in hell ybound:
O feigned woman, all that may confound
Virtue and innocence, through thy malíce,

Is bred in thee, as next of every vice."

By the conspiracy and treason of this wicked mother-inlaw, after having seen her husband and all the Christian converts of his court, together with those of her own suite, massacred at the royal banquet, Custance, (this "emperor's young daughter-full of benignit,") is committed to the mercy of the waves, "in a ship all steerless;" in which, though driven for three years, by wind and tide, through "the seas of Greece," &c. she is miraculously sustained, and driven at last, on the coast of Northumberland, where, after a while, the wicked machinations of a knight, who, not being able to subdue her virtue, endeavours to bring her to an infamous death, are, by miraculous interference, converted into the means of exalting her to another throne, that of King Alla. But finding here, in Donegild, the queen-mother, a counterpart of the satanic Soudanness, affliction and exile still await her. She is thrust forth, with her

* Of the tale told by the Wife of Bath, there is an earlier version by Gower, which has considerable merit, though very inferior to that of Chaucer. It may be seen in the first volume of "Ellis's Specimens;" and is worth consulting, if it were only for the sake of the comparison. It may show those, who are not familiar with the foreign resources from which Chaucer derived so many of his materials, how much was added to his versions by the richness and fertility of his awn original genius.

infant, in the same ship in which she arrived; and her story is pathetically pursued, through a series of wanderings and adventures still more miraculous than the former, interspersed by the narrator with all the edifying logic of a pious morality, till a providential rencounter with king Alla, on his pilgrimage to Rome, where the fugitive and her son were remaining in obscure sojourn, brings all to a happy catastrophe.

The "gat-t thooed" loquacious Wife of Bath, whose tale, in Mr. Tyrwhitt's arrangement, (though not in that of the old folios,) comes next, needs none of the prompting influence of the host. He leaves her accordingly, in plogue and in tale, (the former of which is well known in the version of Pope, and the latter in that of Dryden,*) to her own humour and vivacity. His only interference, with respect to her, being to put a stop to the altercation that had arisen between those eternal wranglers, the fryer and the sompnour,† who, as he tells them, "fare as folk that dronken been of ale;" and whose squabbles suspended for a while the commencement of her proffered story.

This is no sooner ended, than he has, again, to exert his authority to silence the renewed intemperance of these scurrillous antagonists: insisting, roundly, that

"In company we will have no debate,"

and admonishing the fryer in particular, that "a man of his estate" should be" hendy and curteis."

He calls upon them, however, for their respective tales-through the medium of which, as anticipated, they contrive to vent, with an equal emulation of humour and of grossness, their recriminative animosities: much to the amusement, no doubt, if not to the edification of such of their fellow pilgrims, as it might be, were not too nice of ear to remain within the sphere of auditors.

These scurrilous antagonists, thus, for the present, disposed of, our versatile and jolly host shews himself not less talented

* Of the tale assigned by Chaucer to the Wife of Bath, (the marvellous adventures of a knight, who had to redeem his forfeit life, by solving the question, what "is that women most desire,") there is a previous version by Gower, which may be seen in the first volume of "Ellis's extracts." The story as told by Gower is not without interest, and may be said to be well told. But a comparison of the two will evince not only the great superiority of Chaucer's wit and poetic genius, but may give some idea of how much even those tales, which are taken from foreign sources, owe, in his versions, to his own originality and inventive genius.

+ Sompnour.-An officer employed to summon delinquents to appear in ecclesiastical courts, now called an Apparitor.—Tyrwhitt.

for, calling forth the reserved and shy, than for controlling the troublesome and intrusive.

"Sir Clerk of Oxenford," our Hest-e said,
"Ye ride as still, and coy as doth a maid,
Were nearly spoused, sitten at the board:
This day ne'er heard I of your tongue a word.
I trow ye study 'abóuten some sophime: [sophism]
But Solomon saith that every thing hath time.
For God's sake be ye of a better cheer;
It is no time for to be studying here.
Tell us some merry tale now, by your fay;
For when a man has entered in a play,
He must of need unto the play assent.
But preach ye not as fryers do in Lent.
To make us for our olden sins to weep;
Nor let thy tale be one to make us sleep.
Tell us some merry adventures on your part,
Your tropes, your figures, and your terms of art;
Keep them in store, till call'd on to indite
Such lofty style as men to kings would write.
Speak at this time so plainly I you pray,
That we may understand whate'er ye say."

The history of the patient Grisilda, repeated by the clerk, and with which every body is familiar, calls forth another trait of the character or domestic history of "our hoste," who has a dame at home, the very antithesis of the heroine of the Clerk of Oxenford's Tale: a misfortune, which it seems he has in common with the merchant pilgrim-who, though he has "wedded been," not more than "moneths two," bewails his hard destiny in having a wife, "the worst that may be," and betwixt whose and " Grisilda's great patience,

"Here is a long and large difference:"

so large, indeed, that he " dare well swear"

That" though the Fiend to her ycoupled were,
She would him over match."

"The tirade, in which the merchant indulges on the subject of "wives cursedness," comes home to the sympathies of our host-whose exhortation "So God you bless,

Since ye so muchel knowen of that art,

Full heartily I pray you tell us part,"

calls forth the tale of " January and May," to which such popularity has been given by the spirited paraphrase of Pope.

The moral of this tale, our wife-ridden host of course takes up in the rear.

By Goddes mercy," said our hoste tho,

Now such a wife I pray God keep me fro!"

He then gives us some sketches, in broad outline, of his own "labbing shrew," who, he tells us," hath a heap of vices mo," of which

"His wit sufficeth not to tellen all."

Not to harp, however, too much at one time, on the same string, he calls upon the gentle Squire for a more soothing strain.

66

Squier, come near, if that you will it be,
And say somewhat of love, for certes ye
Connen thereon as much as any man."

The fruit of this application is, though unfortunately, “left half told

The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camballo and Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,

That owned the virtuous ring and glass;
And of the wondrous horse of brass,

On which the Tartar King did ride."

We know not, in any space we could assign to it, how we could give a better abstract, than in these beautiful lines of Milton, of a tale, which, as far as it goes, may rank in the very first line of the highest order of imaginative romance. That it should have been left imperfect, is indeed to be deplored; but, where is the Chaucer or the Ariosto of the present day, that shall presumptuously hope to supply the deficiency?

The commendation of the Franklin, whose allusions to his own wayward son, that

"to virtue listeth not to intend,

But for play at dice, and to dispend,"

and some parade about "learning gentilless," the host very unceremoniously cuts short, occasions his tale to be called for; "Straw for your gentilless,"

"Tell on thy tale withouten wordes mo :"

and a legend of sentimental romance, deeply tinged with that affectation of factitious ethics and preternatural platonism (whose origin we are apt to ascribe to a somewhat later period

of our literature) admirably illustrates the tastes and intellectural habitudes of this well-drawn character: whose rustic gentlemanship, not untinctured with the accessible, or ex-collegiate literature of the times, strongly reminded us of what, (though under modifications from the very altered state of knowledge and society) we have occasionally met with, in our own day, among persons in the same class of life.

It is introduced by some sensible observations, though characteristically given in a somewhat sermonising strain, (making the most it may be said of a small morality, as country gentlemen, when they are sentimental, are still apt to do!) about not treating wives as "thralls;" for that

"Love will not be constrain'd by masterie;"

and it relates the history of one Arviragus, (a husband who carries this principle and that of the punctilious obligation of a promise to a somewhat extraordinary extent,) and of Dorigene, his wife, from whom, after having lived with her " a year and more in bliss and in solas," he is obliged by certain affairs to be absent for two years; and who, in the mean while, though pining like a widowed dove, gets entangled in a sort of amour, on her side purely platonic, with a

"lusty squire, servant of Venus, Which that yclepped was Aurelius,"

and which seems, at one time, even after the return of the husband, very likely to terminate (though not without the aid of a most extraordinary feat of magic on the part of the gallant) as platonic amours every where, we believe, but in the pages of novels and romances, pretty generally do terminate; but which, by means of a sort of Cato-like liberality on the husband's part, and his insisting upon the religious fulfilment of the promise into which the reluctant and grief-stricken Dorigene had been most unwittingly, and upon a seemingly impossible condition betrayed, is most sentimentally brought to a happy and honourable conclusion: the gallant himself, (when the lady meets him reluctantly obedient to her engagement and her lord's most scrupulous command,) overcome by the example of such punctilious honour and generosity, relinquishing the longsigh'd-for prize, and restoring her pure and untainted to "the bliss and the solas" of her nuptial obligations.

The tale, strange and sentimentally extravagant as it is, is beautifully told, and in a style that marks the gradation of mind and culture between the rustic and mechanical characters, and those who, from profession and station, may be naturally supposed to have had all the advantages of the learned education of their times.