most delicate and beautiful of these early poetic fancies, the Flower and the Leaf, leads us away into the fairest of English scenes. We wander in the May morning along the forest glade where the oaks open their wide vistas; the grass is "fresh of hew;" the sunbeams glitter amidst the leaves; the birds sing; a leafy lane opens through banks of turf and green grass soft as wool. Under an arbor of vines the poet lingers, when suddenly a troop of fair women, more gracious than the day, break into the lovely glade, and begin to dance and sing upon the lawn. Soon, amidst the noise of "thundering trumpes," a splendid troop of knights on their finest steeds appear. Hand-in-hand, the knights and the ladies glide before the poet. But the burden of the contest is to be between the Lady of the Flower and the Lady of the Leaf. The Lady of the Flower is followed by the goldfinch,

That fro the medlar-tree

Was fled for heat into the bushes cold.

The nightingale:

To the Lady of the Leafe fortheright

She flew, and set her on her hond softly.

But the followers of Flora, the Lady of the Flower, are

THE HOUSE OF FAME.

43

Such folk that loved idlenesse,

And not delite in no businesse.

To the other lady-the Lady of the Laurel-come all the noble and heroic to wear her chaplets and deserve her smiles. The good knight, runs the moral, should be no idler, nor lover of ease, but seek to win the lasting honors of the leaf, and wear the laurel crown. But the flowers fade, "and every storme will blow them soon away." Not so the leaf:

For one leafe given of that noble tree
To any wight that hath done worthily,
And it be done so as it ought to be,
Is more honor than anything earthly.
Witnes of Rome that founder was truly
Of all knighthood and deeds marvellous,
Record I take of Titus Livius.

The poet declares himself the servant of the Leaf, of labor, honesty, and chivalry; and, awaking from his reverie, goes home to put all he "had seen in writing," to charm all future time with his fanciful allegory, and wear the laurel he had so gracefully celebrated.

The House of Fame. - In this poem, Chaucer has reached a higher strain of thought than in his common themes, and with almost epic grandeur surveys the va

rious followers of fame. He is borne aloft in the claws of Jove's eagle, "as lightly as I had ben a lark," to the immeasurable height where lives the austere goddess. Her head strikes the stars; her charms are unspeakable; her palace was the most splendid that could be conceived. It was a glittering mass of beryl and precious stones, of towers, pinnacles, tabernacles, filled with music and feasting, with heralds, nobles, wealthy people, covered with crowns and rich robes. The roof and floor of the great hall were "plated half a foote thicke of golde." Here Fame dispensed her immortal honors, drove off the unworthy who sought a lasting renown, was surrounded by the statues of Homer, Virgil, Lucan, Stace, and even "English Galfride," or Geoffrey of Monmouth, Josephus, and Claudian. The palace rung with songs in praise of the goddess.

But, Lord, the perries and the richesse,
I saw sitting on the goddesse,
And the heavenly melodie
Of songes full of armonie,
I heard about her trone ysong,
That all the palais wales rong.
So song the mighty Muse, she
That cleped is Calliope,
And her seven sisterne eke,
That in hir faces seemen meke,

THE CANTERBURY TALES.

45.

And evermore eternally

They song of Fame as tho heard I
"Heried be thou, and thy name

Goddess of renown or fame."

All the riches and almost childish splendors of the poet's fancy are lavished upon his pictures. All the barbaric images of fine dress, robes, jewels, gold, are made to lend interest to the House of Fame. Amidst the sensual vision one almost forgets that Homer and Virgil, poets and philosophers, contemned the coarser elements of life, and were only men of thought.

The Canterbury Tales.— But all these graceful verses and this delicate play of fancy might have been forgotten, like the lays of many another Trouveur, had not Chaucer, in his old age, in poverty, danger, care, employed himself in painting a series of real men and women, whose countenances, pleasant, cheerful, grave, or grotesque, still look down upon us over the flight of five centuries with an immortal charm. How all England set out upon pilgrimages in the pleasant month of April; what cheerful companies went to be shrived at Canterbury; how they rode through the miry highways, and slept at the noted inns; with what jests and jokes they went leisurely

along, the poet alone has told us; and in this he has won his lasting fame, and founded a national literature. In Chaucer's verses all is cheerfulness, intense mirth, or silent humor. Mine Host never allows his comrades to remain long dull or melancholy; the merry tale succeeds the sad; the coarsest and least decorous is mingled with the purest and most refined. Many, indeed, are not capable of repetition to modern ears, and some are even dull; but the soft, gentle, hopeful English humor, never tending to evil, or bitter with the pangs of hopeless malice; the wit that was to shine through generations of Englishmen, in More, Shakspeare, Addison, Goldsmith, Irving, is something wholly indestructible, and capable of an endless reproduction. The Prologue, or, rather, prologues, are the finest parts of the poem. It is almost possible to discover in them the sources of Shakspeare's studies of life and nature, of his keen perception of the varieties of English character, his everpresent common-sense. Like Shakspeare, the scholar who has surpassed his model, it is in the homely truthfulness of his reflections and his pictures that Chaucer excels. He is the master of the poetry of common life; and it is difficult to see how, without