To tellen how she wept both even and morrow?
For in such cases, women have such sorrow
When that their husbands from them ago,
That for the mor-e part they sorrowen so,
Or éllès fallen into such malady
That at the last-e certainly they die."

"In Palamon a manly grief appears;
Silent, he wept, ashamed to shew his tears;
Emilia shriek'd but once, and then, oppress'd
With sorrow, sunk upon her lover's breast:
"Till Theseus in his arms convey'd with care
Far from so sad a sight, the swooning fair.
"Twere loss of time her sorrows to relate;
Ill bears the sex a youthful lover's fate,
When just approaching to the nuptial state.
But like a low-hung cloud, it rains so fast,
That all at once it falls, and cannot last."

The following may be given as an instance that Dryden does not always dilate. But it may be questioned whether calling the world" an Inn," instead of a thoroughfare, is an improvement either in point of poetry or pathos. It is part of the consolatory exhortation of "his old father Egeus" to the "duke Theseus."

“This world n'is but a thurghfare full of wo,
And we been pilgrims, passing to and fro:
Death is an end of every worldly sore.”

Which Dryden gives in the following couplet—

"Like pilgrims to the' appointed place we tend;
The world's an inn, and death the journey's end."

In describing the lamentations of the populace, Chaucer has said

"So great a weeping was there none certain,
When Hector was ybrought, all fresh yslain,
To Troy, alas! the pity that was there,
Scratching of cheek-es, rending eke of hair.
Why wouldest thou be dead? these women cry,
And haddest gold enough and Emely."

Dryden thus reforms it in the same number of lines; and the

last couplet especially is a specimen of the manner in which we could like to see the patriarch of our poesy treated throughout.

"Nor greater grief in falling Troy was seen,

For Hector's death; but Hector was not then.
Old men with dust deformed their hoary hair,

The women beat their breasts, their cheeks they tare.
Why wouldst thou go, with one consent they cry,

When thou hadst gold enough, and Emily."

To return, however, from these specimens of the serious style of Chaucer, and of the kind of justice that has been done to it by the modernizing hand of Dryden, to the highly comic character of" our hoste," of whom we suppose the reader is by no means tired. His character, indeed, is so admirably sustained throughout, and the part he plays so amusing, his humour, and his authority give such life and interest to the journey-conducting us from stage to stage, and keeping the whole living picture before us-calling into action the different passions and humours of the several characters, yet controlling and managing them with such discretion, that the alteration occasionally provoked may never exceed what his own insubduable pleasantry may allay, that it it almost impossible that he should ever tire. We feel him throughout, to be the cause of our whole entertainment; the agent, whose influence and happy perception and management of the respective humours of the motley group, produced those arrangements of contrast and variety, which give additional interest to the whole. Nor is our regard for him diminished, by perceiving that, with an equal mixture of humour and discretion, he knows when to wave, as well as when to enforce, his delegated authority.

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This "noble storie" being hailed by old and young, as worthy to be drawn in memory," the jolly host, exulting to find his game "so well, begun," requests the lordly monk to tellen, if he can,

"Somewhat to quitten with the knight-es-tale;"

by

but the miller cries out, "in Pilate's voice," and swears 66 arms and blood and bones," that he "can a noble tale for the nones, with which he will quit it." The host, seeing "that he was drunk with ale," at first remonstrates,

“And said—abide thee Robin my lave brother,

Some better man shall tell us first another;"

but the drunken miller being resolute, and swearing by "Goddes soul," that he " wol speak," the host, not choosing to bring his authority to issue "with a fool," whose wit is overcome

with liquor, bids him " tell on a devil way." After some tart altercation, conducted with much comic humour of the broader cast, with the reve, who is a carpenter, and foresees, by the proposed subject of the tale, that it is meant, if not directly personal to him, at least, to throw derision upon his craft, the tale is told and such a tale, as those whose ears are not too nice for such "harlottry" cannot fail to laugh over very heartily.

To such nice ears, however, Chaucer deems it necessary to give fair warning. Such as list to hear only "of storial thing that toucheth gentillesse," he says, had better" turn over the leaf," both of this tale and the one that is to follow, for the miller and the reve are both churls, he tells us, as are 'many other mo.

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The miller then relates, with all the breadth of humour, and all the directness of language which the license of these times admitted, the progress of an amour between one "hendy Nicholas," a clerk of Oxenford, and "Alison," the young wife of an old carpenter, with whom the clerk lodged; together with the tricks, of no very delicate description, put both upon the seely carpenter, and another woer, one Absalon, the parish clerk-a sort of rural libertine and exquisite, whose amours, accomplishments, and multifarious occupations, give a very lively picture of a state of society, in which the separation of trades and callings (the politico-economic division of labour) was little dreamt of.*

*The description is so lively and so characteristic, that we are tempted to present the reader with the entire portrait.

"Now was there of that church a parish clerk,
The which was there yclepped Absolon.
Curl'd was his hair, and as the gold it shon,
And strutted, as a fan, out, large and broad:
But strait and even lay his jolly shode.*
His hue was red, his eyen as grey as goose.
With St. Paul's widows carven were his shoes;
In hosen red he went full festily,

Yclad he was full tight and properly,

All in a kirtel of a light watchet; [blue cloth]
And fair and thickly were the points yset.
And thereupon he had a gay surplíce,

As white as is the bloom upon the rise.

Shode strictly" head of hair." The meaning apparently is, that though his hair was curled and spread out bushy at the sides, it was combed smooth at the top.

The tale is not fit for further analysis in our pages; but it is one of the most humorous, and the most replete with ludicrous incident, that the license of broad-grin wit has ever, perhaps, produced; equal in its way, though different in its species, (and what could be said more) to the "Tam o'Shanter" of Burns. There is a modern version of it in " Ogle's Chaucer," above noticed: but much of the spirit evaporates in the translation: nor is the licentiousness of the original as much mitigated, as the quaintness of the humour is impaired.

After listening to this story, so purposely irritating to the feelings of the reve, it was but in the course of common justice to give him opportunity for the menaced retaliation, of shewing that knavish millers could be fooled and "cuckewolded," as well as silly carpenters.

"Oswold the Reve," however, seems disposed to vent his spleen more ways than one; and is in danger of becoming rather prolix in a rude strain of censorious morality. But

"When that our Host had heard this sermoning,
He began to speak as lordly as a king;
And said he, What amounteth all this wit?
What? shall we speak all day of holy writ?
The devil made a Reve thus for to preach."
"Say forth thy tale, and tarry not the time:
Lo Deptford near, and it is half way prime."

A merry child he was, so God me save;
Well cou'd he leten blood, and clip, and shave,
And make a charter of land, and a quittance. [lease]

In twenty manners could he trip and dance,

After the school of Oxenford also,

And with his legs could caper to and fro;
And play sweet songs upon a small ribíble ;
Or sung he sometime to a loud quiníble.
As well too could he play on a gitérn. [guitar]
In all the town was brewhouse nor tavérn
That he not visitted with his solás,
Wherever any gaillard tapster was."-[merry]
"This Absolon, that jolly was and gay,
Go'th with a censer on the holy day,
Censing the wiv-es of the parish fast;
And many a merry look he on them cast."-
"This parish clerk, this jolly Absolon,
Hath in his heart-e such a love-longing,
That of no wif took he no offering:
For courtesy, he said he would have none."

The reve obeys, and the miller gets to the full as good measure as he had brought, in a tale of the same broad cast, in which two Cambridge scholars, who had carried their corn to Trompington Mill to be ground, revenge, by counter-trick, in which both wife and daughter have their part, the robbery committed on their meal.

In the "Prologue to the Cook's Tale" that follows, we find our merry host rallying with little mercy, but with perfect good humour, this brother of a kindred craft, about selling "Jack-of-Dovers," (a species of patty we suppose,) "that have been twice hot and twice cold," and about the curses of Pilgrims, who have "fared the worse," for the "parsley," (young hemlock, perhaps,)

"That they han eaten in his stubble goose," &c.

Roger the cook, bantering the host in turn, (whose name we now find to be Henry Bailly,) threatens, thereafter, a tale "of an Hostelere," by way of retaliation; but, for the present, commences one of a dicing revelling prentice," of a craft of vitaillers," which seems likely to have given as characteristic a picture of the city apprentices of those times, as we have already had of some of the classes of rustic and mechanic life. But the manuscript is torn, and a fragment consisting of the first fifty-eight lines alone remains.

To the Man of Law, in the next place, our host addresses himself in a style of more decorous gravity; displays his stock of learning in astronomy and the calendar; talks of Seneca ; calculates the portion of the day that is already gone, and moralizes on the value of time, that not like "loss of cattle may recovered be"

"It will not come again withouten dread,

No more than will Malkin's maidenhead ;"

and, calling for a tale anon, according to the bond, or "forword". of their confederacy, glances at his own judicial authority, or right of "jugement in this case."

The Man of Law maintains, in his subject and mode of treating it, the gravity of his profession; and we may add, in his style and language the advantages of his education, and the consequent nearer approximation to the language and idiom of a more polished age. In his introduction he is logical; his ethics shew his familiarity with the philosophy of the ancients, and his illustrations and allusions are erudite and classical. But neither the discourse with which he prefaces it, nor the tale which he relates, is therefore the less illustrative of the characteristic taste and intellectual history of his time. The latter relates, in the heroic stanza of seven lines, in which the