pomp of sacrifice, the solemnities of prayer, the celebration of the gorgeous rites of chivalry. The descriptions of the three temples of Mars, of Venus, and Diana, of the ornaments and ceremonies used in each, with the reception given to the offerings of the lovers, have a beauty and grandeur much of which is lost in Dryden's version. For instance, such lines as the following are not rendered with their true feeling : 'Why shulde I not as well eke tell you all Ther as Mars hath his sovereine mansion. In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best, Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to behold; In which ther ran a romble and a swough, And again, among innumerable terrific images of death and slaughter painted on the wall, is this one, 'The statue of Mars upon a carte stood Armed, and looked grim as he were wood. With eyen red, and of a man he ete.' The story of Griselda is in Boccaccio; but the Clerk of Oxenforde, who tells it, professes to have learned it from Petrarch. This story has gone all over Europe, and has passed into a proverb. In spite of the barbarity of the circumstances, which are abominable, the sentiment remains unimpaired and unalterable. It is of that kind' that heaves no sigh, that sheds no tear; but it hangs upon the beatings of the heart; it is a part of the very being; it is as inseparable from it as the breath we draw. It is still and calm as the face of death. Nothing can touch it in its ethereal purity; tender as the yielding flower, it is fixed as the marble firmament. The only remonstrance she makes, the only complaint she utters against all the illtreatment she receives, is that single line where, when turned back naked to her father's house, she says, 'Let me not like a worm go by the way.' The first outline given of the character is inimitable, 'Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable, And of hir labour toke hir sustenance, 'Among this poure folk ther dwelt a man, But for to speke of vertuous beautee, 'But though this mayden tendre were of age, Hire olde poure fader fostred she; A few sheep spinning on the feld she kept, 'And whan she homward came she wolde bring Wortes and other herbes times oft, The which she shred and sethe for hire living, And ay she kept hire fadres lif on loft 'Upon Grisilde, this poure creature, Ful often sithe this markis sette his eye? 'Commending in his herte hire womanhede, 'Grisilde of this (God wot) ful innocent, 'She thought, "I wol with other maidens stond, 'And she wolde over the threswold gon, The markis came and gan hire for to call, And she set doun her water-pot anon Till she had herd what was the lordes will.' The story of the little child slain in Jewry (which is told by the Prioress, and worthy to be told by her who was 'all conscience and tender heart') is not less touching than that of Griselda. It is simple and heroic to the last degree. The poetry of Chaucer has a religious sanctity about it, connected with the manners and superstitions of the age. It has all the spirit of martyrdom. It has also all the extravagance and the utmost licentiousness of comic humour, equally arising out of the manners of the time. In this, too, Chaucer resembled Boccaccio, that he excelled in both styles, and could pass at will 'from grave to gay, from lively to severe;' but he never confounded the two styles together (except from that involuntary and unconscious mixture of the pathetic and humorous, which is almost always to be found in Nature), and was exclusively taken up with what he set about, whether it was jest or earnest. The Wife of Bath's Prologue (which Pope has very admirably modernized) is perhaps unequalled as a comic story. The Cock and the Fox is also excellent for lively |