strokes of character and satire. January and May is not so good as some of the others. Chaucer's versification, considering the time at which he wrote, and that versification is a thing in a great degree mechanical, is not one of his least merits. It has considerable strength and harmony, and its apparent deficiency in the latter respect arises chiefly from the alterations which have since taken place in the pronunciation or mode of accenting the words of the language. The best general rule for reading him is to pronounce the final e, as in reading Italian.

It was observed in the last lecture that painting describes what the object is in itself, poetry what it implies or suggests. Chaucer's poetry is not, in general, the best confirmation of the truth of this distinction, for his poetry is more picturesque and historical than almost any other. But there is one instance in point which I cannot help giving in this place. It is the story of the three thieves who go in search of Death to kill him, and who, meeting with him, are entangled in their fate by his words without knowing him. In the printed catalogue to Mr. West's (in some respects very admirable) picture of Death on the Pale Horse, it is observed that In poetry the same effect is produced by a few abrupt and rapid gleams of

description, touching, as it were with fire, the features and edges of a general mass of awful obscurity; but in painting, such indistinctness would be a defect, and imply that the artist wanted the power to portray the conceptions of his fancy. Mr. West was of opinion that to delineate a physical form, which in its moral impression would approximate to that of the visionary Death of Milton, it was necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance of superhuman strength and energy. He has therefore exerted the utmost force and perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure.' One might suppose from this that the way to represent a shadow was to make it as substantial as possible. Oh, no! Painting has its prerogatives (and high ones they are), but they lie in representing the visible, not the invisible. The moral attributes of Death are powers and effects of an infinitely wide and general description, which no individual or physical form can possibly represent but by a courtesy of speech or by a distant analogy. The moral impression of Death is essentially visionary; its reality is in the mind's eye. Words are here the only things, and things, physical forms, the mere mockeries of the understanding. The less definite, the less bodily the conception, the more vast, un

formed, and unsubstantial, the nearer does it approach to some resemblance of that omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresistible principle, which everywhere, and at some time or other, exerts its power over all things. Death is a mighty abstraction, like Night, or Space, or Time. He is an ugly customer, who will not be invited to supper, or to sit for his picture. He is with us and about us, but we do not see him. He stalks on before us, and we do not mind him; he follows us close behind, and we do not turn to look back at him. We do not see him making faces at us in our lifetime, nor perceive him afterwards sitting in mock-majesty, a twin-skeleton, beside us, tickling our bare ribs and staring into our hollow eye-balls! Chaucer knew this. He makes three riotous companions go in search of Death to kill him. They meet with an old man whom they reproach with his age, and ask why he does not die, to which he answers thus:

'Ne Deth, alas! he will not han my lif.
Thus walke I like a restless caitiff,

And on the ground, which is my modres gate,
I knocke with my staf, erlich and late.

I say to hire," Leve mother, let me in.
Lo, how I vanish, flesh and blood and skin.
Alas! when shall my bones ben at reste?
Mother, when you wolde I changen my cheste,

That in my chambre longe time hath be,
Ye, for an heren cloute to wrap in me."
But yet to me she will not don that grace
For which ful pale and welked is my face.'

They then ask the old man where they shall find out Death to kill him, and he sends them on an errand which ends in the death of all three. We hear no more of him, but it is Death that they have encountered.

The interval between Chaucer and Spenser is long and dreary. There is nothing to fill up the chasm but the names of Occleve, 'ancient Gower,' Lydgate, Wyatt, Surrey, and Sackville. Spenser flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir John Davies into Ireland, of which he has left behind him some tender recollections in his description of the bog of Allan, and a record in an ably written paper, containing observations on the state of that country and the means of improving it, which remain in full force to the present day.1 Spenser died at an obscure inn in London, it is supposed in distressed circumstances. The

1 This was written in 1818, but unfortunately is not an obsolete remark in 1869. Mr. Richard Morris, in his new edition of Spenser's works, has, by a collation of MSS. copies of the poet's treatise on Ireland, restored the text to something more like its original purity. — ED.

treatment he received from Burleigh is well known. Spenser, as well as Chaucer, was engaged in active life; but the genius of his poetry was not active, it is inspired by the love of ease and relaxation from all the cares and business of life. Of all the poets he is the most poetical. Though much later than Chaucer, his obligations to preceding writers were less. He has in some measure borrowed the plan of his poem (as a number of distinct narratives) from Ariosto; but he has engrafted upon it an exuberance of fancy and an endless voluptuousness of sentiment which are not to be found in the Italian writer. Further, Spenser is even more of an inventor in the subject-matter. There is an originality, richness, and variety in his allegorical personages and fictions which almost vies with the splendour of the ancient mythology. If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance, Spenser's poetry is all fairy-land. In Ariosto we walk upon the ground, in a company gay, fantastic, and adventurous enough. In Spenser we wander in another world, among ideal beings. The poet takes and lays us in the lap of a lovelier Nature, by the sound of softer streams, among greener hills and fairer valleys. He paints Nature, not as we find it, but as we expected to find it, and