a true English love-story, and a real sorrow. To his maturer years are ascribed the Troilus and Creseide, the Canterbury Tales, the House of Fame, and the Legend of Good Women. In many of these, the subject, form, or metres, have been distinctly acquired in the course of foreign travel or foreign reading. The stories of Troilus and Creseide and the Knight's Tale, and the entire plan of the Canterbury Tales, were taken from Boccaccio; the story told by the Nuns' priest, of the poor widow and her cock " Chaunticlere," is borrowed from a fable of Marie, a French poetess, and occurs originally in an old French metrical romance called Roman de Renart; and the Franklin relates the story of the faithful Dorigen in her castle among the black rocks of Bretagne, which he had heard in a lay of the "olde gentil Bretons." The Wife of Bath is indignant with Jankin for poring over books of invective against women and marriage, such as abounded in Chaucer's age. Her story, which follows the voluble account of her married life, occurs also in Gower's Confessio Amantis, and is found in the Gesta Romanorum, a collection of mediaval fables and anecdotes. Indeed, the poems of Chaucer represent their author as a man of wide and varied reading of that kind, romantic, gay, and curious, which was most serviceable to his genius, and which was only to be met with in the literatures of foreign countries. The work upon which his fame chiefly rests is the Canterbury Tales. They occupied, doubtless, a considerable portion of his life; but Mr. Furnivall places the central period of their production in 1386. This was the year in which Chaucer, aged "forty years and upwards,” sat in Parliament at Westminster, from October 1st to November 1st, as one of the Knights of the Shire for Kent. At this date the old king had been dead for nine years, and Richard and the country were still ruled by Edward's sons. The peasantry had failed in 1381 to obtain from the youthful king or the Parliament enfranchisement from serfdom. Religious reform had been checked by the death of Wycliffe in 1384. But the English Bible, which Wycliffe had bequeathed to the English nation, was doing its work, in spite of all obstructions, in favour of both social and intellectual freedom. This may be regarded as the date at

which Chaucer had reached the summit of his worldly fortunes. Until then he had enjoyed what was probably regarded at that period as a large yearly income, derived from a variety of sources, pensions and annuities to himself and his wife from the king and John of Gaunt; wages received from time to time for state services; and salary paid to him as Comptroller of Customs, etc., in the port of London. After 1386, these 'means of livelihood being curtailed, Chaucer fell by degrees into extreme poverty, and it was not until Henry IV.'s accession in 1399 that his pensions were renewed. This was only one year before his death. The Canterbury Tales were at that date still in progress, and a number of tales, and the Epilogue, remained unwritten when Chaucer died at Westminster in 1400.

Chaucer wrote in almost all the metres till then in use, and did great service to our later literature by educating the national ear to the enjoyment of a finer and more varied rhythmic music than it had yet heard. The eight-syllabled rhyming measure was common to many French romances. It was employed by Chaucer in the Romaunt of the Rose, the Death of Blanche the Duchess, and the House of Fame, by Barbour in the Bruce, and by Gower in the Confessio Amantis. Chaucer's other measures consist, with a few unimportant exceptions, of ten-syllabled lines, arranged either in rhymed couplets, as in the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, and in many of the tales themselves, or in the stanza known as "Rhyme-royal," or Chaucer's stanza," used in Troilus and Creseide.

FROM THE DEATH OF BLANCHE THE DUCHESS.

THE DREAM-CHAMBER.

Me thought thus that it was May,

And in the dawning there I lay.
Me met1 thus in my bed all naked,
And looked forth; for I was waked
With smalle fowlès a great heap,
That had affrayed2 me out of my sleep

1 Dreamt.

2 Startled.

Through noise and sweetness of their song.
And, as me met, they sat among
Upon my chamber-roof without,
Upon the tiles over-all about;
And everich songe1 in his wise
The mostè solempnè3 servise
By note that ever man, I trow,
Had heard; for some of them song low,
Some high, and all of one accord.
To tellè shortly at one word,
Was never heard so sweet a steven1
But it had been a thing of Heaven.
So merry a sound, so sweet entunes,
That, certes, for the town of Tunis
I n' old but I had heard them sing;
For all my chamber gan to ring
Through singing of their armony.
For instrument nor melody

Was nowhere heard yet half so sweet
Nor of accordè half so meet;

For there was none of them that feigned
To sing; for each of them him pained
To find out merry crafty notes;
They ne spared not their throats.

And, sooth to sayn,6 my chamber was
Full well depainted, and with glass
Were all the windows well y-glased
Full clear, and not an hole y-crased,"
That to behold it was great joy.
For wholly all the story of Troy
Was in the glasing y-wrought thus,-
Of Hector and of King Priamus,
Of Achilles and of King Laomedon,
And eke of Medea and of Jason,
Of Paris, Helen, and of Lavine.
And all the walls with colours fine
Were painted, bothè text and glose,8
And all the Romaunce of the Rose.

My windows weren shut each one,
And through the glass the sonnè shone
Upon my beddè with bright beams,
With many gladde gildy streams.

1 Each one sang.

2 Old form of its.

5 Except.

6 To speak the truth.

4 Sound.

3 Joyful.

7 Broken. 8 Both with text and gloss (referring to the old glossed MSS.)

And eke the welkin was so fair;
Blue, bright, clear was the air,
And full attemper,1 forsooth, it was,
For neither too cold ne hot it was,
Ne in all the welkin was a cloud.

1 Temperate.

3 Ne wot.

THE DREAM.

And as I lay thus, wonder loud
Methought I heard a hunter blow,
To assay his horn, and for to know
Whether it were clear or hoarse of soun.
And I heard going both up and down
Men, horse, houndes, and other thing,
And all men speakè of hunting,

How they would slee the hart with strength,
And how the hart had upon length
So much embosed,2-I n'ot3 now what.
Anon right when I heardè that,
How that they would on hunting gon,1
I was right glad, and up anon;
Took my horse, and forth I went
Out of my chamber.

I never stent

Till I come to the field without.
There overtook I a great rout
Of hunters and eke foresters,
And many relays and limers,7
And hied them to the forest fast
And I with them. So at the last
I asked one lad, a limere ;8

"Say, fellow, who shall huntè here?"
Quoth I. And he answered again;
"Sir, the Emperor Octavien,"
Quoth he, "and is here fast by."

A God's half, in good time,” quoth I;

"Go we fast!" and gan to ride.

When we came to the forest side,

Every man did right anon

As10 to hunting fell to done.

The maister hunt, anon, foot hotell

With a great horn blew three mote12

6 Fresh horses.

9 With God's favour.

At the uncoupling of his houndis.
Within a while the hartè found is ;
Y-hallowed1 and re-chased1 fast
Long timè; and so, at the last,
This harte rused1 and stole away
Fro all the hounds a privy way.
The hounds had overshot him all,
And were on a default y-fall ;2
Therewith the hunter wonder fast
Blew a forloin3 at the last.

I was go walked fro my tree;
And as I went there came by me
A whelp, that fawned me as I stood,
That had y-followed, and coud no good.
It came, and crept to me as low
Right as it haddè me y-know,

Held down his head and joined his ears
And laid all smoothè down his hairs.
I would have caught it; and anon
It fleddè, and was fro me gone.
As I him followed, and it forth went :
Down by a flowery green it went,
Full thick of grass, full soft and sweet,
With flowers fele fair under feet,
And little used it seemèd thus ;
For both Flora and Zephyrus,
They two that maken flowers grow,
Had made their dwelling there, I trow.
For it was on to beholds

As though the earth envyè wold9

To be gayer than the heaven,

To have mo flowers suchè seven10
As in the welkin starrès be.

It had forgot the poverty

That winter through his coldè morrows
Had made it suffer, and his11 sorrows,—
All was forgotten; and that was seen,
For all the wood was waxen green;
Sweetness of dew had made it wax. 12

1 Terms used in hunting.

6 Many.

2 Fallen on a false scent. 4 As if it had known me. 7 The flowery green. 8 To look on.

3 A hunting term signifying that the game is far off. 5 Quickly. 9 Would aspire. 10 Seven times more flowers than there are stars in the welkin. 12 Grow.

11 Its.