1“Dictionnaire Languédocien-françois,” par l’Abbé de Sauvages. “Franchimanest formé de l’Allemand, et signifiehomme de France.” The Abbé wrote in 1756, when he did not care to translate too literally; the Frank-man meant theFree man, for the Franks called themselves so, as “the free people.” This learned Gascon, in his zeal for theLangue d’oc, explains, “Parla Franchiman,” means “parler avec l’accent (bon ou mauvais) des provinces du nord du royaume:” an insinuation that the French accent might not be positively the better one. The good Abbé had such a perfect conviction of the superiority of his Languedocians, that he would have no other servants not only for their superior integrity, but for that of their language.2“Palgrave,” 174. They also received some in exchange, many words in Cæsar being British.—Hearne’s “Leland’s Itinerary,” vi.3In that very curious “Logonomia Anglica” of the learned Alexander Gill—the father, for his son of the same name succeeded him as master of St. Paul’s—we have the orthoepy of our dialects given with great exactness. This work was produced about 1619, and we find the peculiar provincial pronunciation of the present day. A work so curious in the history of our vernacular tongue should not have been composed in Latin. Mr. Guest has carefully translated a judicious extract,— “History of English Rhythms,” ii, 204.4The late Dr. Valpy told me that Mr. Walker, the orthoepist, had so intimate a knowledge of the provincial peculiarities of pronunciation, that in a private course of reading at Oxford with twelve undergraduates, he told each of them the respective place of their birth or early education.5Tooke’s “Diversions of Purley,” p. 141.6In “Anecdotes of the English Language,” by Samuel Pegge, an antiquary, who called himself “an old modern,” the reader will find several curious exemplifications of the vulgar dialect, sometimes fancifully, but often satisfactorily ascertained. It is amusing to detect what we callvulgarismscomposing the language of Chaucer and Shakspeare, and even our Bibles and Liturgies.7Raywas the first who collected “Local Words,North CountryandSouthandEast Country.” “The Exmoor Scolding and Courtship” is an authentic specimen of theExmoor Language. The words were collected by a blind fiddler, and the dialogues were written by a clergyman with the fiddler’s assistance, before 1725. We have a glossary of Lancashire words and phrases, contained in the humorous works of Tim Bobbin. Other county glossarists have appeared within the last fifteen years:—Brockett’s“North Country Words;” “Suffolk Words and Phrases,” by MajorMoor; Mr.Roger Wilbraham’s“Attempt at a Glossary of Cheshire Words;” Mr.Jennings’“Dialect of the West of England,” particularly the Somersetshire words; Mr.Brittonon those of Wiltshire; and the Rev.Joseph Hunterhas given “The Hallamshire Glossary,” to which are appended “Words used in Halifax,” by the Rev.John Watson, and also an addition to the “Yorkshire Words,” byThoresby, the Leeds antiquary.An investigation of the origin, nature, and history ofDialectswas proposed by the late Dr.Boucherfor a complete glossary of all the dialects of the kingdom. But these precious stores, not only of the vocables but of the domestic history of England—its manners, occupations, amusements, diet, dress, buildings, and other miscellaneous topics—rich in all the affluence of the laborious readings of more years than the siege of Troy, was but bread cast away on the waters, and was never given to the public for want of public support. After the author’s death, two eminent editors zealously resumed the work, which was already prepared; but the public remained so little instructed of its value, it suddenly ceased! Works of national utility should be consecrated as national property, and means should be always ready to avert such a calamity to the literature of England, and to the information of Englishmen, as was the suppression of the labours ofBoucher.
1“Dictionnaire Languédocien-françois,” par l’Abbé de Sauvages. “Franchimanest formé de l’Allemand, et signifiehomme de France.” The Abbé wrote in 1756, when he did not care to translate too literally; the Frank-man meant theFree man, for the Franks called themselves so, as “the free people.” This learned Gascon, in his zeal for theLangue d’oc, explains, “Parla Franchiman,” means “parler avec l’accent (bon ou mauvais) des provinces du nord du royaume:” an insinuation that the French accent might not be positively the better one. The good Abbé had such a perfect conviction of the superiority of his Languedocians, that he would have no other servants not only for their superior integrity, but for that of their language.
2“Palgrave,” 174. They also received some in exchange, many words in Cæsar being British.—Hearne’s “Leland’s Itinerary,” vi.
3In that very curious “Logonomia Anglica” of the learned Alexander Gill—the father, for his son of the same name succeeded him as master of St. Paul’s—we have the orthoepy of our dialects given with great exactness. This work was produced about 1619, and we find the peculiar provincial pronunciation of the present day. A work so curious in the history of our vernacular tongue should not have been composed in Latin. Mr. Guest has carefully translated a judicious extract,— “History of English Rhythms,” ii, 204.
4The late Dr. Valpy told me that Mr. Walker, the orthoepist, had so intimate a knowledge of the provincial peculiarities of pronunciation, that in a private course of reading at Oxford with twelve undergraduates, he told each of them the respective place of their birth or early education.
5Tooke’s “Diversions of Purley,” p. 141.
6In “Anecdotes of the English Language,” by Samuel Pegge, an antiquary, who called himself “an old modern,” the reader will find several curious exemplifications of the vulgar dialect, sometimes fancifully, but often satisfactorily ascertained. It is amusing to detect what we callvulgarismscomposing the language of Chaucer and Shakspeare, and even our Bibles and Liturgies.
7Raywas the first who collected “Local Words,North CountryandSouthandEast Country.” “The Exmoor Scolding and Courtship” is an authentic specimen of theExmoor Language. The words were collected by a blind fiddler, and the dialogues were written by a clergyman with the fiddler’s assistance, before 1725. We have a glossary of Lancashire words and phrases, contained in the humorous works of Tim Bobbin. Other county glossarists have appeared within the last fifteen years:—Brockett’s“North Country Words;” “Suffolk Words and Phrases,” by MajorMoor; Mr.Roger Wilbraham’s“Attempt at a Glossary of Cheshire Words;” Mr.Jennings’“Dialect of the West of England,” particularly the Somersetshire words; Mr.Brittonon those of Wiltshire; and the Rev.Joseph Hunterhas given “The Hallamshire Glossary,” to which are appended “Words used in Halifax,” by the Rev.John Watson, and also an addition to the “Yorkshire Words,” byThoresby, the Leeds antiquary.
An investigation of the origin, nature, and history ofDialectswas proposed by the late Dr.Boucherfor a complete glossary of all the dialects of the kingdom. But these precious stores, not only of the vocables but of the domestic history of England—its manners, occupations, amusements, diet, dress, buildings, and other miscellaneous topics—rich in all the affluence of the laborious readings of more years than the siege of Troy, was but bread cast away on the waters, and was never given to the public for want of public support. After the author’s death, two eminent editors zealously resumed the work, which was already prepared; but the public remained so little instructed of its value, it suddenly ceased! Works of national utility should be consecrated as national property, and means should be always ready to avert such a calamity to the literature of England, and to the information of Englishmen, as was the suppression of the labours ofBoucher.
MANDEVILLE; OUR FIRST TRAVELLER.
Mandevillewas the Bruce of the fourteenth century, as often calumniated and even ridiculed. The most ingenuous of voyagers has been condemned as an idle fabulist; the most cautious, as credulous to fatuity; and the volume of a genuine writer, which has been translated into every European language, has been formally ejected from the collection of authentic travels. His truest vindication will be found by comprehending him; and to be acquainted with his character, we must seek for him in his own age.
At a period when Europe could hardly boast of three leisurely wayfarers stealing over the face of the universe; when the Orient still remained but a Land of Faery, and “the map of the world” was yet unfinished; at a time when it required a whole life to traverse a space which three years might now terminate, SirJohn Mandevilleset forth to enter unheard-of regions. Returning home, after an absence of more than thirty years, he discovered a “mervayle” strange as those which he loved to record—that he was utterly forgotten by his friends!
He had returned “maugre himself,” for four-and-thirty years had not satiated his curiosity; his noble career had submitted to ordinary infirmities—to gout and the aching of his limbs; these, he lamentably tells, had “defined the end of my labour against my will, God knoweth!” The knight in this pilgrimage of life seems to have contracted a duty with God, that while he had breath he should peregrinate, and, having nothing to do at home, be honourable in his generation by his enterprise over the whole earth. And earnestly he prays “to all thereadersandhearersof my book,” (for “hearers” were then more numerous than “readers,”) “to say for him aPater-Nosterwith anAve-Maria.” He wrote for “solace in his wretched rest;” but the old passion, the devotion of his soul, finally triumphed over all arthritic pangs. The globe evidently was his true home; and thus Liege, and not London, received the bones of an unwearied traveller, whose thoughts were ever passing beyond the equator.
With us, to whom an excursion to “the Londe of Promyssioun or of Behest” has sometimes arisen out of a morning engagement—we who impelled by steam go “whither we list,” with those billets which might serve as letters of recommendation in the steppes of Tartary,—we may wonder how our knight, who would not win his way by the arts of commerce, like his predecessor Marco Polo, bore up his chivalry; for in his traversing he had nothing to offer but his honourable sword, and probably his medical science, which might be sometimes as perilous. But difficulties insuperable to us could not enter into the emotions, nor were they the accidents which impeded the traveller, “who, on the day of St. Michael, in the year of our Lord 1322, passed the sea, and went the way to Hierusalem, and to behold the mervayles of Inde.” A deep religious emotion, an obscure indefinite curiosity, and a courageous decision to wander wherever the step of man could press on the globe, to tell the world “the mervayles” it unconsciously holds within its orb, were the inspiration of a journey which stood next in solemnity to a departure to the world of spirits. Sir John had prepared himself, for he was learned not only in languages, but in authentic romance, and in romantic history; and he honestly resolved to tell all “the mervayles” which he had seen, and those which he had not; and these last were not the least.
Sir John Mandeville’s probity remains unimpeached; for the accuracy of whatever he relates from his own personal observation has been confirmed by subsequent travellers. On his return to Europe he hastened to Rome to submit his book to the Pope, and to “his wise council,” and “those learned men of all nations who dwell at that court.” The volume was critically reviewed; and his holiness “ratified and confirmed my book in all points,” by referring to an account in Latin: this account was probably written by some missionary; Rubriquis had been dispatched on an unsuccessful mission to Christianize the great Khan of Tartary in 1230; or it was the writings of Marco Polo, which could not be unknown at Rome. In that day all real information was consigned to the fugitive manuscript, partially known, and often subject to the interpolations and capricious alterations of its possessor, and what sometimes occurred, to the silent plagiarisms of otherwriters—of which even Mandeville himself has been suspected.
The Pope decreed that not only all that Mandeville related was veracious, but that the Latin book which his holiness possessed containedmuch more, and from whence the Mappa Mundi had been made. Indeed Mandeville has himself told us that he wrote only from his recollections as they “would come into his mind;” these necessarily were often broken and obscure. Some “mervayles” remained unrecorded, and hereafter were to be “more plainly told;” but I fear these are lost for us.
In this “true” book we find many things very untrue, but we may doubt whether any in that day were as positive in this opinion. The author himself designed no imposition on his readers; he tells us what he believed; part of which he had seen and the rest he had heard, and sometimes had transcribed from sources deemed by him authentic. Who can suspect the knight of spotless honour, and whose piety would not relinquish hisAve-Mariasfor a dominion? Having fought during two years under the ensign of the Sultan of Egypt, and being offered in marriage the Sultan’s daughter and a province, he refused both, when his Christianity was to be exchanged for Mahometanism.
This was a period when the marvellous never weakened the authenticity of a tale. The mighty tome of Pliny, that awful repository of all the errors of antiquity, and other writers of equal name, detail prodigies and legends, and so do the Fathers. Who would not have rejoiced to transcribe Pliny or St. Austen? Who imagined that all the delectable adventures of the romances, over which they passed many a dreamy day, with the very names of the personages and the very places where they occurred, were solely chimeras of the brain? The learned Mandeville was evidently not one of these sceptics: for he observes, that “the trees of the sun and of the moon are well known to have spoken to King Alisaundre, and warned him of his death.” The unquestioned fact is in that famed romance; and others might be referred to if we required additional authority. I have read of these talking trees of the sun and moon inGuarino detto il Meschino, who lived a year among them to learn his own genealogy, and then wasgraceless enough to laugh at these timber-oracles. Mandeville forgot not in the island of Lango, not distant from Crete, the legend of the unfortunate “Lady of the Land,” who remained a dragoness, because no one had the hardihood to kiss her lips to disenchant her. He tells likewise of the Faery Lady who guarded the sparrow-hawk; whoever ventured to assist that lady during three days and nights, was rewarded by the boon of having whatever he wished. A king who, not wanting anything, had the audacity to wish to have the lady herself, was fairly warned that he did not know what he asked, as happens to the reckless; but, persisting in his absolute will, he incurred the curse of perpetual war to the last of his race!
We trace such tales among the romances, with all their circumstances; and some may have reached the listener from the Arabian tale-teller. The monsters he describes Mandeville never invented; these, human and animal, he gave as some of his predecessors had done, from Pliny, or Ælian, or Ctesias,1who have sent them down to be engraven in the Great Nuremberg Chronicle, and adorned in the immortal page of Shakspeare. Marco Polo had noticed that portentous bird which could lift an elephant by its claws; he does not tell us that he had seen any bird of this wing, but we all know where it is to be found—in the Arabian Tales! Sir Thomas Browne accuses Mandeville ofconfirmingthe fabulous accounts of India by Ctesias; but, in truth, our knight does not “confirm these refuted notions of antiquity;” he only repeats them, with the prelude of “men seyn.” No one was more honest than Mandeville, for when he had to describe the locality of paradise, he fairly acknowledges that “he cannot speak of it properly, for I was not there; it is far beyond, but as I haveheard sayof wise men, it ison the highest part of the earth, nigh to the circle of the moon.” However, he has contrived to describe the wall, which is not of stone, but of moss, with but a single entrance, “closed with brennynge fyre;” and though no mortal could enter, yet it was known that there was a well in paradise, whence flowed the four floods that run through the earth. “Wise men,” he tells us, said this; some of these “wise men” were the Rabbins; and three centuries afterwards, the accounts of paradise, by a finer genius than Mandeville, the illustrious Rawleigh, remained much the same.
To explain some of those incredible incidents which occurred to the author himself might exercise some critical ingenuity. Mandeville’s adventure in “the Valley Perilous,” when he saw the Devil’s head with eyes of flame, great plenty of gold and silver, which he was too frightened to touch, and, moreover, a multitude of dead bodies, as if a battle had been fought there, might probably be resolved into some volcanic eruption, the rest supplied by his own horrifying imagination; for he tells, with great simplicity, “I was more devout then than ever I was before or after, and all for the dread of fiends thatI saw in divers figures;” that is, at theshapesof the disparted rocks. The travellers were beaten down by tempests, winds, and thunder, which raged in this pent-up vale. As he marks the locality, the spot may yet be ascertained.
There was no imposition practised in all such legends; it is we who are startled by the supernatural in a personal narrative; but in the fourteenth century the more wonderful the tale, the more authentic it appeared, as it sunk into the softest and richest moulds of the most germinating imagination. The readers, or the hearers, were as well prepared to believe, as the writers prompt to gather up, their fictions. Collections of “Mirabilia Mundi,” “Wonders,” were a fashionable title applied to any single country, as well as to the world—to England or Ireland, to the Holy Land or the Indies. The “Mirabilia” might be the running title for a whole system of geography. The age of imagination has long been unfurnished of all its ingenious garniture, and yet we still catch at some evanescent hour of fancy susceptible of thoseancient delights. We have lost something for which we have no substitute. Would not the modern novelist rejoice in the privilege of intermingling supernatural inventions to break the level of his every-day incidents and his trivial passions so soon forgotten? But that glowing day has set, leaving none of its ethereal hues in our cold twilight. Mandeville may still be read for those wild arabesques which so long unjustly proved fatal to his authentic narrative. His simplicity often warrants its truth; he assures us that Jerusalem is placed in the middle of the earth, because when he stuck his staff in the ground, exactly at noon, it cast no shadow; and having ascertained the spherical form of the globe, he marvels how the antipodes, whose feet are right upwards towards us, yet do not fall into the firmament! When he describes the elegant ornaments of “a vine made of gold that goeth all about the hall, with many bunches of grapes, some white, and the red made of rubies,” he tells what he had seen in some divan; but when he records that “the Emperor hath in his chamber a pillar of gold, in which is a ruby and carbuncle a foot long, which lighteth all his chamber by night,” it may be questioned whether this carbuncle be anything more than an Arabian fancy, a tale to which he had listened. Some of his ocular marvels have been confirmed by no questionable authority. Mandeville’s description of a magical exhibition before the Khan of Tartary is a remarkable instance of the strange optical illusions of the scenical art, and the adroitness of the Indian jugglers—a similar scene appears in a recent version of the autobiography of the Emperor Akber. What seemed the spells of magic to the Europeans of that age, and of which some marvellous descriptions were brought to Europe by the crusaders or the pilgrims, and embellished the romances, our exquisite masques and our grand pantomimes have realized. Three centuries were to elapse ere the court of England could rival the necromancy of the court of Tartary.
Mandeville first composed his travels in the Latin language, which he afterwards translated into French, and lastly out of French into English, that “every man of my nation may understand it.” We see the progressive estimation of the languages by this curious statementwhich Mandeville has himself given. The author first secured the existence of his work in a language familiar to the whole European world; the French was addressed to the politer circles of society; and the last language the author cared about was the vernacular idiom, which, at that time the least regarded, required all the patriotism of the writer in this devotion of his pen.
Copies of these travels were multiplied till they almost equalled in number those of the Scriptures; now we may smile at the “mervayles” of the fourteenth century, and of Mandeville, but it was the spirit of these intrepid and credulous minds which has marched us through the universe. To the children of imagination perhaps we owe the circumnavigation of the globe and the universal intercourse of nations.2
1Ctesias, a physician in high repute at the Persian Court, and often referred to by Diodorus. He has been universally condemned as a fabulous writer, to which charge his descriptions of some animals was liable. But a naturalist of the highest order, the famousCuvier, has perhaps done an act of justice to this fabricator of animals. Ctesias reported the mythological creations which he had witnessed in hieroglyphical representations as actual living animals. It is glorious to remove from the darkened name of a writer, unjustly condemned, the obloquy of two thousand years.—“Theory of the Earth,” translated by Professor Jameson, 76.2Of modern editions of Mandeville’s “Travels in England,” that of 1725, printed by Bowyer, is a large octavo. There are numerous manuscripts of Mandeville in existence. An edition collated might discover either omissions or interpolations. This might serve as the labour of an amateur. Mandeville has not had the fortune of his predecessor Marco Polo, to have met with a Marsden, learned in geographical and literary illustration.Long subsequently to the time that this article was written, this edition of 1725 has been reprinted, with the advantage of a bibliographical introduction by Mr. Halliwell, and a collation of texts. [It was published in 1839, in an octavo volume of 326 pages, with illustrative engravings from manuscripts and printed books.]
1Ctesias, a physician in high repute at the Persian Court, and often referred to by Diodorus. He has been universally condemned as a fabulous writer, to which charge his descriptions of some animals was liable. But a naturalist of the highest order, the famousCuvier, has perhaps done an act of justice to this fabricator of animals. Ctesias reported the mythological creations which he had witnessed in hieroglyphical representations as actual living animals. It is glorious to remove from the darkened name of a writer, unjustly condemned, the obloquy of two thousand years.—“Theory of the Earth,” translated by Professor Jameson, 76.
2Of modern editions of Mandeville’s “Travels in England,” that of 1725, printed by Bowyer, is a large octavo. There are numerous manuscripts of Mandeville in existence. An edition collated might discover either omissions or interpolations. This might serve as the labour of an amateur. Mandeville has not had the fortune of his predecessor Marco Polo, to have met with a Marsden, learned in geographical and literary illustration.
Long subsequently to the time that this article was written, this edition of 1725 has been reprinted, with the advantage of a bibliographical introduction by Mr. Halliwell, and a collation of texts. [It was published in 1839, in an octavo volume of 326 pages, with illustrative engravings from manuscripts and printed books.]
CHAUCER.
Inthe chronology of our poetical collectors,Gowertakes precedence ofChaucerunjustly, for Chaucer had composed many of his works in the only language which he has written before the elder claimed the honours of an English vernacular poet, and, probably, then only emulating the success of him who first set the glorious example. Nor less in the rank of poetry must Chaucer hold the precedence. The first true English poet is Chaucer; and notwithstanding that the rhythmical cadences of his unequal metre are now lost for us, Chaucer is the first modeller of the heroic couplet and other varieties of English versification. By the felicity of his poetic character, Chaucer was not only the parent, but the master, of those two schools of poetry which still divide its votaries by an idle rivalry, and which have been traced, like our architecture, the one to a Gothic origin, and the other to a classical model.
The personal history ofChaucer, poetical and political, might have been susceptible of considerable development had the poet himself written it, for his biographers had no life to record. Speght, one of the early editors, in the good method of that day, having set down a variety of heads, including all that we might wish to know of any man, when this methodiser of commonplaces came to fill up these well-planned divisions concerning Chaucer, he could only disprove what was accepted, and supply only what is uncertain. The “Life of Chaucer” by Godwin is a theoretical life, and, as much as relates to Chaucer himself, a single fatal fact, when all was finished, dispersed the baseless vision.1The wholerested on the unauthenticated and contradictory statements of Leland, who, writing a century after the times of Chaucer, hastily collected unsubstantial traditions, and, what was less pardonable in Leland, fell into some anachronisms.
This defective chronology in the life of the poet has involved the more important subject of the chronology of his works. Posterity may be little concerned in the dates of his birth and his burial—his unknown parentage—his descriptive name—and, above all, his suspicious shield, which the heralds opined must have been blazoned out of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth propositions of the first book of Euclid, from the poet’s love of geometry, or, more obviously, from having no coat-of-arms to show of “far more ancient antiquity.” But posterity would have been interested in the history of the genius of Chaucer, who having long paced in a lengthened circuit of verbal version and servile imitation, passed through some remarkable transitions, kindling the cold ashes of translation into the fire of invention; from cloudy allegory breaking forth into the sunshine of the loveliest landscape-painting; and from the amatory romance gliding into that vein of humour and satire which in his old age poured forth a new creation. All this he might himself have told, or Gower might have revealed, had the elder bard who lauded the lays and “ditties” of the youth of “the Clerk of Venus” loved him as well in his old age. But elegant literature, as distinguished from scholastic, was then without price or reward. The few men of genius who have written at this early period are only known to us by their writings, and probably were more known to their contemporaries by the station which they may have occupied, than by that which they maintain with posterity.
By royal patents and grants to the poet, we trace hisearly life at court, his various appointments, and his honourable missions to Genoa and to France—we must not add as confidently his visit to Petrarch.
Chaucer, in his political life, was bound up with the party of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and, by a congenial spirit, with the novel doctrines of his friend, Dr. Wickliffe. The sister of his lady finally became the third Duchess of Lancaster, and the family alliance strengthened the political bond. How the Lancastrian exploded in the poet, something we know, but little we comprehend; and those who have attempted to lift the veil have not congratulated themselves on their success. The poet himself has not entrusted his secret to posterity, except, as is usual with poets, by eloquent lamentations. The exposition of a political transaction is never without some valued results; and though deprived of names and dates, we are not without some dim lights: the palpable truth may not be obvious, but it may happen that we may stumble on it.
Chaucer himself has stated, “Inmy youthI was drawn in to be assenting to certainconjurationsand othergreat matters of ruling of citizens, and those things have been mydrawers in and excitersin the mattersso painted and coloured, thatfirstto me seemed thennoble and glorious for all the people.”
Here the tale is plain, for this is the language of one who early in life had engaged in some popular scheme, and these early indications of the temper of the Wickliffite or the Lancastrian, or both, had subsequently led to some more perilous attempts. They were, like all reforms, something “noble and glorious for the people,” and as sometimes happens among reformers, whatat firstappeared to promise so well, ended in disappointment and “penance in a dark prison.”
The locality of this patriotic act was the city of London. He alludes to “free elections by great clamours of much people,” for great disease of misgovernment in the hands of “torcentious citizens.” When the fatal day arrived that he openly joined with a party for “the people,” against those citizens whom he has so awfully denounced, it is evident, though we have no means to discriminate factionsin an age of factions,2that he and his “conjurors” discovered that “all the people” were not of one mind. This votary or this victim of reform suddenly flings his contempt at “the hatred of the mighty senators of London or of its commonalty,” and closes with a painful remembrance of “the janglings ofTHE SHEEPY PEOPLE!” The style of Chaucer bears the stamp of passionate emotions; words of dimension, or of poignant sarcasm. The “torcentious citizens” is an awful bolt, and “the sheepy people” is sufficiently picturesque.
In dismay the whole party took flight. Chaucer, in Zealand, exhausted his means to supply the wants of his political associates, till he himself found that even the partnership of common misery does not always preserve men from ingratitude. Returning home, potent persecutors cast him into a dungeon. Was the Duke of Lancaster absent, or the Duke of Gloucester in power? Let us observe that in all these dark events the loyalty of the poet is never impeached, for Chaucer enjoyed without interruption the favour of both his sovereigns, Edward III. and Richard II.; and we discover that once when dismissed from office, Richard allowed him to serve by deputy, which was evidence that Chaucer had never been dismissed by the king himself. The whole transaction, whatever it was, was a political movement between two factions. Chaucer indeed pleads that whatever he had done was under the control of others, himself being but “the servant of his sovereign.” At that period the factions in the state were more potent than the monarch. In the convulsive administration of a youthful prince,they who oppose the court are not necessarily opposing the sovereign.
It was behind the bars of a gloomy window in the Tower, where “every hour appeared to be a hundred winters,” that Chaucer, recent from exile, and sore from persecution, was reminded of a work popular in those days, and which had been composed in a dungeon—“The Consolations of Philosophy,” by Boethius—and which he himself had formerly translated. He composed his “Testament of Love,” substituting for the severity of an abstract being the more genial inspiration of love itself. But the fiction was a reality, and the griefs were deeper than the fancies. In this chronicle of the heart the poet mourns over “the delicious hours he was wont to enjoy,” of his “richesse,” and now of his destitution—the vain regret of his abused confidence—the treachery of all that “summer-brood” who never approach the lost friend in “the winter hour” of an iron solitude. The poet energetically describes his condition; there he sate “witless, thoughtful; and sightless, looking.” This work the poet has composed in prose; but in the leisure of a prison the diction became more poetical in thoughts and in words than the language at that time had yet attained to, and for those who read the black letter it still retains its impressive eloquence.
But this apology which Chaucer has left of his conduct in this political transaction has incurred a fatal censure. “Never,” observes Mr. Campbell, “was an obscure affair conveyed in a more obscure apology.” His political integrity has been freely suspected. Chaucer has even been struck by the brilliant arrow of the Viscount de Chateaubriand. “Courtisan, Lancastrien, Wickliffist, infidèle à ses convictions, traitre à son parti, tantôt banni, tantôt voyageur, tantôt en faveur, tantôt en disgrace.” No, thou eloquent Gaul! Chaucer never was out of favour, however he may have been more than once dismissed from his office; nor can we know whether the poet was ever “infidèle à ses convictions.”
Obscure must ever remain the tale of justification in a political transaction which terminated on the part of the apologist by revealing “disclosures for the peace of the kingdom,” denied by those whom they implicated, thoughtheir truth was offered to be maintained by the accuser, in the custom of the times, by single combat; and by confessions which acknowledge errors of judgment, but not of intention; and by penitence, which, if the patriot designed what was “glorious to all the people,” he should never have repented of.
This obscure apology conceals the agony of conflicting emotions—indignation at ungrateful associates, and a base desertion of ancient friends, who were plotting against him. Whether Chaucer was desirous of burying in obscurity a story of torturous details, or one too involved in confused motives for any man to tell with the precision of a simple statement, we know of no evidence which can enable us to decide with any certainty on an affair which no one pretends to understand. Chaucer might have been the scapegoat of the sovereign, or the champion of the people. We can rather decide on his calamity than his conduct. Many are the causes which may dissolve the bonds of faithless “conjurations;” and it is not always he who abandons a party who is to be criminated by political tergiversation.
The circumstances of Chaucer’s life had combined with his versatile powers. He had mingled with the world’s affairs both at home and abroad: accomplished in manners, and intimately connected with a splendid court, Chaucer was at once the philosopher who had surveyed mankind in their widest sphere, the poet who haunted the solitudes of nature, and the elegant courtier whose opulent tastes are often discovered in the graceful pomp of his descriptions. It was no inferior combination of observation and sympathy which could bring together into one company the many-coloured conditions and professions of society, delineated with pictorial force, and dramatised by poetic conception, reflecting themselves in the tale which seemed most congruous to their humours. The perfect identity of these assembled characters, after the lapse of near five centuries, make us familiar with the domestic habits and modes of thinking of a most interesting period in our country, not inspected by the narrow details of the antiquarian microscope, but in the broad mirror reflecting that truth or satire which alone could have discriminated the passions, the pursuits, and the foibles of society. Thusthe painter of nature, who caught the glow of her skies and her earth in his landscape, was also the miniature portrayer of human likenesses. When Chaucer wrote, the classics of antiquity were imperfectly known in this country—the Grecian muse had never reached our shores; this was, probably, favourable to the native freedom of Chaucer. The English poet might have lost his raciness by a cold imitation of the Latin masters; among the Italians, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, Chaucer found only models to emulate or to surpass. Hence the English bard indulged that more congenial abundance of thoughts and images which owns no other rule than the pleasure it yields in the profusion of nature and fancy. A great poet may not be the less Homeric because he has never read Homer.
Nature in her distinct forms lies open before this poet-painter; his creative eye pursued her through all her mutability, but in his details he was a close copier. In his rural scenery there is a freshness in its luxuriance; for his impressions were stamped by their locality. This locality is so remarkable, that Pope had a notion, which he said no one else had observed, that Chaucer always described real places to compliment the owners of particular gardens and fine buildings. Let us join him in his walks—
When that the misty vapour was agone,And clear and fair was the morníng,The dews, like silver, shiníngUpon the leaves.
When that the misty vapour was agone,
And clear and fair was the morníng,
The dews, like silver, shiníng
Upon the leaves.
The flowers sparkle in “their divers hues”—he sometimes counts their colours—“white, blue, yellow, and red”—on their stalks, spreading their leaves in breadth against the sun, gold-burned. His grass is “so small, so thick, so fresh of hue.” The poet goes by a river whose water is “clear as beryl or crystal;” turning into “a little way” towards a park in compass round, and by a small gate.
Whoso that would freely might gone (go)Into this Park walled with green stone.
Whoso that would freely might gone (go)
Into this Park walled with green stone.
The owner of that park, probably, was startled when he came to “the little way,” and to “the small gate.” This was either the park of some great personage, or possibly Woodstock Park, where stood a stone lodge, so long knownby the name of “Chaucer’s House,” that in the days of Elizabeth it was still described as such in the royal grant. If poets have rarely built houses, at least their names have consecrated many.
His
Garden upon a river in a green mead;The gravel gold, the water pure as glass,
Garden upon a river in a green mead;
The gravel gold, the water pure as glass,
and “the eglantine and sycamore arbour, so thickly woven, where the priers who stood without all day could not discover whether any one was within,” was assuredly some particular garden. The stately grove has all the characters of its trees—the oak, the ash, and the fir—to “the fresh hawthorn,”
Which in white motley that so swote doth smell.
In all these lovely scenes there was a delicious sense of joyous existence; the inmates of the forest burst forth, from “the little conies, the beasts of gentle kind,” to “the dreadful roe and the buck,” and from their green leaves they who “with voice of angels” entranced the poet-musician—
So loud they sang that all the woodés rungLike as it should shiver in pieces small,And as methought that the NightingaleWith so great might her voice out-wrest,Right as her heart for love would brest (burst).
So loud they sang that all the woodés rung
Like as it should shiver in pieces small,
And as methought that the Nightingale
With so great might her voice out-wrest,
Right as her heart for love would brest (burst).
So true is the accidental remark of the celebrated Charles Fox, that “of all poets Chaucer seems to have been the fondest of the singing of birds.” These were the peculiar delights in the poetic habits of Chaucer, who was an early riser, and often mused on many a rondel in gardens, and meads, and woods, at earliest dawn. This poet’s sun-risings are the most exhilarating in our poetry.
We may doubt if the vernal scenes of Chaucer can be partaken by his more chilly posterity. Did England in the seasons of Chaucer flourish with a more genial May and a more refulgent June? Or should we suspect that the travelled poet clothed our soil with the luxuriance of Provençal fancy, and borrowed the clear azure of Italy to soften the British roughness even of our skies?
Tyrwhit, the able commentator of Chaucer, has thrownout an incidental remark, which seems equally refined and true. “Chaucer in his serious pieces often follows his author with the servility of a mere translator; and in consequence his narration is jejune and constrained (as often appears in the “Romaunt of the Rose” and his translations of Dante), whereas in the comic he is generally satisfied with borrowing a slight hint of his subject, which he varies, enlarges, and embellishes at pleasure, and gives the whole the air and colour of an original; a sure sign that his genius rather led him to compositions of the latter kind.”
This remark is an instance of critical sagacity. The creative faculty in Chaucer had not broken forth in his translations, which evidently were his earliest writings. The native bent of his genius, the hilarity of his temper, betrays itself by playful strokes of raillery and concealed satire when least expected. His fine irony may have sometimes left his commendations, or even the objects of his admiration, in a very ambiguous condition. The learned editor of the second part of the “Paston Letters” hence has been induced to infer that the spirit of chivalry, from the reign of the third Edward, had entirely declined, and only existed in the forms of conventional and fashionable society, and had sunk into a mere foppery, a system of forms and etiquettes, because Chaucer, a court-poet, treats with irony the chivalric manners. Whether this ingenious inference will hold with literary antiquaries, I will not decide; but I am inclined to suspect that Chaucer’s indulgence of his taste for irony was not in the mind of this learned editor. Our poet has stamped with his immortal ridicule the tale told in his own person—“The Rime of Sir Thopas,” which is considered as a burlesque of the metrical romances. In those days there was an inundation of these romances, as “the thirst and hunger” of the present is accommodated with as spurious a brood. We have our “drafty prose” as they had their “drafty riming.” But shall we infer from this ludicrous effusion of the great poet, that he held so light the venerable fablers, the ancient romancers, with whose “better parts” he had nourished his own genius? This is his own confession. Often in his years of grief, when the poet wondered
How he lived, for day ne night,I may not sleep—Sitting upright in my bed,
How he lived, for day ne night,
I may not sleep—
Sitting upright in my bed,
then it was that he prescribed for his “secret sorrows” that medicine which, “drunk deeply,” makes us forget ourselves. In those hours the poet
Bade one reach me a Boke,ARomance, and he it me tookTo read, and drive the Night away;For methought it better playThan play either at Chess or Tables.
Bade one reach me a Boke,
ARomance, and he it me took
To read, and drive the Night away;
For methought it better play
Than play either at Chess or Tables.
And assuredly Chaucer found many passages in the old fablers not less entrancing than some of his own. Our poet indulged this vein of playful irony on persons as well as on things. A sly panegyric, sufficiently ambiguous for us to accept as a refined stroke, we find on the abstruse and interminable question of predestination; on which the Nonne’s priest declares—
But I ne cannot boult it to the bren,As can the holy doctor Augustín,Or Bœcé, orthe bishop Bradwardín.
But I ne cannot boult it to the bren,
As can the holy doctor Augustín,
Or Bœcé, orthe bishop Bradwardín.
As this bishop, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first who treated theology on mathematical principles, and likewise wrote on the “Quadrature of the Circle,” we may presume “Bishop Bradwardin” rather perplexed the poet. Chaucer discovers his ironical manner when gravely stating the different theories of dreaming—
————What causeth Suevenes3On the morrow or on evens?
————What causeth Suevenes3
On the morrow or on evens?
he playfully concludes, and modern philosophy could no better assist the inquiry—
————Whoso of these MiraclesThe causes know bet4than IDefine he, for I certainlyNe can them not, ne never thinkeTo busie my witte for to swinkeTo know why this is more than that is,Well worthé of this thing Clerkés,That treaten of this and of other werkés,For I, of none opinionNil.
————Whoso of these Miracles
The causes know bet4than I
Define he, for I certainly
Ne can them not, ne never thinke
To busie my witte for to swinke
To know why this is more than that is,
Well worthé of this thing Clerkés,
That treaten of this and of other werkés,
For I, of none opinion
Nil.
It is with the same pleasantry he avoids all commonplace descriptions, by playfully suggesting his pretended unskilfulness for the detail, or his want of learning—
Me list not of the chaf, ne of the stre,Maken so long a tale, as of the corn.“Man of Lawe’s Ta’e.”
Me list not of the chaf, ne of the stre,
Maken so long a tale, as of the corn.
“Man of Lawe’s Ta’e.”
Yet humour and irony are not his only excellences, for those who study Chaucer know that this great poet has thoughts that dissolve in tenderness; no one has more skilfully touched the more hidden springs of the heart.
The Herculean labour ofChaucerwas the creation of a new style. In this he was as fortunate as he was likewise unhappy. He mingled with the native rudeness of our English words of Provençal fancy, and some of French and of Latin growth. He banished the superannuated and the uncouth, and softened the churlish nature of our hard Anglo-Saxon; but the poet had nearly endangered the novel diction when his artificial pedantry assumed what he called “the ornate style” in “the Romaunt of the Rose,” and in his “Troilus and Cressida.” This “ornate style” introduced sesquipedalian Latinisms, words of immense dimensions, that could not hide their vacuity of thought. Chaucer seems deserted by his genius when “the ornate style” betrays his pangs and his anxiety. As the error of a fine genius becomes the error of many, because monstrous protuberances may be copied, while the softened lines of beauty remain inimitable, this “ornate style” corrupted inferior writers, who, losing all relish of the natural feeling and graceful simplicity of their master, filled their verse with noise and nonsense. This vicious style, a century afterwards, was resumed byStephen Hawes. We have, however, a glorious evidence, amid this struggle both with a new and with a false style, of Chaucer’s native good taste; he finally wholly abandoned this artificial diction; and his later productions, no longer disfigured by such tortured phrases and such remote words, awaken our sympathy in the familiar language of life and passion.
Tyrwhithas ingeniously constructed a metrical system to arrange the versification to the ear of a modernreader; by this contrivance he would have removed all obstructions in the pronunciation and in the syllabic quantities. He maintained that the lines were regular decasyllabics. But who can read this poet for any length, even the “Canterbury Tales” in the elaborated text of Tyrwhit, without being reminded of its fallacy? Even theEfinal, on which our critic has laid such stress, though often sounded, assuredly is sometimes mute. Dan Chaucer makes at his pleasure words long or short, and dyssyllabic or trisyllabic; and this he has himself told us—
But for the rime is light and lewde,Yet make it somewhat agreáble,Though some verse fail in a sylláble.
But for the rime is light and lewde,
Yet make it somewhat agreáble,
Though some verse fail in a sylláble.
Our critic was often puzzled by his own ingenuity, for in some inveterate cases he has thrown out in despair an observation, that “a reader who cannot perform such operations for himself (that is, helping out the metre) had better not trouble his head about the versification of our ancient authors.” The verse of Chaucer seems more carefully regulated in his later work, “the Tales;” but it is evident that Chaucer trusted his cadences to his ear, and his verse is therefore usually rhythmical, and accidentally metrical.
On a particular occasion the poet submitted to the restraint of equal syllables, as we discover in “The Court of Love,” elaborately metrical, and addressed to “his princely lady,” with the hope that she might not refuse it “for lack of ornate speech.” It is evident, therefore, that Chaucer had a distinct conception of the heroic or decasyllabic verse, but he did not consider that the mechanical construction of his verse was essential to the free spirit of his fancy. “I am no metrician,” he once exclaimed; he wrote
Books, songs, diteesInRIME, or else inCADENCE.“The House of Fame.”
Books, songs, ditees
InRIME, or else inCADENCE.
“The House of Fame.”
This circumstance arose from the custom of the age, when poems wererecited, and notread; readers there were none among the people, though auditors were never wanting; it was much the same among the higher orders. Poems were usually performed in plain chant, and a versewas musical by the modulation of the harp. There was no typographical metre placed under the eye of the reciter; the melody of the poet too often depended on the adroitness of the performer; and the only publishers of the popular poems of Chaucer were the harpers, who, in stately halls on festal days, entranced their audience with Chaucer’s Tale, or his “Ballade.” His poem of “Troilus and Cressida,” although almost as long as the Æneid, was intended to besungto the harp as well asread, as the poet himself tells us, in addressing his poem—
Andreddewhere so thou be, or ellessung.
In the most ancient manuscripts of Chaucer’s works the cæsura in every line is carefully noted, to preserve the rhythmical cadence with precision; without this precaution the harmony of such loose versification would be lost. In the later editions, when the race of roaming minstrels had departed, and our verse had become solely metrical, the printers omitted this guide to the ancient recitation. We perceive this want in the uncertain measures of Chaucer’s versification; and a dexterous modulation is still required to catch the recitative of Chaucer’s poems.
Are the works of our great poet to be consigned to the literary dungeon of the antiquary’s closet? I fear that there is more than one obstruction which intervenes between the poet’s name, which will never die, and the poet’s works, which will never be read. A massive tome, dark with the Gothic type, whose obsolete words and difficult phrases, and, for us, uncadenced metre, are to be conned by a glossary as obsolete as the text, to be perpetually referred to, to the interruption of all poetry and all patience, appalled even the thorough-paced antiquary, Samuel Pegge, as appears by his honest confession. Already a practised bibliosopher proclaims, alluding to the edition by Tyrwhit of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” “And who reads any other portion of the poet?” Yet the “Canterbury Tales” are but the smallest portion of Chaucer’s works! But some skilful critics have perpended and decided differently: even among the projected labours of Johnson was an edition of Chaucer’s works; and Godwin, when diligently occupied on this great poet, withjust severity observed that “a vulgar judgment had been propagated by slothful and indolent persons, that the ‘Canterbury Tales’ are the only part of the works of Chaucer worthy the attention of a modern reader, and this has contributed to the wretched state in which his works are permitted to exist.”
Are we then no longer to linger over the visionary emotions of the great poet in the fine portraitures of his genius from his youthful days, when the fever of his soul, not knowing where to seek for its true aliment, careless of life, fed on its own sad musings, in Chaucer’s “Dreme,” or, onwards in life, in the “Testament of Love,” that chronicle of the heart in a prison solitude? And are we no longer interested in those personal traits Chaucer has so frequently dropped of his own tastes and humours, so that we are in fact better acquainted with Chaucer than we are with Shakspeare? Even during his official occupations, this poet loved his studious solitary nights, and frequently alludes to his passion. Must we close that “House of Fame,” with whose fragments Pope reared “The Temple?” Has all the enchantment of the moonlight-land of chivalry and fairyism in “The Floure and the Leafe” vanished? Are we no longer to listen to “The Complaint of the Black Knight,” which touched a duchess or a queen? or the stanzas of “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,” which musically resound that musical encounter? Is the legend of pathetic tenderness in the impassioned “Troilus,” and “the sillie woman who falsed Troilus,” ever to be closed? there may we pursue the vicissitudes of love, in what the poet calls “a little tragedy;” and we find Ovidian graces amid its utter simplicity. There are, indeed, vicissitudes of taste as well as of love. “Troilus and Cressida” was the favourite in the days of Henry VIII. over the “Canterbury Tales” and “The Floure and the Leafe;” it was, too, the model of Sidney in the court of Elizabeth; Love triumphed at court over Humour and Fancy.
It is true that the language of Chaucer has failed, but not the writer. The marble which Chaucer sculptured has betrayed the noble hand of the artist; the statue was finished; but the grey and spotty veins came forth, clouding the lucid whiteness.
For the poet or the poetical, the difficulty of the language may be surmounted with a reasonable portion of every-day patience. I know, from several of my literary contemporaries, that this, however, has not been conceded. The more familiar I became with Chaucer, the more I delighted in the significance of the Chaucerian words. From some modern critics, occasionally the name of Chaucer startles the ear. One, indeed, has recently complained that “Chaucer’s divine qualities are languidly acknowledged by his unjust countrymen;”5and Coleridge emphatically said, “I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious in my old age. How exquisitely tender he is!”6
But the popularity of this gifted child of nature, and this shrewd observer of mankind, is doomed to another obstruction than that of his curious diction. The playfulness of his comic invention, and the freedom of his simplicity, will no longer be allowed to atone for the levity of some of his incidents. When Warton, to display the genuine vein of the Chaucerian humour, imprudently analysed the “Miller’s Tale,” having reached the middle, the critic, recollecting himself, suddenly breaks off with a curt remark—“The sequel cannot be repeated here!” In a recklessness of all knowledge, and in an unhappy hour, the poet of “Don Juan” decided, while he probably would have started from Chaucer’s black-letter tome, that “Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene and contemptible. He owed his celebrity merely to his antiquity.” As if the greatest of our poets had only been celebrated in the day when Byron wrote! Yet in all the unfettered invention and nudity of style, there was no grossness in the temper, and less in the habits, of the poet. He addressed his own age as his contemporaries were doing in France and in Italy, and from whom he had borrowed the very two tales on which this censure has fallen. In telling “a merrie tale,” Chaucer could not have anticipated this charge; and, in truth, for subjects which are obscene and disgustful he had no taste, as he showed in his reproof of Gower for having selected tworepulsive ones—the unnatural passions of Canace and Apollonius Tyrius. Of these our Chaucer cries,—
Of all swiche cursed stories I say, Fy!
Our poet has himself pleaded that having fixed on his personage, he had no choice to tell any other tale than what that individual would himself have told. Before we immolate Chaucer on the altar of the Graces, we should not only listen to his plea, but to his own easy remedy for this disorder produced by his too faithful copy after nature.
————Whoso list not to hear,Turn over the leaf, and chese another tale!
————Whoso list not to hear,
Turn over the leaf, and chese another tale!
Our notions and our customs of delicacy are the result of a change in our manners of no distant period; and, compared with our neighbours, many are still but conventional. They are so even in respect to ourselves, for, not to go back to the golden days of Elizabeth, the language and the manners of the court of Anne would have startled modern decorum. The “polite conversation” of Swift has fortunately preserved for us specimens which we could not have imagined. Our poems, our comedies, and our tales, so late as the days of Swift and Pope, have allusions, and even incidents and descriptions, which we no longer tolerate. How far our fastidiousness lies on the surface of our lesser morals, I will not decide; but men of genius have complained that this fastidiousness has become too restrictive, by contracting the sphere of inventive humour, which flashes often in such small matters as ludicrous tales and playful levities, which must not lie on our tables.
Chaucer long remained a favourite in the most polite circles; Aubrey, at the close of the seventeenth century, in his “Idea,” recommends the study of Chaucer, as the poet in full reputation. At a later period, the days of Dryden and Pope, our versifiers were continually renovating his humour and his more elegant fictions.Ogle, with others, attempted to modernize Chaucer; but it is as impossible to give such a version of Chaucer as to translate the Odes of Horace. They corrupted by their interpolations, and weakened by their diffusion; Chaucer was not discernible in the dimness of their paraphrase. The greatbeauties of Chaucer spring up from the soil in which they lie embedded; and the most skilful hand will discover that in gathering the flower it must cease to live without its root.
We never possessed a tolerably correct edition of this master-poet; and the very circumstance of the continued popularity of the poems with the many has occasioned their present wretched condition. When works circulated in their manuscript state, before the era of printing, the popularity of a poet made his text the more liable to corruption. Multiplied transcripts were produced by heedless or licentious scribes, whose careless omissions, and whose perpetuated blunders and even interpolations can only be credited by the collators of the manuscripts of Chaucer. This happened with the very first printed edition by Caxton. Our patriarchal publisher discovered that he had printed from a very faulty manuscript, and, in that primitive age of simplicity and printing, nobly suppressed the edition which dishonoured the author, and substituted an improved one. DoubtlessGower, a grave and learned poet, whose copies are remarkably elegant, has descended to us in a purer condition thanChaucer, for he was rarely transcribed. Speght was the first editor who gave a more complete edition of Chaucer, with the useful appendage of a glossary, the first of its kind, and which has been a fortunate acquisition for later glossographers. But Speght, with the aid of Stowe, who was equally industrious, was so deficient in critical acumen, as to have impounded any stray on the common stamped with the initials of Chaucer. Thus our poet has suffered all the mischances of faithless scribes, unintelligent printers, and uncritical editors. To make the bad worse, the last modern edition of Chaucer, byUrry, though recommended by the white letter, offering this bland relief to a modern reader, is a showy volume, of which we are forbidden to read a line! The history of this edition is an evidence how ill our scholars, at no remote period, were qualified to decide on the fate of a great vernacular author. Urry, the pupil of Dean Aldrich, and the friend of Bishop Atterbury, appears to have been one of that galaxy or confederacy of wits called “the Wits of Christ Church.” The “Student of Christ Church, Oxon,” offered a title and a place whichwould sanction an edition of Chaucer; one object of which was to contribute five hundred pounds to finish Peckwater Quadrangle. The pompous folio appeared heralded by the queen’s licence for the exclusive sale for fourteen years. Our editor at first seems to have been reluctant and modest, till instigated by his great patrons to divest himself of all fear of the author. In his innocence conceiving that the strokes of his own pen would silently improve an obsolete genius, this merciless interpolator, changing words and syllables at pleasure, has furnished a text which Chaucer never wrote!7If the worst edition that was ever published contributed to finish Peckwater Quadrangle, it is amusing to be reminded that causes are often strangely disproportionate to their effects.
The famous portion of Chaucer’s Miscellaneous Volume has been fortunate in the editorial cares ofTyrwhit. Tyrwhit, a scholar as well as an antiquary, was an expert philologer; his extensive reading in the lore of our vernacular literature and our national antiquities promptly supplied what could not have entered into his more classical studies; and his sagacity seems to have decided on the various readings of all the manuscripts, by piercing into the core of the poet’s thoughts.8
It is remarkable that some of the most lively productions of several great writers have been the work of their maturestage. Johnson surpassed all his preceding labours in his last work, the popular Lives of the Poets. The “Canterbury Tales” of Chaucer were the effusions of his advanced age, and the congenial verses of Dryden were thrown out in the luxuriance of his later days. Milton might have been classed among the minor poets had he not lived to be old enough to become the most sublime. Let it be a source of consolation, if not of triumph, in a long studious life of true genius, to know that the imagination may not decline with the vigour of the frame which holds it; there has been no old age for many men of genius.
We must lament that at such an early period in our vernacular literature, we have to record that the two fathers of our poetry, congenial spirits as they were, too closely resembled most of their sons—in one of the most painful infirmities of genius. I have said elsewhere that jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, is not, however, confined to them. We do not possess the secret history of the two great poets, Chaucer and Gower; but we are told by Berthelet in his edition of Gower’s “Confessio Amantis,” when he quotes the commendatory lines on Gower by Chaucer, that the poets “were both excellently learned,both great friendes together.” Ancient biographers usually fall into this vague style of eulogy, which served their purpose rather than a more critical research. True it is that “they were both great friends,” but, what Berthelet has not told, they became also “both great enemies.” We know that Chaucer has commemorated the dignified merits of “the moral Gower,” and that Gower has poured forth an effusion not less fervid than elegant from the lips of Venus, who calls Chaucer “her own clerk, who in the flower of his youth had made ditees and songes glad which have filled the land.” Did this little passion of poetic jealousy creep into their great souls? Else how did it happen that Chaucer, who had once solicited the correcting hand of his friend, in his latest work, reprehended the sage and the poet, and that Gower, who had not stinted the rich meed of his eulogy which appeared in the first copies of his “Confessio Amantis,” erased the immortality which he had bestowed. The justice of their reciprocal praise neither of these rivals could efface, for that outlives their little jealousies.