art lines of the Prologue, to mark with fome exfracfs the time of his fuppofed pilgrimage, but unckily the two circumftances of his defeription which ere most likely to answer that purpofe are cach of em irreconcileable to the other. When he tells us hat the floures of April bad perced to the rote the droughte f March, ver. 1, 2, we must fuppofe (in order to alow due time for fuch an operation) that April was ar advanced, while on the other hand the place of the fun, having juft run balf his course in the Pam, ver. 7, 8, reftrains us to fome day in the very latter end of March, as the vernal equinox in the age of Chaucer, according to his own, treatife on the, Aftrolabe (4), was computed to happen on the 12th of March. This difficulty may (and I think fhould) be removed by reading in ver. 8, the Ball, instead of the Ram (5). All the parts of the defcription will then be confiftent with themfelves, and with another paffage, [ver. 4425,] where, in the beft mff. the cighte and twenty day of April is named as the day of the journey to Canterbury.

We will fuppofc therefore that the preceding day,

(4) In this particular the editions agree with the mff. but in general the printed text of this treatife is fo monftroutly incorrect that it cannot be cited with any fafety.

(5) This correction may seem to be authorized in fome meafure by Lydgate, who begins his Continuation of The Canterbury Tales in this manner;

Whan bright Phebus payed was the Rem

Middle of Aprill, and into the Bull came.

But the truth is that Dan John wrote for the most part in a great hurry, and confequently without much accuracy. In the account which he proceeds to give of Chaucer's Tales he not only confounds the circumstances of defeription of the Sumpyour and Pardoner, but he speaks of the latter as---

Telling a tale to anger with the Frere.

Staric of Thebes, ver. 32-35

the feven-and-twentieth of April, was the dayon which the company affembled at The Tabard. In what year this happened Chaucer has not thought fit to inform us (6) either he did not think it neceflary to fix that

(6) It is clear that whether the pilgrimage were real or imaginary Chaucer as a poet had a right to suppose it to have happened at the time which he thought beft; he was only to take care, when the time was once fixed, that no circumitances were admitted into his poem which might clath or be inconfiftent with the date of it. When no particular date is affigned to a fable of this fort we muft naturally imagine that the date of the fable coincides with that of the compofition, and accordingly if we examine The Cant. Tales, we thall not find any circumstances which do not perfectly fuit with that period which has been stated in a former note (No 3,) as the probable time of Chaucer's beginning to compofe them. The latest hiftorical fact mentioned in them is the infurrection of Jakke Straw [ver. 15400,] which happened in 1381, and the earliest in which any perfon of the drama is concerned is the fiege of Algezir, [ver. 56, 57,] which began in August 1342, and ended with the taking of the city in March 1344: [Mariana, 1. xvi. c. 10,11,] the Knight therefore might very well be fupposed to have been at that fiege, and also upon a pilgrimage to Canterbury in 1383, or thereabouts.----They who are difpofed to believe the pilgrimage to have been real, and to have happened in 1383, may support their opinion by the following infcription, which is ftill to be read upon the inn now called The Talbot in Southwark; "This is the inn where Sir Jeffrey "Chaucer and the twenty-nine Pilgrims lodged in their jour"ney to Canterbury, anno 1383." Though the prefent infcription is evidently of a very recent date, we might fuppose it to have been propagated to us by a fucceffion of faithful tranfcripts from the very time, but unluckily there is too good reason to be affured that the first infcription of this fort was not earlier than the last century. Mr. Speght, who appears to have been inquifitive concerning this inn in 1597, has left us this account of it in his Gloffary, v. Tabard; “A jaquet or "levelcfle coate, worne in times paft by noblemen in the

oint at all, or perhaps he postponed it till the comletion of his work fhould enable him to affign fuch a ate to his fable as fhould be confiftent with all the iftorical circumftances which he might take occaon to introduce into it.

$ 6. A fecond point intended to be defined in the Prologue is the number of the company; and this too as its difficulties. They are faid, in ver. 24, to have Seen nine-and-twenty, but it is not clear whether Chau

"warres, but now onely by heraults, and is called theyre "coate of armes in fervife; it is the figne of an inne in South"warke by London, within the which was the lodging of the "Abbot of Hyde by Winchefter. This was the hoftelry where "Chaucer and the other pilgrims mett together, and with "Henry Baily their hofte accorded about the manner of their "journey to Canterbury. And whereas thro' time it hath bin "much decaled, it is now by mafter J.Preston, with the Abbot's "house thereto adjoyned, newly repaired, and with convenient "roomes much encreased for the receipt of many guests."— If any infcription of this kind had then been there he would hardly have omitted to mention it, and therefore I am perfuaded it has been put up fince his time, and most probably when the fign was changed from The Tabard to The Talbot, in order to preferve the ancient glory of the houfe notwithstanding its new title. Whoever furnished the date must be allowed to have at leaft invented plausibly.--While Iam upon the subject of this famous Hofteiry I will just add, that it was probably parcel of two tenements which appear to have been conveyed by William de Ludegarfale to the Abbot, &c. de Hydâ juxta Winton, in 1306, and which are defcribed (in a former conveyance there recited) to extend in length," a communi fof"fato de Southwerke verfus Orientem, ufque Regiam viam "de Sowthwerke verfus Occidentem." Regiftrum de Hyde, “ mf. Harl. 1761, fol. 166---173. If we should ever be so happy as to recover the account-books of the Abbey of Hyde we amay poffibly learn what rent Harry Baily paid for his inn, and many other important particulars.

cer himfelf is included in that number; they might therefore, according to that paflage, be thirty; but if we reckon the feveral characters as they are enuine rated in the Prologue we shall find them one-and-thirty; 1. a Knight, 2. a Squier, 3. a Yeman, 4. a Prioreffe, 5. another Nonne, 6, 7, 8. three Preeftes, 9. a Monk, 10. a Frere, 11. a Marchant, 12. a Clerk of Oxenforde, 13. a Sergeant of the Lawe, 14. a Frankelein, 15. an Haberdafher, 16. a Carpenter, 17. a Webhe, 18. a Deyer, 19. a Tapifer, 20. a Coke, 21. a Shipman, 22. a Doctour of Phyfike, 23. a Wif of Bathe, 24. à Perfone, 25. a Plowman, 26. a Reve, 27. a Miller, 28. a Sompnour, 29. a Pardoner, 30. a Manciple, 31.Chaucer himfelf. It must be obferved however that in this lift there is one very fufpicious article, which is that of the three Preefies. As it appears evidently to have been the defign of Chaucer to compofe his company of individuals of different ranks, in order to produce a greater variety of diftin&t characters, we can hardly conceive that he would, in this fingle inftance, introduce three of the fame profeffion without any difcriminating circumftances whatever; and in fact when the Nonne's Preeft is called upon to tell his Tale, (ver. 14814,) he is accofted by the Hoft in a manner which will not permit us to fuppofe that two others of the fame denomination were prefent, This must be allowed to be a strong objection to the genuineness of that article of the three Preeftes; but it is not the only one. All the other characters are particularly defcribed, and most of them very much at large, whereas the whole that is faid of the other Nonne and the three Preefies is contained in thefe two lines (ver. 163, 4,) at the end of the Prioreffe's character;

Another Nonne alfo with hire had the,

That was hire chapellein, and Preeftes three.

Where it is alfo obfervable that the fingle circumftance of defcription is falfe, for no nonne could be a chaplain. The chief duty of a chaplain was to fay mais and to hear confeffion, neither of which offices could regularly be performed by a nonne or by any woman (7.)

It should feem, therefore, that we have fufficient ground to reject these two lines, or at least the second, as an interpolation (8,) by which means we shall get

(7) It appears that some abbesses did at one time attempt to hear the confeffions of their nuns, and to exercise fome other fmaller parts of the clerical fun&ion, but this practice, I apprehend, was foon flopped by Gregory IX. who has forbidden it in the ftrongeft terms, Decretal. 1. v. tit. 38, c. x.; “Nova quæ"dam noftris funt auribus intimata, quod Abbatiffæ moniales 46 'proprias benedicunt; ipfarum quoque confeffiones in crimni"bus audieunt, et legentes Evangelium præfumunt publice prædicare: cum igitur id abfonum fit et pariter abfurdum, "Mandamus quatenus ne id de cætero fiat cunctis firmiter in"hibere." If these prefumptuous abbesses had ventured to say mafs his Holinets would doubtlcts have thundered itill louder against them.

(8) My notion (I cannot call it opinion) of the matter is this, that the first of thefe lines did really begin the character of the Nonne, which Chaucer had originally inferted in this place, together with that of the Nonne's Preeft, at as great length as the other characters, but they were both afterwards expunged ether by himself, or (more probably) by those who published his work after his death, for reafons of nearly the fame kind with thofe which occafioned the fuppreffion of the latter part of The Coke's Tale. I fufpe&t our bard had been rather too gay in his defcription of these two religious perfons. See a little concern ing the Preeft, ver. 15453—65.----If it thould be thought improbable that an interpolator would infert any thing fo abfurd and contradictory to the Author's plan as the fecond iine, I beg leave to fuggest that it is fill more improbable that fuch a line thould have come from the Author himfelf; and further, Volume I.