Wife of Bathe's Prologue before it has been spoken. Such an impropriety I was glad to remove upon the authority of the best mff. though it had been acquiefced in by all former editors, especially as the fame mff. pointed out to me an other (I believe the true) place for both The Marchant's andThe Squier'sTales, which have hitherto been printed immediately after The Man of Lawe's. But of that hereafter.

$ 17. The want of a few lines to introduce The Wife of Bathe's. Prologue is perhaps one of thofe defects, hinted at above, which Chaucer would have fupplied if he had lived to finish his Work. The extraordinary length of it, as well as the vein of pleafantry that runs through it, is very fuitable to the character of the speaker. The greatest part must have been of Chaucer's own invention, though one may plainly fee that he had been reading the popular invectives against marriage and women in general, fuch as The Roman de la Rofe, Valerius ad Rufinum de non ducendâ uxore, and particularly Hieronymus contra Jovixianum (19.)

alluding very plainly to this Prologue of the Wife of Bath. The impropriety of fuch an allufion in the mouth of Juftine is grofs enough. The truth is that Chaucer has inadvertently given to a character in The Merchant's 'Tale an argument which the Merchant himfelf miglit naturally have used upon a fimilar occafion, after he had heard the Wife of Bath. If we fuppofe, with the editions, that the Wife of Bath had not at that time spoken her Prologue the impropriety will be increased to an incredible degree.

(19) The holy Father, by way of recommending celibacy, has exerted all his learning and eloquence (and he certainly was not deficient in either) to collect together and aggravate whatever he could find to the prejudice of the female fex. Among other things he has inferted his own translation (probably) of a long extract from what he calls-liber aureolus

$18. The Wife of Bathe's Tale feems to have been taken from the thory of Florent in Gower, Conf. Amant. b. i, or perhaps from an older narrative in the Gefta Romanorum, or fome fuch collection, from which the flory of Florent was itself borrowed. However that may have been, it must be allowed that Chaucer has confiderably improved the fable by lopping off fome improbable as well as unneceffary circumftances; and the transferring of the fcene from Sicily to the court of King Arthur must have had a very pleafing effect before the fabulous majefty of that court was quite obliterated.

The old ballad entitled The Marriage of Sir Gawaine, [Ancient Poetry, vol. iii. p. 11,] which the learned editor thinks may have furnished Chaucer with this Tale, I fhould rather conjecture (with deference to to good a judge in thefe matters) to have been compofed by one who had read both Gower and Chaucer.

$ 19. The Tales of the Frere and the Sampaour are well ingrafted upon that of The Wife of Bath. The ill humour which fhews itfelf between those two characters is quite natural, as no two profeffions at that time.

Theophrafi de nuptiis.—Next to him in order of time was the treatife entitled Epiftola Valerii ad Rufinum de non ducendie uxore, mf. Reg. 12 D. iii. It has been printed (for the fimilarity of its fentiments I fuppose) among the works of St. Jerome, though it is evidently of a much later date. Tanuer (from Wood's mf. Coll.) attributes it to Walter Map, [Bib. Brit, v. Map.] I should not believe it to be older, as John of Salisbury. who has treated of the same subject in his Polycrat. I. vili. c. xi, does not appear to have feen it.To these two books Jean de Meun has been obliged for fome of the fevereft firokes in his Roman de la Rofe, and Chaucer has transfufed the quinteffence of all the three works (upon the subject of matrimony) into his Wife of Bathe's Prologue and Merchant's Tale.

were at more conftant variance. The regular clergy, and particularly the Mendicant Freres, affected a total exemption from all ecclefiaftical jurisdiction except that of the Pope, which made them exceedingly obnoxious to the bishops, and of courfe to all the inferiour officers of the national hierarchy.

I have not been able to trace either of thefe Tales to any author older than Chaucer, and poffibly they may both have been built upon fome traditional pleafantries which were never before committed to writing. I am obliged to Mr. Steevens for pointing out to me a story which has a great resemblance, in its principal incidents, to The Frere's Tale: it is quoted by D'Artigny, Memoires d'Hiftoire, &c. t. iii. p. 238, from a collection of fermons by an anonymous Domimican, printed about the beginning of the 16th century, under the title of Sermones Difcipuli.

$20. The Clerke's Tale is in a different ftrain from the three preceding. He tells us, in his Prologue, that he learned it from Petrarch at Padua; and this (by the way) is all the ground that I can find for the notion that Chaucer had feen Petrarch (20) in Italy. It

(20) I can find no older or better authority for this notion than the following paffage in Speght's life of Chaucer, prefixed to the edit. in 1597: Some write that he with Petrarke was prefent at the marriage of Lionell Duke of Clarence with "Violante daughter of Galeafius Duke of Millaine; yet Paul"lus Jovius nameth not Chaucer, but Petrarke, he fayth, was "there." It appears from an inftrument in Rymer [Liberat. 4z Ed. II. m. 1,] that the Duke of Clarence passed from Dover to Calais, in his way to Milan, in the fpring of 1 368,with a retinue of 457 men and 1280 horfes. That Chaucer might have attended the duke upon this occafion is not impossible, He had been, probably, for fome time in the king's service, and had received the year before a grant of an annuity of 20

is not eafy to fay why Chaucer fhould chufe to own an obligation for this Tale to Petrarch rather than to:

marks-"Pro bono fervitio, quod dilectus Vallettus nofter, "Galfridus Chaucer nobis impendit et impendet in futurum.” [Pat. 41 Ed. III. p. 1. m. 13, ap. Rymer.] There is a curious account of the feaft at this marriage in the Chronica di Mantoua of Aliprandi, [Murator. Antiq. Med. Ævia vol. v. p. 11678, et feq.] but he does not give the names of the

Grandi Signori e Baroni Inghilefe,

who were (as he fays)

Con Meffere Lionell' in compagnia.

The moft confiderable of them were probably thofe twentyfix knights and others) who before their fetting out for Milan procured the king's license to appoint attornies-general to act for them here. [Franc. 42 Ed. III. m. 8. ap. Rymer.] The name of Chaucer does not appear among them.-----The em-. baily to Genoa, to which Chaucer was appointed in November 1372, might poffibly have afforded him another opportu nity of feeing Petrarch. But in the firft place, it is uncertain whether he ever went upon that embaffy. If he did, the diRance from Genoa to Padua, where Petrarch refided, is conGiderable; and I cannot help thinking that a reverential visit from a minifter of the King of England would have been fo flattering to the old man that either he himself or fome of his biographers must have recorded it. On the other hand, fuppoting Chaucer at Genoa, it is to be prefumed that he would not have been deterred by the difficulties of a much longer journey from paying his respects to the firft literary character of the age: and it is remarkable that the time of this embally, in 1373, is the precife time at which he could have learned the flory of Grifeldis from Petrarch at Padua ; for Petrarch, in all probability, made his tranflation in that very year, and he died in July of the year following.-The inquifitive and judicious author of Mémoires pour la vie de Petrarque, gave us hopes [Pref. to t. ii. p. 6,] that he would fhew that Chaucer was in connection (en liaiĵon) with Petrarch. As he has not

Boccace, from whofe Decameron, d. x. n. 10, it was tranflated by Petrarch in 1373, (the year before his death) as appears by a remarkable letter which he fent with his tranflation to Boccace. [Opp. Petrarch. P. 540-7, edit. Baf. 1581.] It should feem too from the fame letter that the ftory was not invented by Boccace, for Petrarch fays "that it had always plea"fed him when he heard it many years before" (21,) whereas he had not feen The Decameron till very lately.

$21. In the ballade with which the Clerk concludes his Tale I have changed the order of the three laft ftanzas, fo as to make it end

And let him care, and wepe, and wringe, and waile---`

fulfilled his promise in a later (I fear the laft) volume of his very ingenuous work, I fufpect that his more accurate refearches have not enabled him to verify an opinion which he probably at firfl adopted upon the credit of fome biographer of Chaucer.

(21) Cum et mihi femper ante multos annos audita pla"cuiffet, et tibi ufque adeo placuiffe perpenderem, ut vulgari "eam ftylo tuo cenfueris non indignam, et fine operis, ubi "rhetorum difciplina validiora quælibet collocari jubet,” Petrarch. loc. cit. M. L'Abbé de Sade [Mem. de Petr. t. iii. p. 797,] fays, that the story of Grifeldis is taken from an ancient mf. in the library of M. Foucault, entitled Le Paremont des Dames. If this thould have been faid upon the authority of Manni, [ift. del. Decam. p. 603,] as I very much suspect, and if Manni himself meant to refer to M. Galland's Difcours fur quelques anciens Poetes, [Mem. de l'Acad. des 1. et B. L. t. ii. p. 636.3 we must look ftill further for the original of Boccace's novel. M. Galland fays nothing, as I obferve, of the antiquity of the mf "Le titre" he fays, "eft Le Parement des Dames, a"vec des explications en Profe, où l'on trouve l'hiftoire de "Grifelidis que feu M. Perrault a mife en vers:" but he fays alfo exprefsly that it was a work of Olivier de la Marche, who was not born till many years after the death of Boccace.