THE KNIGHT'S TALE.

41

game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow.'

Some of Chaucer's characters were virtuous, some vicious; some learned, some ignorant; but even the coarse merriment of the lowest characters differs, and is characteristic of the calling of each person. It is sufficient to say,' Dryden adds, 'according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. We have our forefathers and great granddames all before us as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of monks and friars, of chanons, and lady abbesses, and nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered. Boccace lived in the same age with Chaucer, had the same genius, and followed the same studies; both writ novels, and each of them cultivated his mother tongue. In the serious part of poetry, the advantage is wholly on Chaucer's side, for though the Englishman has borrowed many tales from the Italian, yet it appears, that those of Boccace were not generally of his own making, but taken from authors of former ages, and by him only modelled, so that what was of invention in either of them, may be judged equal. But Chaucer has refined on Boccace, and has mended the stories, which he has borrowed in his way of telling, though prose allows more liberty of thought, and the expression is more easy, when unconfined by numbers. Our countryman carries weight, and yet wins the race at disadvantage.'

Among the Canterbury Tales,' Warton gives the preference to the Knight's Tale;' Milton, to the 'Squire's Tale.' Few, if any of these stories were the invention of Chaucer, who borrowed largely from the French and Italian poets. The Squire's Tale' was an Arabian fiction engrafted on Gothic chivalry. The magical art of the Arabians forms a striking feature in this poem, and the triumphs of deception

42

THE SQUIRE'S TALE.

over truth,' to borrow the words of Warton, are wonderfully interwoven with the narrative. Amongst those inventions with which we are willing to be deceived was that of the magical mirror, supposed to have been suggested to Eastern nations by Joseph's cup of divination. Roger Bacon, in 1270, founding his curious work, 'Opus Majus,' on the Arabian Optics, described a tube in which he was able to see future events. Spenser's glass globe, made by the magician Merlin, which showed the approach of enemies, and discovered treasons, was derived from the same source. The monstrous Mexican bird,-mentioned in an American tradition,-which was found on the lake of Mexico, was another superstition current in that day. This bird had in the crown of its enormous head, a mirror, or plate of glass, in which the Mexicans saw their future conquerors, the Spaniards. Long after the darker ages, there existed a partial belief in such superstitions. Shakspeare alludes to the fabulous notions of seeing things in a beryl, a delusion very common in the days even of James the First. And Chaucer, no doubt, enlightened as he was, was not wholly free from the infatuation then so prevalent. He had, at all events, one advantage. The people for whom he wrote were deeply embued with belief on these points, and the effect of his works must naturally have been greatly heightened by their credulity.

6

Among the most extolled of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' is The Clerke of Oxenforde's Tale,' or the story of Patient Grisilde.' This exquisite story is taken from Boccaccio, and is the last in his 'Decameron.' Nevertheless, Chaucer heard it from Petrarch when he met him at Padua.

Petrarch it appears, although intimately acquainted with Boccaccio for thirty years, never saw the 'Decameron' till just before his death, when it happened to fall into his hands. He was so struck with the story of Grisilde that he learned it by heart that he might repeat it to his friends at Padua. Here, it seems, Chaucer heard it. Perhaps in all the history of

INTERVIEW BETWEEN PETRARCH AND CHAUCER. 43

letters there could be nothing more interesting than the interview between Chaucer and Petrarch on this occasion. How inimitably Petrarch must have told the story! How rapt must have been the attention of his hearer! prologue to Patient Grisilde, says:

'I wolle you telle a tale which that I
Lernèd at Padow of a worthie clerke-
Frauncis Petrakke, the laureate poête,

Chaucer, in his

Hightin this clerke, whose rhetoricke so swete,
Enluminèd Italie of poetrie.'

An anecdote of Petrarch's Latin translation of 'Patient Grisilde' is related by the poet himself in a letter to Boccaccio. On showing the translation to a friend at Padua, the latter was so moved by the pathos of the tale that he burst into tears, and could not hear it to the end. A Veronese, hearing of this strong emotion, read the tale, but it produced no effect on him: he returned it with a calm countenance and a steady voice to Petrarch. He owned, however, the story was touching-'I should have wept,' he added, 'like the Paduan, had I thought the story true; but the whole is a manifest fiction. There never was, nor ever will be, such a wife as Grisilde.'

In the tale of the 'Nonnes' Priest,' a satire is conveyed in Dame Partlet's advice on the medical professors of the day.

The well-known description of the farmyard cock affords a specimen of Chaucer's descriptive style; and like all his works, contains references to the prevalent customs.

A cokke highte chaunticlere,

In al the land of crowing not his pere,
His voice was merier than the merie orgon,
On masse-dais that in the churches gon;
Well sikerer was his crowing in his lodge
Than is a clock or abbey horologe.

44

JANUARY AND MAY.

His comb was redder than the fine corall,
And batelled as it were a castill wall,
His bake was blacke as any yet it shone,
Like azure were his leggis, and his tone,

His nailis whiter than the lillie floure,

And like the burnid golde was his colore.'*

The story of January and May' has been modernized by Pope; that of the 'Nonnes' Priest' by Dryden. In altering the language neither of these poets deemed it necessary to take away the indelicacy of the poems: if they must remain with all their imperfections on their heads, they are best read in the original and quaint language of Chaucer himself. The verse of Chaucer has been, in later days, considered inharmonious; but his contemporaries thought it musical. Dryden compares it to the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.'

With regard to the levity and impropriety of the ‘Miller's Tale,' we must look to the taste of the times to account for it, if not to palliate it. Modesty of language, as well as refinement of thought, were the effect, slow indeed in growth, of a reformed religious faith. Not only were some of Chaucer's tales grounded on Italian fictions; his whole notions of the gay science were tinged by Italian poetry. In Italy his brightest days had been passed. He knew that enchanting country at an era when the manners of its people had undergone a sudden change. The plague at Florence was over just when Boccaccio, per cacciar la malinconia delle femine,' composed his Decameron.' Few of the women of Florence were spared; the husbands, brothers, and friends of those thus left were no more. Female attendants were not to be found: the ladies of the city were obliged to take men into their service, and thus the delicacy of their ideas and feelings became tarnished. The monasteries-those great receptacles of secret vice-had been thrown open by the pestilence. That which had hitherto been a moral subter

6

*Warton, vol. ii., p. 420.

THE MILLER'S TALE.

45

ranean sewer of impurity, was now spread throughout the land, in foul streams of iniquity. Even when the monks were compelled to return to their convents, the same dissoluteness of life remained. Unhappily Boccaccio was himself a man of dissolute life, although eventually, like Dryden, he repented, and was almost disposed to become a Carthusian and to renounce poetry. But the mischief was then done; and both the 'Decameron' of Boccaccio, and the Canterbury Tales' of Chaucer, written as they are for the impure, were closed to the pure reader.

In the 'Miller's Tale,' again we find the allusions to prevalent absurdities. The Clerk of Oxenford, ycleped Nicholas, studied, though under the guise of the utmost decorum, astrology. Nicholas lodges with the Carpenter of Oseney Abbey, near Oxford, who has a fair wife—

'Faire was this yongè wife and therwithall,
As a wesill* her bodie gent and small.'

Nicholas, astrologer as he was, or wished to be, falls in love with his blooming hostess; but has a rival in Absalom, the parish clerk, who takes sundry opportunities, whilst carrying the censer about the church on Sundays, to cast amorous glances at the dame. This parish clerk was no saintly character, but a country fop, skilled in shaving and surgery, two things which went together in former days; he had a smattering of law, and a taste for music and for dress

'hadde a gaie surplice

As white as is the blossom on the rice. † 'Yclad he was full small and propirly,.

All in a kirtil‡ of a light watchet.

His rude,' we are told, was

'Redde, his eyin gray as a goose;
With Poulis windows carvin on his shose;
In hosin red he went ful fetously.'

* Weasel.

† Hawthorn.

+ Jacket.

§ Hair.