some touches before incorporating them in his new series, and with all the talks of the Pilgrims added to the new tales he must have been busy enough. Alas, that he did not earlier win his freedom from official drudgery, and for the time wasted, perhaps at the Queen's command, over those legends of Cupid's saints, which, though but half of them were written, yet grow so monotonous. Had he started on his pilgrimage to Canterbury but a year or two earlier, the gaps between one group of tales and another might have been fewer, and we might have had an Epilogue of the doings of the Pilgrims at Canterbury which should have surpassed the Prologue itself. But I am sure that by this time the Pilgrims are ready to start, and I should be sorry, by my gossiping, to cause any lover of them to ride as furiously as the Canon and his Yeoman to overtake them on the way.

ALFRED W. POLLARD.

25th May 1894.

THE CANTERBURY TALES

THE PROLOGUE

Here bygynneth the Book of the tales of Caunterbury

WHAN that Apríllė with hise shourės soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swetė breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendré croppės, and the yongé sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowelės maken melodye
That slepen al the nyght with open eye,—
So priketh hem Natúre in hir coráges,-
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

1-9. whan that Aprille, etc. In
the Athenæum of July 8,
1893, Prof. Skeat shows
that these famous lines
bear a remarkable resem-
blance to a passage in
the fourth book of Guido
delle Colonne's Historia
Trojana.
VOL. I

E

5

IO

3. swich, such. 8. the Ram: the sun runs one half course in the sign of the Ram in March, and the second half course in April. The latter ends on April IIth. II. corages, hearts.

B