Yit wol the fuyr as faire and lightë brennë Sithin 5 folk doon her operacïoun Alway, as doth the fuyr, lo! in his kynde! The early literary works of Chaucer were translations from Latin, French, and Italian; and by these translations he became widely known. One of his contemporaries speaks of him as 'grant translateur, noble Geoffroi Chaucier.' But the work of translation could not satisfy a full and original mind like Chaucer's. We find him in 1369 writing 'The Dethe of Blaunche the Duchesse;' in 1373, the 'Lyfe of Ste. Cecile;' in 1382, 'Troylus and Creseide;' in 1384, his 'Hous of Fame;' and in 1386, his 'Legende of Goode Women.' But his greatest work -and the work which gives him his high place in English Literature is the Canterbury Tales. 6. The Canterbury Tales.-The Canterbury Tales is a kind of national epic of the fourteenth century. The framework of these tales-which is given in the Prologue-is of a quite simple and old-fashioned kind. Dickens, in his Christmas stories, imagines a set of travellers snowed up in a wayside inn, or in an open boat after shipwreck on a stormy sea; and the company, tied to each other by the bond of a common misfortune, and with a good deal of blank time on their hands, bring forgetfulness of sorrow by the recital of stories in turn. Boccaccio, in his Decameron, or Book of the Ten Days, presents to us a company of ladies and gentlemen who have fled from the Plague in Florence, in 1348, to a country-house, where they shut themselves up and amuse each other with stories. Mr William Morris, the poet, employs a like device in his 'Earthly Paradise.' Chaucer's are open-air tales; and he imagines them to be told on horseback by pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas à Becket, as they amble easily along the green lanes which were then the only roads between London and Canterbury. One evening in April, nine-and-twenty pilgrims meet in Southwark, which was then a large country village on the Surrey side of London Bridge. They put up at the well-known Tabard Inn in the High Street. After dinner, when the 'reckonyngs' had been made, and the men were merry 3 Upon. 1 As if. 2 Its. 4 Not. 5 Since, 1. The Wxamet mnd the Tratary bg-I mss be POLKMANA. Tik ze Z-platen by ang are in the Arwich wäinfy WEL SALT get an lige, ike LAN, NI WAX What Higi Germans x te resent lay; and that the Laury of me Engian language frm that me is emply a Listry of loss of the gradual, now and sure dropping oft of aluwet every inflection in the language. This shredding away of the inflections from articies, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs was begun or at least hastened by the Danish invasion and settlement; and it was enormously advanced by the coming-in and settlement in the island of the Normans, who spoke the French of their day-the French of the valley of the lower Seine, For the loss of grammatical inflections the Language more than made up by the acquisition of large numbers of new words from the French language. Decrease in grammar-forms, increase in vocabulary-such is roughly the condition of our English speech as we find it in the time of Chaucer. The old forms had either vanished or were much broken down and thinned off into mere shadows of their former selves ; but the vocabulary was glutted with additions from Norman-French. The two elements in the nation-the Normans and the English-had fallen into the habit of using pairs of words, one English and the other French, as a kind of colloquial dictionary or phrase-book to make themselves intelligible to each other. Chaucer avails himself of this bilingualism,* and has sometimes whole lines consisting of such phrases. In Chaucer's time the spoken English was, in the words of John de Trevisa, 'a-deled a thre '-divided into three main dialects. These, roughly, were the Northern, the Midland, and the Southern. Each of these dialects had county dialects under it; but of these it is unnecessary here to take any notice. Philologists mark the distinction between the three main dialects by the ending of the plural of the present tense of the verb, thus : N. S. M. We hopeth. Or, along with the present participle, which is itself a test of dialect, we find in these three : N. M. S. We standes singande. We standen singende. We standeth singinde. The change of the broad vowel a into a narrow e and then into an i in the south can be illustrated by the corresponding change which has come over the name of our language. It was Anglosc; it became Englesc; and then English, with the sound of Inglish. We find the same phenomenon in the three different ways of sounding Pall Mall, and in the change of bank into bench. It was the East Midland dialect that Chaucer used; and it is the grammar of this dialect that we must learn. 2. Nouns. (a) The ordinary noun plural is formed in s or ës His lymës greete, his brawnës harde and stronge, The dative plural in Early English (1100-1250) ended in um, * See note on line 46. + Italians call an Englishman Inglese; and an English family that settled early in Scotland has the name of Inglis. which became en, and was even cut down to e. The only true examples of the um dative survive in the old dative forms wchilom and seldom. Some MSS. of Chancer give is and us for the nom. plural; but this is due no doubt to the dialect of the scribe who copied, as it is not kely he would be careful to note Chaucer's forms of the plural Chancer here and there retains the plural in ea—a refined form of the old plural in za Thas he has aschen, assen, been (bees), eyes & X. E. or Storchen, da srors, schoon and fon or foon toes! This plan still survives in the Dorset dialect; and, in Mr Barnes's Dorsshire pens it is a great assistance to the rhythm and metre. Thas Mr Barnes has housen, shoon, nestra, and in D is still the chief plural ending in West Friesic. We also find instances of dorable parails. The only two in modern English are brethren and childrm. The oldest or AngloSaxon plural of brother was brocini, and of cid, cidra; and this plural in ra still survives in the collective aux ry, which is found in hervary, gry, molery, etc. But the force of ru was forgotten; and a was aliad Thus we live instiren and children; though the lower classes in England and Ireland still say dilder. Like dochie plurals in Chancer are dowghtren, sistrem, fom or fom pes, and while in Scotland the oldest plural, cy or bye, is still in usel ♫ Many neuter nouns had no plural ending; and we still have survivals of this in skerp, deer, kors when speaking of a troep, wight (in selenaigia = em ngàss and freight = fourteen nighis), stone used as a weight, ff, and others. So, in the oldest periods of English peor, vùxter, and trend had no plara Chancer has in lines 07-S: His lordés sebeen, bis rem bis dareria His swyz, his bears his stoor, and his paltria A very simibrant enmple is to be found in line. He says that the Pardoner had his portmanteau brethal of pardoun come from Eome a bet. The thing had become so common in England than in became subject to the grammatical usage of the most orinary Engish means The genitive singular generally ends in ; thus Ene 337 : For Cristes sake, with every poré vizàs It should be actived that the 'is not the sin of the genitive or possessive case in modern English, but simply marks the absence of an e-a usage which in the eighteenth century was extended to verbs, as we find in Addison walk'd, stretch'd, etc. (f) Some nouns have no genitive ending at all; thus, line 88: In hope to stonden in his lady grace. These were feminine nouns, whose oldest genitive was an, which was broken down into ë, and then disappeared. Thus Chaucer has lady veil, sonnë upriste (the uprising of the sun), and widow sone. We find survivals of this genitive in hell fire, Ladykirk, and Ladyday (= the day of the Virgin Mary). In like manner, fader, brother, and daughter took no form for the genitive singular. Thus we find in line 781: Now by my fader soule that is deed. (g) The dative singular ends in ë; but it is rare. 3. Adjectives. (a) These words were inflected in the oldest English (or Anglo-Saxon') just as German adjectives are inflected now. Like German adjectives also, they had a definite form and an indefinite form (cf. Guter Mann and Der gute Mann). The definite form-which is preceded by the or some possessive pronoun-has an ë, as in the phrases his swetë brethe (line 5), and in the well-known line: The smalë, swetë, greenë juniper. (b) The comparative degree is formed, as now, by the addition of er. But we find also re, a remnant of an older ra. Thus we have derrë, nerrë, ferrë, herrë, for dearer, nearer, farther, and higher. Bet and mo are contractions for bettre and mara. superlative degree ends in este. Chaucer has hext (= highest) on the model of next (= nighest). The (c) The plural of adjectives is made by adding ë; as, line 146: Of smalë houndës hadde sche, that sche fedde. 4. Articles. line 498: is (a) Chaucer sometimes uses tho for the; as in Out of the gospel he tho wordës caughte. (b) We find in lines 29, 125, and others, the form attë (which at tham; later at than), atta, etc. = (c) The plural of this is thise. The pronunciation has in modern times altered the spelling into these. (d) Пkë means same, and is compounded with the into thilkë, and with that. 5. Pronouns. (a) I was in the oldest English ic (as now in H. Ger. it is ich). We find in Chaucer ich; and as there was a |