CHAUCER was, to employ a word which is of the coinage, I think, of the Rev. St. John Tyrwhitt, a Nuditarian, and, in my opinion, something worse. Nuditarianism is an open question in art, but grossness is not. There remains, however, a topic of great interest, namely, the extent to which the manners and sentiments of our ancestors are accurately represented

by our early Nuditarian, and worse than Nuditarian literature.

I. I cannot help thinking that, on the whole, inferences too strong have been drawn by some antiquarian and historical writers with regard to the rudeness and indelicacy of English manners in early times. Perhaps we are too apt to forget how much depends upon the suggestiveness of language, apart from the bare meaning of words. The suggestiveness of the words we employ in common writing and common speech so much depends upon custom, juxtaposition, and a hundred subtle incidents and associations which cannot survive the occasion, or be preserved in any record, however spontaneous and frank that record may seem to be, that it must be very uncertain work drawing conclusions as to manners from any such records or remains. I recollect reading somewhere an anecdote about an aged lady, who said, in answer to some comment upon the changes in recent manners, that in her young days, which were (I fancy) in the early part of George the Third's reign, educated young ladies would sit, and without a blush hear read aloud in company books or narratives which in her older days she found would not be tolerated even in company of a much lower quality. I quote this for the sake of asking the question, would not this lady have keenly resented the charge that in her youth she had been less modest than she afterwards became ?

Assuredly she would. time, when there is a fashion of indecency, as, for example, when Aphra Behn and Nell Gwyn sat for their portraits in the undress which is so familiar to our memories, do I believe the standard of modesty much varies. It would take strong evidence, indeed, to convince me that a woman stood forth unclad in the streets for the performance of a part in a Mystery, or that any woman in the position of the old carpenter's wife in the Reve's Tale ever performed the trick which is attributed to her in Chaucer's story-in the same age as that in which an insult offered, under cover of a legal errand, to a girl in a similar social position, was fully sufficient to cause the smouldering fire of discontent to break out in the flames of a daring rebellion. Is it easily conceivable that the mother of the maiden of Dartford, whose shrieks, when the girl was affronted, summoned Wat the Tiler to the spot with his hammer, could ever have played Eve before the Fall, in Eve's costume before the Fall, in the presence of a large mob of spectators?

Nor, except for short spaces of

Again, whether the story of Lady Godiva be true or not, the mere fact that in an age earlier than that of Chaucer it could obtain such currency as could belong only to a legend which justly represented popular feeling on the question of personal display, is enough to remind us that the laws of modesty in women have been substantially the same in England for a great many centuries.

II. A remark which I have made in another page concerning the large difference in publicity, and in its effect upon the imaginations and critical faculties of both its writers and its readers, between a written and a printed literature, applies not only to the subject of the marvellous, but to that of decency, modesty, delicacy, or self-respect in the choice of topics and in the details of the treatment. Unfortunately, there is no subject which it is more easy to cant about than this; no subject which has, in fact, been more cantingly and superficially handled. First of all, let us have facts acknowledged for what they are. I, for one, will not consent to have the occasional grossness of Chaucer talked out of sight and remembrance by mere commonplaces about the times in which he lived. and the privileges of the poet's imagination. Frankly, I hold that the indelicacy and filthiness of Chaucer are in excess of the license of his time and of the privilege of the poet. There is every presumption which the nature of the case admits of that the anticipative apology which he makes in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,' was a deliberate throwing of dust in the eyes of the reader;* it is conclusive, even if other evidence

* 'But ferst I pray you of your curtesie,
That ye ne rette it nat my vilanye,

Though that I speke al pleyn in this matere,
To telle you here wordes and here cheere;
Ne though I speke here wordes propurly,
For this ye knowen al so wel as I,

His excuse for the

were wanting, instead of such evidence being abundant, that the poet knew very well the indecency of some of the things he had written. Nor is it possible that the poet, who wrote the sweet, wholesome descriptions and tender suggestions which are to be found in his works could have been unaware of his own grossness when he chose to be gross. That he did at times choose to be gross I maintain. gratuitous filth of the Miller's Tale' and the Reve's Tale,' may be sought partly in his early training in the Junkerei or page's quarter, partly in his camp experience, and partly in other directions. But the mere dirtiness of some of the passages in question is not so unlike an English poet, and not so dishonouring to human nature, as the intrusive, insolent indelicacy

Who so schal telle a tale aftur a man,

He moste reherce, as neigh as ever he can,
Every word, if it be in his charge,
Al speke he never so rudely ne large;

Or elles he moot telle his tale untrewe,

Or feyne thing, or fynde wordes newe.

He may not spare, though he were his brothur;
He moste as wel sey oo word as anothur.
Crist spak himself ful broode in holy writ,

And wel ye woot no vilanye is it.

Eke Plato seith, who so that can him rede,
The wordes mot be cosyn to the dede.

Also I pray you to forgeve it me,

Al have I folk nat set in here degre

Here in this tale, as that thei schulde stonde;
My witt is schorte, ye may wel undurstonde.'