There was another Knight, however, more famous in that day, who wrote tales of fiction that were truer to the life than our traveller's descriptions; CHAUCER, the Father, as he is styled, of English Poetry, adorned this century. Perhaps no man ever did so much for a language; and if we love English as we love England-the one a grand interpreter of human thought, the other a chosen witness to prophesy among the nations for God's truth and man's liberty,—we may well give honour to the writer who, more than any other perhaps, helped to make it what it is. He lived through the last seventy years of our century, as his brother-knight lived through the first seventy; but the poet's English is the hardest of the two, and a glossary is a needful accompaniment for any but a learned reader.

It is difficult to select a few stanzas without a puzzling word here and there, and these rather spoil quotations. But I shall like to give you a specimen from his poem of THE CUCKOO AND THE NIGHTINGALE; wherein he dreameth that he heareth the Cuckoo and the Nightingale contend for excellency in singing. He had special delight in sylvan scenes and the song of birds; the feathered warblers he looked on as congenial friends, and describes their habits like one who had watched them, and drunk in their music, in many a dreamy mood, beneath leafy bowers:

"But as I lay this other night waking,

I thought how lovers had a tokening,
And among hem it was a commune tale,
That it were good to here the nightingale
Rather than the leud (loud) cuckow sing.

"And than I thought anon as it was day,
I would go some where to assay
If that I might a nightingale here;
For yet had I none heard of all that yere,
And it was tho the third night of May.

"And anone as I the day aspide,

No lenger would I in my bed abide,
But vnto a wood that was fast by,
I went forth alone boldely,

And held the way downe by a brooke side.

"Till I came to a laund of white and green,
So faire one had I never in been;

The ground was green, ypoudred with daisie,
The floures and the greues (groves) like hy,
All greene and white, was nothing els seene.

"There sate I downe among the faire flours,

And saw the birds trip out of hir bours,
There as they rested hem all the nigt,
They were so joyfull of the dayes light,
They began of May for to done honours.

"They coud that seruice all by rote;
There was many a louely note;
Some song loud as they had plained,
And some in other manner voice yfained,
And some all out as with the full throte.

'They proyned hem, and made hem right gay,
And daunceden and lepten on the spray,

And euermore two and two in fere (pair),

Right so as they had chosen hem to yere (this year),
In Feuerere (February) upon Saint Valentine's day.

"And the riuer that I sate vpon,

It made such a noise as it ron,
Accordaunt with the birds armony,
Me thought it was the best melody

That might been yheard of any mon.'

By his marriage with the sister of John of Gaunt's mistress, and third wife, Chaucer was nigh to royalty, and held offices about the Court in the reign of Richard II. He was no mere rhymer, however, for lords and ladies, but a man of large observation and popular sympathies, one

who surveyed the broad surface of English society, and became, in fact, the chronicler of the manners of his times. The Canterbury Tales are not only a monument of his genius, but a study for the antiquary, as containing the fullest record of the manners, dress, habits of life, and modes of thought, prevalent among the English people, in that distant age, than are to be found in all that History has supplied to us elsewhere. The groundwork of the poem is very simple, yet admirably calculated for its purpose. I remember, when I was a boy, and walked sometimes along the Borough, on the gateway of an inn called the Talbot, just opposite the Town Hall, there was this inscription,―This is the Inne where Sir Jeffry Chaucer, and the nine and twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to Canterbury, Anno 1383. The Town Hall is gone now—so old London disappears; and the inscription, I grieve to say, is gone, too. We are told that Talbot is a corruption of Tabard, which anciently meant a herald's coat; and there, as it was conveniently situated for the great highway from the heart of London to Kent, pilgrims used to muster who meant to travel in company to the tomb of Thomas à Beckett, or Saint Thomas, as he was called, at Canterbury. A more thoroughly national custom it would have been impossible to find. More than two centuries had elapsed since the martyrdom, as Englishmen were taught to style it; and still, year by year, a fresh stream poured out Eastward from the metropolis, to see the shrine which was a wonder for its wealth, or to do honour to the man. A more motley crew, made up of those who could afford to travel on horseback, and yet deemed it not beneath their condition to join company with chance companions journeying on the same errand, it would be impossible to conceive. The poet is supposed to be of the party. Mine host of the Tabard is their guide,—a lover of mirth and

good stories, who proposes that they shall tell tales by the way, going and returning, and that the prize for the best story shall be a supper for the winner at the common cost, when they come safe back again. The Tales vary in character and merit: some are romantic, some satirical, and some offensively coarse. Considering that a Prioress and a Nun are of the party, the recital of these last is a curious fact in the history; and manners, we must say, are much mended since they could be told or tolerated in such company. Before the pilgrims start, each has his likeness taken; and the prologue to the poem, containing six hundred lines, is a gallery of portraits, in which the characteristic features of the several classes into which English society was then divided are vividly and minutely described.

There is the KNIGHT who had seen fifteen mortal battles, and borne himself well in all of them,-a Crusader who helped to win Alexandria from the Infidel,-a gentleman all over,

"In all his port, as meke as is a mayde;

He never yet ne villanie had sayde

In alle his lyf, unto no manere (meaner) Night;

He was a veray parfit gentil knight."

There is his son, the SQUIRE, "as fresh as May," "embroidered" like a flowery meadow, accomplished in dance and song, and well-skilled in the sports of chivalry, wakeful, for very love, as the tuneful nightingale,—

"Courteous he was, lowly and serviceable;"

bred up in the best school of chivalry.

There is the YEOMAN, or Forester, a representative of no unimportant class of Englishmen, who hunted with the knight and squire,-went with them to the wars, and

brought home as good a report of their valour,-clad in coat and hood of green, armed with sword and buckler, and a gay dagger to boot;

"And in his hand he bare a mighty bow,"

evidently one who might have fought at Crecy, and shot some of his "peacock arrows bright and keen" against the cowardly Genoese.

There is the PRIORESS, with neatest, trimmest dress, and stately manners, a model of propriety in the etiquette of the table, with a special love to a pet dog or two that were delicately fed, and with pity to spare for a dead mouse. Her tale, not unnaturally for one nursed in the prejudices of the age, and fed with the literature of the cloister, runs upon the wickedness of Jews, and the foul murder of a Christian child by some of the hated race.

There is the MONK, goodly enough for an Abbot, well mounted, with jingling bells at his bridle rein, his hood fastened with a love-knot and a curious gold pin, his tunic edged with fur-"the finest in the land," known as a mighty hunter, with "dainty horses" in his stable, and greyhounds fleet as birds.

There is the FRIAR, 66 a wanton and a merry,' '-a great rogue, in fact, noted as the best beggar in his convent, who farmed a district for his rounds in the way of business, and warned off intruders,—who would have a farthing from a widow, though she had nothing left but a shoe,—very lenient at Confession times to generous sinners, yet “rage he could," and give himself airs, when men were uncompliant, "like a master or a Pope."

There is the PARDONER, a well-known character in those days, and likely to find customers among a company of pilgrims; whose

"Wallet lay before him in his lap,

Bret-full of pardons come from Rome, all het (hot)."