Right thus, and said, Ne wost nat thou
That is betidden, lo! right now?
No, certes, quod he; tell me what;
And then he told him this and that,
And swore thereto that it was soth;
This hath he said, and this he doth,
And this shall be, and this heard I say,
That shall be found, that dare I lay;
That all the folk that is on live
Ne have the cunning to descrive
Tho thinges that I hearden there,
What aloud and what in the ear.
But all the wonder most was this,
When one had heard a thing, I wis,
He came straight to another wight,
Aud gan him tellen anon right
The same tale that to him was told
Or it a furlong way was old,
And began somewhat for to ech
Unto this tiding in his speech
More than ever it spoken was,
And nat so soon departed n'as
Tho fro him that he ne y-met z
With the third man, and, ere he let a
Any stonnd, he y-told him alse;
Weren the tidings sooth or false,
Yet wold he tell it natheless,
And evermore with mo increase
Than it was erst: thus north and south
Went every tiding from mouth to mouth,
And that increasing ever mo,

As fire is wont to quicken and go
From a sparkle sprongen d amiss,
Till all a city brent up is.
And when that that was full up-sprong,
And waxen more on every tongue

I Knowest thou not that which is befallen.
y Add (eke).

And no sooner was departed then from him than he met.
a Stopped, delayed.
b Moment.

c Also.

a Sprung.

e

h

Than er it was, and went anon
Up to a window out to gone,
Or but it might out there y-pass,
It gan out creep at some crevass,
And flew forth faste for the nones.
And sometime I saw there at once
A leasing and a sad soothsaw,i
That gonnen of aventure drawi
Out at a window for to pace,
And when they metten in that place
They were achecked' bothe two,
And neither of them might out go,
For each other they gun so crowd,
Till each of them gan cryen loud,
Let me gon first; Nay, but let me,
And here I wol ensuren thee

With vowes, that m thou wolt do so,
That I shall never fro thee go,
But be alway thine own sworn brother;
We wol meddle" us each in other,
That no man, be he ne'er so wroth,
Shall have one of us two, but both
At ones, as beside his leve,°

Come we a morrow or on eve,
Be we y-cried or still y-rowned.
Thus saw I false and sooth compowned
Togeder fly for oP tiding.
Thus out at holes gon to wring զ
Every tiding straight to Fame;
And she gan yeven each his name
After her disposition,

And yeve them eke duration,
Some to wexen and wanen soon,
As doth the fair and white moon,

e Before.

g For the occasion (the once). i Grave truth.

m

h Lie, falsehood.

Began by chance to draw.
1 Checked, stopped.
Apparently a misprint for "and," that is, if.
Intermix.

• Without his leave?

n

f Ere ever.

P One.

W

And let him gone: there might I seen
Winged wonders full fast flyen,
Twenty thousand all in a rout
As Eolus them blew about.
And, Lord! this house in alle times
Was full of shipmen and pilgrimes
With scrippes bretful of leasings,
Intermeddeled with tidings;
And eke, alone by them selve,
A many thousand times twelve
Saw I eke of these pardoners,
Currours, and eke of messangers,
With boxes crommed full of lies
As ever vessel was with lees.
And, as I altherfastest" went
About, and did all mine intent▾
Me for to playen, and for to lear,
And eke a tiding for to hear
That I had heard of some countree,
That shall not now be told for me,
For it no need is (readily
Folk can y-sing it bet than I,
For all mote out, or late or rathe,
Alle the sheaves in the lathe) a
I hearden a great noise withal
Within a corner of the hall,
There men of love tidings told;
And I gan thiderward behold,
For I saw renning every wight
As fast as that they hadden might;
And everich cried, What thing is that?
And some said, I n'ot never what:
And when they were all on an heap,
Tho they behind gonnen up leap,
And clamber up on other fast,
And up the noise on highen cast,

b

+ Couriers.

u Fastest of all.

Top-full.
v. Endeavour.

To play or amuse myself?
x Learn. ▾ Must.
z Late or soon.
a Barn. Urry misprints the word "fathe."
tion also shows that he did not understand the passage.
c Know not (wot not).

His punctua

b Where.

72

And treaden fast on other's heels,
And stamp as men done after eels;
But at the last I saw a man,
Which that I nought describe ne can,
But he y-seemed for to be
A man of great auctority.

At the apparition of this unnamed personage the poet awakens from his dream, and the poem ends.

Through such deeper thinking and bolder writing as this, Chaucer appears to have advanced from the descriptive luxuriance of the Romaunt of the Rose to his most matured style in the Canterbury Tales. This is not only his greatest work, but it towers above all else that he has written, like some palace or cathedral ascending with its broad and lofty dimensions from among the common buildings of a city. His genius is another thing here altogether from what it is in his other writings. Elsewhere he seems at work only for the day that is passing over him; here, for eternity. All his poetical faculties put forth a strength in the Canterbury Tales they have no where else shown; not only is his knowledge of life and character greater, his style firmer, clearer, more flexible, and more expressive, his humour more subtle and various, but his fancy is more nimblewinged, his imagination far richer and more gorgeous, his sensibility infinitely more delicate and more profound. And this great work of Chaucer's is nearly as remarkably distinguished by its peculiar character from the great works of other poets, as it is from the rest of his own compositions. Among ourselves at least, if we except Shakspeare, no other poet has yet arisen to rival the author of the Canterbury Tales in the entire assemblage of his various powers. Spenser's is a more aerial, Mil

ton's a loftier song; but neither possesses the wonderful combination of contrasted and almost opposite characteristics which we have in Chaucer-the sportive fancy, painting and gilding every thing, with the keen, observant, matter-of-fact spirit that looks through whatever it glances at; the soaring and creative imagination, with the homely sagacity, and healthy relish for all the realities of things; the unrivalled tenderness and pathos, with the quaintest humour and the most exuberant merriment; the wisdom at once and the wit; the all that is best, in short, both in poetry and in prose, at the same time.

The Canterbury Tales is an unfinished, or at least, as we have it, an imperfect work; but it contains above 17,000 verses, besides more than a fourth of that quantity of matter in prose. The Tales (including the two in prose*) are twenty-four in number; and they are interspersed with introductions to each, generally short, called prologues, besides the Prologue to the whole work, in which the pilgrims or narrators of the tales are severally described, and which consists of between 800

*Mr. Guest conceives that one of these prose tales, the Tale of Meliboeus (that told by the poet himself) is a specimen of the kind of poetry called cadence, of which mention is made in a passage that has been quoted in a preceding page from the House of Fame. (Hist. Eng. Rhythms, ii. 255258.) "As the tale proceeds," he says, "the rhythmical structure gradually disappears." Tyrwhitt, after informing us that Mr. William Thomas, in one of his MS. notes upon the copy of Urry's edition presented by him to the British Museum, had observed that this tale seems to have been written in blank verse, adds: "It is certain that in the former part of it we find a number of blank verses intermixed in a much greater proportion than in any of our author's other prose writings; but this poetical style is not, I think, remarkable beyond the first four or five pages."