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look round and think that by God's blessing, the spirit which had gone forth from his decrepit body was now vivifying the commonwealth of England.

on condition, however, that he should perform the duties of the office in person. About the same time he received an honorary grant of a pitcher of wine daily, which was afterwards commuted into a Nor was the priest John Ball idle in his pecuniary allowance. It would seem that vocation, mingling his crude and fiery nothis was the heyday of the poet's fortunes; tions with a doctrinal theology much less for in the same year his friend, John of pure probably than that of Wycliffe. For Gaunt, gave him a grant of ten pounds for now nearly twenty years, according to life, while the two succeeding years brought Walsingham, he had been overshadowing him two wind-falls-a vacant wardship the country with his presence, 'promulgatvalued at 1047. (equivalent to 18721. of our ing the perverse crotchets of the perfidious money) and a forfeiture of wool to the John Wycliffe, and a vast deal besides amount of 71. 4s. 6d., (12627. of our which it would be tedious to tell of.' It money). Thus become a rich man, Chau- even appears that he had organized politicer appears to have lived in a style of cor- cal associations among the serfs of Kent responding liberality and expense. Twice and Essex; and Knighton has preserved afterwards, in 1376 and 1377, he was specimens of mystic little pamphlets or flyabroad on diplomatic missions. But while leaves, which he was in the habit of disactively engaged in such important duties, tributing under assumed signatures for inhe was still using his pen, and the period surrectionary purposes. The following is of his life at which we are now arrived is one of these specimens, intitled 'Jack Milthe date of the production of his House ler's Letter' :of Fame,' and various other pieces.

'Jack Miller asketh help to turn his mill aright. He hath grounden small, small; the king's son of heaven, he shall pay for all. Look thy mill go aright, with the four sails, and the post stand in stedfastness. With right and with might, with skill and with will. Let might help right, and skill go before will, and right before might; then goeth our mill before skill, then is our mill mis-adight.' aright. But if might go before right, and will

In June 1377, Edward III. died, and was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II., the son of the lamented Black Prince. Although Richard was only in his twelfth year, no formal Regent was appointed, and the administration came into the hands of his three uncles, the Dukes of Lancaster, York, and Gloucester. Meanwhile society was in a state of violent ferment. Wycliffe had now become Doctor of Divinity, The smouldering fire at length burst and, in virtue of that degree, was empow- forth in the insurrection of serfs under Wat ered to open his own school of Theology Tyler, in June, 1381. This insurrection, at Oxford. He was no longer engaged in constituting, in our opinion, an epoch in a petty warfare with the Mendicant Friars. the history of English society, was a comEver since his visit to the Papal Court at pound outburst of three distinguishable Avignon, in the year 1374, his aim had feelings: the inextinct feeling of Saxon been more specific, and now he was attack- against Norman, an impure Lollard feeling the fundamental principles of the Pa-ing, and the feeling of present physical pacy itself. The whole population of Eng-suffering. The revolt lasted a fortnight, land had by this time been infected with the during which the mob of serfs and artisans Lollard opinions; the Londoners especially held possession of London, burnt palaces, were zealous Wycliffites. In compliance and beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbuwith no fewer than four bulls issued against him by Pope Gregory XI. the reformer was brought to trial before an ecclesiastical tribunal, at Lambeth: and but for the political influences in his favor, he would have fallen a sacrifice. Wycliffe's years of activity, however, were nearly over; in the year 1379, he was visited with a stroke of paralysis, which left him weak and incapable of exertion. His work, however, was done; and while sitting in his rectory at Lutterworth, the paralytic man, fifty-five years of age, could

ry with several other persons of note. The throne itself was in danger, and a real concession to the popular spirit was on the point of being made, when the officious mace of the Lord Mayor, Walworth, dashing Wat Tyler from his horse in Smithfield, dispersed the mob and put an end to the insurrection. John Ball, with a few other leaders of the rioters, was taken and hanged; and there, after a haggard career, was an end of the crazy priest.'

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The reign of Richard II. was a continued series of political agitations. Scarcely

was the outbreak of the laboring classes his great poetical work The Canterbury suppressed when a struggle commenced Pilgrimage,' two of the tales in which, between two parties among the nobility and however, are in prose; and his 'Miscellagentry-the Court party, at the head of nies' or ' Minor Poems.' which were the king's favorites, De La Pole and De Vere, and another party, the leaders of which were the King's uncles, John of Gaunt and the Duke of Gloucester This struggle did not terminate till the year 1399, when that revolution occurred which deposed Richard II. and placed Henry Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, upon the throne.

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To one who has enjoyment in true poetry, nothing can be more refreshing than an occasional dip into the minor poems of Chaucer. Most persons have some favorite poetical composition or other to which, in their moments of languor and oppression, they turn for solace. Some produce the calm their spirits require by taking a sorrow-bath in Hamlet;' others drop burning tears of relief over some plaintive Scottish song read for the thousandth time; and others wander away from the world in the enchanted woods of Spenser. Now, in certain moods of the mind the minor poems of Chaucer seem to have a peculiar

moods in which the demand is not for the
strong wine which invigorates, but for a
draught of some soothing and relaxing
beverage-in which, like the man of busi-
ness enjoying his holiday,

'One longs to sink into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, to read a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment.'

These political convulsions affected our poet's fortunes. Attached to the party of Johu of Gaunt, he was elected, in 1386, to serve in Parliament as knight of the shire for Kent, in consequence of which, or in consequence of his conduct in parliament, he was deprived by the king of his offices ly medicinal function of this kind; those in the Customs. In 1387 his wife died; subsequently he was obliged to sell his pensions; and from the year 1394, to 1398, there is evidence, according to Sir Harris Nicolas, that his condition was one of 'sheer unmistakable poverty;' and this, although John of Gaunt, who had been abroad for some time engaged in attempt to be made king of Castile, had now returned to England, and married As an approach to a correct classification, the poet's sister-in-law, Lady Catherine we may say that Chaucer's miscellanies Swinford, formerly Catharine Rouet. It consist of these four kinds of composition: was during his old age of widowhood and translations-pathetic narratives and leadversity, that Chaucer composed his great gends-fanciful or descriptive pieces, with work, that 'Comedy,' as he calls it, which a moral or allegorical signification-and he had resolved to leave behind him as the songs or ballads. most mature and finished production of his mind. The poet's declining years were visited with a gleam of returning prosperity. In 1398, his son Thomas Chaucer, who had been appointed chief butler in the royal household, had orders to allow his father a pipe of wine annually during life. On the accession of Henry Bolingbroke, in 1399, Chaucer's former pension of twenty marks was doubled to him, and other favors followed. The poet, however, did not live long to enjoy them. He died on the 25th of October, 1400, in the seventy-third year of his age; and his body was interred in that part of Westminster Abbey which has since become the Poet's Corner.

The works of Chaucer may be arranged in three divisions-his prose compositions, including The Testament of Love,' supposed to contain autobiographical references, a translation of Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiæ,' and a Treatise on the Astrolabe,' addressed to his son Lewis;

The only complete specimen of translation printed among Chaucer's minor poems, although several passages occurring through the rest of them are either translated or imitated from other authors, is the "Romaunt of the Rose." This poem, the joint production of William de Lorris and John de Meun, two Frenchmen of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, seems to have been an extraordinary favorite in Chaucer's age, and to have influenced the tastes and style of most of the early European poets. The professed object of the poet is to represent under the allegory of a rose, which is placed in a situation difficult of access and guarded by magic, 'the helps and furtherances, as also the lets and impediments that lovers have in their suits.' In the course of the poem, however, which is of immense length, there are innumerable tortuosities and descriptive digressionsscenes, objects, and allegorical personages appearing in strange and confusing suc

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And as the new abashed nightingale
That stinteth first, when she beginneth sing;
When that she heareth any herdés tale,
Or in the hedges any wight stirring;
And after, sicker doth her voice outring;
Right so Cresseide, when that her dreadé
stent,

Opened her heart and told him her intent.'

cession. 'The author hath also,' to use withstanding its prolix character, may be the words of Chaucer's old commentator read with delight; and it abounds with the Urry, many glances at the hypocrisy of finest detached passages. The description the clergy, whereby he got himself such of Cresseide giving way and acknowledging hatred among them, that Gerson, Chancel- her love has been much admired :lor of Paris, writeth thus of him: saith he, "There was one called Johannes Meldinensis, who wrote a book called The Romaunt of the Rose,' which book, if I only had, and there were no more in the world, if I might have five hundred pounds for the same, I would rather burn it than take the money." On the whole, the Romaunt is valuable principally as a picture of the age, and as being a firstling of European literature; for although there are many beautiful and powerful descriptive passages in it, particularly towards the beginning, yet the whole performance drags itself on with such a wormy leisureliness of movement, such a glorious ignorance of the possibility of such a thing as hurry or want of time on the part of the reader, that it is only by assuming the historical spirit very strongly, and saying to oneself-what a dear old book it is, that a modern reader can get on with it. Reading it through is like walking for a week through miles of labyrinthine foliage closing behind you as you advance.

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"The Lamentation of Mary Magdalene for the death of Christ,' a poem professing to be a translation from Origen, has by several critics been treated as the production of some other poet than Chaucer, there being, they say, sufficient internal evidence in the inferiority of the composition to warrant its exclusion from the list of Chaucer's writings. How the genuineness of the poem can be called in question on such grounds, by a person possessed of ear or heart, we cannot understand. To us the whole composition appears quite worthy of Chaucer; the last six stanzas, in particular, surpass every thing we know in pathos.

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Under the head of Pathetic Narratives Of Chaucer's allegoric or descriptive and Legends may be included Troilus poems, the principal are The Complaint and Cresseide,' a long poem in five books; of the Black Knight,' Chaucer's Dream," 'The Legend of Good Women,' in which and the Book of the Duchess,' the purthe illustrious actions of nine or ten hero- port of which has already been explained; ines of ancient history are told in metre; the Court of Love,' a fantastic piece in the Lamentation of Mary Magdalene,' the chivalrous spirit, and after the style of and one or two others founded on fact or the Romaunt of the Rose; the Assembly tradition. The pathetic narrative is a kind of Fowls,' wherein, all the fowls being of composition in which Chaucer perhaps gathered on St. Valentine's day to choose excels all our poets. Taking some simple their mates, a formal eagle being beloved incident or story as the plot of his poem, of three tercels, requireth a year's respite the separation of two lovers for instance, to make her choice upon this trial Qui bien Chaucer paints the afflicting circumstances aime tard oublie;' The Cuckoo and the so slowly and assiduously, descends so ex- Nightingale,' an inimitable little thing in ploringly into the caverns of tears, and which the two birds are heard by the poet gives such an expression of sick and wail-in a dream disputing about their singing; ing melancholy to the language of his and The Flower and the Leaf,' the arguspeakers, that the reader sighs as if the ment of which is as follows: A gentlecase were his own. Of this kind are some woman out of an arbor in a grove seeth a of the Canterbury Tales, and of this kind great company of knights and ladies in a also is Trolius and Cresseide.' In this dance upon the green grass, the which poem, according to Urry, is shewed the being ended, they all kneel down and do fervent love of Troilus to Cresseide, whose honor to the daisy, some to the flower, and love he enjoyed for a time, and her great some to the leaf; afterward this gentleuntruth to him again in giving herself to woman learneth from one of these ladies Diomedes, who in the end did so cast her the meaning hereof, which is this: they off that she came to great misery; in which which honor the flower, a thing fading with discourse Chaucer liberally treateth of the every blast, are such as look after beauty divine purveyance.' The whole poem, not- and worldly pleasure; but they that honor

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the leaf, which abideth with the root notwithstanding the frosts and storms of winter, are they which follow virtue and during qualities without regard of worldly respects. This little poem is a perfect gem of its kind, and is remarkable for the leafying up and down admiring the beauty and richness and luxuriance of its imagery. A poet has compared it to

imaginary dream. On the tenth day of December, the poet, as he lay asleep, dreamt that he was in a temple of glass full of statues and paintings, which he found to be the temple of Venus. Walk

a little copse;

The honeyed lines so freshly interlace
To keep the reader in so sweet a place,
So that he here and there full-hearted stops,
And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops
Come cool and suddenly against his face.'

Chaucer's ballads and songs are of various
kinds, and include several dainty little
pieces, so compact and neatly-rounded, both
as to sense and versification, that they
might figure in collections of poetry, or
even in school-books. A few of them,
breathing a spirit of philosophical resigna-
tion to the world's bad usage, appear to be
expressions of the poet's personal feelings
during the eclipse of his fortunes.

Others

are of a humorous or satirical cast, such as
the cutting ballad in praise of women for
their steadfastness, commencing thus:

'This world is full of variance
In everything, who taketh herd,
That faith and trust and all constaunce
Exiled been; this is no dread.
And save only in womanhead
I ca y-see no sickerness
But for all that, yet as I rede,
Beware alway of doubleness.

richness of all he saw, and wondering at the same time in what country or neighborhood he was, he at length went to the gate of the temple to see if any one was stirring who could inform him. He saw nothing, however, but one vast plain as far as the eye could reach, without town, or house, or tree, or grass, or ploughed land, or any thing but a wide expanse of sand. Oh, save me,' he cried, from phantom and delusion!' and with these words, devoutly looking up, lo! a wonder in the sky. Fast by the sun was an eagle, larger than any he had ever beheld, all of gold, and its feathers so bright that it seemed

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As if the heaven had y-won
All new from God another sun

As he gazed the golden bird began to move; and descending like a thunder-flash to where the poet stood, seized him with its claws and wheeling once round flew up with him into the blue heaven. As soon as the palpitating poet had recovered from the stupefaction caused by the suddenness of his seizure, the eagle calms his fears by assuring him that Jupiter intends neither to stellify him like Romulus, nor to make a butler of him like Ganymede, but only, as a reward for his poetical labors in the ser

There is one of Chaucer's minor poems, to which, although it might be ranked un-vice of the Goddess of Love, to give him a der the third of the above-mentioned glimpse into that strange edifice, the House classes, we have as yet made no allusion. of Fame; to which accordingly they are We refer to The House of Fame,' a hu- now on their way. Of the situation of morous composition of considerable length, this house and the acoustical principles on in which, making use of a grotesque poet- which it is constructed, the eagle favors the ical device, the poet criticises in a healthy, poet with a preparatory description during half-satiric spirit the aspirations after future their flight. Every thing that exists, says fame. As it will be proper to present our the bird, is observed to have its home or readers with a prose analysis of some one stead, some place which is more congenial of Chaucer's poems, we have reserved it for to it than any other place, and which it that purpose, partly because, owing pro- constantly seeks to arrive at if it be not albably to the crippleness of the versification ready in it. Thus stones, lead, and all as compared with others of his composi-heavy substances fall to the earth; while tions, it appears to have been less read than smoke, flame, and all light substances most of them, and partly because it is some- ascend. Now sound is nothing but air what singular in its character, being not a disturbed. When a pipe is blown sharp, mere descriptive piece in which fancy and the air is violently torn and rent; this is sentiment predominate, but a collection of sturdy general reflections on history.

The basis of The House of Fame,' as of several of Chaucer's other poems, is an

sound. Further there is no sound, let it be but a mouse's squeak, but has its waves and reverberations through the whole atmos phere, like the ripples produced by a peb

ble thrown into a sheet of water. There is, however, a central point in space where all sounds in heaven, earth, or sea, meet and forgather. This is Fame's house; the home of sound, where, as inside a great bell, all the noises of the universe hold their booming congress.

throne of ruby, sat a feminine creature of the strangest make. At first she did not appear a cubit long, but in the very act of looking, you saw her dilate till her size be came enormous. She was full of eyes ears, and tongues all over; her hair was golden, wavy, and crisp; and on her feet Professing himself quite satisfied with she had partridge's wings. Music rolled in the somewhat vague natural philosophy of billows over and around her throne; and the eagle, the poet is hurried still upward. the hall resounded. with minstrelsy and Looking down upon the earth he can dis- song. The goddess, for it was Fame hercern fields and plains, hills and valleys, self, sustained on her shoulders the arms cities, forests, and rivers, and ships sailing and the name' of the two most famous on the sea. But soon these become indis-men that ever lived, Alexander and Hercutinct in the distance; and now casting his les; and on a row of pillars extending from eyes upward, lo! the heavenly beasts and the dais to the door stood statues of the the galaxy which some call the milky-way, most celebrated poets and writers of history; and some Watling-street. In such a situ- Josephus, the Jewish historian, on a pillar ation it was but natural to think of Phaeton part of lead and part of iron; Statius the and his chariot. And when ascending poet on a strong iron pillar painted over with still higher he saw the heavenly beasts be- tiger's blood; Homer on a very high pillar neath him, and clouds, mists and tempests, of iron; Virgil on one of tinned iron; snow, hail, rain, and wind, brewing and Ovid on one of copper; Lucan on one of seething together, then it was but natural iron very sternly wrought; and Claudian, also to think of those two well-known wri- very appropriately, on a pillar of sulphur. ters on astronomy, Marcian and Anticlau- Suddenly the poet hears a buzz, like the dian, whose descriptions of the celestial re-hum of bees leaving a hive; and instantly gions were really surprisingly accurate. Do you hear that?' says the eagle, interrupting his cogitations; and sure enough the poet hears a 'great sound rumbling up and down, like the beating of the sea against hollow rocks, or the humbeling after the clap of a thundering.' Suddenly, he wist not how, the eagle lands him in a fair street, and pointing to a palace, which he said was Fame's house, leaves him.

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the hall is filled by a multitude of people of all regions, ages, and conditions. These are suitors to Lady Fame. Madam,' said the first party who approached the throne, we are people who have done many great and meritorious actions on earth; and we wish to obtain renown for them.' From me,' replies the goddess, you shall get good fame, not a particle.' Alas,' say they, 'what is the reason of this?' 'Simply because such is my pleasure,' retorts the goddess.

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No wight shall speak of you, I wiss,
Ne good, ne harm; ne that, ne this.'

The palace stood on the top of a high rock of ice, the whole face of which was carved over with names, all of which, with the exception of such as were in the shade, were illegible from the melting of the ice. The castle itself was of the strangest ar- And leaving her crestfallen suitors to digest chitecture; and the doors were besieged their disappointment, the goddess, anticiby a rabble of troubadours, singers, mimics, pating more petitions of a similar charjugglers, and astrologers. Making his way acter, sends to Thrace for Eolus, the god through these the poet was saluted at the of wind, with his two trumpets, Praise and gate of the castle with cries of a largess, Slander. Æolus is soon in attendance with a largess; God save our gentle Lady Fame,' his instruments; and a second party of and forthwith, showering nobles and star-suitors advance, and prefer the same relings as they went, out poured a crowd of quest as the last. 'I admit,' replies the heralds and pursuivants, clad in rich sur- goddess, 'that your claim is well founded; coats emblazoned with all known devices but I cannot grant your petition. What I in the chivalry of Asia, Africa, or Europe. can grant, however, you shall have; though Letting them pass, and entering the hall of Fame, its appearance amazed him. Walls, floor, and roof, were all plated with fine gold, half a foot thick, and set with precious stones. On a dais at one end, on a

it is the contrary of what you deserve. Eolus, blow a blast of your Slander trumpet.' The wind-god put the foul trumpet of brass to his mouth, and blew as if he would blow the world down.

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