mon from an old fabliau or conte of an anonymous French rhymer, De Gombert et des deux Clers. The reader may easily fatisfy himself upon this head by cafting his eye upon the French Fabliau, which has lately been printed with feveral others from mfl. in France. See Fabliaux et Contes, Paris, 1756, t. ii. p. 115-124. $13. The Coke's Tale is imperfect in all the mff. which I have had an opportunity of examining. In mf. A. it seems to have been entirely omitted; and indeed I cannot help fufpecting that it was intended to be omitted, at least in this place, as in the Manciple's Prologue when the Coke is called upon to tell a Tale there is no intimation of his having told one before. Perhaps our Author might think that three Tales of barlotrie, as he calls it, together would be too much. However, as it is fufficiently certain that the Coke's Prologue and the beginning of his Tale are genuine compofitions they have their ufual place in this edition. There was not the fame reafon for inferting The Story of Gamelyn, which infome mff. is annexed to 'The Coke's Tale. It is not to be found in any of the mfl. of the first authority, and the manner, ftyle, and verfification, all prove it to have been the work of an author much inferiour to Chaucer. I did not therefore think myself warranted to publish it a fecond time among The Canterbury Tales, though as a relick of our ancient poetry, and the foundation perhaps of Shakespeare's As you Like It, I could have withed to fee it more accurately printed than it is in the only edition which we have of it. S14. In the Prologue to The Man of Lare's Tale Chaucer recalls our attention to the action (if I may fo call it) of his drama, the journey of the pilgrims. They had fet out foon after the day began to fpring, [ver. 824 and f.] When the Reve was beginning to tell his Tale they were in the neighbourhood of Deptford and Greenwich, and it was half way prime, that is, I fuppole, balf evay past prime, about half an hour after feven A. M. [ver. 3904, 5.] How much further they were advanced upon their road at this time is not faid, but the hour of the day is pointed out to us by two circumftances: we are firft told [ver. 4422, 3,] that -the fonne The ark of his artificial day had ronne The fourthe part and half an hour and more o and fecondly, [ver.4432,] that he was five-and-forty "degrees high;" and this laft circumftance in fo confirmed by the mention of a correfponding phenomenon that it is impoffible to fufpect any errour in the number. The equality in length of fhadows to their projecting bodies can only happen when the fun is at the heighth of five-and-forty degrees. Unfortunately however this defcription, though feemingly intended to be fo accurate, will neither enable us to conclude with the mff. that it was ten of the clock, nor to fix upon any other hour, as the two circumstances juft mentioned are not found to coincide in any part of the 28th (or of any other) day of April (14) in this cli (14) The 28th day of April, in the time of Chaucer, anfwering to our 6th or 7th of May, the fun, in the latitude of London, Tofe about half hour after four, and the length of the artificial day was a little more than fifteen hours. A fourth part of fifteen hours (three hours forty-five minutes) and half an bour and more may be fairly computed to make together four hours and a half, which being reckoned from four one half A. M. give the time of the day exaěly nine A. M. but the fun was not at the altitude of 45° till about half hour after nine. In like manner if we take the 18th day (according to all the editions and some mil) we fhall find that the fun indeed was 45° high at ten A. M. exactly, but that the fourth Volume I. R mate. All that we can conclude with certainty is, that it was not paft ten of the clock. The compliments which Chaucer has introduced upon his own Writings are modeft enough, and quite unexceptionable; but if the reflection [ver. 4497, and f. upon those who relate fuch ftories as that of Canace or of Apollonius Tyrius was levelled at Gower, as I very much fufpect, it will be difficult to reconcile fuch an attack to our notions of the frict friendship which is generally fuppofed to have fubfifted between the two bards (15.) The attack too at this time muft appear the more extraordinary on the part of our bard, as he is just going to put into the mouth of his Man of Lawe a Tale, of which almost every circumstance is borrowed from Gower. The fact is that the ftory of Canace is related by Gower in his part of the day and half an hour and more had been completed at nine A. M.- In this uncertainty I have left the text as I found it in all the best mff. only mf. H A. does not exprefs the hour, but reads thus; Yt was atte cloke (15) There is another circumftance which rather inclines me to believe that their friendship fuffered fome interruption in the latter part of their lives. In the new edition of the Confefho Amantis, which Gower published after the acceffion of Henry IV. the verfes in praife of Chaucer [fol. 190. b. col. I, ed. 1532,] are omitted. [See mf. Harl. 3869.] Though perhaps the death of Chaucer at that time had rendered the compliment contained in thofe verfes lefs proper than it was at first, that alone does not feem to have been a fufficient reason for omitting them, efpecially as the original date of the work, in the 16 of Richard II. is preferved. Indeed the only other alterations which I have been able to discover are toward the beginning and end, where every thing which had been faid in praife of Richard in the first edition is either left out or converted to the ufe of his fucceffor. Conf. Amant. b. iii, and the story of Apollonius (16) (or Apollynus, as he is there called) in the viiith book of the fame work; so that if Chaucer really did not mean to reflect upon his old friend his choice of thefe two inftances was rather unlucky. $15. The Man of Larve's Tale, as I have just said, is taken, with very little variation, from Gower, Conf. Amant. b. iii. If there could be any doubt, upon a curfory perufal of the two Tales, which of them was written first, the following paffage, I think, is fufficient to decide the question. At ver. 5505 Chaucer fays Som men wold fayn how that the child Maurice (16) The hiftory of Apollonius King of Tyre was fuppofed by Mark Welfer, when he printed it in 1595, to have been tranflated from the Greek a thousand years before. [Fabr. Bib. Gr. v. 6. p. 821.] It certainly hears ftrong marks of a Greek original, though it is not (that I know) now extant in that language. The rythmical poem under the same title, in modern Greek, was retranflated (if I may so speak) from the Latin-απο Λατινικής εις Ρωμαΐκην γλωσσαν. [Du Frefne, Index Author. ad Gloff. Græc.] When Welfer printed it he probably did not know that it had been published already (perhaps more than once) among the Gefta Romanorum. In an edition which I have, printed at Rouen in 1521, it makes the 154th chapter. Toward the latter end of the 12th century Godfrey of Viterbo, in his Pantheon or univerfal Chronicle, inferted this romance as part of the hiftory of the third Antiochus, about 200 years before Chrift. It begins thus, [mf. Reg. 14 C. xi,] Filia Seleuci regis flat clara decore Matreque defuncta pater arât in ejus amore. The rest is in the fame metre, with one pentameter only to two hexameters.-Gower, by his own acknowledgment, took his ftory from the Pantheon, as the author (whoever he was) of Pericles Prince of Tyre professes to have followed Gower, and we read in Gower that Maurice is actually fent upon this moflage to the emperour. We may therefore fairly conclude that in this paffage Chaucer alludes to Gower, who had treated the fame fubject before him, but, as he infinuates, with lefs propriety. I do not however fuppofe that Gower was the inventor of this Tale: it had probably paffed through feveral hands before it came to him. I find among the Cotton, miff. Gal. A. ii. fol. 69, an old English rhyme entitied Amare, in which the heroine under that name goes through a leries of adventures for the most part exactly fimilar to those of Conftance (17 :) but neither was the author of this rhyme the inventor of the flory, for in fol. 70. a, he refers to his original in Romens or French; and in the last stanza he tells us exprefsly. Thys ys on of Brytayne layes That was used by olde dayes. Of the Brylayne layes I thall have occafion to speak more at large when I come to The Frankelein's Tale. $ 16. The Man of Lawe's Tale, in the best mff. is followed by The Wife of Bathe's Prologue and Tale, and therefore I have placed them fo here; not however merely in compliance with authority, but because, according to the common arrangement, in The Marchant's Tale (18) there is a direct reference to The (17) The chief differences are that Emarè is originally expofed in a boat for refusing to comply with the incestuous defires of the emperour her father; that the is driven on the coat of Galys or Wales, and married to the king of that country. The contrivances of the ftepmother, and the confequences of them. are the fame in both florics. (18) v. 9559, Juftine fays to his brother January The WIF of Bathe, if ye han underflonde, Of mariage, which ye han now in hunde, |