[What a pity this fine line did not terminate with a full stop! but he goes on,]

As was Creseid," they saiden evereach one,
That her behelden in her blacké weed;
And yet she stood full low and still alone,
Behind all other folks in little brede,

(In small space,)

And nigh the door, aye under shamés drede,

(That is, not shame-faced, but apprehensive of being put to shame, put out of her self-possession,)

Simple of attire and debonnair of cheer;

With full-assured looking and mannére.

Troilus, thus seeing her for the first time, looks hard at her, like a town-gallant; and she, being townbred herself, for all her unaffectedness, thinks it necessary to let him understand that he is not to stare at her.

She n'as not with the most of her stature, (Her stature was not of the tallest,)

But all her limbés so well answering
Weren to womanhood, that creáture
Was never lessé mannish in seeming,

And eke the puré wise of her meaning
She showed well,

(Her manner was so correspondent with her mean

ing,)

that men might in her guess

Honour, estate, and womanly nobless.

Then Troilus, right wonder well withal,
'Gan for to like her meaning and her cheer,
Which somedeal deignous was;

(Was a little haughty ;)

for she let fall

Her look a little aside, in such mannére

Ascaunces, "What! may

I not standen here?"

And after that her looking 'gan she light;

(Began to lighten,

to restore to its former ease ;)

That never thought him see so good a sight.

Chaucer is very fond of painting these womanly portraits, especially the face. Here is

ANOTHER,

introduced to us with a piece of music.

The succes

sion of adverbs at the end of the first five lines makes

a beat upon the measure, analogous to the dance he is speaking of:

All which that on her 'gan behold;
Her eyen seemed anon she would
Have mercy. Folly weenden so,

But it was ne'er the rather do:

(She looked so good-natured, that folly itself thought she was at its service; though folly was much mistaken :)

It was no counterfeited thing;

IT WAS HER OWN PURE LOOKING.

A charming couplet!

And he need not have said any

more; but, he was so fond of the face, he could not help going on :—

Were she ne'er so glad,

Her looking was not foolish spread.

Though dulness itself, he tells us, was absolutely "afraid of her style of life, it was so cheerful.”

I have no wit that can suffice

To comprehenden her beauty.

(To describe it comprehensively.)

But thus much I dare say, that she
Was white, ruddy, fresh, lively huéd,
And every day her beauty newéd.

...

Be it ne'er so dark,

Me thinketh I see her evermo.

(If all they, says the poet,)

That ever lived were now alive,

Ne would they have found to descrive
In all her face a wicked sign;

For it was sad, simple, and benign.

The Book of the Duchess.

And there is a great deal more of the description.

GOING TO SLEEP IN HEARING OF A NIGHTINGALE.

A nightingale upon a cedar green,

Under the chamber wall there as she lay,
Full loud ysung again the mooné sheen,
Par 'venture, in his birdés wise, a lay

Of love, that made her hearté fresh and gay;
That hearkenéd she so long in good intent,
Till at the last the deadé sleep her hent.

Troilus and Creseida.

EXQUISITE COMPARISON OF A NIGHTINGALE, WITH CONFIDENCE AFTER FEAR.

And as the new abashed nightingale,

That stinteth first when she beginneth sing,
When that she heareth any herdés tale,

(Herdsman counting his flock,)

Or in the hedges any wight stirring;

And after, siker DOTH HER VOICE OUTRING:

(Siker is securely :)

Right so Creseidé, when that her aread stent,

Opened her heart, and told him her intent.

We conclude this long article, very unwillingly (having to omit a hundred beautiful passages), with a specimen of Chaucer's philosophy, particularly fit to honor these pages:

For thilké ground that beareth the weedés wick

(Wicked or poisonous)

Bear'th eke these wholesome herbés as full oft;

And next to the foul nettle, rough and thick,
The rose ywaxeth sote and smooth and soft;
And next the valley is the hill aloft;
And next the darke night is the glad morrow,
And also joy is next the fine of sorrow.

PETER WILKINS AND THE FLYING

WOMEN.

HE "Adventures of Peter Wilkins" is a book written about a hundred years back, purporting to be the work of a shipwrecked voyager, and relating the discovery of a people who had wings. It is mentioned somewhere, with great esteem, by Mr. Southey, if our memory does not deceive us; and has been altogether so much admired, and so popular, that we are surprised Mr. Dunlop has omitted it in his "History of Fiction." The name, "Peter Wilkins,” has, to the present perplexed and aspiring generation (not yet knowing what to retain and what to get rid of), a poor and vulgar sound. It is not Montreville or Mordaunt or Montgomery. "Peter" is not the name for a card. "Wilkins" hardly announces himself as a diner with dukes. But, a hundred years ago, people did not conceive that a gentleman's pretensions were nominal. What novelist now-a-days would call his hero "Tom Jones"? Yet thus was his great work christened by Fielding, a man of noble family. However, there is a "preferment" in the instinct of this aspiration. Society has had a lift, and is inclined to take every thing for an advantage and an elegance which it sees in possession of its new company. By