describe the grief and patience of Griselda; the faith of Constance; and the heroic perseverance of the little child, who, going to school through the streets of Jewry, "Oh Alma Redemptoris mater, loudly sung," and who after his death, still triumphed in his song. Chaucer has more of this deep, internal, sustained sentiment, than any other writer, except Boccaccio. In depth of simple pathos, and intensity of conception, never swerving from his subject, I think no other writer comes near him, not even the Greek tragedians. I wish to be allowed to give one or two instances of what I mean. I will take the following from the Knight's Tale. The distress of Arcite, in consequence of his banishment from his love, is thus described: "Whan that Arcite to Thebes comen was, Ful oft a day he swelt and said Alas, And shortly to concluden all his wo, Clerk of Oxforde, who tells it, professes to have learned it from Petrarch. This story has gone all over Europe, and has passed into a proverb. In spite of the barbarity of the circumstances, which are abominable, the sentiment remains unimpaired and unalterable. It is of that kind, "that heaves no sigh, that sheds no tear;" but it hangs upon the beatings of the heart; it is a part of the very being; it is as inseparable from it as the breath we draw. It is still and calm as the face of death. Nothing can touch its ethereal purity: tender as the yielding flower, it is fixed as the marble firmament. The only remonstrance she makes, the only complaint against all the ill-treatment she receives, is that single line where, when turned back naked to her father's house, she says, "Let me not like a worm go by the way." The first outline given of the characters is inimitable: Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable, Among this poure folk ther dwelt a man, But for to speke of vertuous beautee, But though this mayden tendre were of age, Hire olde poure fader fostred she: A few sheep spinning on the feld she kept, And whan she homward came she wolde bring The which she shred and sethe for hire living, Upon Grisilde, this poure creature, Commending in his herte hire womanhede, Grisilde of this (God wot) ful innocent, She thought, "I wol with other maidens stond, And as she wolde over the threswold gon, And doun upon hire knees she gan to fall. Till she had herd what was the lordes will." The story of the little child slain in Jewry, (which is told by the Prioress, and worthy to be told by her who was "all conscience and tender heart,") is not less touching than that of Griselda. It is simple and heroic to the last degree. The poetry of Chaucer has a religious sanctity about it, connected with the manners and superstitions of the age. It has all the spirit of martyrdom. It has also all the extravagance and the utmost licentiousness of comic humour, equally arising out of the manners of the time. In this too Chaucer resembled Boccaccio that he excelled in both styles, and could pass at will" from grave to gay, from lively to severe;" but he never confounded the two styles together (except from that involuntary and unconscious mixture of the pathetic and humorous, which is almost always to be found in nature,) and was exclusively taken up with what he set about, whether it was jest or earnest. The Wife of Bath's Prologue (which Pope has |