is no finer in details, is as a composition finished and coherent, with no unnecessary or irrelevant passages.

Besides the anomalies of construction in the Canterbury Tales,' and not less remarkable than the difference between the neatness and symmetry of the 'Knight's Tale' and the flaccidity of the 'Man of Law's,' there is an anomaly of sentiment and of mood. Melibeus' may be left out of account, as a portent too wonderful for mortal commentary: there are other problems and distresses in the Canterbury Tales,' and they are singular enough, though not altogether inexplicable or out of all whooping,' like that insinuating 'little thing in prose' by which Sir Thopas was avenged on his detractors.

The Knight's Tale' is an artifice, wholly successful, but not to be tampered with in any way, and above all things not to be made into a drama, except for the theatre of the mind. Chaucer refused to give to Emilie and her rival lovers one single spark of that imaginative life which makes his story of 'Troilus' one of the great narrative poems of the world, without fear of comparison with the greatest stories in verse or prose. By the original conception of the Knight's Tale,' the Lady Emilie is forbidden to take any principal part in the story. This is an initial fallacy, a want of dramatic proportion, which renders the plot impossible for the strongest forms of novel or of tragedy. But Chaucer saw that the fable, too weak, too false for the stronger kind, was exactly right when treated in the fainter kind of narrative which may be called romance, or by any other name that will distinguish it from the order of "Troilus,' from the stronger kind of story in which the characters

are true.

In some of the other Tales the experiment is more hazardous, the success not quite so admirable. What is to be said of the 'Clerk's Tale'? what of the Franklin's? That the story of Griselda should have been chosen by the author of Troilus ' for an honourable place in his 'Canterbury Tales' is almost as pleasant as the publication of 'Persiles and Sigismunda' by the author of Don Quixote.' Chaucer had good authority for the patience of Griselda; by no author has the old story been more beautifully and pathetically rendered, and his 'Envoy' saves him from the suspicion of too great solemnity: but no consideration will ever make up for the disparity between the monotonous theme and the variety of Chaucer's greater work, between this formal virtue of the pulpit and the humanities outside. In the Franklin's Tale' again, in a different way, Chaucer has committed himself to superstitions of which there is no vestige in the more complex parts of his

poetry.

poetry. As Griselda represents the abstract and rectilinear virtue of medieval homilists, the Franklin's Tale' revolves about the point of honour, no less gallantly than Prince Prettyman in the Rehearsal.' The virtue of patience, the virtue of truth, are there impaled, crying out for some gentle casuist to come and put them out of their torment. Many are the similar victims, from Sir Amadace to Hernani: the horn of the old Gentleman' has compelled innumerable romantic heroes to take unpleasant resolutions for the sake of a theatrical effect. That the point of honour, the romantic tension between two abstract opposites, should appear in Chaucer, the first of modern poets to give a large, complete, and humorous representation of human action, is merely one of the many surprises which his readers have to accept as best they may. It is only one of his thousand and one caprices: the only dangerous mistake to which it could possibly lead, would be an assumption that the 'Franklin's Tale' can stand as a sample of Chaucer's art in its fullest expression; and the danger of such an error is small. The beginning of right acquaintance with Chaucer is the conviction that nothing represents him except the whole body of his writings. So one is brought round to Dryden's comfortable and sufficient formula: Here is God's plenty.' From the energy and the volume of his Trojan story, as glorious as his Trojan

river:

And thou, Simoys, that as an arwe clere

Through Troie rennest ay downward to the se';

from the passion and the music of that tragedie' to the doleful voices of 'Melibeus,' there is no form or mood, no fashion of all the vanities, that is not in some way or other represented there. The variety of the matter of Chaucer may possibly to some extent have hindered a full and general recognition of the extraordinary variety in his poetical and imaginative art. It may be doubted whether there is any general appreciation of the height attained by Chaucer in the graver tragic form of story, or of the perfection of his style in all the manifold forms in which he made experiments. If there be any such established injustice in the common estimate of Chaucer as makes it possible for reasonable but misguided people to think of him as merely a 'great translator,' then the refutation will come best of all, without clamour or heat, from the book in which Chaucer's work is presented in the most adequate way. Mr. Skeat in his edition has excluded a number of critical questions which might be maintained to be as capable of argument as the subject of Chaucer's dialect and his practice in the composition

2 N 2

composition of English verse. But although the problems of Chaucer's poetry are not exhausted, and many of them untouched, in this edition, it is still to this edition that appeal will be made for many a year to come. Its value as the first critical text of the whole of Chaucer will scarcely be much impaired by the future edition of a hundred years hence, which shall stand in the same relation to this edition as this to Tyrwhitt's, not to disparage its work, but to complement it. The spirit of the editor is fortunately such as to make him disinclined to rest on his accomplishments. It is evident from many signs that these six volumes are not yet the end of his studies, and that it will probably be something even more strongly equipped than these six volumes which will be left by him to the next age as the final version of his work.

ART.

ART. X.-1. Parliamentary Papers.

2. Obituary Notices of Lord Randolph Churchill. 1895.

IT

T seems certain, as certain at least as any future contingency well can be, that the duration of the existing Parliament cannot be prolonged many months after the close of the present year. To make any attempt to predict the outcome of the impending electoral contest would be an idle task. Everything must depend upon the particular conditions under which the electors are called upon to exercise their franchise. This much, however, may be stated with confidence, that in public opinion the Conservative party is regarded as representing the winning cause,— that is, as the one likely to command the largest share of popular support. Opinions differ greatly as to the actual majority the Unionists are likely to secure; but as to the prospect that there will be an Unionist majority, there is a general consensus of opinion. Whether this assumption is correct or incorrect is a matter upon which we are not called to enter. All that concerns us is the fact that the Conservatism of to-day is, under household suffrage, the cause of the majority. In other words, the party which is traditionally associated with class interests, class influence, and class privileges, has become for the time the party of the majority. To understand the causes which have brought about this change in popular sentiment is essential to all who have at heart the ideas of which Conservatism is the champion. The subject is too wide a one to be discussed within the limits of an article, but still we think it is possible to indicate some of the political, social, and economical causes which have rendered Conservatism, as it is known to us to-day, the creed of a vast and increasing portion of our people. It seems to us also that the present occasion is singularly appropriate for such an examination, as since our last issue we have to deplore the untimely death of the statesman who did more than any other politician of his day to weld together and stimulate the forces which have brought about the popular reaction towards Conservatism.

On the late Lord Randolph Churchill's services to the Conservative party we shall dwell later; but in order to realize the significance of the change in which his marked personality played an important part, it is necessary to recall the position occupied by the Conservative party in public opinion up to a comparatively recent date. A man need not have passed much beyond middle life to remember the days when Conservatism was regarded, even by its own adherents, as a decaying, if not a moribund, cause. The great Reform Bill, Catholic Emancipation,

Emancipation, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws had practically broken up the old Tory party, just as later events have led to the disappearance of the Whigs. Parties passing through a period of transition are rarely conscious of the change they are undergoing; and up to a period which may be roughly defined as that of the Crimean War, the Conservatives, to adopt what was then a name chiefly affected by themselves and ignored by their opponents, were identified not only in popular opinion but in their own minds with the old Tory party. They looked for support to the landed interest, to the country gentlemen, to the Church Establishment, to the possessors of broad acres and large fortunes, to the classes who as a rule represented rank and fashion, and to the farmers who still clung tenaciously to a belief in the ultimate restoration of Protection. The Liberals, on the other hand, had on their side a not insignificant section of the great houses and county families who adhered to the old Whig faith, the manufacturing interests, the Nonconformist bodies, the overwhelming majority of the shopkeeping class, a very large proportion of professional men and of the lower middle class, and the great bulk of the comparatively small number of working men who had votes under the suffrage established in 1832. Given these conditions, the Conservatives party of the past, the Liberals the party

were of necessity the of the future.

It was obvious to anyone gifted with ordinary prescience that the causes which were tending to promote the advance of democracy in England-the growth of trade, the progress of science, the increased facility of locomotion-must tend also to promote the power of the classes who then formed the component elements of Liberalism, and to weaken the influence of the classes who then constituted the backbone of Conservatism. Thus the instinct which leads the majority of mankind to follow the winning side, told in favour of the party of progress. Moreover, the stars in their courses fought against the Conservatives. The advent of Free Trade coincided, roughly speaking, with the introduction of railways, ocean steamers, and telegraphs; and the extraordinary impetus given thereby to our industrial and commercial prosperity was credited not altogether unnaturally to the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Navigation Laws, measures which were advocated by the Liberals, and resisted, till Peel gave way, by the whole strength of the Conservatives. Again, the struggles which marked the era of Revolution on the continent of Europe strengthened the Liberal cause at home. Rightly or wrongly, the majority of Englishmen, irrespective of party, sympathised with the efforts of Italy

to