bold innovator, yet the language would have still been indebted to him for enriching it. But such revolutions in languages are not wrought by indi viduals; and the style of Chaucer will bear a fair comparison with that of his contemporaries, Gower, Wickliffe, and Mandeville. That the polite English of that period should have been highly impregnated with French is little to be wondered at, considering that English was a new language at court, where French had of late been exclusively used, and must have still been habitual. English must, indeed, have been known at court when Chaucer began his poetical career, for he would not have addressed his patrons in a language entirely plebeian; but that it had not been long esteemed of sufficient dignity for a courtly muse appears from Gower's continuing to write French verses, till the example of his great contemporary taught him to polish his native tongue1.

The same intelligent writer, Mr. Tyrwhitt, while he

1 Mr. Todd, in his Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer, p. 26, observes, that authors, both historical and poetical, in the century after the decease of these poets, in usually coupling their names, place Gower before Chaucer merely as a tribute to his seniority. But though Gower might be an older man than Chaucer, and possibly earlier known as a writer, yet unless it can be proved that he published English poetry before his Confessio Amantis, of which there appears to be no evidence, Chaucer must still claim precedency as the earlier English poet. The Confessio Amantis was published in the sixteenth year of Richard II.'s reign, at which time Chaucer had written all his poems except the Canterbury Tales.

vindicates Chaucer from the imputation of leaving English more full of French than he found it, considers it impossible to ascertain, with any degree of cer tainty, the exact changes which he produced upon the national style, as we have neither a regular series of authors preceding him, nor authentic copies of their works, nor assurance that they were held as standards by their contemporaries. In spite of this difficulty, Mr. Ellis ventures to consider Chaucer as distinguished from his predecessors by his fondness for an Italian inflexion of words, and by his imitating the characteristics of the poetry of that nation.

He has a double claim to rank as the founder of English poetry, from having been the first to make it the vehicle of spirited representations of life and native manners, and from having been the first great architect of our versification, in giving our language the ten syllable, or heroic measure, which, though it may sometimes be found among the lines of more ancient versifiers, evidently comes in only by accident. This measure occurs in the earliest poem that is attributed to him1, The Court of Love, a title borrowed from the fantastic institutions of that name, where points of casuistry in the tender passion were debated and decided by persons of both sexes. It is a dream, in which the poet fancies himself taken to the Temple of Love, introduced to a mistress, and sworn to observe the statutes of the amatory god.

1 Written, as some lines in the piece import, at the age of nineteen.

As the earliest work of Chaucer, it interestingly exhibits the successful effort of his youthful hand in erecting a new and stately fabric of English numbers. As a piece of fancy, it is grotesque and meager; but the lines often flow with great harmony.

His story of Troilus and Cresseide was the delight of Sir Philip Sydney; and perhaps, excepting the Canterbury Tales, was, down to the time of Queen Elizabeth, the most popular poem in the English language. It is a story of vast length and almost desolate simplicity, and abounds in all those glorious anachronisms which were then, and so long after, permitted to romantic poetry: such as making the son of King Priam read the Thebais of Statius, and the gentlemen of Troy converse about the devil, justs and tournaments, bishops, parliaments, and scholastic divinity.

The languor of the story is, however, relieved by many touches of pathetic beauty. The confession of Cresseide in the scene of felicity, when the poet compares her to the "new abashed nightingale, that stinteth first ere she beginneth sing," is a fine passage, deservedly noticed by Warton. The grief of Troilus after the departure of Cresseide is strongly portrayed in Troilus's soliloquy in his bed.

"Where is mine owne ladie, lief, and dere? Where is her whitè brest-where is it-where? Where been her armès, and her iyen clere, That yesterday this timè with me were ?

Now may I wepe alone with many a teare,
And
graspe about I may; but in this place,
Save a pillòwe, I find nought to embrace.

The sensations of Troilus, on coming to the house of his faithless Cresseide, when, instead of finding her returned, he beholds the barred doors and shut windows, giving tokens of her absence, as well as his precipitate departure from the distracting scene, are equally well described.

Therwith whan he was ware, and gan behold
How shet1 was every window of the place,
As frost him thought his hertè gan to cold,
For which, with changed deedly palè face,
Withouten worde, he for by gan to pace,
And, as God would, he gan so fastè ride,
That no man his continuance espied.
Than said he thus: O paleis desolate,
O house of houses, whilom best yhight,
O paleis empty and disconsolate,

O thou lanterne of which queint2 is the light,
O paleis whilom day, that now art night;
Wel oughtest thou to fall and I to die,
Sens3 she is went, that wont was us to gie1.

The two best of Chaucer's allegories, The Flower and the Leaf, and The House of Fame, have been fortunately perpetuated in our language; the former 4. To make joyous.

Shut. 2 Extinguished.

VOL. I.

3 Since.

C

by Dryden, the latter by Pope. The Flower and the Leaf is an exquisite piece of fairy fancy. With a moral that is just sufficient to apologize for a dream, and yet which sits so lightly on the story as not to abridge its most visionary parts, there is, in the whole scenery and objects of the poem, an air of wonder and sweetness; an easy and surprising transition that is truly magical. Pope had not so enchanting a subject in The House of Fame; yet, with deference to Warton, that critic has done Pope injustice in assimilating his imitations of Chaucer to the modern ornaments in Westminster Abbey, which impair the solemn effect of the ancient building. The many absurd and fantastic particulars in Chaucer's House of Fame will not suffer us to compare it, as a structure in poetry, with so noble a pile as Westminster Abbey in architecture. Much of Chaucer's fantastic matter has been judiciously omitted by Pope, who at the same time has clothed the best ideas of the old poem in spirited numbers and expression. Chaucer supposes himself to be snatched up to heaven by a large eagle, who addresses him in the name of St. James and the Virgin Mary, and, in order to quiet the poet's fears of being carried up to Jupiter, like another Ganymede, or turned into a star like Orion, tells him, that Jove wishes him to sing of other subjects than love and blind Cupido,' and has therefore ordered, that Dan Chaucer should be brought to behold the House of Fame. In Pope, the philosophy of fame comes with much more propriety from