Chapter VII (4)

The Knight, his son the Squire, his servant the good Yeoman--a gallant three--the Clerke of Oxenford, the "poure Person of a toun," and his brother the Ploughman, are, each in his estate, of thorough worthiness, and are all, accordingly, drawn in a spirit of full affection. The Prioress and the Franklin are laughed at a little--she for the pains she gives herself to display her _imitative_ high breeding, and for--only think it!--A.D. 1489--her SENTIMENTALITY!--he for his love of a plenteously-spread board, and for his "poignant sauces!" But the two are good at heart; and the satire of the poet leaves to them undisturbed their place in your good esteem. His other men of some condition--the Monk, the Friar, the "Sergeant of the Lawe," the Merchant, the "Doctour of Physike"--he lashes with a more vigorous wrist. But not like a farce-monger, who, to gain your laugh, must utterly abase his characters, and make them merely ridiculous. The hunting Monk wants nothing but his hood off to be a distinguished country squire. He is "_a manly man_ to be an abbot able!" and, if he keeps greyhounds, they are "as swift as fowl of flight." And look but at his horse's points and condition! The rascal of a "Frere," if, by his perseverance and persuasiveness in begging, he impoverishes the county, is a noble post of his order, and well beloved and familiar with franklins, and with worthy women. The Merchant has an assumed air of importance--magnifies his gains--thinks the protection of the sea betwixt the ports from which his vessels run the first duty of civilized governments--and keeps his wit set upon the main chance. But that is the worst of him--"For sothe he was _a worthy man_ withalle." The Lawyer is at the top of his profession--wise, witty, perfect in statutes and in precedents, high in honours. What are his faults? You can hardly tell. There is a slight ostentation of wisdom. He has got a deal of money together--he is full of business--but he "_seems_ yet busier than he is." The Doctor, too, is an excellent physician. He calls the stars in to his aid. But that may be Chaucer's belief, not his mirth. He knows the disease, and has the remedy at command. To be sure, he and his apothecaries understand one another. He is learned in a thousand books; but not in THE BOOK. Gold is of high esteem in medicine as a cordial. Therefore he loves gold.

Why go on? Like Shakspeare, Chaucer portrays men in a spirit of humanity. He paints his fellows; and, if he is amused with our follies, he prefers showing the fairer side of our nature. Even the merry, warm-blooded Wife of Bath, with her five wedded husbands, earns some goodwill of us by her joyous and invincible spirit. Imagine the daring, the vigour, and the stirring wit of the west-country cloth-manufacturess, who cannot rest easy till she has been three times in pilgrimage to Jerusalem!

There is a visible purpose of keeping up the RESPECTABILITY of the company. If the MILLER, the COKE, the REVE, and the SOMPNOUR, stand on a somewhat low step of the social stair--the HABERDASHER, the CARPENTER, the WEBBE (Weaver)--the DYER and the TAPISER--who are lumped in the poet's description--

"Were al yclothed in ye liveree,
_Of a solempne and gret fraternitee_.

* * * *

_Wel semed ech of hem a fayr burgeis_,
_To sitten in a gild halle_, ON THE DEIS."

They are of wisdom qualifying them to stand for Aldermen of their wards. Their wives are 'ycleped Madame'--take precedency in going to vigils--and have

----"A mantel reallich (_i.e._ royally) yborne."

Even our honest friend the Southwark innkeeper, Henry Bailey, has an air of dignity thrown over him. He was

"A semely man--
For to have ben _a marshal in an halle_.
_A large man_ he was, with eyen stepe,[30]
_A fairer burgeis is ther non in Chepe_.
Bold of his speche, and wise and _wel ytaught_,
And of manhood him lacked righte nought."

Moreover, even that chief of poetical Taverns, the TABARD, is designated as

"This _gentil_ hostelrie."

No wonder! since

"The _chambres and the stables weren wide_,
And _wel we weren esed_ ATTE BESTE."

The Tales are, in some respect, like an extension of the Prologue. They carry out the characters, or the spirit of the characters, there drawn. Thus, if the chivalry of the time is impersonated, in respect of its valour, honour, and courteous demeanour, in the Knight, in his Tale it mounts into poetical aspiration, and shines out in regal splendour. The contrast, due to the different years of the father and the son, is in part disappointed by the cross destiny which has

----"left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold."

The youthful fancy, dipped or drenched in romance, of the twenty-year old Squire, shows itself, indeed, in the two sections which we have of his chivalrous narrative. The Sword, which, with its edge, hews through all armour, and with its "plat" heals the else incurable wounds of its own inflicting--the Mirror, which discloses the plotting of the kingdom's enemies, the truth or disloyalty of a distant lover--the Ring, which enables its wearer to understand the "leden" of all birds, and to answer them in the same--and the marvellous Horse of Brass, which, with turning of a pin, and with a whisper in the ear, carries his rider whither he would through the air, vanishes and comes with a wish, and, farthermore, behaves and comports himself wholly after the best fashion of a horse;--these four gifts from the King of Arabie and Inde to the Tartar king and his daughter, transport us, as with a flight of the magical courser himself, into the deep, wild, and mystical heart of that region, unplaced by geographers, explored by the host of dreamers, Romance. So, the love-story of the forsaken Bird, with whom the Ring brings the Princess acquainted, is Eastern, is amorous, is high-fantastical, fit for the 'lover and lusty bacheler,' who

----"Coude songes make, and well indite,
Juste and eke dance"--

and stands off in complete distinction from the love-debate, with argumentation and with arms, of Palamon and Arcite. What is it, then, that we would have more? Truly, we fear, that for once we are half unreasonable. The Tale, with beginning, middle, and end, to satisfy the heart of Aristotle, in the Knight's mouth--and the finely-begun fragment in the Squire's--are, by their temper, allied and opposed, quite up to the dramatic propriety of the two speakers. What would we have more? Simply this, that Chaucer, by carrying to an end the unfinished fiction in the tone in which he has begun it, should have demonstrated himself the master of his art, which, by his project, he seems to be. The Knight's is a love-tale, as well; but there is, in the love-story, an involving of political interests, which, together with the known historical names, or such as are so reputed, tempers the romantic, confers a gravity, and mixes in a tone of the world's business that suits the sedate reason, and the various observation of the veteran warrior, tried in high services. It would have been a pleasant feat of poetical understanding and skill, especially for that unpractised day, if a second equally gallant recital of love and war--long and complex it would, by the intimations thrown out, have been--could have been pursued throughout its natural evolutions and vicissitudes, as resolutely as thus far it is, upon its own meet self-sustained wing. It would have been! Oh, vex not the shade of the true Maker with saucy doubts and fears! "Call up Him!" Yes--were there evocations of such potency; but "call Him" in the simplicity of your soul, because he has moved in you the lawful desire of hearing--because you long, insatiably, to know what was done, found, suffered, enjoyed, by Cambalo, Algarsif, Canace: which none other segger, disour, maker, harper and carper, that shall ever arise shall have wit to tell you--not because you would fain sit in the chair of criticism, awarding or withholding the palm of dramatic skill, claimed by Dan Geffrey. Ay! "call up Him!" But call up no substitute for Him.

The Sergeant of Laws' Tale, and the Clerke of Oxenford's, have an affinity. Each describes a tried wife, an exemplar for all her sex, two perfectly pure-souled women. And nothing is more honourable to Chaucer than the love with which he has dwelt upon the story of both. Both suffer to extremity; but Custance, the Sergeant's heroine, under the hand of Providence, who proves her with strange calamities, and when she has well-endured the ordeal, restores her to deserved happiness. For the loving wife, whom the Clerke of Oxenford praises, a loving husband is pleased to devise a course of sharp assaying, which might have been conveniently spared. The manner of telling in the two stories is marked with a difference. In both it is somewhat of the copious kind; and it may be observed, generally, that the style of the narrative, in the seven-lined stanza, or "rime roiall," is more diffuse than in the couplets. There is a difference between the two which appears to belong to the characters of the speakers. The Man of Law has not a few passages of exclamatory and apostrophical moral and sentimental rhetoric. They compel you to recollect his portrait--

"Discret he was, and of gret reverence
He _seemed_ swiche, his _wordes were so wise_."

The Clerk has nothing of the kind. The largeness in his manner of relating, is rather an explicit and lucid fulness in representing an interesting subject, than what is properly called diffuseness. Chaucer has said of him--

"Not a word spake he more than was nede;"

and you will see accordingly, that although he _details_ his narrative, every word, in its place, is pertinent and serviceable. He ends with a freak, which carries him, you are disposed to think, out of his character. He has related, after Petrarch, the story of patient Griseldis, with beautiful earnestness and simplicity. He has conducted her through all the trials which the high-born lord thought good to lay upon the low-born wife, has displayed and rewarded her inimitable "wifly pacience," and then confesses, that not being imitable, neither is it intended that it should be imitated. In short, he "stints of ernestful matere;" and to "gladen" his audience, ends with "saying them a song," in six quaintly-rhymed stanzas, in which he counsels the wives to stand upon the defensive against their husbands, and take all natural care of themselves--

"Be ay of chere as light as lefe on linde,
And let _him_ care, and wepe, and wringe, and wail."

The ironical counsel does not belie the moral of the story; but it comes unexpectedly from him whom the Hoste has called upon for his tale, with remarking, that he "rides as still and coy as a maid newly espoused sits at her bord."

The Franklin has at home a graceless cub and heir of his own. If good living were one and the same thing with holy living, this should the less easily have happened. The Franklin is wonderfully captivated with our young Squire's breeding, grace, and eloquence. The contrast brings his own "burdane" painfully into his mind, and wrings from him a mortified exclamation. The old man, with his sanguine complexion, and his beard

"White as is the dayesie,"

has--notwithstanding the sharp censorship which he exercises over his cook--a heart in his bosom. The pleasure with which he has heard the Squire, vouches as much; and more decisively so does the story, which he himself tells from the old Breton lays; another story of a virtuous wife, strangely tried, of all the three the most strangely. Her husband, a knight, is on a voyage, and she takes a horror of the perilous rocks that edge their own shore. Meanwhile, a youthful squire pursues her with love. One day, in a mockery, she promises to grant him his suit if he will remove all the rocks in a morning. After some perplexity of thought he resorts to an able magician at Orleans; who, for the consideration of a thousand pounds, undertakes, and accomplished the feat. Who is now hard bestead, but the lady? She, in her strait, consults her husband, who has returned; and the honourable husband says--you must keep your word. The squire comes for his guerdon. "My husband says that I must keep my word." "Indeed!--and shall a squire not know how to do a 'gentil dede,' as well as a knight? I release you your promise."--He carries L500--all of the agreed sum that he can muster to the conjurer, and prays of him time for the rest. "Have I performed my undertaking?" "Yes!"--"And the lady hers?"--The squire is obliged to relate the sequence of events.--"And is a clerk," exclaims the master, "less able to do a gentil dede, than squire and knight? Keep thy money, Sir Squire!"

That is a creditable tale for a country gentleman--

"Whose table dormant in the halle alway
Stood redy covered alle the longe day."

There is much feeling in the detail of the story, and the magical shows, by which the enchanter, before striking his bargain, demonstrates his competency, and by which he afterwards executes his engagement, are dressed out with vivid imagination.

But now it is really high time that you should hear Dryden on Chaucer. For is not this Number IV. of our Specimens of the British Critics?

"With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue; from Chaucer the
purity of the English tongue began. The manners of the poets were not
unlike: both of them were well bred, well natured, amorous, and
libertine, at least in their writings; it may be also in their lives.
Their studies were the same--philosophy and philology. Both of them
were knowing in astronomy; of which Ovid's _Books of the Roman
Feasts_, and Chaucer's _Treatise of the Astrolabe_, are sufficient
witnesses. But Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil,
Horace, Persius, and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and
clearness; neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the
Grecian fables, and most of Chaucer's stories were taken from his
Italian contemporaries, or their predecessors--Boccace his
'Decameron' was first published; and from thence our Englishman has
borrowed many of his 'Canterbury Tales.' Yet that of _Palamon and
Arcite_ was written, in all probability, by some Italian wit, in a
former age, as I shall prove hereafter. The tale of _Grisilde_ was
the invention of Petrarch; by him sent to Boccace, from whom it came
to Chaucer. _Troilus and Cressida_ was also written by a Lombard
author, but much amplified by our English translator, as well as
beautified; the genius of our countrymen, in general, being rather to
improve an invention than to invent themselves, as is evident not
only in our poetry but in many of our manufactures. I find I have
anticipated already, and taken up from Boccace before I come to him;
but there is so much less behind; and I am of the temper of most
kings, who love to be in debt, are all for present money, no matter
how they pay it afterwards; besides, the nature of a preface is
rambling, never wholly out of the way, nor in it. This I have learned
from the practice of honest Montaigne, and return at my pleasure to
Ovid and Chaucer, of whom I have little more to say. Both of them
built on the inventions of other men; yet since Chaucer had something
of his own, as _The Wife of Bath's Tale_, _The Cock and the Fox_,
which I have translated, and some others, I may justly give our
countryman the precedence in that part; since I can remember nothing
of Ovid which was wholly his. Both of them understood the manners;
under which name I comprehend the passions, and in a larger sense the
descriptions of persons, and their very habits. For an example, I see
Baucis and Philemon as perfectly before me as if some ancient painter
had drawn them; and all the pilgrims in the _Canterbury Tales_, their
humours, their features, and their very dress, as distinctly as if I
had supped with them at the Tabard, in Southwark. Yet even there,
too, the figures of Chaucer are much more lively, and set in a better
light; which, though I have not time to prove, yet I appeal to the
reader, and am sure he will clear me from partiality. The thoughts
and words remain to be considered in the comparison of the two poets,
and I have saved myself one-half of that labour by owning that Ovid
lived when the Roman tongue was in its meridian; Chaucer, in the
dawning of our language; therefore, that part of the comparison
stands not on an equal foot, any more than the diction of Ennius and
Ovid, or of Chaucer and our present English. The words are given up,
as a post not to be defended in our poet, because he wanted the
modern art of fortifying. The thoughts remain to be considered; and
they are to be measured only by their propriety; that is, as they
flow more or less naturally from the persons described on such and
such occasions. The vulgar judges, which are nine parts in ten of all
nations, who call conceits and jingles wit, who see Ovid full of
them, and Chaucer altogether without them, will think me little less
than mad, for preferring the Englishman to the Roman. Yet, with their
leave, I must presume to say, that the things they admire are only
glittering trifles, and so far from being witty, that in a serious
poem they are nauseous, because they are unnatural. Would any man who
is ready to die for love, describe his passions like Narcissus; would
he think of _inopem me copia fecit_, and a dozen more of such
expressions, poured on the neck of one another, and signifying all
the same thing? This is just John Littlewit, in 'Bartholomew Fair,'
who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a
miserable conceit. On these occasions, the poet should endeavour to
raise pity; but, instead of this, Ovid is tickling you to laugh.
Virgil never made use of such machines when he was moving you to
commiserate the death of Dido; he would not destroy what he was
building. Chaucer makes Arcite violent in his love, and unjust in the
pursuit of it; yet when he came to die, he made him think more
reasonably: he repents not of his love, for that had altered his
character; but acknowledges the injustice of his proceedings, and
resigns Emilia to Palamon. What would Ovid have done on this
occasion? He would certainly have made Arcite witty on his
deathbed;--he had complained he was farther off from possession by
being so near, and a thousand such boyisms, which Chaucer rejected as
below the dignity of the subject. They who think otherwise, would by
the same reason prefer Lucan and Ovid to Homer and Virgil, and
Martial to all four of them. As for the turn of words, in which Ovid
particularly excels all poets, they are sometimes a fault, and
sometimes a beauty, as they are used properly or improperly; but in
strong passions always to be shunned, because passions are serious,
and will admit no playing. The French have a high value for them; and
I confess they are often what they call delicate, when they are
introduced with judgment; but Chaucer writ with more simplicity, and
followed nature more closely, than to use them. I have thus far, to
the best of my knowledge, been an upright judge betwixt the parties
in competition, not meddling with the design nor the disposition of
it; because the design was not their own; and in the disposing of it
they were equal. It remains that I say something of Chaucer in
particular.

"In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold
him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or
the Romans Virgil. He is a perpetual fountain of good sense; learned
in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects. As he
knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence
which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the
ancients excepting Virgil and Horace. One of our late great poets is
sunk in his reputation because he could never forgive any conceit
which came in his way, but swept like a drag-net great and small.
There was plenty enough, but the dishes were ill sorted; whole
pyramids of sweetmeats for boys and women, but little of solid meat
for men. All this proceeded, not from any want of knowledge, but of
judgment. Neither did he want that in discerning the beauties and
faults of other poets, but only indulged himself in the luxury of
writing; and perhaps knew it was a fault, but hoped the reader would
not find it. For this reason, though he must always be thought a
great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten
impressions which his works have had in so many successive years, yet
at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth;
for as my last Lord Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, 'Not
being of God, he could not stand.'

"Chaucer followed nature every where, but was never so bold to go
beyond her; and there is a great difference of being _poeta_ and
_nimis poeta_, if we may believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a
modest behaviour and affectation. * * *

"He must have been a man of most wonderful comprehensive nature,
because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the
compass of his _Canterbury Tales_ the various manners and humours (as
we may now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age. Not a
single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally
distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations,
but in their very physiognomies and persons. Baptista Porta could not
have described their natures better, than by the marks which the poet
gives them. The matter and manner of their tales, and of their
telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours, and
callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth.
Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their
several sorts of gravity; their discourses are such as belong to
their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of
them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some
virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and
some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is
different; the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are several men, and
distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady Prioress,
and the broad-speaking gap-toothed Wife of Bath. But enough of this;
there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am
distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. It is
sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's
plenty. We have our forefathers and great-granddames all before us,
as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still
remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by
other names than those of monks, and friars, and canons, and
lady-abbesses, and nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing
lost out of nature, though every thing is altered. May I have leave
to do myself the justice, (since my enemies will do me none, and are
so far from granting me to be a good poet, that they will not allow
me so much as to be a Christian, or a moral man,) may I have leave, I
say, to inform my reader, that I have confined my choice to such
tales of Chaucer as savour nothing of immodesty. If I had desired
more to please than to instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the Shipman,
the Merchant, the Sumner, and, above all, the Wife of Bath, in the
prologue to her tale, would have procured me as many friends and
readers as there are beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town. But I
will no more offend against good manners. I am sensible, as I ought
to be, of the scandal I have given by my loose writings; and make
what reparation I am able, by this public acknowledgment. If any
thing of this nature, or of profaneness, be crept into these poems, I
am so far from defending it, that I disown it, _totum hoc indictum
volo_. Chaucer makes another manner of apology for his broad speaking
and Boccace makes the like; but I will follow neither of them."

An English reader is likely to have held his way through the Palamon and Arcite of Dryden, ere arriving at the knight's Tale of Chaucer. It will not easily happen that he overleaps that Version, so full of the fire and vigorous grace which he delights in, and couched in the very choicest of that English on which his ears habitually feed, to introduce himself all at once to the antique and to him obsolete Original. The pure impression, therefore, with which he would read the Tale in its proper place, if he there first got acquainted with it, is hardly to be obtained. No matter! Forget Dryden, and plunge yourself into Chaucer.

Be surprised, if you can, as you surely will be amused, at encountering the inextricable commixture of manners, usages, tones, thinkings, and speakings, which time and space have done their best at keeping asunder--the chivalry of modern Europe, and of the middle ages, transplanted into the heroic age of old Greece, and to the Court of Theseus, "Duk of Athenes." Be surprised and amused, but do not therefore lay the book out of your hand, or laugh the old master to scorn, or do him other than reverent and honourable justice. Take rather the story to pieces, convince yourself step by step how strangely at every turn the old world and the new, the Christian and the Heathen, are confounded together, and feel at every step how the vitality which the good poet has infused into his work, reconciles and atones discordancies and discrepancies; and in spite of the perplexing physiognomy, how that must needs be one body which is informed and actuated, through all its joints and members, by one spirit.

Take in pieces the story--untwist the intertwined classical and romantic threads. Make sure of the fault, and then hasten to forgive it. The fault! Are you quite sure that it is one? Recollect that it is not Chaucer who relates the Knight's Tale. Chaucer is here a dramatic poet, and his Knight relates his own tale. What!--Shall he, who has "full often time the bord begun,"--

"Aboven alle natiouns in Pruce;"

who has "reysed in Lettowe, and in Ruce," has been--

"In Gernade at the siege
Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie;"

who was--

"At Leyes and at Satalie,
When they were wonne; and in the Grete See,
At many a noble armee;"--

he who has been at--

"Mortal battailes fiftene,
And foughten for our faith at Tramisene,
In listes thries, and ay slain his fo"--

shall he, upon the qualm of a queasy criticism, not be allowed to transfer something of the

"Chevalrie,
Truth and honor, fredom and courtesie,"

which, "from the time that he first began to riden out," he has loved--across a gap of a few hundred leagues and years? To what end else, it may be asked, has he approved himself, "full worthy in his lordes werre," and "ridden thereto no man ferre,"--

"As well in Christendom as in Hethenesse,
And ever honor'd for his worthinesse?"

Why, the Knight would have been no knight at all if he had been Richard Bentley or John Milton, and not, as there is every reason to hope he was, _le noble et vaillant Chivaler_ MATHEU DE GOURNEY, whose marble tells us that he had fought at Benamaryn and Algezire, and been at abundance of battles and sieges, named and unnamed, in Christendom and Heathenesse--"_en les quex il gaigna noblement graunt los et honour_"--and who "died in 1406 at the age of 96." It is therefore Sir Matheu de Gourney who speaks, like a knight, of knighthood--and let him speak--

"Who never yet no vilainie ne sayde,
In all his life unto no manere wight."--

Let him speak, justifying his eulogist, and showing us, as well as may be by his words, what his deeds showed the world, that--

"He was a veray parfit gentil knight!"

The first transaction that is related with some full process, is the chivalrous enterprise of Theseus against Creon; King of Thebes. This dispiteous and abominable tyrant prohibits the bodies of the warriors fallen in the celebrated siege of that city from burial. The widows of the slain princes and nobles move Theseus for vengeance and redress, which he instantly undertakes, and forthwith executes. And now mark the admixture of times and manners. In the first place, the heinousness of the crime, and even the imagination of such an impiety, are purely antique, as, in truth, the fact itself is on classical record in the "Antigone" of Sophocles. Again, the suppliant, bereaved, and woebegone wives have awaited Theseus's coming "in the temple of the goddess Clemency," than which nothing can be more classical; and the manner in which, at his return home from his victorious war upon the "Amasones," the sorrowful company receive him, kneeling by two and two clothed in black, along the highway, might persuade you that Sir Matheu had read the OEdipus Tyrannus, and successfully imitated OEdipus's dolorous and picturesque reception in the streets of Thebes, by the kneeling, plague-smitten population of the city.

On the other hand, the claim of redress at the hand of the warrior carries your imagination to the interesting volumes of St Palaye; and clearly refers to the obligation by which the knight, at his investiture, bound himself to redress all wrongs, especially those of the ladies. And Theseus is nothing slack in acknowledging the obligation. He dismounts, takes them each and all up in his arms,

"And swore his oth, _as he was trewe knight_,"

that he will do his endeavour that the world shall applaud the chastising of the "false king."--Again, when the one day's demolishing fight has given Creon to death, and his Land into Theseus's hand, and the two right Heroes of the Tale, the Theban cousins, Palamon and Arcite, are dragged out, half-alive and half-dead, from the heap of the slain, the "herauds" know them, by the "cote-armoure," to be of the blood-royal. Of course, they are designated "knights."--Again: Theseus will take no ransom for them. That is perhaps, indifferently, ancient or modern; but it sounds to our ears rather modern, that he shuts them up in a high tower, which overlooks the Garden of his Palace.

But now we plunge into the bosom of our own Heroic times. To do observance to the May is a rite that we find continually occurring in the poetry of the middle ages. It is on May morning that Emelie, going into the garden to gather flowers, and wreathe for herself a coronal, is first seen by the two captive Theban kinsmen. Again, when Arcite, liberated by the intervention of Pirithous, has returned, and is living unrecognized in the service of Theseus, it is precisely upon the same occasion of going into the wood to gather "grenes" for May morning, that he falls in with Palamon, who has the night before broken prison, and hides himself during the day in the forest--which encounter leads to their set encounter in arms the next day, and so to the interruption of their duel by Theseus himself, and so to all the consequent course of events. Whatever the true rites of returning May may have been, in classical antiquity, the observance comes into this tale from the manners of mediaeval Europe, not of ancient Greece.

With what glad and light ritual, the Athenians, in the first years after the war of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes, did homage to their king and queen of the May, we do not remember to have seen distinctly described. At this day the young folk of old Hellas parade the streets, shouting the classical [Greek: chelidonisma], or song of the swallow, on the 1st of March. The Romans held their Floralia from the 28th of April to the 1st of May, danced and sang, and had games, and crowned themselves with garlands and with flowers. Nevertheless, you instinctively feel that the singularly graceful picture of Emelie, called up from slumber by the dawning May morning, and proceeding to pluck in the royal garden the dew-fresh and bright materials of her own coronal, owes nothing to the lore of books, but is breathingly imaged from some gracious original of our own good fourteenth century. You remain assured, that the trustworthy poet records his own proper love-experience in adjusting the occasion that is to vivify with a new passion the dolorous prison of the two Thebans, and turn the sworn brothers-in-arms into rivals at deadly feud with each other. That rougher age of the world--rude the day was not that produced and cherished Chaucer--had this virtue, that the grown-up men and women were still, by a part of their heart, children. The welcoming-in of the May is described by the old poets in different countries of Europe as a passion--seizing upon young and old, high and low. All were for the hour children--children of nature. When, therefore, that love at first sight, which immediately becomes a destiny to the two kinsmen, governing their whole after-life, is in this manner attached by our poet to the visit made upon this occasion by Emelie to the garden which their tower overlooks, the reader is entitled to understand that the poet does for him the very best thing any poet can do, that he infuses into his poetical dream his own pulsating life-blood.

The immense joy and universal jubilee of nature, called out by the annual renewing of warmth, light, life, and beauty, and the share and the sympathy of man in the diffusive and exuberant benediction, fix themselves and take form in stated and ordered celebrations all the world over. It seems hard to deny to any nation the rejoicing on the return of summer. All have it. Yet certainly Chaucer paints from his own experience, and not from erudition. The poem of "The Cuckou and the Nightingale" is a mere extolling of love and the May. The exordium is a sort of incidental hymn to the Love-god, and runs into affirming and arguing at some length the peculiar energy of his dominion in this month.

"And most his might he shedeth ever in May."

The Complaint of the Black Knight--love is his complaint--falls in May. The unhappy lover has built himself a lodge or bower in the greenwood, whether with returning May he withdraws himself from all feasts, societies, and throngs of men, to dedicate himself to love-mourning, and where, under the trees, whilst the month of love lasts, he remains abandoned to his love-martyrdom. That 'Dreme of Chaucer,' which has been supposed, although Tyrwhitt thinks fancifully, to refer to the marriage of John of Gaunt with the Lady Blanche, happens as he lay alone on a night of May thinking of his lady. The opening of the Flower and Leaf puts you in doubt whether you are not rather in April than in May; but by and by you find that the nightingale has been all the day long singing the service of May. All this amorous and poetical caressing of the May discovers, in the twice resting the process of events in "The Knight's Tale" upon the observance of May-day, a significancy otherwise perhaps less evident. Shakspeare, in the verse--

"As full of spirits as the month of May,"

expresses the natural ground which ceremony and eulogy, solemn or quaint, have artificially displayed in the usages of old times, and in the poetry of Chaucer.

But to return to our two knights. They are _brothers-in-arms_--by the by, rather a romantic, than a classical institution--and so pledged to help one another in love; and the question arises, as the ground of a long argument, which is traitor to the other. Yet here, too, is intermixed the classical with the romantic. For Palamon, who first sees Emelie, takes her for the goddess Venus; on which Arcite ingeniously founds his own plea, that _he_ first loved her as a woman, and so is entitled to the help of the other. Their silent arming of one another, for mortal duel, in the forest, each

"As frendly as he were his owen brother,"

reminds you of chivalrous loyalty and faith; although it would be hard to deny that the antique warriors might have been as honest. But the truth is, that in Homer every knight arms himself, and the two Thebans must have worn modern armour to need this help. And yet here what a classical relief in the simile of the hunter! Of all transplantation from the modern to the ancient, tempered nevertheless with antiquity, their great listed Duel stands foremost. Take it, with all the circumstances that introduce it. Whilst the kinsmen are fighting, Theseus rides up, "pulled out a sword, and cried, Ho!" This is the language of the 14th century, and the western side of Europe. But he swears by "mighty Mars," that the first who strikes another stroke shall lose his head. Both are liable to death. Palamon for having broken prison, and Arcite, because his avoiding Athenian ground on pain of death was an original condition of his liberation. Theseus' challenge to them, "Tell me who ye are that are so bold as to fight here without judge or officer," is the manner of the poet's day. In the time of Theseus, fighting in a wood near Athens was free to all the world.

What saves them? The interposition of the ladies! Queen, princess, court and all, who think it a pity two gallant young "gentil men" of "gret estat" shall die, and all for love. The duke is moved; for pity soon melts in a "gentil herte." And he appoints a regular Tournament--that at the year's end they shall meet, each bringing a hundred knights, and fight it out. He pledges himself 'upon his troth, and as he is a knight,' that he who shall slay his adversary, or 'out of listes him drive,' shall have Emelie to wife.

The lists are--from the hint of antiquity--a regular Amphitheatre, a mile about--walled, and the seats in steps to the height of sixty paces. Art and wealth have been lavished in making the field worthy of the fight. Over the Eastern gate is an altar and an "Oratorie" to Venus--over the Western, to Mars--on the North side is one to Diana. The description of the three Fanes is of surpassing power. Among the portraitures in that of Mars is the Suicide, for whom the relater, poet or knight, forgets himself in his vivid conception, and says that he _saw it_.

The allies of the two knights are both classically and romantically chosen. With Palamon comes "Licurge, the grete king of Trace." That is classical. With Arcite "the grete Emetrius, the king of Inde." That is romantic. The persons of the two kings are described at large, with great strength and fecundity of painting. And here again, in the way of art, the contrast is admirably sustained and effective. Licurge is the older, more uncouth, and giant-like. The youthful Emetrius is more splendid and knightly. Both are thoroughly regal and formidable. Licurge is black-bearded, for the sake of more savage effect; wherefore the monarch of Inde, contrariwise to the actual distribution of races over the earth, or more properly speaking to the known influence of climate, is fair. His crisp and ringed locks are yellow, and glitter like the sun. His complexion may trouble the physiologists; but is not likely to discompose the poetical reader under the tuition of Christopher North. The "foure white bolles" that draw the 'char of gold' upon which the Thracian _stands_, are as antique as you can devise. The tamed eagle as any lily white, which Emetrius carries "for his deduit"--therefore, in lieu of a hawk upon his hand, is of manners that are almost our own.

Each king brings his own hundred knights. They arrive "on the Sonday abouten prime." The tilting will be next day. The three persons principally interested in the issue of the impending combat perform, in the interval, their devotions at the three several shrines, which have been aptly provided for them in the building of the lists. Each of them obtains an answer from the respective deity. Two hours ere the day, Palamon visits the oratory of Venus. He prays that he may win Emelie, although he should lose what comparatively he regards with indifference, the palm of the conflict. The statue of the goddess renders, after a long delay, the signal of acceptance. Emelie, at sunrise, worships Diana. Her first prayer is, that she may remain till death the virgin servant, herself a huntress, of the divine huntress; and if that may not be, that he may win her who best loves her. Upon the altar she kindles two fires, which burn ominously. One goes out and revives again. Then the other is wholly quenched--drops of blood falling out from the hissing and burning brands. All this the process of the combat and its consequences afterwards elucidate; as the appearing goddess forewarns her chaste worshipper. The 'nexte hour of Marte'--whereof anon--Arcite offers prayer and incense to the God of War. He is accepted, and victory promised; but the oracular voice murmurs the words faintly and hollowly.

All this intricate omination comes forcibly out in the sequence of events; and is in itself, as you feel, at all events right classical. The treatment of the Hours lies deeper. It is astrological. For the twelve now longer and now shorter hours, into which the time from sunrise to sunset--and the twelve now shorter and now longer, into which the time from sunset to sunrise was divided, belonged to the Seven Planets, in the order Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Venus, Mercury, Luna--by following out which order, you will discover that, since the first hour of Sunday belongs to the Sun, giving name to the day--the twenty-third hour, or the second before sunrise of the following day, will belong to Venus, to whom Palamon then prays--and the hour of sunrise, next day, belongs to the Moon, or Diana, to whom Emelie then addresses herself. Following the circle, you find that the fourth hour of Monday belongs to Mars. This is Arcite's hour. And if you wonder how such Chaldaic and Egyptian lore should come into your tale of chivalry, you will be relieved by understanding that these dedications had, in our poetical ages, due popularity for infusing into them a poetical efficiency; forasmuch as an old French "Shepherds' Calendar," cited by Tyrwhitt, alleges the very rule which we have given, for the instruction of him "who will weet how the Shepherds do wit which planet reigneth every hour of the day and of the night." This timing, therefore, of sacrifice and orison to the planetary hours, is pertinently and speakingly feigned by Chaucer.

The Tournament follows, which is mediaeval enough. Arcite, according to the promise of Mars, is victorious. Palamon is taken and bound. But here is the difficulty. Venus has promised Emelie to Palamon. Saturn, the [Greek: agchylometis], finds a remedy, and gratifies his grand-daughter. As Arcite, the victor, having taken off his helmet, rides along the lists to show himself to all, and especially to Emelie, Pluto, at the request of Saturn, sends an infernal fury who starts up out of the ground before him. The scared horse plunges and stumbles; Arcite is thrown upon his head, and taken up for dead. He is not dead; but he dies, and is burned, after the fashion of Patroclus and Hector; and twelve months after, his virgin widow is by Theseus given in marriage to Palamon.

What is the real effect of all this commixture? The truth is, that under such circumstances, after a little resistance and struggling, you give in, and let the poet have his own way, provided that he is a poet. There is but one condition--that the poet put, into whatever manners, true life. Then you willingly give up your own dull book-learning, and accept his painting for the authentic record of reality. You are, in fact, gradually conducted to this pass, that you look upon history as useful for ministering materials to poetry, not upon poetry as bound to teach history. But Chaucer _has_ wonderfully put life into the classical part of the poem, so that you can hardly say that he seems more at home in giving the manners which he had seen, than in reviving the manners which he had only read. He has this in common with Shakspeare. In common with Shakspeare he has, too, the apology for the confusion of manners--of having lived before we were as critical in the costume of ages and nations as we now are.

The 'Knight's Tale,' after the requisition usually laid upon an epic fable, makes use, and skilfully, of preternatural machinery. And here we will venture a vindication against an illustrious critic. The first suggestion to the banished Arcite of returning to Athens, comes to him in sleep. There is a slight invoking of the supernatural--at least of the fabulous. He dreams that Mercury appears, and announces to him an end of his woe at Athens. On awaking, he casts his eyes on a mirror, and sees that he is so changed with love-pining that he no longer knows himself--goes in disguise to Athens, offers himself to serve in the household of Emelie, and is accepted. Sir W. Scott blames this introduction of Mercury as needless, but let it be remembered:----

_First_, That this is introductory to far more important divine interpositions, is in keeping with them, and prepares the imagination for them.

_Secondly_, That, so managed, it is the least violent intervention of a god; the apparition being ambiguous between a natural dream and a real divine manifestation: an ambiguity which, by the by, is quite after the antique. So, Mercury appears to AEneas in a dream in the Fifth Book of the AEneid: and compare Hector's Ghost, &c.

_Thirdly_, That a psychological fact may be understood as here "lively shadowed:"--namely, that active purposes have often their birth during the mystery of sleep; and it would be a very felicitous poetical expression of this phenomenon to turn the oracular suggestion of the soul into a deity--_Sua cuique_ DEUS _fit dira cupido_.

_Fourthly_, It is completely probable, that the fancy of a believer in Mercury would actually shape his own dreaming thought into the suitable deity.--The vision is lightly touched by Chaucer, and gracefully translated by Dryden. The classical inventions throughout appear to be very much from Boccaccio; but the poetry of the relation Chaucer's own.

Do you wish to see Dryden in his majesty? Look here:--

"But in the dome of mighty Mars the red,
With different figures all the sides were spread.
This temple, less in form, with equal grace,
Was imitative of the first in Thrace:
For that cold region was the loved abode,
And sovereign mansion of the warrior god.
The landscape was a forest wide and bare,
Where neither beast nor human kind repair;
The fowl that scent afar, the borders fly,
And shun the bitter blast, and wheel about the sky.
A cake of scurf lies baking on the ground,
And prickly stubs, instead of trees, are found;
Or woods with knots and knares deform'd and old,
Headless the most, and hideous to behold;
A rattling tempest through the branches went,
That stripp'd them bare, and one sole way they bent.
Heaven froze above severe, the clouds congeal,
And through the crystal vault appear'd the standing hail.
Such was the face without; a mountain stood
Threat'ning from high, and overlook'd the wood;
Beneath the lowering brow, and on a bent,
The temple stood of Mars armipotent;
The frame of burning steel, that cast a glare
From far, and seem'd to thaw the freezing air.
A straight long entry to the temple led,
Blind with high walls, and horror overhead;
Thence issued such a blast and hollow roar,
As threaten'd from the hinge to heave the door;
In through that door, a northern light there shone;
'Twas all it had, for windows there were none.
The gate was adamant, eternal frame!
Which, hew'd by Mars himself, from Indian quarries came,
The labour of a God; and all along
Tough iron plates were clench'd to make it strong.
A ton about was every pillar there;
A polish'd mirror shone not half so clear;
There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor's thought,
And midwife Time the ripen'd plot to murder brought.
There the red Anger dared the pallid Fear;
Next stood Hypocrisy, with holy leer;
Soft-smiling, and demurely looking down,
But hid the dagger underneath the gown;
The assassinating wife, the household fiend;
And, far the blackest there, the traitor-friend.
On t'other side, there stood Destruction bare,
Unpunish'd Rapine, and a waste of war;
Contest, with sharpen'd knives, in cloisters drawn,
And all with blood bespread the holy lawn.
Loud menaces were heard, and foul disgrace,
And bawling infamy in language base,
Till sense was lost in sound, and silence fled the place.
The slayer of himself yet saw I there,
The gore congeal'd was clotted in his hair,
With eyes half closed, and gaping mouth he lay,
And grim, as when he breathed his sullen soul away.
In midst of all the dome Misfortune sate,
And gloomy Discontent, and fell Debate,
And Madness laughing in his ireful mood;
And arm'd complaint on theft, and cries of blood.
There was the murder'd corpse in covert laid,
And violent death in thousand shapes display'd,
The city to the soldiers' rage resign'd,
Successless wars, and poverty behind:
Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores,
And the rash hunter strangled by the boars;
The new-born babe by nurses overlaid;
And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.
All ills of Mars his nature, flame and steel;
The gasping charioteer beneath the wheel
Of his own car; the ruin'd house that falls
And intercepts her lord betwixt the walls.
The whole division that to Mars pertains,
All trades of death that deal in steel for gains,
Were there; the butcher, armourer, and smith,
Who forges sharpen'd faulchions, or the scythe.
The scarlet conquest on a tower was placed
With shouts, and soldiers' acclamations graced;
A pointed sword hung threat'ning o'er his head,
Sustain'd but by a slender twine of thread.
There saw I Mars his Ides, the Capitol,
The seer in vain foretelling Caesar's fall;
The last Triumvirs, and the wars they move,
And Antony, who lost the world for love:
These, and a thousand more, the Fane adorn,
Their fates were painted ere the men were born;
All copied from the heavens, and ruling force
Of the red star, in his revolving course.
The form of Mars high on a chariot stood,
All sheathed in arms, and gruffly look'd the God:
Two geomantic figures were display'd
Above his head, a warrior and a maid,
One when direct, and one when retrograde."