Chapter XIV: Part 14

[Footnote 8: The wife of Bath accuses her old husbands to their faces of having delivered this kind of railing lecture to her when they had come home at night "as drunk as mice." The drunkenness and the railing are alike inventions of her own, but she appeals to her niece, and Jenkin, the apprentice, to bear witness to the truth of her assertions. The version of Pope is not so vivid, so lively, or so close to nature as the original, and he has nearly passed over one of the most prominent characteristics of the speech. When the wife of Bath taunts her husband with the reproaches she pretended he had heaped upon her, she intersperses her repetition of his objurgations with abusive and disdainful names by way of comment upon his monstrous sentiments. Old caynard or villain, Sir old lecher, thou very knave, lorel or worthless fellow, old dotard schrewe or sinner, old barrel full of lies, Sir old fool, are some of the appellations by which she marks her opinion of the doctrines she fathers upon him. After reciting his alleged complaint, that women concealed their vices till they were married, she adds that the maxim is worthy of "a schrewe," or scoundrel. When she imputes to him the declaration that no man would wed who was wise, or who desired to go to heaven, she follows it up with the wish that thunder and lightning would break his wicked neck. When he is charged with having said that there were three things that troubled earth, and that a wife was one of them, she hopes that the life of such a villain will be cut short. When she taxes him with quoting the proverb that a house not water-tight, a smoky chimney, and a scolding wife drove men from home, she retorts upon him that he is himself a scold, and intimates that his years are an aggravation of the vice. This is not only natural as the sort of scurrilous language which the wife of Bath would have used if the drunken invectives had been real, but was part of her plan for bringing her husbands into subjection. Her indignant recriminations were intended to browbeat them into meekness.]

[Footnote 9: She enlarges in the original upon this device, which was one of her capital resources. She quotes the proverb, that he first grinds who comes first to the mill, and upon this principle, when she had done wrong, she began by attacking her husband;

Or elles I had often time been spilt.

The poor man thus suddenly assailed stood upon the defensive, endeavoured to vindicate his innocence, and was heartily glad to hold his tongue on condition of receiving forgiveness for faults he had never committed.]

[Footnote 10: By pretending that she went out to watch her husbands she got the opportunity for indulging in freaks and jollity with her youthful friends.

Under that colour had I many a mirth.
For all such wit is given us of birth;
Deceipt, weeping, spinning, God hath give
To women kindely while they may live.
And thus of one thing I avaunte me,
At th' end I had the bet in each degree,
By sleight or force, or of some maner thing,
As by continual murmur or chiding.

"Kindely" is by nature.]

[Footnote 11: In the original,

With empty hand men may no hawkes lure.

When the falconer had let fly his hawks, and wanted them to return, he was commonly obliged to entice them by some bait. The tassel, or tercel, was the male of the peregrine falcon, and was noted for its docility and gentleness. It would seem as if this species would obey the summons of the trainer without any other inducement, for when Juliet calls after Romeo, and he does not instantly reappear, she says,

O for a falconer's voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again.

[Footnote 12: In Chaucer she states that her husbands would grant all her demands to soothe her into good humour:

That made me that ever I would them chide.
For though the pope had seten them beside,
I nold not spare them at their owne board,
For, by my troth, I quit them word for word.
As help me very God omnipotent,
Though I right now should make my testament,
I owe them nought a word, that it nis quit;
I brought it so aboute by my wit,
That they must give it up, as for the best,
Or elles had we never been in rest.
For though he looked as a grim lion,
Yet should he fail of his conclusion.

Pope has omitted the latter half of the lines and thus obliterated one of those nicer traits of nature with which the original abounds. Men put on the grimness of the lion, and think to prevail by strength, but women conquer by pertinacity. The majority of men grow weary of perpetual conflict, and purchase peace by concession; but women of the stamp of the wife of Bath wilt wrangle for ever, and prefer endless discord to the subjugation of self-will. Dryden, adding to Virgil's thought, has expressed the idea, AEn. v. 1024:

Ev'n Jove is thwarted by his haughty wife,
Still vanquished yet she still renews the strife.]

[Footnote 13: Chaucer represents her as still youthful:

And I was young, and full of ragerie,
Stubborn and strong and jolly as a pye.]

[Footnote 14:

The flour is gone, there nis no more to tell,
The bran as I best can, now must I sell.]

[Footnote 15: In the original she does not say that she set his marrow frying, but that she fried him in his own grease, by stirring up in him the tormenting jealousy which his faithlessness had first engendered in herself.

I made him of the same wood a cross.
Not of my body in no foul manere;
But certainly I made folk such cheer,
That in his owne grease I made him fry
For anger and for very jealousy.
By God, in earth I was his purgatory,
For which I hope his soule be in glory.
For God it wot, he sat full still and sung,
When that his shoe full bitterly him wrung.
There was no wight save God and he that wist
In many wyse how sore I him twist.

This is a life-like portrait of a man tortured by inward pangs, and affecting an air of indifference while he did not dare to complain, from the consciousness that his greater offence would expose him to a crushing retort.]

[Footnote 16: In the character which Chaucer gives of the wife of Bath he says,

And thrice had she been at Jerusalem;
She hadde passed many a strange stream;
At Rome she hadde been, and at Boulogne,
In Galice at Saint Jame, and at Cologne.

The reputed tomb of Saint James was at Compostella, in Galicia, and was a favourite resort of pilgrims. The wife of Bath may be supposed to have joined these expeditions quite as much from a love of roving and novelty as from superstitious motives.]

[Footnote 17: Chaucer says he was buried under the rood-beam, or as it is usually called the rood-loft, which was placed on the top of the screen that separated the chancel from the nave. The name was derived from the rood or cross that stood in the centre with the effigy of our crucified Lord, and having on one side an image of the Virgin, and on the other of the apostle John. Pope buries the deceased husband in the churchyard, and the root is a wooden cross which has been erected upon his grave.]

[Footnote 18: Artemisia, wife of Mausolus, king of Caria. On the death of her husband, 352 B.C., she erected a monument to him at Halicarnassus, which, from the beauty of its architecture and sculpture, was considered one of the seven wonders of the world. The Romans, says Pausanias, called all their most magnificent tombs _mausolea_ after this monument to Mausolua, and hence our modern term mausoleum. There is no mention of the tomb of Mausolus in Chaucer.]

[Footnote 19:

I trow I loved him beste for that he
Was of his love daungerous to me.
We women have, if that I shall not lie,
In this matter a queynte fantasy.
Wayte, what thing we may not lightly have,
Thereafter will we soonest cry and crave.
Forbid us thing, and that desire we;
Press on us fast, and thenne will we flee.
With danger outen alle we our ware;
Great press at market maketh dear chaffare.

"Daungerous" in the second line means sparing, and in the last line but one, "with danger" signifies with a scarcity. Then, says the wife of Bath, we must produce all our own wares to give in exchange. At the date of her fifth marriage she was forty and the bridegroom was only twenty. Everything is now reversed. Her first husbands had endowed her with all their property that they might buy a young wife in their old age. She, in turn, that she may procure a young husband, gives him

all the land and fee
That ever was me give therebefore;
But afterward repented me full sore.

Her aged mates had worshipped her, and she repaid them with disdain. In her mature years she is infatuated by a youth, and he, who has no relish for the homage of a matron of forty, slights her just as she had done her early husbands under similar circumstances.]

[Footnote 20: It would seem from Chaucer that the youth was a native of Bath, and had returned there when he had completed his education at Oxford:

He some time was a clerk of Oxenford,
And had left school, and went at home to board,
With my gossib, duelling in our town:
God have her soul, her name was Alisoun.

"My gossib" is my godmother, and the wife of Bath, whose christian name was also Alisoun, had been named after her. Pope, by turning "_my_ gossip" into "_a_ gossip," has done away with the special relationship, and employed the word in its modern sense of a lover of tittle-tattle.]

[Footnote 21: In Chaucer she adds a more powerful motive:

what wist I where my grace
Was shapen for to be, or in what place?

In other words, as she explains shortly afterwards, she was in search of a lover who might succeed the fourth husband whenever he died.]

[Footnote 22: "To perform a station," says Richelet, in his French Dictionary, "consists in visiting with devotion one or several churches a certain number of days and times, and praying there in order to propitiate the wrath of God, and obtain some favour from his mercy." The wife of Bath in the original says, that she attended vigils, processions, preachings, miracle-plays, and marriages, besides making pilgrimages, but "stations" are not included in her list. The Roman Catholicism of Pope had rendered the word familiar to him.]

[Footnote 23: The expression "I can't tell how" implies that the intimacy on the part of the wife of Bath was accidental, whereas it appears from Pope's context, and still more from the original, that it was a deliberate design:

Now will I telle forth what happed me.
I say that in the fieldes walked we
Till truely we had such dalliance
This clerk and I, that of my purveyance
I spake to him, and saide how that he
If I were widdow, shoulde wedde me.
For certainly I say for no bobaunce,
Yet was I never withouten purveyance
Of mariage, ne or no thinges eke;
I hold a mouse's heart not worth a leek,
That hath but oon hole to sterte to,
And if that faile then is all i-do.

The acknowledgment that while married to one man she is always engaged to a second, seems to the wife of Bath to have nothing discreditable in it, and she only fears lest she should expose herself to the charge of vanity in asserting that she can command a succession of admirers.]

[Footnote 24: No Englishwoman would talk of laying her husband in his urn, not to mention that the phrase is a mixture of incongruous ideas, the "laid" being applicable to burial, and the "urn" to burning. When the wife of Bath speaks of her departed husband she says,

He is now in his grave and in his chest.]

[Footnote 25: This couplet is an exaggeration of the original:

I followed ay my dames lore,
As well of that as of other thinges more.]

[Footnote 26: Tearing garments, and throwing dust upon the head was a custom with some ancient nations, but was not an English habit, and there is no allusion to it in the text of Chaucer:

When that my fourthe husband was on bier,
I wept algate, and made a sorry cheer,
As wives musten for it is usage;
And with my kerchief covered my visage;
But, for that I was purveyed of a mate,
I wept but small, and that I undertake.

The hard-hearted selfishness which does not bestow a thought upon the dead, being solely intent upon enjoying existence with the living, comes out in a yet more odious light when she narrates her feelings at the funeral. Her mind is entirely taken up with the young clerk, and mainly with admiration of his figure:

When that I saw him go
After the bier, methought he had a pair
Of legges and of feet so clean and fair
That all my heart I gave unto his hold.]

[Footnote 27: She does not in the original profess "to repent it still," and for the excellent reason that, after a period of rebellion on the part of the clerk, he had become a puppet in her hands, and had rendered up both himself and his chattels to her undisputed management.]

[Footnote 28: The wife of Bath says she insisted upon going from house to house, according to her former custom, and the clerk set his face against the practice. His instances from Roman story were directed against this special failing, and were not general declamations on the virtue of Roman matrons and Gracchus' mother. The clerk told the gossiping, intriguing dame that Simplicius Gallus left his wife for ever, merely because he caught her looking out of the door with her head uncovered. He told her of another Roman that in the same manner deserted his wife because she one day went to see a game without his knowledge. His quotation from Holy Writ is not "some grave sentence," but the particular sentence of Ecclesiasticus which says, "Give the water no passage; neither a wicked woman liberty to gad abroad." When the context has been generalised the lines which follow have not the accumulative sting of the original, where they are an additional example of the evil consequences of suffering women to rove about. Pope has further weakened their force by supposing them to have no higher authority than the opinion of the clerk. In Chaucer they are given as a proverb, and the husband urges them with triumph because they convey the general experience of mankind. The language is stronger than in Pope. Instead of mildly pronouncing that the man who suffers his wife to visit "halwes" or the shrines of saints "deserves a fool's cap," the proverb declares that he "is worthy to be hanged on the galwes."]

[Footnote 29: The clerk in the original reads with greater assiduity than "oft at evening."

He had a book that gladly night and day,
For his desport he woulde read alway.

After describing the contents of the book the wife of Bath adds,

And alle these were bound in one volume;
And every night and day was his custume,
When he had leisure and vacatioun
From other worldes occupation,
To reden in this book of wicked wives.

This portion of the narrative in Chaucer is exceedingly pleasant and natural. The wife says that she paid no regard to the clerk's Roman precedents, his quotations from Scripture, his old saws and proverbs.

Ne I would not of him corrected be;
I hate him that my vices telleth me.

The contempt with which she treated his exhortations drove him utterly mad, and it was then that he betook himself to reading all the literature he could find that bore upon the vices and frailties of women. The evidence of their general perversity with which his studies supplied him consoled him for the ungovernable disposition of his own wife, and he used "to laugh away full fast" over the record of their obstinacy and evil doings. He had the sweeter satisfaction of revenge. His mirth galled his imperious, froward wife, and when he read aloud the endless detail of female iniquities, backed up by the authority of great names, she could restrain her rage no longer, and the storm burst forth under which the wretched clerk succumbed.]

[Footnote 30: Pope has omitted a stroke of humour; for in the original, she naturally mistakes the rank and age of St. Jerome.

And eke there was a clerk sometime in Rome
A _cardinal,_ that highten St. Jerome.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 31: This passage acquaints us with the writers who were popular in the days of Chaucer.--WARTON.

Warton takes no account of the fact that Chaucer was only enumerating the authors which furnished arguments against women. Valerius is a tract by Walter Mapes, which bears the title "Epistola Valerii ad Rufinum." St. Jerome's denunciations of matrimony are in his treatise "Contra Jovinianum." Tertullian wrote strongly against second marriages; and severe animadversions upon female vices or weaknesses have a large place in his works. "Who is meant by Chrysippus," says Tyrwhitt, "I cannot guess." Ovid's Art of Love, and the Letters of Eloisa and Abelard are known by name to all the world.]

[Footnote 32: This line is not in Chaucer.]

[Footnote 33: If Pope intended to follow the original, "good" means "good legends."]

[Footnote 34: The wife of Bath, having laid down the maxim that it is impossible for any clerk to speak well of women, except it be of the saints, indignantly inquires,

Who painted the lion, tell me, who?

and with an oath she adds,

If women hadde written stories,
As clerkes have within their oratories,
They would have writ of men more wickedness,
Than all the mark of Adam may redress.

"Than all the mark" is than all that bear the mark or image of Adam. Pope's version, in which the wife asks the question and tamely answers it, is flat in comparison with the scornful repetition of the emphatic "who?" Yet he has employed this reduplication of a predominant word at ver. 397, where it has much less effect. Judiciously used, there is force and beauty in the turn, as in the couplet from Addison's translation of Ovid:

Her sisters often, as 'tis said, would cry
Fie, Salmacis, what always idle, fie:]

[Footnote 35: Pope, misapplying the original, has adopted an image which is astronomically false. Chaucer spoke the language of astrology, and said that each of these planets fell in the exaltation of the other; for a planet was in its exaltation when it was in the sign of the zodiac, where it was supposed to exercise its greatest influence, and fell, or was in its dejection, in the sign where it exercised the least. Mercury, the god of science, was in his exaltation in Virgo, where Venus, the goddess of love, had no sway. Venus was in her exaltation in Pisces, and there Mercury was in his dejection. A man could not be under the government of incompatible planetary powers, and since scholars served Mercury,

Therefore no woman is of clerkes praised.]

[Footnote 36: This line was followed by a poor couplet, which Pope afterwards omitted:

How Sampson's heart false Delilah did move,
His strength, his sight, his life were lost for love.
Then how Aleides died whom Dejanire, &c.]

[Footnote 37: Eryphile, bribed by a necklace, prevailed upon her husband Amphiaraus to join the expedition against Thebes, although he assured her it would be fatal to him. Clytemnestra lived in adultery during the absence of her husband, Agamemnon, at the siege of Troy, and, on his return, she and her paramour entrapped and murdered him.]

[Footnote 38: Some writers have pretended that Lucilia, the wife of Lucretius, the poet, gave him a love potion which drove him mad.]

[Footnote 39: Chaucer says nothing of the blushes of the wife of Bath, which were not at all in her character.]

[Footnote 40: Who, exclaims the wife of Bath, could imagine

The woe that in mine hearte was and pine?
And when I saw he nolde never fine
To reden on this cursed book all night,
All suddenly three leaves have I plight
Out of this booke that he had, and eke
I with my fist so took him on the cheek,
That in our fire he fell backward adown.
And he upstert as doth a wood leoun,
And with his fist he smote me on the head
That in the floor I lay as I were dead.
And when he saw so stille that I lay
He was aghast, and would have fled away.
Till atte last out of my swoon I braide;
O hastow slain me, false thief I said,
And for my land thus hastow murdered me?
Ere I be dead, yet will I kisse thee.

"Pine" is pain; "fine" is cease; "plight" is plucked; "wood" is mad; and "braide" is awoke. Pope has dropped the natural circumstance of the clerk's terror when he fancies he has killed his wife. This alarm brings out more strongly the hypocrisy of his virulent dame in pretending that the blow he gave her on the head, after she had torn the leaves out of his book and knocked him backwards into the fire, was with the deliberate design of murdering her to get possession of her property.]

[Footnote 41: Pope's translation is mawkish, and his "adieu, my dear, adieu!" destroys the point of the story. The wife of Bath seconds the blow with reproaches instead of with terms of endearment, nor does she consent to be pacified until the clerk surrenders at discretion. Had she relaxed before her conquest was complete, she would have lost the opportunity of establishing her dominion. After the line, "Ere I be dead, yet will I kisse thee," Chaucer thus continues:

And near he came, and kneeleth fairadown,
And saide, Deare sister Alisoun,
As help me God, I shall thee never smite;
That I have done it is thyself to wite;
Forgive it me, and that I thee beseke;
And yet oftsoon I hit him on the cheek,
And saide, Thief thus muchel I me wreke
Now will I die, I may no longer speak.
But atte last, with muchel care and woe
We fell accorded by ourselven two;
He gave me all the bridle in mine hand
To have the governance of house and land,
And of his tongue, and of his hand also,
And made him burn his book anon right tho.

"To wite" is to blame; "I me wreke" is "I revenge myself;" and "tho" is then. As soon as the poor clerk consented to have no will of his own, and to be governed like a school-boy by his master, the dame declares,

God help me so, I was to him as kind
As any wife from Denmark unto Inde.

It must have been holiday time with him, notwithstanding, when the wife of Bath set out on one of her pilgrimages, and left him in peace at home.]

THE TEMPLE OF FAME

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1711.

THE TEMPLE OF FAME: A VISION.

By Mr. POPE.

8vo.

London: Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT, betwixt the two Temple Gates in Fleet Street. 1715.

This is the first edition. A second edition, which I have not seen, is advertised by Lintot in some of the lists of his publications. Dennis, in the Observations he put forth on the poem in 1717, asks Pope if there are no women who are worthy to appear in the Temple of Fame, and immediately adds, "Divers, he says, but he thought he should affront the modesty of the sex in showing them there." The remark does not occur in the first edition, nor in the reprints of the poem in Pope's collected works, and it may, perhaps, have been taken from the second edition. As the production disappointed the expectations raised by the name of the author the sale was probably not large. The piece was included in the quarto of 1717, and in the editions of Lintot's Miscellanies which came out in 1727 and 1732, but was not in the editions of 1720 and 1722. Lintot paid 32_l._ 5_s._ for the copyright on Feb. 1, 1715.

ADVERTISEMENT

The hint of the following piece was taken from Chaucer's House of Fame. The design is in a manner entirely altered, the descriptions and most of the particular thoughts my own: yet I could not suffer it to be printed without this acknowledgment,[1] or think a concealment of this nature the less unfair for being common. The reader who would compare this with Chaucer, may begin with his third Book of Fame, there being nothing in the two first books that answers to their title.[2] Whenever any hint is taken from him, the passage itself is set down in the marginal notes.[3]

Some modern critics, from a pretended refinement of taste, have declared themselves unable to relish allegorical poems.[4] It is not easy to penetrate into the meaning of this criticism; for if fable be allowed one of the chief beauties, or, as Aristotle calls it, the very soul of poetry, it is hard to comprehend how that fable should be the less valuable for having a moral. The ancients constantly made use of allegories. My Lord Bacon has composed an express treatise in proof of this, entitled, The Wisdom of the Ancients; where the reader may see several particular fictions exemplified and explained with great clearness, judgment, and learning. The incidents, indeed, by which the allegory is conveyed, must be varied according to the different genius or manners of different times; and they should never be spun too long, or too much clogged with trivial circumstances, or little particularities. We find an uncommon charm in truth, when it is conveyed by this sideway to our understanding: and it is observable, that even in the most ignorant ages this way of writing has found reception. Almost all the poems in the old Provencal had this turn; and from these it was that Petrarch took the idea of his poetry. We have his Trionfi in this kind; and Boccace pursued in the same track. Soon after, Chaucer introduced it here, whose Romaunt of the Rose, Court of Love, Flower and the Leaf, House of Fame, and some others of his writings, are masterpieces of this sort. In epic poetry, it is true, too nice and exact a pursuit of the allegory is justly esteemed a fault; and Chaucer had the discernment to avoid it in his Knight's Tale, which was an attempt towards an epic poem. Ariosto, with less judgment, gave entirely into it in his Orlando; which, though carried to an excess, had yet so much reputation in Italy, that Tasso (who reduced heroic poetry to the juster standard of the ancients) was forced to prefix to his work a scrupulous explanation of the allegory of it, to which the fable itself could scarce have directed his readers. Our countryman, Spenser, followed, whose poem is almost entirely allegorical, and imitates the manner of Ariosto rather than that of Tasso. Upon the whole, one may observe this sort of writing, however discontinued of late, was in all times, so far from being rejected by the best poets, that some of them have rather erred by insisting on it too closely, and carrying it too far; and that to infer from thence that the allegory itself is vicious, is a presumptuous contradiction to the judgment and practice of the greatest geniuses, both ancient and modern.--POPE.

Pope, as he tells Steele in their correspondence (Nov. 16, 1712), had written the Temple of Fame two years before, that is, when he was only twenty-two years old, an early time of life for so much learning and so much observation as that work exhibits. It has, as Steele warmly declared, a "thousand beauties." Every part is splendid; there is great luxuriance of ornaments; the original vision of Chaucer was never denied to be much improved; the allegory is very skilfully continued, the imagery is properly selected and learnedly displayed; yet with all this comprehension of excellence, as its scene is laid in remote ages, and its sentiments, if the concluding paragraph be excepted, have little relation to general manners or common life, it never obtained much notice, but is turned silently over and seldom quoted or mentioned with either praise or blame.--JOHNSON.

It was, to the Italians we owed anything that could be called poetry, from whom Chaucer, imitated by Pope in this vision, copied largely, as _they_ are said to have done from the bards of Provence. But whatever Chaucer might copy from the Italians, yet the artful and entertaining plan of his Canterbury Tales was purely original and his own. This admirable piece, even exclusive of its poetry, is highly valuable, as it preserves to us the liveliest and exactest picture of the manners, customs, characters, and habits, of our forefathers, whom he has brought before our eyes acting as on a stage, suitably to their different orders and employments. With these portraits the driest antiquary must be delighted. By this plan, he has more judiciously connected these stories which the guests relate, than Boccace has done his novels, whom he has imitated, if not excelled, in the variety of the subjects of his tales. It is a common mistake, that Chaucer's excellence lay in his manner of treating light and ridiculous subjects; for whoever will attentively consider the noble poem of Palamon and Arcite, will be convinced that he equally excels in the pathetic and the sublime. The House of Fame, as being merely descriptive, is of an inferior rank to those in Chaucer of the narrative kind, and which paint life and manners. The design is improved and heightened by the masterly hand of Pope. It is not improbable that this subject was suggested to our author, not only by Dryden's translations of Chaucer, of which Pope was so fond, but likewise by that celebrated paper of Addison, in the Tatler, called the Table of Fame, to which the great worthies of antiquity are introduced, and seated according to their respective merits and characters, and which was published some years before this poem was written. The six persons Pope thought proper to select as worthy to be placed on the highest seats of honour are Homer, Virgil, Pindar, Horace, Aristotle, Tully. It is observable that our author has omitted the great dramatic poets of Greece. Sophocles and Euripides deserved certainly an honourable niche in the Temple of Fame, as much as Pindar and Horace. But the truth is it was not fashionable in Pope's time, nor among his acquaintance, attentively to study these poets. I own I have some particular reasons for thinking that he was not very conversant in this sort of composition, having no inclination to the drama. In a note on the third book of his Homer, where Helen points out to Priam the names and characters of the Grecian leaders from the walls of Troy, he observes, that several great poets have been engaged by the beauty of this passage to an imitation of it. But who are the poets he enumerates on this occasion? Only Statius and Tasso; the former of whom, in his seventh book, and the latter in his third, shows the forces and the commanders that invested the cities of Thebes and Jerusalem. Not a syllable is mentioned of that capital scene in the Phoenissae of Euripides, from the hundred and twentieth to the two hundredth line, where the old man, standing with Antigone on the walls of Thebes, marks out to her the various figures, habits, armour, and qualifications of each different warrior, in the most lively and picturesque manner, as they appear in the camp beneath them. In conclusion, we may observe that Pope's alterations of Chaucer are introduced with judgment and art, and that these alterations are more in number, and more important in conduct, than any Dryden has made of the same author.

The Temple of Fame was communicated to Steele, who entertained a high opinion of its beauties, and who conveyed it to Addison. Pope had ornamented the poem with the machinery of guardian angels, which he afterwards omitted. He speaks of his work with a diffidence uncommon in a young poet, and which does him credit. "No errors," he says to Steele, "are so trivial but they deserve to be mended. I could point you to several; but it is my business to be informed of those faults I do not know, and as for those I do, not to talk of them but to correct them. You speak of that poem in a style I neither merit nor expect, but, I assure you, if you freely mark or dash out, I shall look upon your blots to be its greatest beauties,--I mean, if Mr. Addison and yourself should like it in the whole. I am afraid of nothing so much as to impose anything on the world which is unworthy its acceptance."--WARTON.

Chaucer's poem contains great strokes of Gothic imagination, yet bordering often on the most ideal and capricious extravagance. Pope has imitated this piece with his usual elegance of diction and harmony of versification; but, in the mean time, he has not only misrepresented the story, but marred the character of the poem. He has endeavoured to correct its extravagancies by new refinements and additions of another cast; but he did not consider that extravagancies are essential to a poem of such a structure, and even constitute its beauties. An attempt to unite order and exactness of imagery with a subject formed on principles so professedly romantic and anomalous, is like giving Corinthian pillars to a Gothic palace. When I read Pope's elegant imitation of this piece, I think I am walking among the modern monuments unsuitably placed in Westminster Abbey.--T. WARTON.

Little can be added to T. Warton's masterly appreciation of the characteristic merit of this poem. May I be just allowed to mention, that there is less harmony of versification in this poem, than in most of the preceding, particularly the Rape of the Lock, Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady, and, above all, the Epistle of Eloisa. The pause is too generally at the end of the line, and on the fourth and fifth syllable. Pope bids

The Muses raise
The golden trumpet of eternal praise.

Chaucer with a bolder personification sends for Eolus, "that king of Thrace," from "his cave of stone," to sound his "trump of gold." These circumstances may designate in some measure the character of either poem. I must confess I think there can be no comparison between the bold trump of Eolus which he set

To his mouth
And blew it east, and west, and south,
And north, as loud as any thunder,

and the delicate but less animated tone of the Muses in Pope.--BOWLES.

If Chaucer was indebted to any of the Italian poets for the idea of his House of Fame, it was to Petrarca, who in his Trionfo della Fama has introduced many of the most eminent characters of ancient times. It must however be observed, that the poem of Petrarca is extremely simple and inartificial, and consists only in supposing that the most celebrated men of ancient Greece and Rome pass in review before him; whilst that of Chaucer is the work of a powerful imagination, abounding with beautiful and lively descriptions, and forming a connected and consistent whole. Pope's Temple of Fame is one of the noblest, though earliest, productions of the author, displaying a fertile invention and an uncommon grandeur and facility of style. It is confessedly founded on Chaucer's House of Fame; but the design is greatly altered and improved, and many of the thoughts and descriptions are entirely his own; yet such is the coincidence and happy union of the work with its prototype, that it is almost impossible to distinguish those portions for which he is indebted to Chaucer from those of his own invention. The conclusion, as descriptive of his own feelings at an early period of his own life, is particularly interesting.--ROSCOE.

Chaucer's House of Fame is adorned with statues

Of all manner of minstrales,
And gestours that tellen tales
Both of weeping and of game.

Just such a gestour, or narrative poet, was Chaucer himself; for, as Warton has remarked, he excelled alike in the pathetic and the gay, and, if he was more admirable in one than in the other, his "tales of weeping" were superior to his "tales of game." None of our poets, except Shakespeare, can compete with him in versatility of genius. His numerous characters are conceived with equal truth and distinctness; his dialogue is lively and natural; his humour is sometimes broad, sometimes subtle, and always racy; his tenderness is unrivalled in its mingled depth, simplicity and refinement; his descriptions, whether serious or comic, have never been surpassed in ease and vividness. His pre-eminence appears the more conspicuous when we contrast his living strains with the feeble diffuse monotony of his successors and predecessors. He may be compared, says Thomas Warton, to a premature summer's day in an English spring. The autobiographical passages in his works afford a glimpse of the varied tastes and pursuits which rendered him one of the most comprehensive writers in the world. His keen observation of mankind was blended with the plodding of a student. He tells us that he lived the life of a hermit, and was entirely ignorant of what was passing among the neighbours who "dwelt almost at his door." His custom when the duties of the day were over was to withdraw to his house, and sit down "as dumb as any stone" to his books, till he was "dazed" with reading. His love of nature could alone compete in intensity with his love of literature. The single thing which had power to entice him from the studies he held "in reverence" was the singing of birds and the blooming of flowers. The month of May had a peculiar fascination for him. "Then," he exclaims, "farewell my book," and transported by the opening beauties of the year he gave himself up to the exhilarating effects of renovated nature. The "flower of flowers," in his eyes, was the daisy, and there was never a morning that he was not out at dawn in the meadows, kneeling on the "soft, sweet grass," and watching his little favourite unclose its petals to the sun. In the evening he returned to see the daisies "go to rest," and no sooner were they shut up than he hastened home to bed, that he might be awake in time to witness the renewal of the scene. The sight was to him so "blissful" that it "softened all his sorrow," nor did the commonness of the occurrence abate the charm. He protests that he still feels within him the fire which impelled him to rise with glad devotion before break of day that he might behold the resurrection of his cherished flower, and do it reverence; for the friendly daisy was--

Ever alike fair and fresh of hue,
And I love it, and ever alike new,
And ever shall till that mine hearte die.

These traits present a charming picture of the man, and they are enhanced by the modesty which accompanied his greatness. He always speaks of his writings with unaffected humility, as those of a person who from taste was a diligent cultivator of poetry without possessing the faculty to become a worthy poet.

The House of Fame cannot be ranked with Chaucer's best productions. The incidents are supposed to pass in a dream, which was his ordinary plan for avoiding the infringement of probability when he exchanged terrestrial realities for the visions of fancy. He repeatedly in his works does homage to the happy influence of love. He maintained that it was the parent of the choicest qualities among mankind, though he sometimes adulterates his loftier sentiments by intermingling voluptuous passion with the pure affections of the heart,--a defect which was usual with the mediaeval "gestours." He reverts in the House of Fame to his favourite theme, and the first book is taken up with a description of the temple of Venus. The entire edifice was of glass that was radiant with paintings representing subjects from Ovid and Virgil. Chaucer flourished in the finest period of Gothic architecture, when the "storied windows richly dight" were the delight of the age, and his detailed enumeration of the pictured incidents were not, to his contemporaries, the dry catalogue they may appear to us. After examining the marvellous gallery, he walks out of the building to seek for some one to inform him in what country he may be. He finds that the surrounding district is a desert as far as the eye can reach, without house, tree, herbage, or living creature, till gazing upwards he beholds an eagle aloft in the sky.

It was of gold, and shone so bright
That never saw men such a sight,
But if the heaven had ywon
All new of God another sun.

The book concludes with the announcement that the gorgeous eagle began somewhat to descend, and this is followed in the second book by the bird catching sight of Chaucer, and stooping upon him with the rapidity of lightning. In an instant it catches him up in its claws, and "as lightly as if he was a lark" soars with him into the clouds. He swoons with fright, and is restored to consciousness by the eagle calling him by name, and rebuking him for his fears. Having calmed him, the bird informs him why he has been sent to fetch him, and bear him aloft into the skies. Chaucer more than once confesses that he was not framed to win affection. He says he did "not dare to love for his unlikeliness," and that he might "go in the dance" with those whom it had not been Cupid's pleasure to prosper. Yet his quick and glowing sympathies had led him to employ his genius in celebrating a blessing of which he had tasted so sparingly, and he is now told that his disinterested service to Venus and Cupid, in devoting the hours of night to composing poems on the histories of lovers till his head aches, has attracted the notice of Jupiter, who intends to reward him by admitting him to a view of the palace of Fame. The eagle continues rising upwards with his burthen, and expounds to Chaucer as they go the situation of the building, and the means by which everything said and done on earth is known in the distant sanctuary of the goddess. Arrived there, the winged messenger of Jupiter sets the poet down, and bidding him farewell, expresses a hope that the God of heaven will send him grace to learn some good from the scenes which are about to be unveiled to him. The third book contains the account of the House of Fame, and the House of Rumour, and despite the previous announcement of the extraordinary disclosures which await him, Chaucer has copied several of his leading ideas from Ovid and Virgil. In the House of Fame he witnesses the caprice with which the goddess dispenses reputation and disgrace; and in the House of Rumour he learns that nothing can exceed the lying and deception which are practised by mercenary ecclesiastics for the sake of lucre. His honest nature and penetrating understanding repudiated the impostures of the Romish church, and it was the main lesson which he seemed to wish to inculcate in his poem.

It is stated by Pope in his prefatory advertisement that the House of Fame had only supplied him with the "hint" for the Temple of Fame, that "the design was entirely altered," and that "the descriptions, and most of the particular thoughts, were his own." Bowles says that "Pope seems unwilling to confess all he owes to Chaucer," and that his language would "lead us to conclude that the chief merit of the arrangement and imagination belonged to himself," whereas he is indebted to his predecessor for "what is most poetical in the whole composition." Pope cannot be accused of concealing his obligations to the House of Fame, for he has fairly specified them in his notes, but he extremely underrated the extent to which he borrowed from it when he fancied that his general outline was different, and "most of the particular thoughts entirely new." The fertility of invention ascribed to him by Roscoe, and which he, in some degree, challenges for himself, is the last praise he can claim. Every portion of the conception which has a touch of creative power is found in Chaucer, together with the largest part of what is good in the filling up. High authorities differ as to the effect of Pope's additions and variations. Thomas Warton pronounced that "the character of the poem was marred," and Bowles endorsed the criticism. Johnson, on the other hand, asserts that "the original vision was never denied to be much improved," and he had Joseph Warton, Roscoe, and Campbell on his side. "Much of Chaucer's fantastic matter," says Campbell, "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. In Pope, the philosophy of fame comes with much more propriety from the poet himself than from the beak of a talkative eagle."[5] The introduction of the majestic eagle, its tremendous swoop when it pounces on the lonely wanderer, the terror produced by the first stage of the flight, and the animated dialogue in the second stage, is the most striking portion of Chaucer's vision. The philosophic discourse of the bird is not inconsistent with the wild imaginings of a dream. "Fantastic matter" is here the most natural, and keeps up an illusion which disappears in the formal composition of Pope. The advantage of modern language and versification would have rendered it easy for a man less gifted than him to improve on isolated passages, but the free fancy and picturesqueness of Chaucer are wanting. The romance which constitutes the truth and charm of the original dream is replaced by a scene of frigid tameness; and Johnson, while declaring that every part of the remodelled piece was splendid, is compelled to admit that it is turned silently over and takes no hold on the mind. Dullness is a fatal innovation which is poorly compensated by the greater polish of the style, and harmony of the verse.

The Temple of Fame suffered from a cause which deteriorated much of Pope's early poetry,--the notion that the noblest exercise of mind was to magnify the ancients, and reproduce their ideas. The epic poem he commenced at thirteen was naturally a school-boy's "slavish imitation" of Greek and Latin authors.[6] A magnificent modern literature, marked by the strongest lines of native vigour and masculine independence, might have been expected, as he grew acquainted with it, to expand his taste. This effect did not ensue. Led astray by the false conventional canons of hacknied criticism, he clung to his early prejudices, and, regardless of the splendid names which gave the lie to his theory, he could say, at the age of thirty, in the preface to his works, "All that is left us is to recommend our productions by the imitation of the ancients." He told Spence that he should certainly have tried his hand upon a second epic if he had not translated the Iliad, and this epic, in its main characteristics, would not have differed much from his translation. "I should have sat down to it," he said, "with this advantage, that I had been nursed up in Homer and Virgil."[7] He once intended to take the Corinthian Timoleon for his hero; and scene, manners, personages, machinery, and sentiments would all have been as Greek as they could be made by an imitator who had not entered deeply into the spirit of classic writers and times. The everlasting interest attached to the Iliad,--to a poem original and national, reflecting the institutions, customs, feelings, and beliefs of its era,--would, he thought, be extended to a modern duplicate, in which every one of these qualities would have been reversed. "The less we copy the ancients," said Dr. Young, "we shall resemble them the more." The undue exaltation of antiquity is complete in the Temple of Fame. No English king, warrior, statesman, or patriot; no Christian martyr or evangeliser; no poet or philosopher was deemed worthy to be ranked with the men of old. The fictitious phantoms of heathen mythology, the heroes of decayed empires, and the authors whose works are in dead languages, are the sole immortals of Pope. Within the limits of his narrow world several of his names appear to have been selected at random, and others are applauded upon mistaken principles. He extols the virtue of Brutus, whose chief glory was to have plotted the death of his preserver, patron, and friend. Nations do not need, and virtue disowns the patriotism which manifests itself in ingratitude, treachery, and murder. Pope's admiration of tyrannicides even led him to celebrate Timoleon for killing his brother, notwithstanding that Timoleon had forfeited his claim to the panegyric by bitterly repenting his crime. To consecrate political assassinations is to put the lives of rulers at the mercy of any individual who conceives their policy to be mischievous. In short, the portion of the Temple of Fame which was not directly borrowed from Chaucer is merely a school-boy's theme in verse. The manner in which Pope sets forth his worthies is not, for him, felicitous. His portraits are nearly all faint and feeble sketches, without distinctness of outline, individuality of feature, or brilliancy of colouring.

The contemporary literature of the middle ages could not compete with the classical masterpieces, and Chaucer might have been justified in peopling his House of Fame with ancients alone. But he does not believe that genius and grandeur expired with the Romans. He has faith in authors whose light has long since been dimmed or extinguished, and confidently ranks such writers as Guido de Columpnis and Geoffrey of Monmouth with the loftiest Greek and Latin names. The statues of minstrel bards, musicians, and professors of magic adorn the exterior of the palace; the wall within is crowded with heralds, and on their coats are embroidered the armorial ensigns of all the persons who had been famous in Europe, Asia, and Africa since chivalry began. Everywhere we have the true reflection of the world in which Chaucer lived. His narrative represents the fourteenth century, its actual pursuits and genuine tastes, while the modernised version of Pope is stripped of circumstantial realities, and exhibits only an impassive, artificial pedantry.

The architecture of Pope's Temple and Chaucer's House presents the same difference which distinguishes the respective poems throughout. The House is in the magnificent Gothic of the time, with its multiplied buttresses, niches, images, pinnacles, and traceried windows. The Temple is a building which resembles nothing that ever existed. One face is Grecian architecture, a second Eastern, a third Egyptian, and a fourth Northern. Warton, in a note to the poem, says that Pope's "knowledge and taste in the fine arts were unquestionable." Had he possessed the crudest ideas of architecture he could not have affirmed that so hideous, and indeed so impossible a combination, surpassed in beauty whatever had been "beheld in proud Rome, or artful Greece, or elder Babylon." The details are worthy of the general conception. The northern side is said to be "of Gothic structure,"--not the glorious style which commonly bears the name, a style for which Pope had no eyes, since with Chaucer's description before him he ignores the mediaeval Gothic altogether, but a structure lustrous as glass, and "overwrought with ornaments of barbarous pride." "Huge colosses rise" upon its face, and around the statues are "engraved Runic characters." This part of the design appears to be an importation from the south. In the Egyptian temples colossal figures are often attached to the piers, and at the top, bottom, and sides of the piers there is a border of hieroglyphics. With his statues Pope has conjoined "rude iron columns smeared with blood" upon which stand the "horrid forms of Scythian heroes," and in a note he gravely asserts that this medley "is agreeable to the architecture of the northern part of the world." In the text he has ventured upon the no less extraordinary statement that all the facades were of "equal grace" or in other words that his barbarous and chimerical northern side was of equal grace with the architecture of Greece.