wretched mother, wandering and wailing, is led by the sweet, plaintive echoes, whose tones she knows, to where her poor boy lies dead; and even as she comes, he, with throte y-carven, his

Alma Redemptoris gan to sing

So loude that al the placë gan to ring.

Then the Christian people take him up, and bear him away to the Abbey. His mother lies swooning by the bier. They hang those wicked Jews-and prepare the little body for burial and sprinkle it with holy water; but still from the poor bleeding throat comes evermo'" the song:

O Alma Redemptoris mater!

And the good Abbot entreats him to say, why his soul lingers, with his throat thus all agape?

"My throte is cut unto my nekkë bone,"
Saide this child, "and as by way of kynde,
I should have dyed, ye longë time agone,
But Jesu Christ, as ye in bookës finde,
Wol that his glory laste, and be in minde,
And for the worship of his moder dere,

Yet may I sing, 'O Alma!' loud and clere."

But he says that as he received his death-blow, the Virgin came, and

"Methoughte she leyde a greyn upon my tongue, Wherefore I singe and singe; I mote certeyn

Til from my tonge off-taken is the greyn;

And after that, thus saidë she to me,

'My litel child, then wol I fecchen thee!'

[Where at] This holy monk-this Abbot― him mene I, His tonge out-caughte, and tok away the greyn,

And he gaf up the goost full softëly.

And when the Abbot had this wonder sein

His saltë teres trilled adown as raine,

And graf he fell, all platt upon the grounde,

And stille he lay as he had been y-bounde.

After this they take away the boy-martyr from off

And in a tombe of marble stonës clere

Enclosen they his litel body swete;

Ther he is now: God leve us for to mete!

How tenderly the words all match to the delicate meaning! This delightful poet knows every finest resource of language: he subdues and trails after him all its harmonies. No grimalkin stretching out silken paws touches so lightly what he wants only to touch; no cat with sharpest claws clings so tenaciously to what he would grip with his earnester words. He is a painter whose technique is never at fault-whose art is an instinct.

Yet it must be said—there is no grand horizon at the back of his pictures: pleasant May-mornings and green meadows a plenty; pathetic episodes, most beguiling tracery of incidents and of character, but never strong, passionate outbursts showing profound capacity for measurement of deepest emotion. We cannot think of him as telling with any adequate force the story of King Lear, in his delirium. of wrath: Macbeth's stride and hushed madness and bated breath could not come into the charming, mellifluous rhythm of Chaucer's most tragic story without making a dissonance that would be screaming.

But his descriptions of all country things are garden-sweet. He touches the daisies and the roses with tints that keep them always in freshest, virgin, dewy bloom; and he fetches the forest to our eye with words that are brim-full of the odors of the woods and of the waving of green boughs.

In our next talk we shall speak of some who sang beside him, and of some who followed; but of these not one had so rare a language, and not one had so true an eye,

IN

CHAPTER IV.

N our last chapter we went back to the latter edge of the thirteenth century and to the City of Oxford, that we might find in that time and place a Franciscan Friar known as Roger Bacon, who had an independence of spirit which brought him into difficulties, and a searchingness of mind which. made people count him a magician. I spoke of Langlande and Wyclif: and of how the reforming spirit of the first expressed itself in the alliterative rhythm of the Piers Plowman allegory; and how the latter declared against Papal tyranny and the accepted dogmas of the Church: he too, set on foot those companies of "pore priests," who in long russet gowns reaching to their heels, and with staff in hand, traversed the highways and byways of England, preaching humility and charity; he gave to us moreover that Scriptural quaintness of language,

which from Wyclif's time, down to ours, has left its trail in every English pulpit, and colored every English prayer.

Then we came to that great poet Chaucer, who wrote so much and so well, as first and most of all contemporary or preceding writers-to make one proud of the new English tongue. He died in 1400, and was buried at Westminster - not a stone's throw away from the site of his last London home. His tomb, under its Gothic screen, may be found in the Poet's Corner of the Abbey, a little to the right, on entering from the Old Palace Yard; and over it, in a window that looks toward the Houses of Parliament, has been set in these latter years, in unfading array the gay company of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims.

In the same year in which the poet died, died also that handsome and unfortunate Richard the Second* (son of the Black Prince) who promised bravely; who seemed almost an heroic figure when in his young days, he confronted Wat Tyler so coolly; but he made promises he could not or would

* His dethronement preceded his death, by a twelvemonth

or more.