The story of pious Custance is told by the Man of Law. It is of a beautiful princess of Rome who has wedded the Sultan of Syria, and on her nuptial eve is set adrift in an enchanted ship by her wicked mother-in-law. She floats over the ocean for many years till the vessel strands on the coast of Britain. Here she is succored by the governor of the port and his wife, Dame Hermegilde, till a false knight, who hates Custance because she has refused his love, slays Dame Hermegilde and accuses Custance of the murder. She is taken for trial before the king, and must die unless she can find a champion who will prove her innocence in a contest of arms with the accusing knight. The king, touched with pity at sight of Custance, asks if she has no champion. She falls on her knees and answers that she has no defender but God, and then, rising, looks piteously about her:

"Have ye not seen somtime a pale face
Among a pres of him that hath ben lad
Toward his deth, wher as he geteth no grace,
And swiche a colour in his face hath had,
Men mighten know him that was so bestad?
Amonges all the faces in that route

So stant Custance, and loketh hire about."

Is it any wonder that at sight of that pale, innocent face the king is almost ready to get down from his throne and fight as her champion? He calls at once for a Breton book of the gospels, and as the knight swears on this that Custance is guilty, an unseen hand smites him, so that his neck is broken and his "eyes burst out of his face, in sight of everybody in that place." The British King Alla then marries pious Custance, so wonderfully protected, and in course of time, when the king is away on some Custance falls a foreign wars, a son is born to them. victim to the plots of her second mother-in-law, who manages to have her sent back on the wonderful ship again, where she miraculously floats about till her boy grows to manhood, when she is restored to her husband, and the tale ends happily. The picture of Custance

when she is sent to the ship with her baby is in Chaucer's tenderest vein :

"Hire litel child lay weping in hire arm,

And kneling, pitously to him she said,
'Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee no harm.'

With that hire couverchief of her hed she braid,

And over his litel eyen she it laid,

And in hire arme she lulleth it full fast,

And into the heven hire eyen up she cast. . . .

Therwith she loketh backward to the lond,

And saide, Farewel, housbond rutheles ;'
And up she rist, and walketh doun the strond.
Toward the ship hire foloweth all the prees,
And ever she praieth hire child to hold his pees;
And taketh hire leve, and with a holy entent,
She blesseth hire, and into the ship she went."

Another of the most beautiful of all these stories, and the one which is, I think, most read, is the story of patient Griselda, told by the Oxford student. This tale, which Chaucer says he got from the Italian poet Petrarch, is of a meek woman who has married a man above her in rank, and is put to all sorts of cruel trials by her husband to prove her virtuous patience.

tests, and is happy at last.

She triumphs over all these We are so indignant at her treatment that we can hardly read the poem with patience;

and even Chaucer says, —

"This story is said, not for that wives shuld

Folwe Grisilde, as in humilitee,

For it were importable, tho they wold, —
But for that every wight in his degree

Shulde be constant in adversitee

As was Grisilde; therfore Petrark writeth

This storie, which with high stile he enditeth."

If you do not care to read all The Canterbury Tales, those I have mentioned are the three I would advise you to read first. A few of the stories are too coarse for modern taste,

- those of the Miller, the Merchant, the Reeve, and one or two others. Chaucer, at the outset, declares he is not responsible for the moral of the stories, and only tells them as he heard them. I regret that he should have thought

it worth while to tell all he heard. But it is easy enough for us to keep out of the way of the gross persons of the company, and most of the tales are pure enough for any time.

Chaucer's quaint old English deters many students nowadays from the attempt to read him. But a very little familiarity with him will make his language plain, with the occasional aid of a glossary to look up a word which has now become obsolete. And once mastered, the elder English of Chaucer is delightful, and close knowledge of it will help to revive many dear and homely words that are fast disappearing from our language, and aid to make clear the meanings of other words which we use without a full consciousness of their worth and richness. If we want to appreciate the beauty of our English tongue, we shall be greatly helped by an acquaintance with Chaucer, and shall learn what a debt we owe the Father of English poetry. And so we leave our good old poet reluctantly, as one with whom we should like to be better acquainted, to enter upon a century which is notable for two of the greatest events in the world's history. Let us see what these events are, and what influence they will be likely to work on literature.

XIV.

TELLING OF SOME OF THE GREAT EVENTS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, OF CAXTON AND HIS PRINTING-PRESS; AND OF THE ROMANCE OF THE MORTE D'ARTHUR.

HAUCER died in the opening year of the fifteenth cen

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tury. With him literature seemed for a time to die also. The reign of the house of Lancaster brought in the hosts of bloody war; insurrections at home and battles abroad filled up the first half of the century; and when the house of York took the throne, there was little quiet in

1375-1461

which to hear the voice of poet or scholar. Two names that closely follow that of Chaucer are all that we meet with of any consequence till the close of the century. The first is that of JOHN LYDGATE, a monkish schoolmaster who spent his leisure in writing poetry which we should pronounce very dull indeed; the second is that of a lawyer, THOMAS OCCLEVE, who wrote verse duller even than Lydgate's. In the hundred years and more after Chaucer no such genius blazed out as we have seen in Wycliffe's prose and Chaucer's

1370-1454

verse.

But although few new books were written, the old books grew more and more into demand, and in no previous century were handsomer copies made of the great masterpieces of literature than during this period. So great was the increase in the making of books that manuscript copying was no longer done wholly by monks, but became the work of men in every-day life. This change led naturally to the invention of printing; for as soon as book-making came to be a business of life, and not the pastime of scholars and priests, it passed into the hands of practical men, who would cast about to do the work more easily and rapidly than by the tedious way of handwriting. Wooden blocks as large as a book page were first made, which were soon superseded by single letters of movable type; and from that time books could be made quickly, although at first they were not beautiful books, like those made by the painstaking monks, with their many colored inks and slow, patient pens.

1412-1492

WILLIAM CAXTON, the first English printer, was a young man when he went to live in Belgium, as apprentice to a London merchant. He stayed there till past middle life, and prospered in business. He was always of a book-loving turn, and in his spare time copied manuscripts for his own delight. It was thus natural that he should have become interested in the new art of printing which had begun in Germany, and flourished all about him; and when he was able to do so, he gladly dropped the

pen and took up the quicker mode of type-setting. In 1474 he came home to England with a printing-press of his own, and began business in one of the buildings belonging to Westminster Abbey. Here, under the walls that had sheltered Chaucer when he finished The Canterbury Tales, Caxton invited all who desired to come and buy his books or give orders for printing. All sorts of people answered this invitation; noble ladies and gentlemen of the realm were ready and glad to lend him their precious manuscript books to be copied by the printing-press, and his work was honored as ought to be the work of a man who adds faithfully to the knowledge and progress of the world.

The list of the books which Caxton printed, shows good taste on the part of our first printer and publisher. They are from all sources, a miscellaneous, but very interesting library. The first book issued was a work on Chess, soon followed by a translation of the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. He also published the first edition of Chaucer's works, and the first edition of those of Gower and John Lydgate. From his press came translations of Virgil's Eneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the Consolation of Boethius. He printed the tales of Reynard the Fox so famous even to this day; he gave to the English reader the fables of Æsop, and also the Book of Good Manners, and The Craft to Know well how to Die. Caxton deserves to be considered more than a mere craftsman in book-making. Many of these works he translated himself, and by using, whenever he could, the simple spoken English, he did good work in helping to form and make stable our language.

One of the most important books to our literature of all the number issued from his press was the 1485 Morte d'Arthur,—the old stories of Arthur and his Knights, which were translated by Sir Thomas Malory from the French. In this book we have again the stories which belong to the Arthurian romance, woven into one. Here we see, more fully than ever before, the forms of King