PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor when we have to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club the LIVING Age with another periodical. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. Yet hoping still that something done A shady grove, a crystal well; And I am gone, thou know'st not whither. From The Quarterly Review. CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE.* It is now about a century since the study of Chaucer began to revive. Between the time of Verstegan and Tyrwhitt- the "Restitution of Decayed In there are traces on it of the whitewash or telligences" was published in 1605, Tyr-lication of his volumes may be dated the whitt's memorable work in 1775-he had, renewal of the critical and the appreciaby slow degrees, fallen nearly altogether tive study of the greatest literary producout of the general knowledge of men. tions of the English Middle Ages. The He, whom Spenser called "the well of impulse they gave, has been perpetually English undefiled," was vulgarly accused strengthened and multiplied by various of having poisoned and corrupted the tendencies and movements, both of a springs of his native tongue. He whom general and a particular character. At that same Spenser-the sweetest melo- the present time a Chaucer Society has dist of our literature-looked up to as been formed, and under the zealous leadhis verse-master and exemplar, was stig-ership of Mr. Furnivall, its founder and matized as a very metrical cripple and organizer and almost sole worker, is doidiot. And what little acquaintance there ing excellent service * in bringing within was maintained with him was due to ver- common reach the original texts of the sions of certain of his poems made by great poet. Of various other ways in the facile pens of Dryden, and of Pope; which in the course of this century, and so completely had he fallen on what were especially in our own generation, some for him "evil days" and "evil tongues." popular, as well as scholarly, familiarity To Tyrwhitt belongs the honour of first with one of our greatest minds has been reinstating the old poet on the pedestal encouraged and promoted, it is not our from which he had been so rudely de- purpose now to speak. Let it suffice to posed so long a time. Proper considera- say that Chaucer has never been known tion being made for the age in which that since his own day more intelligently and admirable scholar lived, his edition of more admiringly than he seems likely to Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" must be be during the last quarter of this ninepronounced a wonder of erudition and of teenth century. faithful labour. Certainly the figure of Chaucer which he presented to the eyes of his time is not a quite genuine thing; dan. It is certain that this Chaucerian revival is not the result of any mere antiquarianism, but of a genuine poetic vitality. There can be no better testimony to Chaucer Society's Publications for 1868-72. Lonthe true greatness of the old poet than that FIRST SERIES: Texts.. The Prologue and First half a thousand years after the age in Sixteen Tales of the Canterbury Tales from the six which he wrote he is held in higher estibest inedited Manuscripts, namely, the Ellesmere, Hengwrt, 154; Cambridge, Gg. 4, 27; Corpus (Ox-mation than ever; that, whatever interford), Petworth and Lansdowne, 851; both in par-missions of his popularity there may allel columns and separate octavos, with colored fac- have been in times that cared nothing similes of the Tellers of all the Tales, from the Ellesmere MS. 2. A Parallel Text Edition of the first four Minor Poems of Chaucer from all the existing unprinted MSS., together with the French original of his A B C, and the hitherto unpublished first cast of his Prologue to the Legends of Good Women, &c. SECOND SERIES: Illustrations.—1. Mr. A. J. Ellis, Early English Pronunciation, with special reference to Shakspere and Chaucer. 2. Essays on Chaucer. By Professor Ebert, &c. for, as they knew little of, the great Romantic School to which he belonged, and that were wholly incapable of understanding the very language in which he expressed and transcribed his genius, he this day speaks with increasing force and power. Through all the obsoleteness of his language, and all the lets and impedi 3. Mr. Furnivall on the Right Order of the Canter-ments to a full enjoyment of his melody bury Tales, and the Stages of the Pilgrimage. 4 Mr. Furnivall's "try to set Chaucer's Works in Originals and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury caused by our ignorance of fourteenth So far as its funds, which, we are sorry to say, are by no means flourishing, allow it. But although the form which was to receive such splendid usage from Shakespeare, and to prove the very amplest and century English, through all the conventional and social differences which separate his time from ours, we yet recognize a profoundly human soul with a marvel- fittest and noblest body for the highest lous power of speech. We are discovering that he is not only a great poet, but one of our greatest. It is not too much to say that the better acquaintance with Chaucer's transcendent merits is gradually establishing the conviction that not one among all poets deserves so well as he the second place. Chaucer and Shakespeare have much in common. However diverse the form of their greatest works, yet in spirit there is a remarkable likeness and sympathy. Their geniuses differ rather in degree than in kind. Chaucer is in many respects a lesser Shakespeare. Chaucer lived generations before the dramatic form was ripe for the use of genius. In his day it had scarcely yet advanced beyond the rude dialogue and grotesque portraiture of the Miracleplay. In fact at that time that rare growth, which two centuries later was to put forth such exquisite imperishable flowers, had hardly yet emerged from its native earth; it was yet only embryonic. Chaucer stands in relation to the supreme Dramatic Age in a correspondent position to that held by Scott. Chaucer lived in the morning twilight of it, Scott in the evening. There can be little doubt that both would have added to its lustre - that England would have boasted one more, and Scotland at least one great dramatist - had they been born later and earlier respectively; but Chaucer could not even descry it in the future, so far off was it, and it was Scott's fortune to look back upon it in the swiftly receding dis dramatic spirit, was not yet ready for wear in the culminating epoch of the Middle Ages, yet that dramatic energy which blazed out so brilliantly at a later period was already at work and insisting on some representation. It worked with vehemence in Chaucer. He is pre-eminently the dramatic genius, not only of medieval England, but of medieval Europe. The great Italians of the bright dawn of modern literature were not of the dramatic order. Much as Chaucer undoubtedly owed to them, they furnished him with no sort of dramatic precedent or example. He is the first in time of modern dramatical spirits; and one must travel far back into the ancient times before one meets with anybody worthy of comparison with him. Certainly if, as has been remarked, it was in Dante that Nature showed that the higher imagination had not perished altogether with Virgil, it was in Chaucer that she showed that dramatic power had not breathed its last with Plautus and Terence. In respect of means of expression Chaucer was placed in a much more unprovided and destitute position than was Shakespeare. We have already seen that neither Tragedy nor Comedy,* in the strict sense of those terms, was known in his day; whereas nothing can be wronger than to make Shakespeare say, as Dryden makes him say,— I found not, but created first the stage. The stage was already not only in existence, but occupied by wits of no contemptible rank, when Shakespeare appeared in Town. Shakespeare had in Marlowe a dramatic master. The pupil presently outshone the master; but of the influ * See the prologue to "Monkes Tale":- In the Elizabethan age this part of Herod had become a proverb of rant; so that Hamlet uses the name as the very superlative of noise (act iii. scene 2). The Miller himself cries out "in Pilate's voice." The wife of Bath, with Clerk Jankin and her gossip dame Ales, goes to "Playes of Miracles." Shakespeare laughs at the rough amateurs of the old stage in the by-play of the "Midsummer Night's Dream." In Chaucer's age perhaps Bottom would have been regarded as a very Roscius, and that interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe might As to the term Comedy, observe, for instance, Dante's have drawn genuine tears down medieval cheeks. use of it. he re C 21 24 may be believed, to his own sound judgment-that he never became in any way a satellite or retainer of the Court of James I., but escaped from the rapidly ence of that master there can be no doubt, though perhaps it has not been, and is not, as adequately recognized and acknowledged as it should be by Shakesperian critics and commentators. And degenerating atmosphere of the BlackMarlowe did not stand alone; he was one, certainly the most eminent one, of a group whose starry lights it is not easy to see in the intense brightness flowing from the great sun that uprose amongst them; but they were and are, of no faint brilliancy, so long as they had the firmament to themselves, unsuffused by an overpowering glory. But for Chaucer there were no such predecessors at home or abroad. Naturally enough, it would seem that it was not till comparatively late in life that he discovered the best vehicle of self-expression. For many years his genius struggled for a fitting language. Like all poets, he began by imitating the models he found current. He dreamed dreams, and saw visions in the conventional mode. He echoed whatever sweet sounds reached his quick sensitive ears from any quarter. He translated, with a quite touching humble-mindedness, received masterpieces of French and of Italian literature. Through all these labours his originality was gradually developing. For all his efforts his genius would not keep to the beaten path, but would perpetually strike out some new way for itself and forget the appointed route. At last he started altogether alone, be looking no longer for old footprints to retrace or any established guide-posts. He discovered a fair wide country that had lain untrodden for ages, over whose tracks the grass or the moss had grown, and here he advanced as in some fresh new world: sk be s Co i ethe she exprs th friars and the Whitehall of the seventeenth century to his home at Stratford. Chaucer was not so fortunate. He was attached to one of the most extravagant and frivolous circles that ever gathered round a monarch of a like description. However noble-natured, he could scarcely live in such company without some contamination. Assuredly his works have stains upon them contracted in that evil air, much as Beaumont and Fletcher are flushed and spotted by the contagions of James I.'s time. And with that Court connection it is impossible not to associate the extreme pecuniary difficulties, of which there are only too manifest signs at a certain period of Chaucer's life. Probably it was these piteous, but seemingly not inevitable or reproachless, distresses that impeded the completion of the " Canterbury Tales." The original design, indeed, is in itself too vast for realization. Chaucer commits the same error in this respect as Spenser does. But it may well be believed that had Chaucer matured his work, he would either have retrenched his plan, or by some device have brought its execution within tolerable dimensions. The part that happily was written has evidently not received the finishing touch. The Prologue itself, perhaps, was never finally revised; in our opinion the "wel nyne and twenty in a companye," of line 24,* requires correction, for the poet added to his pilgrims as his work proceeded; in the case of the "Persoun" he deviates from his programme in not telling us Chaucer's great work is but a noble For another solution of this difficulty see the Aldine 209, ed. 1872. |