as spoken and written in the present day, the following calculations may be found curious and instructive, and perhaps they may give a better notion of the present condition of the language than more general description. It has been ascertained that the English now consists of about 38,000 words, of which 23,000, or nearly five-eighths, are Anglo-Saxon in their origin; and that in our most idiomatic writers about nine-tenths are Anglo-Saxon, and in our least idiomatic writers about twothirds. As examples of the most completely idiomatic authors, we may instance the immortal De Foe, and among those who are least Saxon perhaps Gibbon may, without injustice, be adduced. There can be no doubt, however, that the AngloSaxon element is slowly but perceptibly diminishing; and the learned Sharon Turner considers that one-fifth of the Saxon language has ceased to be used. CHAPTER II. CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES. Age of Chaucer-His Birth and Education-Translation in the Fourteenth Century-His Early Productions-His Career-Imbued with Provençal Literature-Character of his Poems-Romaunt of the Rose-Troilus and Cresseide-Anachronism-House of FameCanterbury Tales-Plan of this Work-The Pilgrims-Proposition of the Host-Plan of the Decameron-Superiority of Chaucer's Plan -Dialogue of the Pilgrims-Knight's Tale-Squire's Tale-Story of Griselda-Comic Tales-The two Prose Tales-Rime of Sir Thopas -Parson's Tale-Language of Chaucer-The Flower and the Leaf. NEITHER the plan nor the extent of the present volume will permit us to give a detailed history of all the productions, nor, indeed, even a list of all the names, which figure in the annals of English literature. It will be our aim to direct the reader's attention upon those great works and those illustrious names which form, as it were, the landmarks of the intellectual history of the country, and which gave the tone and colour to the various epochs to which they belong; exerting also, according to circumstances, an influence more or less powerful on contemporary and succeeding generations. And by this method we hope to give a clearer idea of the scope and character of English literature than we could expect to afford them by a more elaborate and detailed work, the materials for which are so abundant, that it would require not a volume but a library to develop them as they deserve. We consider, therefore, the age of Chaucer as the true The age of starting-point of the English literature properly Chaucer. so called. In Italy letters appear to have revived after the long and gloomy period characterised by the somewhat false term of "the dark ages," with astonishing rapidity. Like germs and seeds of plants which have lain for centuries buried deep in the unfruitful bowels of the earth, and suddenly brought up by some convulsion of nature to the surface, the intellect of Italy burst forth, in the fourteenth century, into a tropical luxuriance, putting out its fairest flowers of poetry, and its solidest and most beautiful fruits of wisdom and of wit. Dante died seven years before, and Petrarch and Boccaccio about fifty years after, the birth of Chaucer, who thus was exposed to the strongest and directest influence of the genius of these great men. How great that influence was, we shall presently see. The great causes, then, which modified and directed the genius of Chaucer were-first, the new Italian poetry, which then suddenly burst forth upon the world, like Pallas from the brain of Jupiter, perfect and consummate in its virgin strength and beauty; second, the now decaying Romanz or Provençal poetry; and third, the doctrines of the Reformation, which were beginning, obscurely but irresistibly, to agitate the minds of men; a movement which took its origin, as do all great and permanent revolutions, in the lower depths of the popular heart, heaving gradually onwards, like the tremendous ground-swell of the equator, until it burst with resistless strength upon the Romish Church in Germany and in England, sweeping all before it. Wickliffe, who was born in 1324, only four years before Chaucer, had undoubtedly communicated to the poet many of his bold doctrines: the father of our poetry and the father of our reformed religion were both attached to the party of the celebrated John of Gaunt, and were both honoured with the friendship and protection of that powerful prince: Chaucer indeed was the kinsman of the Earl, having married the sister of Catherine Swinford, first the mistress and ultimately the wife of "timehonoured Lancaster;" and the poet's varied and uncertain career seems to have faithfully followed all the vicissitudes of John of Gaunt's eventful life. Geoffrey Chaucer was born, as he informs us himself, in London; and for the date of an event so important to the destinies of English letters, we must fix it, on the authority of the inscription upon his tomb, as having happened in the year 1328; that is to say, at the commencement of the splendid and chivalrous reign of Edward III. The honour of having been the place of his education has been eagerly disputed by the two great and ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the former, however, of the two learned sisters having apparently the best established right to the maternity -or at least the fosterage of so illustrious a nurseling. Cambridge founds her claim upon the circumstance of Chaucer's having subscribed one of his early works "Philogenet of Cambridge, clerk." He afterwards returned to London, and there became a student of the law. His detestation of the monks appears, from a very curious document, to have begun even so early as his abode in the grave walls of the Temple; for we find the name of Jeffrey Chaucer inscribed in an ancient register as having been fined for the misdemeanour of beating a friar in Fleet Street. Translation The first efforts of a revival of letters will always be made in the path of translation; and to this principle in fourteenth Chaucer forms no exception. He was an indecentury. fatigable translator; and the whole of manynay, a great part of all-his works bears unequivocal traces of the prevailing taste for imitation. How much he has improved upon his models, what new lights he has placed them in, with what skill he has infused fresh life into the dry bones of obscure authors, it will hereafter be our business to inquire. He was the poetical pupil of Gower, and, like Raphael and Shakspeare, he surpassed his master: Gower always speaks with respect of his illustrious pupil in the art of poetry; and, in his work entitled 'Confessio Amantis' places in the mouth of Venus the following elegant compliment : "And grete wel Chaucer, when ye mete, As my disciple and my poéte: For in the flowers of his youth, In sundry wise, as he well couthe, Of ditees and of songés glade The which he for my saké made," &c. These lines also prove that Chaucer began early to write; and probably our poet continued, during the whole course of his eventful life, to labour assiduously in the fields of letters. His earliest works were strongly tinctured with the manner, His early nay, even with the mannerism, of the age. They productions. are much fuller of allegory than his later productions; they are distinguished by a greater parade of scholar ship, and by a deeper tinge of that amorous and metaphysical mysticism which pervades the later Provençal poetry, and which reached its highest pitch of fantastical absurdity in the Arrêts d'Amour of Picardy and Languedoc. As an example of this we may cite his 'Dream,' an allegorical composition written to celebrate the nuptials of his friend and patron John of Gaunt, with Blanche, the heiress of Lancaster. Chaucer was in every sense a man of the world: he was the ornament of two of the most brilliant courts in the annals of England-those of Edward III., and his successor Richard II. He also accompanied the former king in his expedition into France, and was taken prisoner about 1359 at the siege of Retters; and in 1367 we find him receiving from the Crown a grant of 20 marks, i. e. about 2007. of our present money. Our poet, thus distinguished as a soldier, as a courtier, and as a scholar, was honoured with the duty of forming part of an embassy to the splendid court of Genoa, where he was present at the nuptials of Violante, daughter of Galeazzo Duke of Milan, with the Duke of Clarence. At this period he made the acquaintance of Petrarch, and probably of Boccaccio also: to the former of these illustrious men he certainly was personally known; for he hints, in his 'Canterbury Tales,' his having learned from him the beautiful and pathetic tale of the Patient Griselda :: "Learned at Padua of a worthy clerke, Francis. Petrarke, the laureate poét, Highte thys clerke, whose rhethorique sweet It was during his peregrinations in France and Italy that Chaucer drew at the fountain-head those deep draughts from the Hippocrene of Tuscany and of Provence which flow and sparkle in all his compositions. It is certain that he introduced into the English language an immense quantity of words absolutely and purely French, and that he succeeded with an admirable dexterity in harmonizing the ruder sounds of his vernacular tongue; so successfully, indeed, that it may be safely asserted that very few poets in any modern language are more exquisitely and uniformly musical than Chaucer. Indeed, he has been accused, and in rather severe terms, of |