their respective times, both have contrived to embody the realities they had witnessed in the persons and transactions they have feigned, and to render the knowledge, derived from the secondary sources of written and traditionary science, subservient to the more efficient and authentic intelligence derived from actual intercourse with their species. One delighted, indeed, in the contentions of camps and councils, the din of arms and strife of the dusty field ; the other was most at home in the mingled intercourses of familiar life—its occupations and its pastimes, its humours, passions, absurdities ; its squabbling garrulities, and ludicrous intrigues. One shews us human nature, such as power and public station, and ambition, and all the gigantic passions of the aspiring mind, have a tendency to make it; the other, such as its instincts and propensities render it, under the restriction of more humble or more sordid circumstances ; where ambition becomes dwarfed into petty rivalry, and the same emulous and hostile feelings which might have desolated realms and trampled nations in the dust, vent themselves in breaking a head at cudgel-play, or a scurrilous jest in the conflicts of conversational recrimination. One pictures the splendid atrocities of illustrious homicides, and thrills us with sublime and pathetic descriptions of the miseries entailed on warring nations by a lascivious queen; the other is content to excite our laughter over the ludicrous consequences of a clerk of Oxenford's intrigue with the light-heeled spouse of a sely old carpenter; or the pleasant vengeance of a brace of poor scholars on the crafty miller, who had robbed them of a part of their grain. But the characters of Homer in the highly imaginative adventures of the Odyssey, and the equally imaginative conflicts of the Iliad, and those of Chaucer, whether in the suppositious adventures of the Pilgrims, or the comic stories they relate, bear alike the authentic stamp of nature in every word and circumstance ascribed to them. They are alike, indeed, in every instance, distinct creations of the genius of the respective authors; but endued with appropriate passions, habitudes, and characteristics, evidently derived from the co-existing realities of human life and incident. They were fitted, therefore, alike to be the great exemplars, one of the tragic, the other of the comic drama, in their respective regions.

It has not, indeed, happened to Chaucer as to Homer, to have his individual characters and incidents consecrated by name and circumstance to the purposes of the stage. But it was he, nevertheless, who first shewed the way how comedy should be constructed, and its characters grouped and diversified; and his is the storehouse into which some of our best dramatic poets, (Shakspeare among the rest) were in the habit of looking, not only for examples, but for specific materials, and

from which the genuine spirit of English comedy has been drawn.

This dramatic form of writing has indeed sufficient advantages to recommend its adoption to all who have the requisite endowments. It leaves the author at liberty to escape out of his own individualities—to emerge from the egotistical monotony of detailing merely his own sentiments and opinions, and to indulge his imagination without responsibility for every sentiment he may amplify, or every passion he may call into play. It duplicates and multiplies him into a thousand shapes and distinct identities; and gives him the opportunity of adopting the idiom of every vice, as well as every virtue; of every humour, impulse, and caprice; of the lowest degradations, as well as the most towering sublimities of human passion; and even of the grossest ignorance and fatuity, without taint or humiliation: provided only that in the selection of persons and incidents there be so much discretion, as not to shock the ear of modesty, or trespass beyond the limits of moral decorum.

Chaucer, in his general prologue, has thought fit to claim the full benefit of this dramatic privilege ; and as it may perhaps be thought, that he occasionally stands in need of all the indulgence that can be granted to him, we will let him speak for himself.

Having enumerated and described the several pilgrims or persons of his drama, the poet thus proceeds.

“ But now is time to you for to tell
How that we bearen us that ilke night
When we were in that hostelry alight;
And after will I tell you of our viáge,
And all the remnant of our pilgrimage.

But first, I pray you, of your courtesy,
That ye ne arett [account] it not my villany,
Though that I plainly speak in this matter,
To tellen you their wordes and their cheer,
Nor though I speak their wordes properly;
For this ye knowen all as well as I,
Whoso shall tell a Tale after a man .
He must rehears as nigh as ever he can,
Every word if it be in his charge,
All speak he never so rudely and so large;
Or else he muste tellen his tale untrue,
Or feignen things or finden wordes new;
He may not spare altho' he were his brother;
He must as well say one word as another..
Christ spake himself full broad, in holy writ,
And well ye wot no villany is it;

· Eke Plato sayeth, whoso can him read,

The wordes must be cousin to the deed.”
Chaucer, it will be seen, has thus, in the very outset, put
in his plea of indulgence pretty broad; and whether he has,
in all respects, or as far as morality is concerned, complied with
our premised condition of decorous selection, in the Tales
especially which he has put into the mouths of some of his
characters, or how far, if now brought to the bar of decorous
criticism, he might avail himself of excuse from those changes
which have taken place since his time in the fashions of phra-
seology, which are sometimes mistaken for moral distinctions, it
is not necessary at present to discuss. Though perhaps it may
not be amiss to observe, by the way, that (however we may
admire the delicacy and refinement of the present age in
these respects, as far as manners are concerned) it is not always
the coarsest language, or even the coarsest incident, that is
most injurious. If we look, through surfaces, to latent con-
sequences, we perhaps may find, that “ vice” is so far from
“losing half its evil by losing all its grossness,” that the gross-
ness is frequently, in some degree, an antidote to the vice;
and that morality is never so much endangered as by the deli-
cacy of

" that soft persuasive art,
That can without the least offence impart

The loosest wishes to the chastest heart.*”
It appears, however, by his own confession, that Chaucer
was sufficiently aware that his Miller and his Reve, &c. did
not very strictly confine themselves even within the fashion of
the decorums of his own time; and he has accordingly, in the
prologue to the Miller's Tale, thought it necessary not only to
renew his plea of dramatic licence, but to accompany it with a
warning, of which the more modest of his readers may, if they
please, avail themselves.

“This drunken Miller spake full soon again,
And saide leve brother Oswold,
Who hath no wife he is no cuckewold ;
But I say not therefore that thou art one;

* The Sentimental Journey of Sterne, for example, is more immoral in its tendencies than his Tristram Shandy. At the gross incidents of the latter we laugh, and the virgin would blush; and with the laugh and the blush the joke passes away; but the garnished looseness of principle, and refined impurity of the other, steal into the imagination, and endanger the moral principle in proportion as we neither blush nor laugh.

There been full goode wives many one
Why art thou angry with my Tale now?
I have a wife parde as well as thou,
Yet n'would I for the oxen in my plough
Taken upon me more than enough
As deeming of myself that I am one;
I will believen well that I am none,
A husband should not be inquisitive
Of Godde's privity, ne of his wife :
So he may finden Godde's foison there,
Of the remainant needeth not to enquire.

What should I more say, but this Miller
He n'would his wordes for no man forbear,
But told his cherles Tale in his manner,
Me thinketh that I shall rehearse it here ;
And therefore every gentle wight I pray,
For Godde's love, as deem not that I say
Of evil intent, but that I must rehearse
Their Tales all, allbe they better or worse,
Or elles falsen some of my matere;
And therefore whoso list it not to hear,
Turn over the leaf and choose another Tale,
For he shall find enow both great and smale
Of storial thing that toucheih gentiless,
And eke morality and holiness.
Blameth not me if that ye choose amiss;
The Miller is a churl, ye know well this,
So was the Reve, (and many other mo) [more]
And harlotry they tolden both the two.
Advise you now, and put me out of blame;

And eke men should not make ernest of game.” The subject of the works of Chaucer it is impossible to exhaust within the limits of one paper, in a publication dedicated to various tastes and various objects; but we shall take the very earliest opportunity of resuming the discussion of topics on which we trust we have conferred a portion of the deep interest we feel in them.

END OF VOL. IX. PART I.

LONDON:
Printed by D. S. Maurice, Fenchurch Street.

THE

Retrospective Review.

Vol. IX. Part II.

Art. I.-Britain ; or, a Chorographicall Description of the

most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the Islands adjoining, out of the depth of Antiquitie : lieautified with Mappes of the several Shires of England : written first in Lutine by William Camden, Clarencieux King of Arms; translated newly into English by Philemon Holland, Doctor of Physick ; finally revised, amended, and enlarged with sundry additions by the said Author. Folio, 1637.

“ I hope” (thus saith the author to the reader) “it shall be no discredit if I now use again, by way of preface, the same words, with a few more, that I used twenty four years since in the first edition of this work. Abraham Ortelius, the worthy restorer of ancient geography, arriving here in England about thirty four years past, dealt earnestly with me that I would illustrate this isle of Britain, or (as he said that I would restore antiquity to Britain, and Britain to antiquity; which was, (I understood), that I would renew ancientry, enlighten obscurity, clear doubts, and recall home verity, by way of recovery, which the negligence of writers and credulity of the common sort had in a manner proscribed and utterly banished from among us. A painful matter, I assure you, and more than difficult; wherein what toil is to be taken, as no man thinketh, so no man believeth but he who hath made the trial. · Nevertheless, how much the difficulty discouraged me from it, so much the glory of my country encouraged me to undertake it. So, while at one and the same time I was fearful to undergo the burthen, and yet desirous to do some service to my country, I found two different affections, fear and boldness, I know not how, conjoined in one. Notwithstanding, by the most gracious direction of the Almighty, taking industry for my consort, I adventured upon it; and, with all my study, care, cogitation, continual meditation, pain, and travail, I employed myself thereunto when I

VOL. IX. PART II.

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