all, his equanimity is only comparative, and that perfection in this is as difficult to be attained as in any other virtue. We see him chiefly in his flower-garden and summer-house; but beneath his gay manner as he receives visitors there, we discover, after longer acquaintance, symptoms of sensitive tenderness as well as sternness and strength where the smiling serenity at first appeared to be imperturbable.

Chaucer's works are assigned by Professor Ten Brink to three periods: the first ending with his departure for Italy in 1372, comprising his "A B C," his translation of the Roman de la Rose, and his "Book of the Duchess," and representing his subordination to French influence; the second, ending in 1384, the supposed date of the "House of Fame," comprising as well as that work, his "Life of St Cecile " (Second Nun's Tale), his " Parliament of Fowls," his "Troilus and Cresside," and his first version of the Knight's Tale, and representing his subordination to Italian influence; and the third, comprising "Annelida and Arcite," the "Legend of Good Women," the 'Canterbury Tales,' and the "Complaint of Mars and Venus," and representing Chaucer's maturity and independence. I should be inclined to reject this division as throwing a factitious, and, upon the whole, misleading light on the natural development of Chaucer's genius. There is an immense advance from the "Book of the Duchess" to the "House of Fame ;" but I do not think that that advance is explained by supposing French influence to have operated on the one, and Italian influence on the other. The difference mainly represents an increasing width of knowledge and mastery of expression, fully accounted for by the interval between the works. It seems to me that Chaucer had from first to last more affinity with the French than with the Italians. I can distinguish no change either in his methods or in his spirit that is fairly attributable to Italian influence. He was master of his own development from the time that he received his first impulse from the French. The Italians merely supplied him as they supplied Shakespeare with

material. English obligations to Italian impulse belong to the sixteenth century. The greater part of "Troilus and Cresside" is Chaucer's own. He exalts the character of Cresside in the chivalrous spirit common to him and Guillaume de Lorris ; and recasts Pandarus with a power of characterisation inferior to nothing in the Canterbury Tales.'

Mr Furnivall's refinement of a fourth period, a period of decay, into which he puts all the minor poems that he does not like, seems purely arbitrary, so far as I can judge; but Mr Furnivall's devotion to the subject gives him a very great authority. I should have been disposed to refer Chaucer's "Flee fro the Press," to his final retirement from the world, to the same date as his “Parson's Tale."

"The Testament of Love," the "Assembly of Ladies," and the "Lamentation of Mary Magdalene," are now universally allowed not to be genuine works of Chaucer; and of late, the genuineness of the "Court of Love," the "Flower and the Leaf," and "Chaucer's Dream," has been disputed by Professor Ten Brink and Mr Bradshaw, and their arguments have been accepted by Mr Furnivall. They proceed chiefly with a rhyme test: the rhyming of the adverbial y with the verbal and adjectival ye. They put together all the works ascribed to Chaucer by early MSS., or mentioned by himself or by Lydgate as his; find that all these agree in not admitting the y ye rhyme, and conclude that no work admitting this rhyme can be genuinely Chaucer's. This is the real strength of their case. They adduce also internal evidence; but that is more than overbalanced against them. The weak point in the rhyme argument is the "Romance of the Rose." Chaucer tells us that he made a translation of this work, and yet it admits the objectionable rhyme. Mr Bradshaw obviates the difficulty by declaring that the exist ing translation is not Chaucer's, but a translation by some

1 See Mr W. M. Rossetti's admirable prefatory remarks to his comparison of the work with Boccaccio's Filostrato, Chaucer Society. I do not quite agree with Mr Rossetti, upon his own showing, that the chivalric passion and gallantry came in great measure out of Boccaccio's poem into Chaucer's. Troilus's courtship is modelled more, it seems to me, on the pursuit of the Rose.

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body else, and that Chaucer's must have been lost. fessor Ten Brink makes the more cautious and rational conjecture that, when Chaucer translated the Romance, he had not begun to restrict himself from the y ye rhyme, which was freely used by all English poets before him. It is hard to believe that this translation, if written before Chaucer's, could have been unknown to him, and if known, could have been ignored; and the supposition that it could have been written after his, without any reference to him, is absurdly contrary to the customs of the time. And if the existing translation is Chaucer's, the whole rhyme test becomes of no value as applied to Chaucer's early poems; or rather, it tells in favour of their genuineness. If the "Court of Love" and "Chaucer's Dream," which, if Chaucer's at all, must, from their themes, be placed among his very earliest efforts, had been written subject to the restriction, while the Romance is not, it would have been rather a presumption against their genuineness; but when all the earliest works are found to agree in admitting the y ye rhymes, the probability becomes as strong as possible that Chaucer began by observing the metrical law of his predecessors, and did not venture to restrict himself absolutely till he had acquired greater command of the language. As regards "Chaucer's Dream," it is not worth arguing about, though creditable enough as an early performance: but it is satisfactory to find that the rhyme test need not deprive us of the "Court of Love," which Mr Swinburne has pronounced "Chaucer's most beautiful of young poems;" or of the "Flower and the Leaf," which Dryden and Hazlitt placed among the finest of Chaucer's works. It is also satisfactory that the cleverness of the test as a piece of observation is not discredited by its proving contrary to common-sense. It is simply incredible that these poems could have been written by a poet whose name has perished. If he had written before Chaucer, which could hardly be seriously maintained, he could not but have become famous; and the probability is that Chaucer would have mentioned him as the model of his seven-line stanza. If

he had written after Chaucer, he would certainly have mentioned Chaucer in his list of masters, according to the universal habit of the time. The idea of deliberate forgery is out of the question; and if the "Court of Love" had been the work of a forger or an imitator, the artificial restriction of rhyme was precisely the sort of thing he would labour to observe. Finally, the "Court of Love" is unmistakably imitated in the 'King's Quhair' of James I., whose captivity in England began only five years after Chaucer's death, and yet he mentions no master except Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate. That makes it quite clear that James attributed the "Court of Love" to Chaucer; and what need is there for further evidence? 1

II. HIS LANGUAGE, METRES, AND IMAGERY.

Our philological authorities do not seem to be quite at one about Chaucer's English. Mr Earle ('English Philology,' p. 75-97) says that Chaucer and Gower wrote King's English, the language that had grown up at Court about the person of the monarch; and that this was distinguished from all the contemporary dialects by its being formed more under the influence of French. This position is not refuted by counting the number of words derived from the French, as Mr Ellis does for the Prologue to the 'Canterbury Tales,' and finding that the proportion of words so derived is "not quite one word in a line on an average." It is not so much

1 Philogenet, the name of the writer of the "Court of Love," comes curiously near Philo Ghent, which Chaucer might well subscribe himself; and Philobone would pass for a pretty transmutation of Philippa, the name of Chaucer's wife. True, Philobone is not Philogenet's mistress-she only introduces him; but this is in accordance with the Troubadour rule (which may explain, also, the apparent inconsistency of Chaucer's Dream "), that, when the poet's mistress was attached to a court, he addressed his songs to the presiding princess (see Mr Rutherford's Troubadours, p. 150). Rosial, though intended for Philippa, may thus have been formally Lady Blanche, on whom Philippa attended. Once more, compare the name Rosial with ll. 41-48 of the Romance, where the translator tells his patroness that she "ought of price and right be cleped Rose of every wight." But these may be mere accidental coincidences.

the number of words borrowed that Mr Earle insists upon, as the general strain or rhythm of the language. Not that he means to say that the King's English adopted the French rhythm, but that, growing up as it did among persons familiar with French, it acquired a rhythm of its own, different both from the French rhythm and from the rhythm of the provincial dialects. To understand this, compare the English of Chaucer or Gower with the English of Robert de Brunne, or of Langland's 'Piers Plowman.' Difference in the inflections and in the proportion of French words do not account for the immense indescribable difference in the general movement of the language. This movement, this rhythm, Mr Earle considers the distinctive feature of the King's English.

Whether Dr Morris would accept Mr Earle's position or not, I do not know. Dr Morris lays down that Chaucer wrote in the East Midland dialect, and so far is at variance with Mr Earle's statement, that the language of the Court differed from all other dialects. But perhaps Dr Morris means only that Chaucer uses the inflectional system of the East Midland as distinguished from the Northern and the Southern. These dialects have been defined by Dr Morris with new precision.1 The Midland was the most widely spread, and of its many varieties the East Midland was the most important. It was first cultivated as a literary dialect as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century; and it had then thrown off most of the older inflections, so as to become in respect of inflectional forms and syntactical structure as simple as our own. It was the dialect of Orm and of Robert of Brunne. Wickliffe and Gower added considerably to its importance, and Chaucer's influence raised it to the position of the standard language. In Chaucer's time it was the language of the metropolis, and had probably found its way south of the Thames into Kent and Surrey. Such is Dr Morris's account of the East Midland. So far as appears, he has not been struck with differences of rhythm, and it has not occurred to him whether

1 Garnett and Guest, however, are still worth reading.