Why should joys be sweet
Used with deceit,

Nor with sorrows meet?

But an honest joy
Doth itself destroy

For a harlot coy.

IN A MYRTLE SHADE.

a lovely myrtle bound,

Blossoms showering all around,

Oh, how weak and weary I
Underneath my myrtle lie!

Why should I be bound to thee,
O my lovely myrtle-tree?
Love, free love, cannot be bound
To any tree that grows on ground.

PROSE EXTRACTS.

THE

CHAUCER'S CANTERBURY PILGRIMS.

HE time chosen is early morning before sunrise, when the jolly company are just quitting the Tabarde Inn. The Knight and Squire, with the squire's yeomen, lead the procession; next follow the youthful Abbess, her Nun, and three Priests. Her greyhounds attend her;

"Of small hounds had she that she fed

With roast flesh, milk, and wasted bread."

Next follow the Friar and Monk, then the Tapiser, the Pardoner, and the Sompnour and Manciple. After these "Our Host," who occupies the centre of the cavalcade, directs them to the Knight as the person who would be likely to commence their task of each telling a tale in their order. After the Host follow the Shipman, the Haberdasher, the Dyer, the Franklin, the Physician, the Ploughman, the Lawyer, the poor Parson, the Merchant,

the Wife of Bath, the Miller, the Cook, the Oxford Scholar, Chaucer himself; and the Reeve comes as Chaucer has described;

"And ever he rode hinderest of the rout."

These last are issuing from the gateway of the inn; the Cook and the Wife of Bath are both taking their morning's draught of comfort. Spectators stand at the gateway of the inn, and are composed of an old man, a woman, and children. The landscape is an eastward view of the country from the Tabarde Inn, in Southwark, as it may be supposed to have appeared in Chaucers time; interspersed with cottages and villages. The first beams of the sun are seen above the horizon; some buildings and spires indicate the situation of the Great City. The inn is a Gothic building, which Thynne, in his glossary, says was the lodging of the Abbot of Hyde, by Winchester. On the inn is inscribed its title, and a proper advantage is taken of this circumstance to describe the subject of the picture. The words written over the gateway of the inn are as follows "The Tabarde Inn, by Henry Baillie, the lodgynge-house for Pilgrims who journey to St. Thomas' Shrine at Canterbury." The characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations. As one age falls another rises, different to mortal sight, but to immortals only the same; for we see the same characters repeated again and again, in animals,

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vegetables, and minerals, and in men. Nothing new occurs in identical existence; accident ever varies, substance can never suffer change or decay. Of Chaucer's characters, as described in his Canterbury Tales," some of the names or titles are altered by time, but the characters themselves for ever remain unaltered; and, consequently, they are the physiognomies or lineaments of universal human life, beyond which nature never steps. Names alter, things never alter. I have known multitudes of those who would have been monks in the age of monkery, who in this deistical age are Deists. As Newton numbered the stars, and as Linnæus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes of men. The painter has consequently varied the heads and forms of his personages into all nature's varieties; the horses he has also varied to accord to their riders; the costume is correct according to authentic monuments. The Knight and Squire, with the Squire's yeomen, lead the procession, as Chaucer has also placed them first in his prologue. The Knight is a true hero, a good, great, and wise man. His whole length portrait on horse-back, as written by Chaucer, cannot be surpassed. He has spent his life in the field, has ever been a conqueror, and is that species of character which in every age stands as the guardian of man against the oppressor. His son is like him, with the germ of perhaps greater perfection still, as he blends literature and the arts with his warlike studies.

Their dress and their horses are of the first rate, without ostentation, and with all the true grandeur that unaffected simplicity, when in high rank, always displays. The Squire's Yeoman is also a great character, a man perfectly knowing in his profession.

"And in his hand he bare a mighty bow."

Chaucer describes here a mighty man, one who in war is the worthy attendant on noble heroes. The Prioress follows these with her female chaplain

"Another nonne also with her had she,

That was her chaplain, and priestes three."

This lady is described also as of the first rank, rich and honoured; she has certain peculiarities and little delicate affectations, not unbecoming in her, being accompanied with what is truly grand and really polite. Her person and face Chaucer has described with minuteness. It is very elegant, and was the beauty of our ancestors till after Elizabeth's time, when voluptuousness and folly began to be accounted beautiful. Her companion and her three priests were no doubt all perfectly delineated in those parts of Chaucer's work which are now lost; we ought to suppose them suitable attendants on rank and fashion. The Monk follows these with the Friar. The painter has also grouped with these the Pardoner, and the Sompnour, and the Manciple, and has here also introduced one of the