252 BELL'S CHAUCER.* LET us hope the reader will as readily agree with us, that to sum up in a comprehensive éloge all the merits of Geoffrey Chaucer would take up pages on pages, as he will excuse our not attempting anything of the kind. And yet there are those,-Englishmen, too, and of taste, and of undoubted genius, and themselves poets, acknowledged to be such by acclamation all the world over, who have limited the merits of Chaucer to a single one. This one merit is, the equivocal one of being a very old fellow. He was an antique. Therein, they say, lies, and thereto is confined, the sum and substance of his renown. As he did not himself fix his time of birth, or decide on his incarnation taking place no later on any account than the fourteenth century, even this merit is very open to question, and in fact will not stand two minutes' investigation. Besides that, allowing it to be a merit, it is one in which Dan Chaucer is beaten hollow by other less known but far older fellows, who had the start of him by lustres, and decades, and centuries,-which nobody can deny. Lord Byron, for instance, says of him: "Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene and contemptible: he owes his celebrity merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve so well as Pierce Plowman, or Thomas of Ercildoune." After this, one reads with relative comfort what else is read with absolute confusion, his lordship's opinion of Shakspeare: "What," he asked Thomas Moore-"what do you think of Shakspeare, Moore? I think him a dd humbug."‡ The said Thomas Moore, whatever he may have thought of Shakspeare, seems to have approximated scandalously close to his noble friend in the matter of Chaucer. "Chaucer, for instance," he writes, in his Diary (1819)," in what terms some speak of him! while I confess I find him unreadable. Lord Lansdowne said he was so glad to hear me say so, as he had always in silence felt the same."§ The "Canterbury Tales" are, says Berington,|| "in every one's hands; but I would willingly learn by how many they have been read, and particularly by how many with the feeling of delight." The Reverend Joseph is certain, not only that Chaucer has been immoderately extolled by writers of old time, who "were satisfied to pronounce an undiscriminating panegyric," but that, at the present time, if we would speak the truth, he is read (with the exception of some passages) not as a poet, who delights by the richness of his imagery, or the harmony of his numbers, but simply as a writer who has portrayed with truth the manners, customs, and habits of the age. Berington does, however, allow Chaucer to * Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited by Robert Bell. Eight Volumes. John W. Parker and Son. 1855-6. (Annotated Edition of the English Poets.) Moore's Life of Byron. Lord John Russell's Memoirs of Thomas Moore, vol. iii. Mr. Rogers corroborates the report of Byron's heresy hereanent. § Ibid. vol. ii. Berington's Literary History of the Middle Ages, book vi. "Such, I recollect, was my own judgment at least, when, some years ago, I was prevailed upon to peruse him."-Ibid. "Prevailed upon," quotha ? Constrained by outward pressure, by importunate friends or what not, to the ungrate take the first rank among our early English poets. This is something. Chaucer's admirers must take what they can get in his favour, from Chaucer's detractors, who have ears but hear not aught inspired or heavenborn in the strains so Gladly we suppose with Charles Knight that Shakspeare was the pupil of Chaucer, and that the "fine bright folio of 1542," as he calls it, whose bold black letter seems the proper dress for the rich antique thought, was his closest companion. Infallibly, with him, we believe, that the Warwickshire boy would delight in Chaucer's romance, and would learn what stores lay hidden of old traditions and fables-legends that had travelled from one nation to another, gathering new circumstances as they became clothed with a new language, the property of every people, related in the peasant's cabin, studied in the scholar's cell, -and that Chaucer would teach him to select these as the best materials for a poet to work upon, their universality proving them akin to man's inmost nature and feelings. "The time would arrive when, in his solitary walks, unbidden tears would come into his eyes as he recollected some passage of matchless pathos; or irresistible laughter arise at those touches of genial humour which glance like sunbeams over the page."† And as with Shakspeare, so with many and many another poet, Elizabethan, præ-Elizabethan, and post-Elizabethan,-own children of the Sire of English verse. His claim to that title "the Father of English Poetry”—has been recognised far and wide. Mr. Bell, his latest, and not least accomplished and genial editor, asserts his right to it, not only because he was our earliest true poet, but because the foundations he laid still support the fabric of our poetical literature, and will outlast the vicissitudes of taste and language. And as witnesses to this right are summoned such authorities as Lydgate, who calls him the "chief poete of Bretayne;" and the "lode-sterre" of our language, and says that he was the first to distil and rain the gold dewdrops of speech and eloquence into our tongue,and Occleve, who styles him "the fynder of our fayre langage,"—and Roger Ascham, who dubs him the "English Homer," and attributes to "his sayinges" as much "authority as eyther Sophocles or Euripides in Greke," and Spenser, who speaks of him as the "pure well-head of poetry," ," "the well of English undefiled," and who is himself ranked by ful toil of" perusing" that PREVAILING POET! The Reverend Joseph is evidently ashamed of himself for having read Chaucer: but he indirectly pleads, in mitigation, that he was as good as bullied into it, and, secondly, that it was "years ago," implying that he had never repeated the offence, and could therefore be styled an old offender in an indulgent sense only. * Tennyson: "A Dream of Fair Women." † Knight's "William Shakspere: a Biography," book i. chap. ix. Denham* next in chronological order to this Sire of national song, in the succession of poets great and glorious, But has there come at last a new generation which knows not Chaucer, and votes him obsolete? We trow not. But at any rate the edition now before us, and the measure of its acceptance by the public, will go far to settle that point. For here we have him, not in modernised gear, but in his habit as he lived. Mr. Bell has well and wisely done in allowing him the use of his own tongue, while furnishing the reader with every means of making him thoroughly intelligible. It is, courteous reader, we must discourteously say, eminently and exclusively thine own fault, if, with this edition before thee, thou failest to sean with ease the meanings as well as metres, of Dan Chaucer. Mr. Bell declares his paramount aim throughout to have been to render this edition popular in a legitimate sense; while he has not overlooked any of the projects, or experiments, which have been suggested from time to time to facilitate the convenience of the general reader. He reviews the attempts to popularise Chaucer, by modernising his orthography, made by Dryden and Pope, whose versions, however, are, in fact, very elaborate paraphrases, in which the idiomatic forms and colours of the old writer vanish in the process of adaptation;" and which "bear no closer resemblance, in spirit or expression, to Chaucer, than Pope's translation bears to Homer." The experiment made in our Cown time by R. H. Horne, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, and others, amongst them, Mr. Bell himself, was a failure, its purpose considered. Mr. Bell's present report on the subject is, that the result was satisfactory, as finally determining all doubts thereupon; for, while some of these versions are distinguished by as much fidelity as it is, perhaps, possible to attain in the transfusion of an ancient author into modern language, Vand are otherwise admirable specimens of skilful treatment, they are, nevertheless, as unlike Chaucer as they are unlike each other., "In proportion as they preserve strictly his exact phraseology, they become formal and cumbrous; for that which is perfectly easy and natural in its antique garb and associations, acquires an obsolete and heavy air when it is transplanted amongst more familiar forms. When they deviate, on the other hand, which the necessities of structure and metret frequently i render 1 T Rod For at read at t DENHAM'S Elegy on Cowley. † For, as Wilson remarked, ten syllables must be kept, and rhyme must be kept; and in the experiment it results, generally, that whilst the rehabiting of Chaucer is undertaken under a necessity which lies wholly in the obscurity of his dialect-the proposed ground or motive of modernisation-far the greater part of the actual changes are made for the sake of that which beforehand you might not think of, namely, the verse. This it is that puts the translators to the strangest shifts and fetches, and besets the version, in spite of their best skill, with antiChaucerisms as thick as blackberries.-NORTH's Specimens of the British Critics. Part VI. unavoidable, it is always at a loss of some subtle trait of expression, or some complexional peculiarity essential to the truthful presentation of the original. Between the new and the old styles which, notwithstanding the utmost care, thus become insensibly mingled, the spirit of Chaucer escapes, and nothing remains, so to speak, but the letter of his work."* Mr. Bell also refers to another danger inseparable from all such experiments, proved to be inseparable by the best of these versions,namely, the colouring imparted to each version by the special manner of each modern versifier. Wordsworth's Chaucer Wordsworthises. Leigh Hunt's Chaucer is Leigh Huntish. Mrs. Browning's Chaucer indulges in Elizabeth Barrettisms. A reader acquainted with the Lyrical Ballads, with the Story of Rimini, and with the Vision of Poets, has little difficulty, when conning these several versions of the old bard, to discriminate between this and that "eminent hand," and distribute unhesitatingly suum cuique. Mr. Bell's hope and essay, then, it is, in the present most welcome and meritorious edition, to make Chaucer's language and metre easy to the million without tampering with its forms. He has Coleridge's opinion in his favour that this is practicable. "I cannot in the least allow," said Coleridge, "any necessity for Chaucer's poetry, especially the 'Canterbury Tales,' being considered obsolete. Let a plain rule be given for sounding the final e of syllables, and for expressing the terminations of such words as ocean, nation, &c., as dissyllables; or let the syllables to be sounded in such cases be marked by a competent metrist." This simple expedient, he was convinced, would, with a very few trifling exceptions, where the errors are inveterate, enable any reader to feel the perfect smoothness and harmony of Chaucer's verse. As for the latter suggestion, the accentuating system, it is justly objected that, in order to carry out a thoroughly effective system of the kind, it would he necessary to employ two or three distinctive signs to intimate the varieties of accent, and that the unavoidable frequency of their recurrence, and the obligation thus created of scanning the lines, would so sensibly interrupt the pleasure of the reader, that, it may be taken for granted, a book scarred over by such scholastic marks would never find its way i into general circulation. The present editor's conclusion on the whole matter was, that the best plan would be the supplying the reader with a few plain rules for pronunciation, which should embrace the principal structural peculiarities, leaving him to apply them for himself. His metrical analysis of the opening lines of the Canterbury Tales, will of itself suffice to enable his readers to understand most of the peculiarities of inflexion and accentuation. Here is the manner of it: Bell's Chaucer, I. 65. “ ད་,། ༈:༼ For the purpose of testing the experiment practically, Mr. Bell actually accented the whole of the Canterbury Tales in the first instance for this edition, nor relinquished the design of printing them in that manner till the labour had been completed. But relinquish it he did, because of the necessity these accents imposed, in a vast number of instances, of deciding doubtful questions affecting the resolution of quantities, and the differences of opinion they would inevitably generate on points for which no arbitrary laws can possibly be laid down.-See BELL'S Chaucer, I. 69. * Whăn thāt | April | lě with | his sehow | răs swoote Here, as Mr. Bell points out, the final e in Aprille, swete, halfe, yonge, smale, is pronounced; while in Marche, veyne, nature, it is quiescent, because in these cases it is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, or with the letter h, according to the rule in French poetry. "The final es is pronounced in croppes, fowles, as in German. The French words licour, nature, corages, are accented on the last syllable of the root, as in French. The reader will also remark the old forms of hem and here, for them and their; and slepen, maken, the Anglo-Saxon inflexion of the infinitive and plural verb; i-ronne is also the pret. part. of rennen, to run, as in German, gelobt, from loben." With ordinary attention to this analysis at the beginning, and to the ample glossary at the end, of Mr. Bell's edition, no one with a care to be thought compos mentis will henceforth complain of Chaucer's metre or matter as past finding out. * After all, there exists a great delusion, as Mr. de Quincey years ago observed, as to the character of Chaucer's diction: some ninety or one hundred words that are now obsolete, certainly not many more, he maintains, vein the whole surface of Chaucer; and thus a prima facie impression is conveyed that Chaucer is difficult to understand; whereas a very slight practice familiarises his language. And one half the difficulties, it has been urged by another critic,† are local, for the people north of the Humber and south of the Tay, would understand Chaucer without much labour, speaking as they do a language still rich in Saxon words, and using to this day many of his expressions, for the meaning of which Surrey and Middlesex turn to a glossary. Having mastered, with such slight expenditure of time and trouble, these preliminary "difficulties,"-having cracked the "rough shell that encloses the sweet kernel,"-what a reward awaits the novice in the freshness, freedom, narrative liveliness, dramatic energy, picturesque description, practical philosophy, tender pathos, and racy humour of the Sire of English Verse! Breezes are blowing in old Chaucer's verse, says Alexander Smith-and every reader who has a mind (we say it advisedly, though perhaps ambiguously) may verify this for himself. "And look at dear old Chaucer," exclaims a thoughtful essayist of our day, "how the fresh air of the Kentish hills, over which he rode four hundred years ago, breathes in his verses still. They have a perfume *"Homer and the Homerida." Part III. |