like fine old hay, that will not lose its sweetness, having been cut and carried so fresh."* We are reminded of Camden's ridicule of the "smattering poetasters," whom, trying to keep up with him, Chaucer left by many leagues behind him, Jam monte potitus Ridet anhelantem dura ad fastigia turbam which being Englished by old Camden himself, signifieth that When once himself the steep-top hill had won, At all the sort of them he laugh'd anon, So sound was Master Geoffrey of wind and limb, so blithe his song, and so springy his step on hill-sides and hill-tops, whither anhelans turba, a panting throng, toiled after him in vain. "C'est l'effet de tout style vieilli de paraître naïf et enfant," says a commentator on the good Bishop Amyot. But Chaucer is naïf et enfant after an exceptional kind, and in an exceptional degree. In Mrs. Browning's procession of bards he is characterised as Chaucer, with his infantine Familiar clasp of things divine- He had a nature "embrowdid" like the complexion of his own "yong Squyer," as it were a mede Al ful of fresshe floures, white and reede. "I take unceasing delight in Chaucer," said Coleridge, when aged, languishing, and dying out: "his manly cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my old age. How exquisitely tender he is, and yet how perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melancholy or morbid drooping!" The lonely invalid, confined to one narrow chamber, finds it peopled by Chaucer with the moving, speaking, acting forms of manycoloured life. Forms how distinct, definite, individualised! Well might Dryden declare he could see the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales, their humours, their features, and their very dress, as distinctly as if he had supped with them at the Tabard, in Southwark. And well has glorious John noted how clearly all the pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other-not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons, insomuch that "Baptista Porta could not have *"Euphranor." Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. || Dryden's Preface to the Fables. "Vision of Poets." Chaucer, says Mr. Leigh Hunt, is "as studious of physiognomy as Lavater, and far truer. Observe, too, the poetry that accompanies it-the imaginative sympathy in the matter of fact. His yeoman, who is a forester, has a head like a nut. His miller is as brisk and healthy as the air of the hill on which he lives, and as hardy and cross-grained as his conscience. We know, as well as if we had ridden with them, his oily-faced monk; his lisping friar (who was to make confession easy to the ladies); his carbuncled summoner or church-bailiff, the described their natures better, than by the marks which the poet gives them" each pilgrim's tale, and manner of telling it, being so aptly suited to their several educations, humours, and callings, that it would be improper in any other mouth-the grave and serious characters being distinguished each by his own specific gravity, and the ribaldry of the low characters differing according to their natures, the Reeve being as sharply discriminated from the Miller, and the Miller from the Cook, as either of them from the mincing Lady Prioress, and the broad-speaking gap-toothed Wife of Bath. No age, it has been said, has been so variously or so minutely depicted in any author, either in prose or in rhyme, as that of Edward the Third, and his successor, in the works of Chaucer. For, if in the orations of Thucydides, or of Demosthenes, we have the Knights of Athens,if, in the comedies of Aristophanes, we have their opponents, the Churls; if, in the Latinised versions of Menander, and others, Terence and Plautus show up the follies and vices of the middle classes; if, in the characters of Theophrastus, mixed up with much general satire, we have many traits of manners peculiarly Athenian; and if, in Ben Jonson, we see every possible variety of the blackguard of his day; in Chaucer, we have all these, and more, from the hand of the same master. As portraying the habits, and as participating in the sentiments of the middle classes of his day, Chaucer affords a marked contrast to his contemporary, Froissart. Froissart, throughout his whole life, wrote only for princes. In his poems and romances, he treats of the favourite courtly topic, the all-engrossing subject, of love. In his Chronicles, as in the Iliad, we have but a variety of the Knight; and that, rather the hero of poetical chivalry, than the true historical Knight of Chaucer." Chaucer's Knight is true historical," cap-a-pie, inside and out. But the same verisimilitude belongs to the lowest of his associates in that Canterbury pilgrimage: it marks as well the Cook, so knowing in the matter of London ale, as the Prioress, Madame Englentyne, who could intone the service so divinely (albeit with a nasal‡ accent); the Shipman from Dartmouth, of the bark Magdalen, embrowned by summer suns off Carthage and Cape Finisterre, as well as the young Squire, that accomplished horseman, dancer, verse-maker, draughtsman, carver, and lusty bachelor; the Ploughman in his smockfrock upon his mare, as well as the Merchant clad in motley and mounted ** grossest form of ecclesiastical sensuality; and his irritable money-getting Reve, or steward, with his cropped head and calfless legs, who shaves his beard as closely as he reckons with his master's tenants."-LEIGH HUNT'S Wit and Humour. *** From Chaucer, says Mr. Charles Knight, the "matured judgment" of Shakspeare would learn the “"possibility of delineating individual character with the minutest accuracy, without separating the individual from the permanent and the universal."-KNIGHT'S Shakspere: a Biography. "In Chaucer we find depicted the rural dwelling of the Reve, and the lonely cottage of the poure widowe,' who is described as a maner dey,' the lowest class of labourers: 'ful sooty was hire hall, and eke hire bower.' But Froissart never condescends to smoky rafters; he dwells always in the tapestried halls of princes, and delights to describe their unlimited power and their costly magnificence."HIPPISLEY'S Chapters on Early English Literature. Speght reads voice for nose ("Entuned in hire nose ful semyly;")-but the latter is surely not un-Chaucer-like, nor out of keeping with the general description (veined with gentle irony) of the Lady Prioress. high on horse; the stout Miller, brawny and big-boned, broad-shouldered, red-bearded, with that bristly wart on his nose, and that mouth as wide as a great furnace, as well as the Oxford Clerk, lean of person and threadbare of garb, slow of speech till called upon, and rapid of speech then; the Summoner, with his fire-red phiz, and narrow eyes, and black brows, and his passion for leeks and garlic and strong drink, as well as the poor parish priest, rich in good works and holy thoughts, true successor to the apostles in life and doctrine; the studious money-making Doctor of Physic, and the jovial, ambler-mounted, sharp-spurred, gaily shawled, smart-shoed, scarlet-hosed Wife of Bath. Next to the "Canterbury Tales," Troylus and Cryseyde" appears to have been for three or four centuries the most popular of Chaucer's works. It is indeed demonstrably a free version of Boccaccio's "Filostrato," from which, however, it differs sufficiently to be accounted "in a great measure an original work" the conclusion which forces itself upon the mind on comparing the two poems being, Mr. Bell says, that while Boccaccio excels in elegance of diction and ornament, Chaucer is immeasurably superior in depth of feeling and delineation of the passions; while his characters are painted with more vigour and individuality, and he everywhere displays a closer knowledge of life.* These excellences are fewer and farther between in the allegorical poems "The Boke of the Duchesse," "Chaucere's Dreme," and The House of Fame," though the last is considered to outdo all the poet's other writings as a display of extensive knowledge and diversified imagery: his present editor refers to the Arabic system of numeration, then lately introduced into Europe, and the theory of sound, as examples of the topies so largely introduced,and alludes also to the intimate acquaintance with classical authors, exhibited in Chaucer's felicitous judgments on their works. For instance, what can be more happy than the distinction he indicates between Homer and Virgil, by placing each on a pillar of iron, characteristic of their warlike themes, but at the same time covering Virgil's iron with tint est le t du m‚Œ 1 er The seventh volume of this edition contains The Romaunt of the Rose," Chaucer's translation, and a pretty close one, as far as it goes, of the famous poem begun by the skilful, inventive, and pictorial William de Lorris, and completed by the less imaginative, more satirical and pugnacious John de Meun, that democrat and communist of the thirteenth century. The present text is printed, not from Speght, as all previous editions have been, but from a "probably unique " MS. in the library of the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow, the existence of which was not known until recently. Speght's "corrupt and half-modernised" text has necessarily been had recourse to, when, as is now and then the case, a leaf is missing in the MS. Mr. Bell's industry and diligence in editing the poet deserve public recognition. In his notes, scattered through eight volumes, we might occasionally find something to suggest *Notes and Queries" of our own; but taking the edition as a whole, it enhances our interest in, and speeds our best wishes for, the admirable series in which it occupies so conspicuous a place. * Bell's Chaucer, vol. v. † Ibid. vol. vi. 260 CENTRAL AMERICA.* CENTRAL AMERICA, a distinguished statesman has lately remarked, is a term of modern invention, and can only appropriately apply to those states at one time united under the name of the Central American Republic, and now existing as five separate republics. Others have opined that the term must be taken rather in a geographical than a political sense; but such a view of the subject would be very objectionable, for then Central America would comprise several provinces of Mexico, as also Panama and Darien, belonging to the Republic of New Granada. Guatemala, or the Federal Republic of Central America, as it was called in its constitutional acts, was formerly a division of the viceroyalty of Mexico. It raised the standard of independence on the 24th of June, 1823; and the union formed under that title embraced the five now independent states of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and San Salvador. It is difficult, however, to state the precise relations which the Central American States bear to each other at the present time, on account of the frequent revolutions which occur. Yucatan formed part of the Mexican States till 1841, when it revolted, and constituted a new republic. The tract of territory known as British Honduras was ceded to its present possessors long before the declaration of independence of any of the states, and the claim of Great Britain to such territory is therefore of greater antiquity and repute than even that of any of the governments of Central America. Spanish Honduras, southward of Belize, first detached itself from the other republics, against some of which it has lately waged war. The Mosquito and Poyaise territories were never conquered by Spain. The former is now governed by native kings, under the protection of Great Britain. Lastly, within Central America itself the native Indians have been enabled, within the last few years, to raise the standard of revolt, and to claim independence in that beautiful country, dotted with the mysterious remains of a by-gone civilisation which gave them birth, and over which they once enjoyed undisputed sway. The Toltec, or Tulteca Indians, the most powerful and civilised of all the nations of Central America, came originally from the neighbourhood of Tula, in the kingdom of Mexico. This emigration took place by direction of an oracle, in consequence of the great increase of the population, in the reign of Nimaquiche, the fifth king of the Tultecas. In performing this journey, they expended many years, suffered extraordinary hardships, and wandered over an immense tract of country, until Notes on Central America; particularly the States of Honduras and San Salvador: their Geography, Topography, Climate, Population, Resources, Productions, &c., &c.; and the proposed Honduras Inter-Oceanic Railway. By E. G. Squier, formerly Chargé d'Affaires of the United States to the Republics of Central America. Harper and Brothers, New York. Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. By the late John Lloyd Stephens. Revised from the latest American Edition, with Additions. By Frederick Catherwood. Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co. The Clayton and Bulwer Convention of the 19th April, 1850, between the British and American Governments concerning Central America. Trübner and Co. they discovered a large lake (the lake of Atitan), where they resolved to fix their habitations, and which they called Quiche, in commemoration of their king, Nimaquiche (Quiche the Great), who died during their grination. The time of this emigration it is of course impossible to ascertain with precision. Nimaquiche was succeeded by his son Acxopil, from whom Kicab Tanub, the contemporay of Montezuma II., was the fourteenth in succession who reigned in Utatlan, the capital of Quiche. The principal part of Guatemala was conquered in 1524 by Pedro de Alvarado. It is said that no Spanish colony was established with less effusion of blood than that of Guatemala, and the praise of this is due to the celebrated Dominican, Las Casas, who accompanied the conquerors in their expedition against this country. Most of the Indian tribes were ultimately persuaded to embrace the profession of Christianity; but the Mosquitos and Poyers, or Poyaise, adhered to the religion of their forefathers. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Guatemala was greatly harassed by English and Dutch privateers, and by the inroads of the Mosquitos and Poyaise. These fierce aboriginals maintained an unrelenting struggle with their Spanish neighbours, while they freely permitted the English to form settlements upon their coast. The present condition of the Mosquito territory has been described elsewhere; it was with the object of controlling the inroads of the natives, that, after the fall of Iturbide and the declaration of Guatemalan independence, the English assumed the protectorate of the Mosquito territory. The celebrated Poyaise scheme of the pseudo-cacique MacGregor, and its melancholy results, are yet fresh in the memory of many. The new political aspect of the country, and its multifarious and valuable productions, first invited the attention of travellers and of the commercial world. To such we are indebted for the ever-important travels of Humboldt and Bonpland in these countries. The discovery made in the neighbourhood of Palenque, of the ruins of a town nearly eighteen miles in circumference, with innumerable monuments of a by-gone civilisation, served very much to exalt the interest felt in these little-known regions. Probably the best, certainly the most accessible and richly illustrated, work on the antiquities of Central America, is that of Stephens and Catherwood. In contemplating these memorials of Toltec and Aztec civilisation, although we find abundant indications of existing or pre-existing relations with the known nations of antiquity, more especially the Egyptian, still do we also find traces of a social and political system, and of religious and philosophical theories, and of an art perfectly original, and enveloped in the same mysterious obscurity as is the origin and descent of the aborigines themselves. The projected establishment of an inter-oceanic communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific has attached in modern times still greater interest and higher importance to these regions, and has been the source of some rivalry and no inconsiderable jealousy between the United States and England. The central chain of Guatemala forms the division between the great basins of the Carribean Sea and the Pacific, and were such a work, as cutting through that barrier, executed on an adequate scale, the benefit to the whole commercial world would be immense; not only would the coast navigation of the American continent be prodigiously facilitated, but a new line of transit, attended with so many advantages |