Turning over a couple of leaves, we behold a modernization of the antique with a vengeance—

"His son, a young squire, with him there I saw, A lover and a lusty bachelor! (aw) (ah!) With locks crisp curl'd, as they'd been laid in press, Of twenty year of age he was, I guess."

Chaucer never once in all his writings thus rhymes off two consecutive couplets in one sentence so slovenly, as with "I saw," and "I guess." But Mr Horne is so enamoured "with the old familiar faces" of pet cockneyisms, that he must have his will of them. Of the same squire, Chaucer says—

"Of his stature he was of even length;"

and Mr Horne translates the words into—

"He was in stature of the common length,"

They mean "well proportioned." Of this young squire, Chaucer saith—

"So hote he loved, that by nightertale He slep no more than doth the nightingale."

We all know how the nightingale employs the night—and here it is implied that so did the lover. Mr Horne spoils all by an affected prettiness suggested by a misapplied passage in Milton.

"His amorous ditties nightly fill'd the vale; He slept no more than doth the nightingale."

Chaucer says of the Prioresse—

"Full well she sang the service divine Entuned in hire nose ful swetely."

Mr Horne must needs say—

"Entuned in her nose with accent sweet."

The accent, to our ears, is lost in the pious snivel—pardon the somewhat unclerical word.

Chaucer says of her—-

"Ful semely after hire meat she raught,"

which Mr Horne improves into—-

"And for her meat Full seemly bent she forward on her seat."

Chaucer says—

"And peined hire to contrefeten chere Of court, and been astatelich of manere, And to be holden digne of reverence."

That is, she took pains to imitate the manners of the Court, &c.; whereas Mr Horne, with inconceivable ignorance of the meaning of words that occur in Chaucer a hundred times, writes "it gave her pain to counterfeit the ways of Court," thereby reversing the whole picture.

"And French she spake full fayre and fetisly,"

he translates "full properly and neat!" Dryden rightly calls her "the mincing Prioress;" Mr Horne wrongly says, "she was evidently one of the most high-bred and refined ladies of her time."

Chaucer says, of that "manly man," the Monk—

"Ne that a monk, when he is rekkeless, Is like to a fish that is waterless; This is to say, a monk out of his cloistre. This ilke text held he not worth an oistre."

Mr Horne here modernizeth thus—

"Or that a monk beyond his bricks and mortar, Is like a fish without a drop of water, That is to say, a monk out of his cloister."

There can be no mortar without water, but the words do not rhyme except to Cockney ears, though the blame lies at the door of the mouth. "Bricks and mortar" is an odd and somewhat vulgar version of "rekkeless;" and to say that a monk "beyond his bricks and mortar" is a monk "out of his cloister," is not in the manner of Chaucer, or of any body else.

Chaucer says slyly of the Frere, that

"He hadde ymade ful mony a mariage Of yonge women, at his owen coste;"

and Mister Horne brazen-facedly,

"Full many a marriage had he brought to bear, For women young, and paid the cost with sport."

O fie, Mister Horne! To hide our blushes, will no maiden for a moment lend us her fan? We cover our face with our hands.—Of this same Frere, Mr Horne, in his introduction, when exposing the faults of another translator, says that "Chaucer shows us the quaint begging rogue playing his harp among a crowd of admiring auditors, and turning up his eyes with an attempted expression of religious enthusiasm;" but Chaucer does no such thing, nor was the Frere given to any such practice.

Of the Clerk of Oxenford, Chaucer says, he "loked holwe, and thereto soberly." Mr Horne needlessly adds "ill-fed." Chaucer says—

"Ful threadbare was his overest courtepy."

Mr Horne modernizes it into—

"His uppermost short cloak was a bare thread."

Why exaggerate so? Chaucer says—

"But all that he might of his frendes hente On bokes and on lerning he it spente."

Mr Horne says—

"But every farthing that his friends e'er lent."

They did not lend, they gave outright to the poor scholar.

The Reve's Prologue opens thus in Chaucer—

"Whan folk han laughed at this nice cas Of Absalom and hendy Nicholas."

Mr Horne says—

"Of Absalom and credulous Nicholas!"

He manifestly mistakes the sly scholar for the credulous carpenter, whom on the tenderest point he outwitted! To those who know the nature of the story, the blunder is extreme.

What is to be thought of such rhymes as these?

"And for to drink strong wine as red as blood, Then would he jest, and shout as he were mad."

"Toward the mill, the bay nag in his hand, The miller sitting by the fire they found."

"And on she went, till she the cradle found, While through the dark still groping with her hand."

These to our ears, are not happy modernizations of Chaucer.

Here come a few more Cockneyisms.

"Alas! our warden's palfrey it is gone. Allen at once forgot both meal and corn."

"Allen stole back, and thought ere that it dawn, I will creep in by John that lieth forlorn."

"For, from the town Arviragus was gone, But to herself she spoke thus, all forlorn."

"Aurelius, thinking of his substance gone, Curseth the time that ever he was born."

"An arm-brace wore he that was rich and broad, And by his side a buckler and a sword."

"Now grant my ship, that some smooth haven win her; I follow Statius first, and then Corinna."

Alas! this worst of all is Elizabeth Barrett's! "Well of English undefiled!"

In Chaucer we have—

"A SERGEANT OF THE LAWE, ware and wise, That often hadde yben at the Parvis."

Mr Horne gives us—

"A Sergeant of the Law, wise, wary, arch! Who oft had gossip'd long in the church porch."

The word "arch" is here interpolated to give some colour to the charge of "gossiping," absurdly asserted of the learned Sergeant. The Parvis was the place of conference, where suitors met with their counsel and legal advisers; and Chaucer merely intimates thereby the extent of the Sergeant's practice. In Chaucer we have—

"In termes hadde he cas and domes alle That fro the time of King Will. weren falle."

Who does not see the propriety of the customary contraction, King Will.? Mr Horne does not; and substitutes, "since King William's reign."

Of the Frankelein Chaucer says, he was

"An housholder, and that a gret was he;"

the context plainly showing the meaning to be, "hospitable on a great scale." Mr Horne ignorantly translates the words,

"A householder of great extent was he."

In Chaucer we have—

"His table dormant in his halle alway Stood ready covered all the longe day."

The meaning of that is, that any person, or party, might sit down, at any hour of the day, and help himself to something comfortable, as indeed is the case now in all country houses worth Visiting—such as Buchanan Lodge. Mr Horne stupidly exaggerates thus—

"His table with repletion heavy lay Amidst his hall throughout the feast-long day."

In the prologue to the Reve's Tale, the Reve, nettled by the miller, who had been satirical on his trade, says he will

"somdel set his howve For leful is with force force off to showve."

"Howve" is cap—and in the Miller's Prologue we had been told

"How that a clerk had set the wrightes cappe;"

that is, "made a fool" of him—nay, a cuckold. Mr. Horne,

"Though my reply should somewhat fret his nose."

In Chaucer the Reve's tale begins with

"At Trumpington, not far from Cantebrigge, There goeth a brook, and over that a brigge."

Mr Horne saith somewhat wilfully.

"At Trumpington, near Cambridge, if you look, There goeth a bridge, and under that a brook."

Two Cantabs ask leave of their Warden

"To geve hem leve but a litel stound, To gon to mill and sen hire corn yground."

i.e. "to give them leave for a short time." Mr Horne translates it, "for a merry round."

In the course of the tale, the miller's wife

"Came leping inward at a renne."

i.e. "Came leaping into the room at a run." Mr Horne translates it—

"The miller's wife came laughing inwardly!"

Chaucer says—

"This miller hath so wisly bibbed ale."

And Mr Horne, with incredible ignorance of the meaning of that word, says—

"The miller hath so wisely bobbed of ale."

So wisely that he was "for-drunken"—and "as a horse he snorteth in his sleep."

In Chaucer the description of the miller's daughter ends with this line—

"But right faire was hire here, I will not lie,"

i.e. her hair. Mr Horne translates it "was she here."

But there is no end to such blunders.

In Chaucer, as in all our old poets of every degree, there occur, over and over again, such forms of natural expression as the following,—and when they do occur, let us have them; but what a feeble modernizer must he be who keeps adding to the number till he gives his readers the ear-ache. Not one of the following is in the original:—

"At Algeziras, in Granada, he,"

"At many a noble fight of ships was he."

"For certainly a prelate fair was he."

"In songs and tales the prize o'er all bore he."

"And a poor parson of a town was he."

"Such had he often proved, and loath was he."

"In youth a good trade practised well had he."

"Lordship and servitude at once hath he."

"And die he must as echo did, said he."

"Madam this is impossible, said he."

"Save wretched Aurelius none was sad but he."

"And said thus when this last request heard he."

In like manner, in Chaucer as in all our old poets of every degree, there occur over and over again such natural forms of expression as "I wot," "I wis"—and where they do occur let us have them too and be thankful; but poverty-stricken in the article of rhymes must be he, who is perpetually driven to resort to such expedients as the following—all of which are Mr Horne's own:—

"Of fees and robes he many had, I ween."

"And yet this manciple made them fools, I wot."

"This Reve upon stallion sat, I wot."

"Than the poor parson in two months, I wot."

"For certainly when I was born, I trow."

"A small stalk in mine eyes he sees, I deem."

"There were two scholars young and poor, I trow."

"John lieth still and not far off, I trow."

"Eastern astrologers and clerks, I wis."

"This woful heart found some reprieve, I wis."

"Unto his brother's bed he came, I wis."

"And now Aurelius ever, as I ween."

"That she could not sustain herself, I ween."

Mr Horne, in his Introduction, unconscious of his own sins, speaks with due contempt of the modernizations of Chaucer by Ogle and Lipscomb and their coadjutors, and of the injury they may have done to the reputation of the old poet. But whatever injury they may have occasioned, "there can be doubt," he says, "of the mischief done by Mr Pope's obscene specimen, placed at the head of his list of 'Imitations of English Poets.' It is an imitation of those passages which we should only regard as the rank offal of a great feast in the olden time. The better taste and feeling of Pope should have imitated the noble poetry of Chaucer. He avoided this 'for sundry weighty reasons.' But if this so-called imitation by Pope was 'done in his youth' he should have burnt it in his age. Its publication at the present day among his elegant works, is a disgrace to modern times, and to his high reputation." Not so fast and strong, good Mister Horne. The six-and-twenty octosyllabic lines thus magisterially denounced by our stern moralist in the middle of the nineteenth century, have had a place in Pope's works for a hundred years, and it is too late now to seek to delete them. They were written by Pope in his fourteenth or fifteenth year, and gross as they are, are pardonable in a boy of precocious genius, giving way for a laughing hour to his sense of the grotesque. Joe Warton (not Tom) pompously calls them "a gross and dull caricature of the Father of English Poetry." And Mr Bowles says, "he might have added, it is disgusting as it is dull, and no more like Chaucer than a Billingsgate is like an Oberea." It is not dull, but exceedingly clever; and Father Geoffrey himself would have laughed at it—patted Pope on the head—and enjoined him for the future to be more discreet. Roscoe, like a wise man, regards it without horror—remarking of it, and the boyish imitation of Spenser, that "why these sportive and characteristic sketches should be brought to so severe an ordeal, and pointed out to the reprehension of the reader as gross and disagreeable, dull and disgusting, it is not easy to perceive." Old Joe maunders when he says, "he that was unacquainted with Spenser, and was to form his ideas of the turn and manner of his genius from this piece, would undoubtedly suppose that he abounded in filthy images, and excelled in describing the lower scenes of life." Let all such blockheads suppose what they choose. Pope—says Roscoe—"was well aware as any one of the superlative beauties and merits of Spenser, whose works he assiduously studied, both in his early and riper years; but it was not his intention in these few lines to give a serious imitation of him. All that he attempted was to show how exactly he could apply the language and manner of Spenser to low and burlesque subjects; and in this he has completely succeeded. To compare these lines, as Dr Warton has done, with those more extensive and highly-finished productions, the Castle of Indolence by Thomson, and the Minstrel by Beattie, is manifestly unjust"—and stupidly absurd. What Mr Horne means by saying that Pope "avoided imitating the noble poetry of Chaucer for sundry weighty reasons," is not apparent at first sight. It means, however, that Pope could not have done so—that the feat was beyond his power. The author of the Messiah and the Eloise wrote tolerable poetry of his own; and he knew how to appreciate, and to emulate, too, some of the finest of Chaucer's. Why did Mr Horne not mention his Temple of Fame? A more childish sentence never was written than "its publication at the present day among his elegant works is a disgrace to modern times, and to his high reputation." Pope's reputation is above reproach, enshrined in honour for evermore, and modern times are not so Miss Mollyish as to sympathize with such sensitive censorship of an ingeniously versified peccadillo, at which our avi and proavi could not choose but smile.

But Mr Horne, thinking, that in this case "the child is father of the man," rates Pope as roundly for what he seems to suppose were the misdemeanours of his manhood. "Of the highly-finished paraphrase, by Mr Pope, of the 'Wife of Bath's Prologue,' and 'The Merchant's Tale,' suffice it to say, that the licentious humour of the original being divested of its quaintness and obscurity (!) becomes yet more licentious in proportion to the fine touches of skill with which it is brought into the light. Spontaneous coarseness is made revolting by meretricious artifice. Instead of keeping in the distance that which was objectionable, by such shades in the modernizing as should have answered to the hazy appearance (!) of the original, it receives a clear outline, and is brought close to us. An ancient Briton, with his long rough hair and painted body, laughing and singing half-naked under a tree, may be coarse, yet innocent of all intention to offend; but if the imagination (absorbing the anachronism) can conceive him shorn of this falling hair, his paint washed off, and in this uncovered stated introduced into a drawing-room full of ladies in rouge and diamonds, hoops and hair-powder, no one can doubt the injury thus done to the ancient Briton. This is no unfair illustration of what was done in the time of Pope," &c.

It may be "no unfair illustration," and certainly is no unludicrous one. We must all of us allow, that were an ancient Briton, habited, or rather unhabited, as above, to bounce into a modern drawing-room full of ladies, whether in rouge and diamonds, hoops and hair-powder, or not, the effect of such entree would be prodigious on the fair and fluttered Volscians. Our imagination, "absorbing the anachronism," ensconces us professionally behind a sofa, to witness and to record the scene. How different in nature Christopher North and R.H. Horne! While he would be commiserating "the injury thus done to the ancient Briton," we should be imploring our savage ancestor to spare the ladies. "Innocent of all intention to offend" might be Caractacus, but to the terrified bevy he would seem the king of the Cannibal Islands at least. What protection against the assault of a savage, almost in puris naturalibus, could be hoped for in their hoops! Yet who knows but that, on looking round and about, he might himself be frightened out of his senses? An ancient Briton, with his long rough hair and painted body, may laugh and sing by himself, half-naked under a tree, and in his own conceit be a match for any amount of women. But shorn of his falling hair, and without a streak of paint on his cheeks, verily his heart might be found to die within him, before furies with faces fiery with rouge, and heads horrent with pomatum—till instinctively he strove to roll himself up in the Persian carpet, and there prayed for deliverance to his tutelary gods.

Our imagination having thus "absorbed the anachronism," let us now leave Caractacus in the carpet—while our reason has recourse to the philosophy of criticism. Mr Horne asserts, that in "Mr Pope's" highly-finished paraphrase of the "Wife of Bath's Prologue," and the "Merchant's Tale," "the licentious humour of the original is divested of its quaintness and obscurity, and becomes yet more licentious in proportion to the fine touches of skill with which it is brought into the light." Quaintness and obscurity!! Why, everything in those tales is as plain as a pike-staff, and clearer than mud. "The hazy appearance of the original" indeed! What! of the couple in the Pear-Tree? Mr Horne spitefully and perversely misrepresents the character of Pope's translations. They are remarkably free from the vice he charges them withal—and have been admitted to be so by the most captious critics. Many of the very strong things in Chaucer, which you may call coarse and gross if you will, are omitted by Pope, and many softened down; nor is there a single line in which the spirit is not the spirit of satire. The folly of senile dotage is throughout exposed as unsparingly, though with a difference in the imitation, as in the original. Even Joseph Warton and Bowles, affectedly fastidious over-much as both too often are, and culpably prompt to find fault, acknowledge that Pope's versions are blameless. "In the art of telling a story," says Bowles, "Pope is peculiarly happy; we almost forget the grossness of the subject of this tale, (the Merchant's,) while we are struck by the uncommon ease and readiness of the verse, the suitableness of the expression, and the spirit and happiness of the whole." While Dr Warton, sensibly remarking, "that the character of a fond old dotard, betrayed into disgrace by an unsuitable match, is supported in a lively manner," refrains from making himself ridiculous by mealy-mouthed moralities which on such a subject every person of sense and honesty must despise. Mr Horne keeps foolishly carping at Pope, or "Mr Pope," as he sometimes calls him, throughout his interminable—no, not interminable—his hundred-paged Introduction. He abominates Pope's Homer, and groans to think how it has corrupted the English ear by its long domination in our schools. He takes up, with leathern lungs, the howl of the Lakers, and his imitative bray is louder than the original, "in linked sweetness long drawn out." Such sonorous strictures are innocent; but his false charge of licentiousness against Pope is most reprehensible—and it is insincere. For he has the sense to see Chaucer's broadest satire in its true light, and its fearless expositions. Yet from his justification of pictures and all their colouring in the ancient poet, that might well startle people by no means timid, he turns with frowning forehead and reproving hand to corresponding delineations in the modern, that stand less in need of it, and spits his spite on Pope, which we wipe off that it may not corrode. "This translation was done at sixteen or seventeen," says Pope in a note to his January and May—and there is not, among the achievements of early genius, to be found another such specimen of finished art and of perfect mastery.

Mr. Horne has ventured to give in his volume the Reve's Tale. "It has been thought," he says, "that an idea of the extraordinary versatility of Chaucer's genius could not be adequately conveyed, unless one of his matter-of-fact comic tales were attempted. The Reve's has accordingly been selected, as presenting a graphic painting of character, equal to those contained in the 'Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,' displayed in action by means of a story, which may be designated as a broad farce, ending in a pantomime of absurd reality. To those who are acquainted with the original, an apology may not be considered inadmissible for certain necessary variations and omissions." For our part, we do not object to this tale, though at the commencement of such a work its insertion was ill-judged, and will endanger greatly the volume. But we do object to the hypocritical cant about the licentiousness of Pope's fine touches, from the person who wrote the above words in italics. Omissions there must have been—but they sadly shear the tale of its vigour, and indeed leave it not very intelligible to readers who know not the original. The variations are most unhappy—miserable indeed; and by putting the miller's daughter to lie in a closet at the end of a passage, this moral modernizer has killed Chaucer. In the matchless original all the night's action goes on in one room—and that not a large one—miller, miller's wife, miller's daughter, and the two strenuous Cantabs, are within the same four narrow walls—their beds nearly touch—the jeopardized cradle has just space to rock in—yet this self-elected expositor of Chaucer is either so blind as not to see how essential such allocation of the parties is to the wicked comedy, or such a blunderer as to believe that he can improve on the greatest master that ever dared, and with perfect success, to picture, without our condemnation—so wide is the privilege of genius in sportive fancy—what, but for the self-rectifying spirit of fiction, would have been an outrage on nature, and in the number not only of forbidden but unhallowed things. The passages interpolated by Mr Horne's own pen are as bad as possible—clownish and anti-Chaucerian to the last degree.

For example, he thus takes upon himself, in the teeth of Chaucer, to narrate Alein's night adventure—

"And up he rose, and crept along the floor, Into the passage humming with their snore; As narrow was it as a drum or tub, And like a beetle doth he grope and grub, Feeling his way, with darkness in his hands. Till at the passage end he stooping stands."

Chaucer tells us, without circumlocution, why the Miller's Wife for while had left her husband's side; but Mr Horne is intolerant of the indelicate, and thus elegantly paraphrases the one original word—

"The wife her routing ceased soon after that: And woke and left her bed; for she was pained With nightmare dreams of skies that madly rained. Eastern astrologers and clerks, I wis, In time of Apis tell of storms like this."

Such is modern refinement!

In Chaucer, the blind encounter between the Miller and one of the Cantabs, who, mistaking him for his comrade, had whispered into his ear what had happened during the night to his daughter, is thus comically described—

"Ye false harlot, quod the miller, hast? A false traitour, false clerk, (quod he) Thou shalt be deaf by Goddes dignitee, Who dorste be so bold to disparage My daughter, that is come of swiche lineage. And by the throte-bolle he caught Alein, And he him hente despiteously again, And on the nose he smote him with his fist; Down ran the bloody streme upon his brest; And on the flore with nose and mouth to-broke, They walwe, as don two pigges in a poke. And up they gon, and down again anon, Till that the miller spurned at a stone, And down he fell backward upon his wif, That wiste nothing of this nice strif, For she was falle aslepe, a litel wight with John the clerk," and ...

Here comes Mr Horne in his strength.

"Thou slanderous ribald! quoth the miller, hast! A traitor false, false lying clerk, quoth he, Thou shalt be slain by heaven's dignity Who rudely dar'st disparage with foul lie My daughter, that is come of lineage high! And by the throat he Allan grasp'd amain, And caught him, yet more furiously again, And on his nose he smote him with his fist! Down ran the bloody stream upon his breast, And on the floor they tumble heel and crown, And shake the house, it seem'd all coming down. And up they rise, and down again they roll: Till that the Miller, stumbling o'er a coal, Went plunging headlong like a bull at bait, And met his wife, and both fell flat as slate."

Mr Horne cannot read Chaucer. The Miller does not, as he makes him do, accuse the Cantab of falsely slandering his daughter's virtue. He does not doubt the truth of the unluckily blabbed secret; false harlot, false traitor, false clerk, are all words that tell his belief; but Mr Horne, not understanding "disparage," as it is here used by Chaucer, wholly mistakes the cause of the father's fury. He does not even know, that it is the Miller who gets the bloody nose, not the Cantab. "As don two pigges in a poke," he leaves out, preferring, as more picturesque, "And on the floor they tumble heel and crown!" "And shake the house—it seemed all coming down," is not in Chaucer, nor could be; but the crowning stupidity is that of making the Miller meet his wife, and upset her—she being all the while in bed, and now startled out of sleep by the weight of her fallen superincumbent husband. And this is modernizing Chaucer!

What, then—after all we have written about him—we ask, can, at this day, be done with Chaucer? The true answer is—READ HIM. The late Laureate dared to think that every one might; and in his collection, or selection, of English poets, down to Habington inclusive, he has given the prologue, and half a dozen of the finest and most finished tales; believing that every earnest lover of English poetry would by degrees acquire courage and strength to devour and digest a moderately-spread banquet. Without doubt, Southey did well. It was a challenge to poetical Young England to gird up his loins and fall to his work. If you will have the fruit, said the Laureate, you must climb the tree. He bowed some heavily-laden branches down to your eye, to tempt you; but climb you must, if you will eat. He displayed a generous trust in the growing desire and capacity of the country for her own time-shrouded poetical treasures. In the same full volume, he gave the "Faerie Queene" from the first word to the last.

Let us hope boldly, as Southey hoped. But there are, in the present world, a host of excellent, sensitive readers, whose natural taste is perfectly susceptible of Chaucer, if he spoke their language; yet who have not the courage, or the leisure, or the aptitude, to master his. They must not be too hastily blamed if they do not readily reconcile themselves to a garb of thought which disturbs and distracts all their habitual associations. Consider, the 'ingenious feeling,' the vital sensibility, with which they apprehend their own English, may place the insurmountable barrier which opposes their access to the father of our poetry. What can be done for them?

In the first place, what is it that so much removes the language from us? It is removed by the words and grammatical forms that we have lost—by its real antiquity; perhaps more by an accidental semblance of antiquity—the orthography. That last may seem a small matter; but it is not.

There are three ways in which literary craftsmen have attempted to fill up, or bridge over, the gulf of time, and bring the poet of Edward III. and Richard II. near to modern readers.

Dryden and Pope are the representatives, as they are the masters, of the first method; for the others who have trodden in their footsteps are hardly to be named or thought of. Dryden and Pope hold, in their own school of modernizing, this undoubted distinction, that under their treatment, that which was poetry remains poetry. Their followers have written, for the most part, intelligible English, but never poetry. They have told the story, and not that always; but they have distilled lethargy on the tongue of the narrator.—This first method the most boldly departs from the type. It was probably the only way that the culture of Dryden's and Pope's time admitted of. We have since gradually returned, more and more, upon our own antiquity, as all the nations of Europe have upon theirs. Then civilization seemed to herself to escape forwards out of barbarism. Now she finds herself safe; and she ventures to seek light for her mature years in the recollections of her own childhood.

But now, the altered spirit of the age has produced a new manner of modernization. The problem has been put thus. To retain of Chaucer whatever in him is our language, or is most nearly our language—only making good, always, the measure; and for expression, which time has left out of our speech, to substitute such as is in use. And several followers of the muses, as we have seen, have lately tried their hand at this kind of conversion.

It is hard to judge both the system and the specimens. For if the specimens be thought to have succeeded, the system may, upon them, be favourably judged; but if the specimens have failed, the system must not upon them be unfavourably judged, but must in candour be looked upon as possibly carrying in itself means and powers that have not yet been unfolded. But unhappily a difficulty occurs which would not have occurred with a writer in prose—the law of the verse is imperious. 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 modernization—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 anti-Chaucerisms as thick as blackberries.

It might, at first sight, seem as if there could be no remorse about dispersing the atmosphere of antiquity; and you might be disposed to say—a thought is a thought, a feeling a feeling, a fancy a fancy. Utter the thought, the feeling, the fancy, with what words you will, provided that they are native to the matter, and the matter will hold its own worth. No. There is more in poetry than the definite, separable matter of a fancy, a feeling, a thought. There is the indefinite, inseparable spirit, out of which they all arise, which verifies them all, harmonizes them all, interprets them all. There is the spirit of the poet himself. But the spirit of the time in which a poet lives, flows through the spirit of the poet. Therefore, a poet cannot be taken out of his own time, and rightly and wholly understood. It seems to follow that thought, feeling, fancy, which he has expressed, cannot be taken out of his own speech, and his own style, and rightly and wholly understood. Let us bring this home to Chaucer, and our occasion. The air of antiquity hangs about him, cleaves to him; therefore he is the venerable Chaucer. One word, beyond any other, expresses to us the difference betwixt his age and ours—Simplicity. To read him after his own spirit, we must be made simple. That temper is called up in us by the simplicity of his speech and style. Touched by these, and under their power, we lose our false habituations, and return to nature. But for this singular power exerted over us, this dominion of an irresistible sympathy, the hint of antiquity which lies in the language seems requisite. That summons us to put off our own, and put on another mind. In a half modernization, there lies the danger that we shall hang suspended between two minds—between two ages—taken out of one, and not effectually transported into that other. Might a poet, if it were worth while, who had imbued himself with antiquity and with Chaucer, depart more freely from him, and yet more effectually reproduce him? Imitating, not erasing, the colours of the old time—untying the strict chain that binds you to the fourteenth century, but impressing on you candour, clearness, shrewdness, ingenuous susceptibility, simplicity, ANTIQUITY! A creative translator or imitator—Chaucer born again, a century and a half later.

Let us see how Wordsworth deals with Chaucer in the first seven stanzas of the Cuckoo and Nightingale.

"The god of love, a benedicite! How mighty and how gret a lord is he, For he can make of lowe hertes highe, Of highe lowe, and like for to dye, And harde hertes he can maken fre.

"And he can make, within a litel stounde, Of seke folke, hole, freshe, and sounde, Of hole folke he can maken seke, And he can binden and unbinden eke That he wol have ybounden or unbounde.

"To telle his might my wit may not suffice, For he can make of wise folke ful nice, For he may don al that he wol devise, And lither folke to destroien vice, And proude hertes he can make agrise.

"And shortly al that ever he wol he may, Ayenes him dare no wight saye nay: For he can glade and greve whom he liketh: And whoso that he wol, he lougheth or siketh, And most his might he shedeth ever in May.

"For every true gentle herte fre That with him is or thinketh for to be Ayenes May shal have now som stering, Other to joie or elles to som mourning; In no seson so moch as thinketh me.

"For whan they maye here the briddes singe, And se the floures and the leves springe, That bringeth into hire rememberaunce A maner ese, medled with grevaunce, And lusty thoughtes fulle of gret longinge.

"And of that longinge cometh hevinesse, And therof groweth oft gret sekenesse, Al for lackinge of that that they desire; And thus in May ben hertes sette on fire, So that they brennen forth in gret distresse."

WORDSWORTH.

"The God of love! Ah, benedicite, How mighty and how great a lord is he, For he of low hearts can make high, of high He can make low and unto death bring nigh, And hard hearts he can make them kind and free.

"Within a little time, as hath been found, He can make sick folk whole, and fresh, and sound. Them who are whole in body and in mind He can make sick, bind can he and unbind All that he will have bound, or have unbound.

"To tell his might my wit may not suffice, Foolish men he can make them out of wise; For he may do all that he will devise, Loose livers he can make abate their vice, And proud hearts can make tremble in a trice.

"In brief, the whole of what he will, he may; Against him dare not any wight say nay; To humble or afflict whome'er he will, To gladden or to grieve, he hath like skill; But most his might he sheds on the eve of May.

"For every true heart, gentle heart and free, That with him is, or thinketh so to be, Now against May shall have some stirring—whether To joy, or be it to some mourning; never At other time, methinks, in like degree.

"For now when they may hear the small birds' song, And see the budding leaves the branches throng, This unto their rememberance doth bring All kinds of pleasure, mix'd with sorrowing, And longing of sweet thoughts that ever long.

"And of that longing heaviness doth come, Whence oft great sickness grows of heart and home; Sick are they all for lack of their desire; And thus in May their hearts are set on fire, So that they burn forth in great martyrdom."

Here is the master of the art; and his work, most of all, therefore, makes us doubt the practicability of the thing undertaken. He works reverently, lovingly, surely with full apprehension of Chaucer; and yet, at every word where he leaves Chaucer, the spirit of Chaucer leaves the verse. You see plainly that his rule is to change the least that can possibly be changed. Yet the gentle grace, the lingering musical sweetness, the taking simplicity, of the wise old poet, vanishes—brushed away like the down from the butterfly's wing, by the lightest and most timorous touch.

"For he can make of lowe hertes highe."

There is the soul of the lover's poet, of the poet himself a lover, poured out and along in one fond verse, gratefully consecrated to the mystery of love, which he, too, has experienced when he—the shy, the fearful, the reserved—was yet by the touch of that all-powerful ray which

"Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep,"

enkindled, and to his own surprise made elate to hope and to dare.

But now contract, as Wordsworth does, the dedicated verse into a half verse, and bring together the two distinct and opposite mysteries under one enunciation—in short, divide the one verse to two subjects—

"For he of low hearts can make high—of high He can make low;"

and the fact vouched remains the same, the simplicity of the words is kept, for they are the very words, and yet something is gone—and in that something every thing! There is no longer the dwelling upon the words, no longer the dilated utterance of a heart that melts with its own thoughts, no longer the consecration of the verse to its matter, no longer the softness, the light, the fragrance, the charm—no longer, in a word, the old manner. Here is, in short, the philosophical observation touching love, "the saw of might" still; but the love itself here is not. A kindly and moved observer speaks, not a lover.

In one of the above-cited stanzas, Urry seems to have misled Wordsworth. Stanza iv. verse 4, Chaucer says:—

"And whoso that he wol, he lougheth or siketh."

The sense undoubtedly is, "and whosoever HE"—namely, the God of Love—"will, HE"—namely, the Lover—"laugheth or sigheth accordingly." But Urry mistaking the construction—supposed that HE, in both places, meant the god only. He had, therefore, to find out in "lougheth" and "siketh," actions predicable of the love-god. The verse accordingly runs thus with him,

"And who that he wol, he loweth or siketh."

Now, it is true, that, after all, we do not exactly know how Urry understood his own reading; for he did not make his own glossary. But from his glossary, we find that "to lowe" is to praise, to allow, to approve—furthermore that "siketh" in this place means "maketh sick." Wordsworth, following as it would appear the lection of Urry, but only half agreeing to the interpretation of Urry's glossarist, has rendered the line

"To humble or afflict whome'er he will."

He has understood in his own way, from an obvious suggestion, "loweth," to mean, maketh low, humbleth; whilst "afflict" is a ready turn for "maketh sick" of the glossary. But here Wordsworth cannot be in the right. For Chaucer is now busied with magnifying the kingdom of love by accumulated antitheses—high, low—sick, whole—wise, foolish—the wicked turns good, the proud shrink and fear—the God, at his pleasure, gladdens or grieves. The phrase under question must conform to the manner of the place where it appears. An opposition of meanings is indispensable. "Humble or afflict," which are both on one side, cannot be right. "Approveth or maketh sick," are on opposite sides, but will hardly pick one another out for antagonists. "Laugheth or sigheth," has the vividness and simplicity of Chaucer, the most exact contrariety matches them—and the two phenomena cannot be left out of a lover's enumeration.

Chaucer says of his 'bosom's lord,'

"And most his might he sheddeth ever in May"—

renowning here, as we saw that he does elsewhere, the whole month, as love's own segment of the zodiacal circle. The time of the poem itself is accordingly 'the thridde night of May.' Wordsworth has rendered,

"But most his might he sheds on the eve of May."

Why so? Is the approaching visitation of the power more strongly felt than the power itself in presence? Chaucer says distinctly the contrary, and why with a word lose, or obscure, or hazard the appropriation of the month entire, so conspicuous a tenet in the old poetical mind? And is Eve here taken strictly—the night before May-day, like the Pervigilium Veneris? Or loosely, on the verge of May, answerably to 'ayenes May' afterwards? To the former sense, we might be inclined to propose on the contrary part,

"But sheds his might most on the morrow of May,"

i.e. in prose on May-day morning, consonantly to all the testimonies.

Chaucer says that the coming-on of the love-month produces in the heart of the lover

"A maner ease medled with grevaunce."

That is to say, a kind of joy or pleasure, (Fr. aise,) mixed with sadness. He insists, by this expression, upon the strangeness of the kind, peculiar to the willing sufferers under this unique passion, "love's pleasing smart." Did Wordsworth, by intention or misapprehension, leave out this turn of expression, by which, in an age less forward than ours in sentimental researches, Chaucer drew notice to the contradictory nature of the internal state which he described? As if Chaucer had said, "al maner ese," Wordsworth says, "all kinds of pleasure mixed with sorrowing."

In the next line he adds to the intuitions of his master, one of his own profound intuitions, if we construe aright—

"And longing of sweet thoughts that ever long."

That ever long! The sweetest of thoughts are never satisfied with their own deliciousness. Earthly delight, or heavenly delight upon earth, penetrating the soul, stirs in it the perception of its native illimitable capacity for delight. Bliss, which should wholly possess the blest being, plays traitor to itself, turns into a sort of divine dissatisfaction, and brings forth from its teeming and infinite bosom a brood of winged wishes, bright with hues which memory has bestowed, and restless with innate aspirations. Such is our commentary on the truly Wordsworthian line, but it is not a line answerable to Chaucer's—

"And lusty thoughtes full of gret longinge."

Is this hypercriticism? It is the only criticism that can be tolerated betwixt two such rivals as Chaucer and Wordsworth. The scales that weigh poetry should turn with a grain of dust, with the weight of a sunbeam, for they weigh spirit. Or is it saying that Wordsworth has not done his work as well as it was possible to be done? Rather it is inferring, from the failure of the work in his hand, that he and his colleagues have attempted that which was impossible to be done. We will not here hunt down line by line. We put before the reader the means of comparing verse with verse. We have, with 'a thoughtful heart of love,' made the comparison, and feel throughout that the modern will not, cannot, do justice to the old English. The quick sensibility which thrills through the antique strain deserts the most cautious version of it. In short, we fall back upon the old conviction, that verse is a sacred, and song an inspired thing; that the feeling, the thought, the word, and the musical breath spring together out of the soul in one creation; that a translation is a thing not given in rerum natura; consequently that there is nothing else to be done with a great poet saving to leave him in his glory.

And our friend John Dryden? Oh, he is safe enough; for the new translators all agree that his are no translations at all of Chaucer, but original and excellent poems of his own.

A language that is half Chaucer's, and half that of his renderer, is in great danger to be the language of nobody. But Chaucer's has its own energy and vivacity which attaches you, and as soon as you have undergone the due transformation by sympathy, carries you effectually with it. In the moderate versions that are best done, you miss this indispensable force of attraction. But Dryden boldly and freely gives you himself, and along you sweep, or are swept rejoicingly along. "The grand charge to which his translations are amenable," says Mr Horne, "is, that he acted upon an erroneous principle." Be it so. Nevertheless, they are among the glories of our poetical literature. Mr Horne's, literal as he supposes them to be, are unreadable. He, too, acts on an erroneous principle; and his execution betrays throughout the unskilful hand of a presumptuous apprentice. But he has "every respect for the genius, and for every thing that belongs to the memory, of Dryden;" and thus magniloquently eulogizes his most splendid achievement:—"The fact is, Dryden's version of the 'Knight's Tale' would be most appropriately read by the towering shade of one of Virgil's heroes, walking up and down a battlement, and waving a long, gleaming spear, to the roll and sweep of his sonorous numbers."

* * * * *

Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work.

THE END