exalts and glorifies the language. Thus the very defects of that language have been made advantageous to our literature, as long winter nights and stormy seas have given us our maritime skill, and as we have learnt, from the uncertainty of our climate, to be alert and active in all seasons alike.

Chaucer drew much from the French and Italian poets, but more from observation and the stores of his own wealthy and prolific mind. Strong English sense, and strong English humour characterize his original works. He caught with a painter's hand the manners and features of the age; he beheld the objects of external nature with a poet's eye, and he penetrated with a poet's intuition into the recesses of the human heart. Dante holds a higher place in literature because he wrought with materials which were capable of displaying and preserving his exquisite skill. Dante may be classed above all other poets for strength and severity of style: Nothing can be worse than the plan of the Divina Comedia; the matter is sometimes puerile, sometimes shocking, frequently dull, but the style is uniformly perfect. Here Chaucer falls short of him, but only here, where, from the state of the English language, it was impossible that he should prove his equal: in extent and variety of power he is greatly his superior. Had it not indeed been for the political convulsions which began immediately after Chaucer's time, England would in that age have ontstript all nations in the career of intellectual improvement, as she already exceeded them in military renown. Never had any country seen so glorious a dawn! Roger Bacon, like Moses from Mount Pisgah, had seen the promised land of science; Wicliffe had struck the spark of reformation, and kindled the torch of Scripture. Our political system could not have attained its present happy state without that dreadful struggle which ended in the destruction of a baronial alike formidable to the crown and oppressive to the people; but the process from which this ultimate good resulted was dreadful, and the progress of the country in arts and knowledge was for a full century impeded.

During that century there could be little encouragement for poetry, and what was produced chiefly consisted either of dull translations, or vapid imitations of Chaucer. The style ornate' had been introduced, and was sanctioned by Chaucer's name: of the poems in that style which are printed as his, many are of questionable authority; few traces of it are to be found in his greater and better works; and it seems probable that he just tried the experiment, and convinced himself of its unfitness. But idolatrous admirers have a singular ingenuity in selecting defects for the objects of their worship: and the malice of a satirist, and the enmity of a critic, are less skilful than an injudicious imitator, in

detecting

detecting and caricaturing a characteristic fault. Accordingly the poetry of this age was stuffed with sesquipedalian Latinisms, like the worst of Dr. Johnson's prose. The southern nations of Europe dilute their sounds into polysyllables; we, contrariwise, at some occasional expense of euphony, purchase condensation and strength; in this respect our national character and our language have acted upon each other, and the fashion of the style ornate was an attempt in direct contradiction of both. The experiment was remarkably unfortunate. Instead of the sonorous terminations of our monosyllabic rhyme, or the rich and stimulating variety of double rhymes, the ornate writers delighted to end their lines in words of three and four syllables, and thus in the vain attempt at grandiloquence and elevation, they really impoverished the verse both in sound and sense; for the close fell flat upon the ear;* and when four syllables (as it not unfrequently happened) stood in the place of a synonym of one, the matter and meaning of the verse were diminished in the corresponding proportion of one to four.

The fashion did not long maintain its ground in England, and the men who followed it were of so little pith that it mattered not much to what fashion they addicted themselves. Hawes was the best of them, yet Warton has overrated his merits. The following is a fair as well as curious specimen of his descriptive powers.

Lines:

Then in we wente to the garden gloryous
Lyke to a place of pleasure most solacyous,
With Flora paynted and wrought curyously,
In divers knottes of marvaylous gretenes,
Rampande lyons stode up wondersly

Made all of herbes with dulcet swetenes,
Wyth many dragons of mervaylos likenes
Of dyvers floures made ful craftely
By Flora coloured wyth colours sundry.

Chapman has expressed a similar opinion upon this subject in some characteristi

And for our tongue that still is so empayrd
By travelling linguists, I can prove it clear
That no tongue hath the Muses utterance heyrd
For verse, and that sweet music to the ear
Struck out of rhyme, so naturally as this:
Our monosyllables so kindly fall

And meet, opposed in rhyme, as they did kiss.
French and Italian most immetricall;

Their many syllables in harsh collision

Fall as they brake their necks; their bastard rhymes

Saluting as they jostled in transition,

And set our teeth on edge; nor tunes nor times
Kept in their falls. And methinks their long words
Shew in short verse, as in a narrow place

Two opposites should meet with two-hand swords
Unwieldily without or use or graces

Amiddes

Amiddes the garden so moche delectable
There was an herber fayre and quadrante,
To Paradyse right well comparable,

Set all about with floures fragraunt,

And in the myddle there was resplendyshaunt
A dulcet spring and marvaylous fountaine
Of gold and asure made all certaine.

In wonderfull and curious similtude

There stood a dragon of fyne golde so pure,
Upon his tayle of mighty fortitude
Wrethed and skaled al with asure,
Havyng thre hedes divers in fygure,
Whyche in a bath of the sylver grette
Spouted the water that was so dulcette.

Compare this with some of Chaucer's descriptions, and the difference between the two poets is as great as between a fine natural landscape and a garden filled with the vegetable lions and dragons which old Stephen thought so dulcette and so moche delectable. Hawes has however given good counsel in quaint phrase to his fellow servants of the Muses train; for he tells them that the poet, Must nombre all the hole cyrcumstaunce

Of his matter with brevyacion,

That he walke not by longe continuance

The perambulat waye.

The stiff pedantry of the ornate writers might perhaps have proved more lastingly injurious to English poetry, if the Reformation had not produced a shoal of versifyers who berhymed the most impassioned parts of the Scriptures, and purposely levelled their tone to the capacities of the ignorant multitude. The wide circulation and general acceptance of these versions materially affected the character of the language in its then unsettled state. Devoid as they were of literary merit, they nevertheless influenced the literature of the country, as, without the sanction of authority, they made their way into the service of the established church. The effect was particularly seen in the fashion of metre which they established during the Elizabethan age. And here we must look back upon the previous state of our versification. Chaucer seems not to have been satisfied with any metre in use before his time, except the eight syllable couplet, in which, following the originals, his longest translations are written. He never uses the barbarous alliteration of Piers Ploughman, nor the alexandrine of the two metrical chroniclers who preceded him; and the stanza of Sir Thopas seems to excite the contempt of the Host as much as the matter.

No more of this for Goddes dignitee,
Quod our Hoste, for thou makest me

So wary of thy veray lewednesse,
That al so wisly God my soule blesse,
Min eres aken of thy drafty speche;
Now swiche a rime the devil I beteche;

This may wel be rime dogerel, quod he.

In his great work he usually employs the heroic couplet, which he either invented or introduced; but sometimes a stanza; his favourite form being that of the seven-lined, in which the first and third lines rhyme, the second, fourth, and fifth, and the two at the close: (the extract from Hawes is in this measure:) occasionally he uses one of eight lines, the first and third rhyming; the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh; and the sixth and eighth; this is the form which, with a different movement, prevailed for a considerable time in Spain. The Cuckoo and the Nightingale is written in a very unusual, but sweet stanza.

But as I lay this othir night waking,
I thought how lovers had a tokening,

And among hem it was a common tale
That it were gode to here the Nightingale,
Moche rather than the lewid Cuckowe sing.
And then I thought anon as it was day
I woulde fain go somwhere to assay
If that I might a Nightingale yhere,
For yet had I none herde of al that yere,
And it was tho the thirdé night of May.'

There is we believe but one other form of stanza in all Chaucer's works, that in which the Complaint of Mars is written; the first, second, fourth, and fifth lines rhyme to each other; the third, sixth, and seventh, and then a concluding couplet: thus,

To what fine made the God that sytte so hie
Beneth him ethir love or companye,

And strainith folke to love maugre ther hed,
And then their joy for aught I can espie
Ne lasteth not the twinkeling of an eye?
And some have nevir joye til they be ded,
What menith this, what is this mistihed?
Wherto constrainith he his folke so fast
Thing to desirin, but it should ylast?

Among the poems which Stowe has imputed to Chaucer, is one which, bearing in other respects strong marks of his masterly hand, exhibits a singular instance of irregularity in its structure. It begins in his usual septenary stanza, but as it proceeds, both the length of the stanza and the arrangement of the rhymes are varied according to the convenience of the poet. The verses are all of the same length. The Pindarics, as they were called, of a later age,

differ from this, because they varied the length of line; and we do not know that any other example is to be found till our own days. Lord Brooke indeed has some poems in which the stanzas differ in length, but the distribution of the rhyme is always the same.

Lydgate (whose works surely deserve to be collected) trod reverently in the steps of his great master, and therefore preferred the septenary stanza, and the ten-syllable couplet. No improvement in versification seems to have been made or attempted from Chaucer to Surrey; who in this respect enriched the language more than all his predecessors and all his successors. That most accomplished victim of a beastly tyrant introduced the sonnet, the elegiac quatrain, and blank verse, a measure which, for versatility of application, variety in itself, power, and dignity exceeds every metre of every language ancient or modern.

The improvement of our language under the Tudors was so rapid, that the school of Chaucer became obsolete. Meantime a corresponding change took place in those parts of the continent with which we formerly held our chief literary commerce. The Provençal poets had had their day; and Roundels, Verelays, and 'Balades royal, morale and of godely counsails, were out of vogue. From France we received no new fashion in their stead; indeed the French themselves were following classical and Italian models. Spenser was impressed by the wild solemnity of Bellay's deeper strains; but, except in this instance, we derived little or nothing from the French poets till Du Bartas. The Pleiades' were not recognized as a constellation out of their sphere; and Ronsard, who might have been looked upon as the morning star of his age and country, raised only a transitory reputation, and produced less effect than might have been thought possible from his celebrity, and his vigorous powers. Queen Mary Stuart beguiled many hours of her captivity with his poems; but it was in France that she had learnt to love them. The English writers never looked that way; some studied classical models, more the Italians, and not a few followed the devices of their own fancies.

The Elizabethan age, as it abounded with poets more than any other, except the present, abounded also with metrical experiments. The long verse of Sternhold and Hopkins was however beyond all doubt the prevailing taste, and for that reason was chiefly used by translators, who, not having to express their own conceptions, were more likely than original writers to consult the fashion of the time. The popular ear,' says Warton, from its familiarity was tuned to this measure.' Whatever absolute and original dignity it may boast,' he adds, at present it is almost ridiculous from an unavoidable association of ideas, and because it necessarily recals the tone of the versification of the puritans. I suspect it might have