Canterbury Tales and Other Poems | Page 6

deep human interest, or
broad-sighted satire. In The Canterbury
Tales, we see, not Chaucer, but Chaucer's times and neighbours; the artist has lost himself
in his work. To show him honestly and without disguise, as he lived his own life and
sung his own songs at the brilliant Court of Edward III, is to do his memory a moral
justice far more material than any wrong that can ever come out of
spelling. As to the
minor poems of Spenser, which follow The Faerie Queen, the choice has been governed
by the desire to give at once the most interesting, and the most characteristic of the poet's
several styles; and, save in the case of the Sonnets, the poems so selected are given entire.
It is manifest that the endeavours to adapt this volume for popular use, have been

already noticed, would imperfectly succeed without the aid of notes and glossary, to
explain allusions that have become
obsolete, or antiquated words which it was
necessary to retain. An endeavour has been made to render each page selfexplanatory,

by placing on it all the glossarial and illustrative

notes required for its elucidation, or --
to avoid repetitions that would have occupied space -- the references to the spot where
information may be found. The great advantage of such a plan to the reader, is the
measure of its difficulty for the editor. It permits much more flexibility in the choice of
glossarial
explanations or equivalents; it saves the distracting and timeconsuming
reference to the end or the beginning of the book;
but, at the same time, it largely
enhances the liability to error. The Editor is conscious that in the 12,000 or 13,000 notes,

as well as in the innumerable minute points of spelling,
accentuation, and rhythm, he
must now and again be found
tripping; he can only ask any reader who may detect all
that he could himself point out as being amiss, to set off against
inevitable mistakes and
misjudgements, the conscientious labour bestowed on the book, and the broad
consideration of its fitness for the object contemplated.
From books the Editor has derived valuable help; as from Mr Cowden Clarke's revised
modern text of The Canterbury Tales, published in Mr Nimmo's Library Edition of the
English Poets; from Mr Wright's scholarly edition of the same work; from the
indispensable Tyrwhitt; from Mr Bell's edition of Chaucer's Poem; from Professor Craik's
"Spenser and his Poetry,"
published twenty-five years ago by Charles Knight; and from
many others. In the abridgement of the Faerie Queen, the plan may at first sight seem to
be modelled on the lines of Mr Craik's painstaking condensation; but the coincidences are
either
inevitable or involuntary. Many of the notes, especially of those explaining
classical references and those attached to the minor poems of Chaucer, have been
prepared specially for this edition. The Editor leaves his task with the hope that his
attempt to remove artificial obstacles to the popularity of England's earliest poets, will
not altogether miscarry.
D. LAING PURVES.
LIFE OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
NOT in point of genius only, but even in point of time, Chaucer may claim the proud
designation of "first" English poet. He wrote "The Court of Love" in 1345, and "The
Romaunt of the
Rose," if not also "Troilus and Cressida," probably within the next
decade: the dates usually assigned to the poems of
Laurence Minot extend from 1335 to
1355, while "The Vision
of Piers Plowman" mentions events that occurred in 1360 and
1362 -- before which date Chaucer had certainly written "The Assembly of Fowls" and
his "Dream." But, though they were
his contemporaries, neither Minot nor Langland (if
Langland was the author of the Vision) at all approached Chaucer in the finish, the force,
or the universal interest of their works and the poems of earlier writer; as Layamon and
the author of the
"Ormulum," are less English than Anglo-Saxon or AngloNorman.

Those poems reflected the perplexed struggle for
supremacy between the two grand
elements of our language,
which marked the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; a struggle
intimately associated with the political relations between the conquering Normans and
the subjugated Anglo-Saxons.
Chaucer found two branches of the language; that
spoken by
the people, Teutonic in its genius and its forms; that spoken by the learned
and the noble, based on the French Yet each branch had begun to borrow of the other --
just as nobles and people had been taught to recognise that each needed the other in the
wars and the social tasks of the time; and Chaucer, a scholar, a courtier, a man conversant
with all orders of society, but
accustomed to speak, think, and write in the words of the

highest, by his comprehensive genius cast into the simmering mould a magical
amalgamant which made the two half-hostile
elements unite and interpenetrate each
other. Before Chaucer wrote, there were two tongues in England, keeping alive the feuds

and resentments of cruel