Chaucerians do, that an untrained reader can master essential peculiarities in the space of an hour, and can then enjoy his Chaucer with the best. The number of persons competent to enjoy the niceties of Chaucer's art is necessarily restricted; but the number of persons who could enjoy the substance and matter of his poems, irrespective of the precise manner of presentation, is unbounded—a consideration which inclines one rather strongly to sympathise with Dryden, when he says, "I think I have just reason to complain of those who, because they understand Chaucer, would deprive the greater part of their countrymen of the same advantage, and hoard him up as misers do their grandam Gold, to look on it themselves and hinder others from making use of it."

For general criticism of Chaucer the ordinary reader will do well first to scan what the literary historians have to say: among them he will find much admirable criticism in Stopford Brooke,* Henry Morley, Taine, Jusserand, Chambers, and Ten Brink*; above all, in Warton's and in Courthope's respective histories of English poetry.

If the reader has need of a Chaucer manual, he has again a considerable choice. There is an excellent little Chaucer Primer, by Mr. A. W. Pollard; there is also a highly condensed Guide to Chaucer and Spenser, by F. G. Fleay (1877); The Age of Chaucer, by Mr. F. J. Snell (1901); and Dr. Ward's Chaucer, in the Men of Letters Series; in addition to Skeat's Student's Chaucer (1895) and The Chaucer Canon (1900). For interesting reading about Chaucer the reader will probably find most to entertain him in the three volumes of Studies in Chaucer (London, 1892), by a Yale professor, T. R. Lounsbury. These studies form a series of agreeable, if somewhat diffuse, magazine essays rather than an organic book. In the later stages of his Chaucer course the student will naturally depend much on the Transactions of the Chaucer Society. Yet more important, perhaps, than any of these aids to study is the light thrown upon the subject by such essayists as Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, Alexander Smith in Dream

thorpe, and J. R. Lowell in My Study Windows. Among notable periodical essays should be mentioned two articles in Blackwood (vols. ii. and lvii.); two in Macmillan (vols. xxiv. and xxvii.)-one by Stopford Brooke, the other by Furnivall; and two in The Quarterly (January, 1873, emphasising the affinity between Chaucer and Shakespeare; and April, 1895, a review of Skeat's edition of Chaucer).

CHAPTER III

MORAL GOWER-THE "MORTE D'ARTHUR "

"O moral Gower, this book I directe

To thee, and to the philosophical Strode,
To vouchensauf, ther nede is, to corecte,
Of your benignitees and zeles gode."

-CHAUCER, Troilus and Criseyde.

Warton's criticism of Gower-Confessio Amantis-Sir Thomas Malory-Morte d'Arthur-Its influence in English literature.

CHAUCER'S Canterbury Tales was probably the fourth separate book printed by Caxton at Westminster, and is usually dated about 1478. Five or six years later the printer produced a second edition of the Tales with woodcuts. About the same time that he produced this second edition, or perhaps a little before it, Caxton set to work on a folio edition of Chaucer's recognised foil, John Gower. He tells us himself that he finished printing the Confessio Amantis on September 2nd, 1483. Two years later he gave to the world The Noble Histories of King Arthur and of Certain of his Knights, by Sir Thomas Malory (Westminster, folio, July 31st, 1485). As, among the eighty odd books which Caxton printed at Westminster, these are two of the most famous (if not quite the most famous, with the exception of two or three of Caxton's translations and the three books of Chaucer's which he printed), we shall give here some account of the books and of their authors, as being early examples of the work of the printing-press in perpetuating sound literature.

John Gower was born before Chaucer, probably in the early twenties of the fourteenth century (1323-6). He came of a Kentish family, and appears to have been a man of some consideration and an esquire in his native county. It would seem as if he gained his wealth, or it was gained for him, as a merchant; but it is difficult to reconcile the immense volume of his poetry with active commercial life. In later life he must have been practically a literary recluse. He died in August or September, 1408, leaving a widow, Agnes, and was buried in the Priory of St. Mary Overy (now St. Saviour's Cathedral, Southwark), to the rebuilding of which he was a generous contributor.

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The best and most concise account of Gower's poetry is that given by Thomas Warton in his History of English Poetry (1778). "Gower's capital work," says Warton, consisting in three parts, is entitled Speculum Meditantis, Vox Clamantis, Confessio Amantis." The third and last portion of this work was completed in 1393. The first, or Speculum Meditantis, was written in AngloFrench twelve-line octosyllabic rhymes in ten books, dealing primarily with the nature of virtue and vice, the errors of man, and the path of regeneration through the aid of our Lord Jesus Christ and the intercession of the Virgin Mary, whose life the poem ends by commemorating.

The second poem, the Vox Clamantis, or voice of one crying in the wilderness, contains seven books of Latin elegiacs; it is primarily a metrical chronicle of the great social upheaval of 1381, denouncing Wat Tyler, the rabble rout, the maddened serfs, and the Lollards in no measured terms; but pointing out at the same time the grievances by which the community was burdened, the rapacity of the clergy, the knavery of lawyers and merchants, the prevalence of sensual indulgence, extortion, and rash governance. In later years (being then a staunch adherent

of Henry IV., who had conferred on him the Lancastrian emblem or collar of SS) Gower appended to his poem a Chronicon Tripartitum, dealing in a tone of far greater candour with the misgovernment of Richard II.

The Confessio Amantis is an English poem containing a prologue, seven books on seven deadly sins, and one on the duties of a king-in all over thirty thousand eightsyllabled rhymed lines-first printed by Caxton in 1483. The ravages of the seven sins, Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust, are illustrated by a series of stories loosely strung together somewhat after the manner of Boccaccio's Decameron. The book was written at the command of Richard II., who, meeting the poet rowing on the Thames near London, invited him into the royal barge, and, after much conversation, requested him to "book some new thing." In spite of age and infirmity Gower laboured nearly ten years at the composition and revision of this poem, completed in 1393 (with additions criticising the government of Richard II., which it is difficult to place before 1397).

"Considered in a general view," says Warton, "the Confessio Amantis may be pronounced to be no unpleasing miscellany of those shorter tales which delighted the readers of the Middle Ages." And when he has a tale to narrate, it must be admitted that Gower does his duty by it. In the unfolding of a narrative, however well worn the theme may be, there is an ease and a fluency about Gower's development of the story which is suggestive of the ripeness as well as of the garrulity of old age. The worst of Gower's stories is that we always know they are there merely to furnish occasion for a homily. They are usually illustrations of deadly sins-never, as in The Canterbury Tales, of concrete personalities. The dramatic element hardly came within Gower's purview. Gower's characters are perambulating moralities-remote,