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as poetry with the current of social existence. The age, alarmed and deafened by the thunder of the most tremendous events, could no longer listen to the smooth "liquid lapse" which had dwindled into the ripple of Della Cruscan effeminacy. A mighty time required a mightier poetry; and a crowd of harps, nobly strung, responded to the call. The fifty years of the middle of the eighteenth century number only three or four names, and those not of the highest class; the first ten of the nineteenth present about a dozen poets of first-class merit in the various departments of their art. The character of the products, moreover, was totally changed. The splendours of past centuries were resuscitated in a form of far more magnificence and elegance than the previous age had been able to invest them with. Descriptive painting was no longer the heavy, laborious, and minute process, whose endless details had delighted our wondering forefathers; nor was it a succession of trim garden pictures, of scenes where hills, and lakes, and mists, and sunlight, and moonshine, were anachronized into glittering confusion; but men had been taught to look at Nature, and to feel her reflected, not in their ears or their fancies, but in their souls: the human heart itself was penetrated; the pulses of the deeper passions and affections throb in the pages of modern poetry; no way of life was too mean for the free and ardent footsteps of the muse's walk; and the humble cottager, his hopes, and fears, and joys— nay, his grass plot and his faithful dog-shared with the scutcheoned baron and the towered palace the ardour of the poet's lay and the interest of his listener. The incidents of this poetry, ranging over all nature and history, with its broad, unchecked freedom of sentiment and opinion, and with its varied diction and melody, present a complete contrast to the poetical literature of any age except that of Elizabeth, which in some respects it resembles. There is the same bold impetuosity which pauses at no new region; the same vigour of imaginative wing, for which no height is too formidable; there is the same varied action of intellect and emotion; but our age is fortunately purged from the baser elements that mingled with the earlier period, and possesses a purer and more classic taste in the arrangement and decoration of its acquirements.

With the close of the first half of the nineteenth century terminated what may justly be designated a great period in our national poetical literature. The contemporary names of Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth might well illustrate any age,

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and each possessed a distinct and separate character - Scott representing the poetry of feudalism and chivalry; Byron, the poetry of sensation and passion; Shelley, the hopes and aspirations of intellectual democracy; and Wordsworth, the material and moral beauty of nature. Under these representative chiefs, ranked men of high gifts and power, - Coleridge, Southey, Crabbe, Rogers, Campbell, and Moore. In poetic diction Coleridge has only been excelled by Byron, whose rapid energy and condensation of style form not the least of his great merits. One evil which the poetry of the present day has to dread is efflorescence of mere language. Our tongue has become exact and regular in its grammar, and the grammatical education of our youth is daily inculcating the smoothing down of its salient points, so that any introduction of the elliptical, terse, picturesque phraseology of our ancestors is apt to startle and offend. In its advance to what is reckoned perfection of accuracy, the language has been weakened in its power of mental training. Any instructor who compares his resources of examination on the vocables of an elder author, with those of a modern, will be sensible of this change. Mr. Tennyson, however, is imparting something of the early vigour to our poetical style. While reflecting the spirit of his age, in its progress, its inventions, and its struggles for right and truth, he has looked back to the old masters of our language for hints in choice, picturesque, and figurative expression. That the Laureate is a poet of "large compass, of profound insight, and of finished skill" (Brimley's Essays), is now universally admitted.

It is remarked by Hallam, that an age of learning is not always found to be one of poetical excellence; and a similar observation has been applied to the effect of the scientific and utilitarian tendencies of the present times, as if these acted repressively on the development of poetry. There does not seem to exist any necessary sequence between the decline of imaginative literature and the spread of science. If our poetry is inferior to the products of forty years ago, it is a result naturally to be expected after a period of activity so very remarkable. The great eras of our literature have always been followed by intervals of decline or stagnation. In other respects the time seems to be favourable for poetical genius; its pecuniary rewards are infinitely above those of the ages when a patron's aid was necessary to float a poet's name on a precarious popularity; the universal diffusion of intellectual products, in the cheapest

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forms, has vastly multiplied the number of readers and improved the national taste; the law of copyright acts in a manner favourable to literary property; and the British mind, filled with the associations and attachments of a brilliant history and a timehonoured patriotism, and animated by home affections and enlightened religion, seems adapted to the cordial and perpetual relish of pure, high-toned, and earnest poetry.

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GEOFFREY CHAUCER, venerated as the father of English poetry, was born about the year 1328, in the City of London. In the "Testament of Love," he has these words-"The city of London, that is to me so dear and sweet, in which I was forth grown; and more kindly love have I to that place than to any other in earth, as every kindly creature hath full appetite to that place of his kindly ingendure." Of his origin and rank the accounts are various and uncertain; as the name is Norman, he may have been of noble or knightly descent. Both universities claim a share in the honour of his education. He is supposed in his youth to have travelled, and afterwards to have studied law in the Inner Temple. He married the sister of the lady who ultimately became the wife of John of Gaunt, the son of Edward III.; and thus "acquired the powerful support of the Lancastrian family." His abilities and engaging qualities rendered him a favourite in the court of Edward, at that time the most splendid in Europe. He must have possessed talents and address for business, as he held various public employments. Following the sure guidance of the national records, we find that in 1367, he received a pension of twenty marks; in 1372 he was a joint envoy on a mission to the Duke of Genoa; in 1374 he was made comptroller of the customs of wine and wool in London, and had a pitcher of wine daily from the royal table, subsequently commuted into an allowance of twenty

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marks per annum; in the same year he received an annuity of £10 a year from the Duke of Lancaster. As one of the King's Esquires, he had 40s. a year for robes. In 1377 he was dispatched on a mission to Flanders, and was also employed to negotiate the marriage of Richard II. with the Princess Mary of France. He was next employed on a mission to Lombardy, and he was returned Knight of the Shire for Kent, sitting sixty-one days, with the allowance of 8s. per diem. Towards the close of 1386 the poet, like his patron the Duke of Lancaster and his adherents, fell into disgrace; he lost his comptrollership and fled to Holland. On his return he is said to have been cast into prison, but the circumstance is doubtful, and in 1389 he was again in favour. He was appointed Clerk of the King's works at Westminster, the Tower, etc. His pension and Esquire's allowance he never lost, and when Henry of Bolingbroke ascended the throne his pension was doubled. The last notice of him is his taking a lease in December 1399 of a tenement in the garden of the chapel of St. Mary, Westminster, at the rate of 535. 4d. per annum. He did not long enjoy this residence, dying October 25th, 1400. He was interred in Westminster Abbey, where his tomb still remains.

The mind of Chaucer appears to have been joyous and happy, generous and affectionate. He possessed that intense relish for the beauties of nature that is so characteristic of the genuine poet. His works abound with enthusiastic descriptions of spring, morning, groves, green solitudes, with birds and flowers. But his mind has no effeminacy, and it is strong in many moods; his life busy, and in some measure stormy, made him familiar with all phases of human life and human character. Nature, courts, camps, characters, passions, motives, are the things with which he deals. A vigorous temperament, a penetrating and observing intellect, with strong and comprehensive good sense, are the instruments with which he operates on his poetical materials. "His words," says Hazlitt, "point as an index to the objects, like the eye or finger. There were none of the common-places of poetic diction in our author's time; no reflected lights of fancy; no borrowed roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things for himself; to look narrowly, almost to handle the object..... Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of nature and discrimination of character; and his interest in what he saw gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation." This is just. Chaucer is the poet of objects, not of words or of mere sentiment.

Chaucer's versification has been the subject of dispute. Its condemnation by Dryden or by Johnson, in ages when the phonetic principles of the language had not only been altered, but regarded as fixed, is not wonderful. The best rule for reading him is to pronounce the final e as in reading Italian. In the following extracts the orthography is modernized, except where the change would impair either the measure or the spirit of the passage.

The principal works of Chaucer, besides the Canterbury Tales, are, "The Romaunt of the Rose," a condensed translation from a French romance; "Troilus and Cresseide;" "The Legende of Good Women;" "Chaucer's Dreme;" "The House of Fame;" "The Flower and the Leaf," etc.; some of the "Canterbury Tales," and his "Testament of Love," written during his imprisonment, exhibit him as a vigorous and elegant writer in prose.

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