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Of course it is always necessary to be cautious before asserting any apparent addition of Chaucer's to be his own invention. "Flatterers be the Devil's chaplains, that sing aye Placebo." On the other hand, Chaucer is capable of using goods manifestly borrowed or stolen for a purpose never intended in their original employment.
The section on Avarice is particularly valuable for its picture of the sins of executors of wills, rack-renting lords, extortionate shopkeepers, false lawyers, usurers, and gamblers. See ibid., I, pp. 44-5. Prudence and Melibeus is worth reading once, either in Chaucer's or in Renault de Louens' version, because of its great popularity in the Middle Ages, and because of occasional vivid passages.
Anglo-Saxon Language and Historical English Grammar. Mr. SEWARD. Two hours. Anglo-Saxon Literature: Poetry and Prose. Professor JACKSON. Two hours. Chaucer's Language, Versification, and Method of Narrative Poetry. Professor JACKSON. Two hours. English Language and Literature of the Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Centuries.
The architect responsible for this monstrosity sought to combine two fabrics in incoherent proportions. More than one authority decries the use of iron as a constructive element, and Chaucer's description of the Temple of Mars in the Knight's Tale reads significantly: "Wrought all of burned steel... Was long and straight and ghastly for to see."
Artemus Ward, taking up Chaucer, professed amazement to find spelling that would not be tolerated in an elementary school; the learned doctors, taking up Byrde, found he had disregarded all the rules rules, be it remembered, formulated after Byrde's time, just as our modern rules of spelling were made after Chaucer's time; and as Artemus Ward jocularly condemned Chaucer, and showed his wit in the joke, so the doctors seriously condemned Byrde, and showed their stupidity in their unconscious joke.
Thus the British Navy is really national because it is natural; it has cohered out of hundreds of accidental adventures of ships and shipmen before Chaucer's time and after it. But the German Navy is an artificial thing; as artificial as a constructed Alp would be in England.
A century before Chaucer's time, when the feudal spirit was still all-powerful, there were but two classes of men thought worthy of consideration, the knighthood and the clergy; and in the romances of chivalry knights and priests exclusively composed the dramatis personæ. But the slow progress of the masses, in whom lies the chief strength of a nation, becomes visible in Chaucer's time.
It is often said that the power of liquidness and fluidity in Chaucer's verse was dependent upon a free, a licentious dealing with language, such as is now impossible; upon a liberty, such as Burns too enjoyed, of making words like neck, bird, into a dissyllable by adding to them, and words like cause, rhyme, into a dissyllable by sounding the e mute.
If Chaucer's personages had disengaged themselves from Chaucer's crowd, forgotten their common goal and shrine, and after sundry magnifications become, each in his turn, the centre of some Elizabethan play, and a few years later split into their elements, and so given birth to romantic poetry, I need not reverse the cinematograph.
Morris and Skeat's Specimens of Early English Prose. What are the chief historical events of the fourteenth century? What social movement is noticeable? What writers reflect political and social conditions? Tell briefly the story of Chaucer's life. What foreign influences are noticeable? Name a few poems illustrating his three periods of work. What qualities have you noticed in his poetry?
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