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It is to be feared that he occasionally read Latin authors with so eager a desire to arrive at the contents of their books that he at times mistook their meaning not far otherwise, slightly to vary a happy comparison made by one of his most eminent commentators, than many people read Chaucer's own writings now-a-days.
The cost of these unspiritual pleasures the great prelates had ample means for defraying in the revenues of their sees; while lesser dignitaries had to be active in levying their dues or the fines of their courts, lest everything should flow into the receptacles of their superiors. So in Chaucer's "Friar's Tale" an unfriendly Regular says of an archdeacon,
"Faith, sir," replied the story-teller, "as to that matter, I don't believe one-half of it myself." Go, little booke, God send thee good passage, And specially let this be thy prayere, Unto them all that thee will read or hear, Where thou art wrong, after their help to call, Thee to correct in any part or all. CHAUCER'S Belle Dame sans Mercie.
It is an insight into the manners, modes of life, and ways of thinking that is of value; and Mr. Olmsted, who goes about, like Chaucer's Somner, "Ever inquiring upon everything," is just the person to supply a great want in our literature. We know less of the domestic habits of a large part of our population than of those of the Saxons in the time of Alfred.
Speight in his life of Chaucer, printed in 1602, mentions a tale in William Thynne's first printed book of Chaucer's works more odious to the clergy than the Plowman's Tale. One thing must not be omitted concerning the works of Chaucer.
We hear of a Marie in Brittany who sang songs worthy to be mixed with Chaucer's for true poetic sweetness, and in Italy a Vittoria Colonna sang her noble sonnets. But in England, where is our poetess before Joanna Baillie poetess in the true sense?
Proof is thus furnished, if any proof were needed, that no story interesting in itself is too old to admit of being told again by a poet; in Chaucer's version Ovid loses something in polish, but nothing in pathos; and the breezy freshness of nature seems to be blowing through tales which became the delight of a nation's, as they have been that of many a man's, youth.
has a virtue of manner and movement such as we shall not find in all the verse of romance-poetry; but this is saying nothing. The virtue is such as we shall not find, perhaps, in all English poetry, outside the poets whom I have named as the special inheritors of Chaucer's tradition.
His obligations to the French singers have probably been over-estimated at all events if the view adopted in this essay be the correct one, and if the charming poem of the "Flower and the Leaf," together with the lively, but as to its meaning not very transparent, so-called "Chaucer's Dream," be denied admission among his genuine works.
It is perhaps the most interesting part of the book, for it is entirely Chaucer's own and it is truly English. It is said that Chaucer borrowed the form of his famous tales from a book called The Decameron, written by an Italian poet named Boccaccio.
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