Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 355, May 1845

To return, however, to waistcoats. They constitute a class of garments that have fallen into vulgar hands, and are applied to vulgar purposes. Your gents in the city, and your Margate-steamer men, know how to display a yard of velvet or silk to infinite advantage; see how ostentatiously they throw open their coats, and show you half-a-mile of mosaic gold chain meandering over a champ fleuri. They are regular tailors' advertisements, and disgust one by their abuse of cheap decoration. We never see a man in a smart waistcoat but we think of what lies at the back of it – a yard of silk or calico – all the glory of the front negatived, and the garment so mean behind that he dares not show it. Not so the good old sailor who spent his prize-money with honesty of purpose, and, let us add, with real good taste also; he decorated his shattered timbers stem and stern alike – there was no make-believe finery about him, and he was not ashamed to take off his coat before any body! Away, then, with the petty vanity of a waistcoat; away with all false idea of its giving decoration to the ensemble of the toilet. We know of nothing in its favour except one single claim on the score of some small utility. To any one living in a variable climate it is of value, as enabling the wearer to modify the temperature of the body. Is the day unusually warm? he can throw open his coat, and preserve that prim neatness of appearance which is required in the present age, but is at variance with the display of fine linen of the Caroline epoch. Or is there a sudden blast of wind from the east, searching his rheumatic limbs to the very bone? he may button his coat over his waistcoat, and he has then a double protection for the tenderest chest. But if thus anxious for the chest, why not for the back also? Why should there be two thicknesses of cloth or stuff over the one, and only a single thickness, with some flimsy calico, over the other? In all this there is an inconsistency. Our ancestors, who wore only one coat at a time, had always a small mantle ready against any change of temperature; and they wore it either appended to the neck, as in the days of James I., or more constantly on the shoulders, as in the time of Cromwell. The main advantage of the waistcoat consists in its being light and permanently worn, – but it should be made of the same stuff throughout, and we think it might well be dispensed with altogether. If Kneller, Lely, Vandyke, and Rubens could visit the earth again for a moment – and they were good judges of what was, or what was not becoming – we have no doubt but they would be unanimous against waistcoats.

We come, therefore, to our last remaining class of coats, and here we halt with a hum of approbation: it would be hard indeed were we to pull the modern dandy to pieces, and leave him no protection against the wintry blast. Yes! the frock or surtout is good! we have little or nothing to say against it, – much in its favour. Utility and elegance are at once seen combined in this garment; it is warm, easy to wear, and comfortable it is of graceful and dignified appearance, and it is becoming, to man at all periods of his life. The frock-coat is nothing more than the ancient tunic opened in front, and made to sit tight upon the upper part of the body: the superior half of it shows the form of the wearer to advantage, and imparts to it a due degree of manly rigidity, while the inferior half partakes of the flowing folds of drapery, and gives warmth and covering down to the very knees. Of all garments that are to have any degree of freedom and looseness about them, the frock-coat is the best: it is good for a man in almost any avocation, and may be made suitable for the common business of life, as well as for the refinements of society. But then it should not be worn open: it should be buttoned upon the breast. Place an officer in his plain closely-buttoned undress coat by the side of a civilian, with his loose and open frock, and the contrast is so decidedly in favour of the former, that the point, as a matter of taste and effect, will not admit of a dispute. The one is a regular sloven compared with the other. If any thing can be said against this buttoning, it is on the score of inconvenience in civil life: – is a man at his library-table or his office-desk always to be fastened up in buckram? where are we to stow away our watches, our knives, our toothpicks, our loose cash (when we have any —par parenthèse)? There is some weight in these objections; for these little articles of comfort cannot be dispensed with; and we have no better answer than to propose small external pockets with lapels, which would not spoil the symmetry of the figure; or else, if you are obstinate, good reader, and are determined on throwing away your money upon waistcoats – then keep your frock-coat open; but have a waistcoat either of the same colour, or of some respectable hue, and have it made jacket-fashion, as good behind as before. For ourselves, however, we confess we shall prefer

"That you, my friend, whatever wind should blow,
Might traverse England safely to and fro,
An honest man, close-button'd to the chin, —
Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within."

Any quantity of ornament that might be deemed requisite, could easily be applied to this kind of coat – so as to make it a fit habiliment for occasions of ceremony: in its present state, it retains the stiffness of its military origin, (for it may be called an invention of the Great Duke's, of him who wore it on the glorious fields of Salamanca and Waterloo, and it came into fashion at the close of the Peninsular war:) but it may be embroidered as much as you please, or its stuff may be varied ad infinitum, from Manchester fustian to the finest Genoa velvet. Not that embroidery is always consonant with good taste, when applied to male attire. A plain, dark, close-buttoned coat, whether of cloth or velvet, fastened with a single row of diamond or steel buttons in front, would be far more effective, as an object of good taste, than if its seams were all covered with gold lace.

As for the colour of coats, we do not intend to speak of this till we come to the subject of military costume. We leave it awhile to the taste of the nation, – colours have always served as marks of national differences. We beg leave to subjoin a few words in behalf of a poor little garment that has hardly any grown-up friends to say any thing for it; and which, when it left school, either went into a manufactory, or was sent to sea – we mean the jacket. In warm weather, for a country walk, for a ride, for a game at billiards or cricket, even for shooting, (experto crede) – a jacket is a capital contrivance; while for a sail, whether down the Thames or up the Mediterranean, it is indispensable. We do not appreciate the jacket as we ought, or rather we do not remember the good service it did us at Eton and Harrow – when the limbs were free and supple, and when their full activity was called into constant play, who would have thought of a coat? It was only when we began to fancy ourselves men, and to think that our claims to virility lay in the skirts of our coats, that we discarded the jacket. 'Twas an ungrateful proceeding: – school friendships ought not to be broken – and we recommend you, courteous reader, some day or other to lay your dignity aside for a while, and indulge in the innocent freedom of a jacket: you will get through any work you have on hand twice as quickly. The beaux of Queen Elizabeth's and King Jamie's courts wore nothing else but jackets, you know, with their short mantles hanging in the most dégagé manner from the shoulders: – and truly we do not see why a man in a well-cut jacket, properly decorated, should not be entitled to as much admiration in his civil capacity, as when he has the honour to hold her Majesty's commission in the Tenth, and avails himself of that privilege to disturb the equanimity of the beauty and fashion of England. Much may be said upon all sides in this matter: the jacket would now be deemed too familiar without a sword and sabretache; the frock might be considered as slovenly; about the habit-de-cour there can be no dispute; as for the dress-coat, it ought to be sent to Monmouth Street; waistcoats should be given to your valet. Speedily judge for yourself, tasty reader; but let us have a garment calculated for real use, and real ornament; no pretence, no sham; a fine manly figure, and a covering worthy of it, voilà la chose essentielle!

To criticize a gown is always a more pleasing task than to waste one's patience upon a coat; and, independently of this, the æsthetician has to lay aside nearly all terms of reprobation, in alluding to the habiliments of ladies of the present day. Women have never wandered into so many absurdities of form with regard to this main article of dress, as men have; they have been volatile enough in the material, and colour, and ornament of their gowns; but in shape and cut they have kept much nearer to the golden rule of comfort and utility than the lords of the creation. The period of greatest aberration in this matter may be taken as extending from the latter quarter of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth. During those long years, absurdity and inconvenience seemed to hold paramount sway in the wardrobes of the fair; and to apply the word "taste," in its good sense, to any portion of the female dress, at least in England, is hardly allowable within the limits mentioned. Look at your grandmothers' pictures, or turn over the leaves of any edition of Hogarth's works, and the broadness of the caricature cannot fail to strike you. That women should ever have consented so greatly to travestie the beautiful proportions of their fair frames; that they should ever have so completely lost sight of the main principles of decoration and comeliness, is inconceivable. The mischief all originated in France; and it must have come, in the first instance, from the deformity, either of body or mind, of some crabbed old dowager at Versailles; no young unsophisticated girl would ever of herself have invented the hoop or the négligé. But those times have happily gone by; and after passing through a transition state of minor absurdity – (look to the prints of the Belle Assemblée from 1800 to 1815) – we have thrown away all unnatural short waists; we have discarded scanty skirts; stomachers have been sent nearly to the right about; and with the exception of a single opisthodomic folly – to which we do not care to allude more particularly – our better halves, and our fair friends, seem to have entered upon an age of good taste and good sense. The happy change has been brought about partly by some women of good sense consulting their own ideas of utility and simplicity – partly by a return of public taste to the dresses of the middle ages, and also of the times of Charles the First. Ladies have at length become aware, that novelty of form is not essential to beauty of effect – and they have opened their eyes to the truth, that the less they disfigure the proportions of their persons, the more becomingly and the more comfortably will they be clad.

The main divisions of lady's gown – every milliner understands what we mean – are the corsage or body, and the jupe or skirt. They are as independent of each other as the upper and lower divisions of a wasp – (indeed, some giddy girls have carried the similitude too far, and have been seen to approximate in their lacing contractions to that wonderfully small animal passage) – and these two divisions of the garment are to be formed and ornamented on totally different principles. By the common practice and consent of all womankind, it appears that the lower portion should be loose and flowing; and that the upper should be so conformable to the contour of the body, as to show that contour to the best advantage; these must be taken as the fundamental definitions upon which all laws of female dress are to be tried. And, first of all, of the skirt; if its form is to be loose and flowing, it should be made to derive its beauty from the curves and breaks and folds which drapery, partly suspended, partly at rest on the ground, will afford. It must be ample and symmetrically proportioned; and its material must have sufficient stiffness as well as pliability – drapery always requires a certain volume of material to be effective. The extreme limit of a scanty skirt, and its poor effect, as well as its great inconvenience, may be judged of from the figures and pictures of the old Egyptian priestesses – they look very statuesque, and make capital caryatides for temples – but they will not bear a comparison with those lovely Athenian virgins, winding round the Parthenon, in their sacred pilgrimage to the shrine of their tutelar goddess. Drapery, then, must be ample, if it is to fall in graceful folds. But drapery, only suspended, will not produce the entire effect desired; it will hang in merely longitudinal lines, whereas one of the most pleasing effects produced by it is caused by those abrupt breaks in a fold, those sudden cuttings off of volutes, which are only to be seen when part of the drapery is in horizontal repose, or rests partially on the ground. Hence short gowns are not so graceful as long ones; they are beautiful at any time, it is true, and when the wearer is seated, produce somewhat of the effect alluded to; but for a woman to be robed with all the combined influences of grace and dignity, she must allow her dress to trail partially around her. Think upon the short garments of many classes of peasantry, and think of the train of a lady when dressed for court – we speak of their form, not of their substance – it will easily be seen how much dignity is conferred by length. The utility of long skirts is not so easy to be proved as their beauty; but this is only on the score of the difficulty in keeping them clean; as for warmth and comfort, the advantage is quite on their side. Our fair contemporaries, however, seem to have arrived at a reasonable and happy medium upon that point; they never wore better-formed skirts than at the present day. A gown, if properly made, and without any stinting of stuff, and if that stuff have any thing like substance, needs no adventitious aids to give it sufficient amplitude of contour; let our gentle readers take the hint; they will otherwise militate against one of the main laws of good taste. Let them only look at the portraits of their ancestors in the middle of the last century but one – let them look at Hollar's prints, and if they are open to conviction they will agree in what we say.

If the skirt is to be ample, the body should be confined to the natural shape of the human frame; and the more nearly it is so, the more graceful and effective will it become. Do what we will, distort the sleeves and waist as much as we may, we shall never come up to the symmetry of Dame Nature; she is a better milliner than any in Regent Street; and if the ladies would have their corsages made after her pattern in all cases, they would find their clothes fitting better, pinching less, and keeping them much warmer. Women assert – and we are not competent to dispute the point with them – that they need an enveloping support for the body; in fact, that they must have corsets: be it so: there is no harm in the article itself, provided the utility of it can be clearly proved; but there is much harm in it, if, by an abuse of its powers, this same thing is made to distort the body, and to injure the internal organization of the human frame. As far as beauty of form is concerned, whatever intrenches on the proportion of natural shape is intrinsically contradictory to it: let no woman imagine that she has a fine figure, if she can lace herself into a diameter of nine or ten inches; for by so doing, she disturbs the harmony of all the curves – all the lines of beauty, as Hogarth calls them – with which she has been so richly endowed; she fails of her effect, and, instead of beauty, produces only absurdity. Still the corsage of her dress should fit close; and for this to be possible, there must be a well-fitting corset beneath; but it need not pinch or squeeze the least in the world; let it fit close; that is enough. It is no doubt uncommonly convenient for a lusty alderman's wife of forty to reduce herself to the proportions of "fair seventeen;" but she ought to be able to reduce the whole frame in the same ratio; otherwise to pull in at the waist till the idea of suffocation is painfully evident to the most careless beholder, and yet to leave the bust with the symmetry of Minerva Victrix, is a gross and palpable absurdity. Far from being the το χαλον, this is the το χαχον of all female decoration.

And, if the waist should not be metamorphosed into unnatural smallness, so the sleeves should not be puffed out into preternatural enlargement. Those abominable gigot-sleeves, so well named from our old familiar family-joint – they were utter abominations; and those bishop's sleeves – they were foolish caricatures. Ladies are doing much better now: either, in the evening, they trust to nature herself to set off their arms as she pleases, or else, in the morning, they envelope them in a covering that hardly destroys the beauty of their form. This is as it should be: one of the principal characteristics of female grace consists, as any sculptor can tell you, in the narrowness of the shoulders – just as of male dignity, in their breadth. What, then, could ever have made ladies suppose that they were ornamenting themselves by extending the upper portions of their sleeves until they measured full three feet in a direct transversal line? We are now witnesses of better ideas; the neck, the shoulders, and the arms are allowed to make a continuous series of curves. The corsage is simple in its form, and the only attempt at enrichment is the pendant border of lace, or other material, that gives due relief, without destroying the harmony of the outline.

As for form, then, we congratulate the ladies on having attained and preserved so much excellence in their habiliments. We have only to recommend, that they do not rashly try to innovate upon what they now delight in; or rather, if new ideas are to be introduced, that they control them by a perpetual reference to the form and framework of nature, as their best, indeed their only, guide to what is true and beautiful. Thanks to the manufacturing skill of European nations in general, and of our own more particularly, there is no lack of material for women to choose their dresses from. The loom teems with all kinds of substances; and every requirement of climate, every caprice of fancy, can now be gratified at a reasonable rate. One of the best symptoms of taste amongst Englishwomen is the increasing use of the finer woollen fabrics. They are well suited to the climate, and they are calculated to make graceful habiliments in whatever manner they are employed. But cotton is an immense boon for the mass of the population; and, by contributing to the cleanliness of the lower orders, has been of great value to the health of the community. The fact is, that it is of little consequence what an elegant woman wears, as far as her appearance is concerned. All clothes require, as the French say, to be bien portés. An awkward woman will never look well in any thing, however fine. Let ladies consult their own comfort, their own purposes, and the material they hit upon will certainly become them. We have now, too, ample means of decoration: furs, and lace, and ribands, and embroidery, are gradually coming within the grasp of large classes of society; we have to fear rather a deluge of ornament than the opposite; and, if caution is to be used in any direction, it is in this. The true secret of female ornament is, that it should be genuine: no sham flowers; no make-believe lapels; no collars only stitched on to the edge of the gown; no bows that do not untie; no ribands without some positive use; all false ornament should be avoided as the direct contrary to what is tasteful and becoming. If lace is worn, let it be of thread or silk – not of cotton; if fur, let it be from the real animal – not dyed or imitated; if jewels, let them be few but good, and set in real gold – no abominable sham decoration.

And what are we to say about cloaks, and pelisses, and shawls, and the other preservers of gowns, that correspond to the outward comforters of man? They flutter about in shop windows, thick as gnats in a summer sunbeam: many of them are elegant; not a few useful; some are quite loves! – witness the polka-pelisse – others are frumpy and old-fashioned; such as the cloak with a deep cape of ever-to-be-respected maternal memory. But there are two which we single out as simple and unspoiled, and indeed unspoilable, items of dress, which ought to be in fashion as long as women love pretty things. One is the Spanish mantilla; that plain black scarf which forms the sweetest disguisement a woman can put on: by its simplicity, and its obvious utility, it claims our approbation at the first glance. The other is the Indian shawl; that marvellous product of the mountain loom, fit for any climate, for any temperature, for any complexion, and for any purpose; women may rack their inventions for ever, but they never will invent a garment more generally useful, more constantly becoming, than this.

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS

No. IV

Dryden on Chaucer

Nothing is gained by attempting to deny or to disguise a known and plain fact, simply because it happens to be a distasteful one – Time has estranged us from Chaucer. Dryden and Pope we read with easy, unearned pleasure. Their speech, their manner of mind, and their facile verse, are of our age, almost of our own day. The two excellent, graceful, and masterly poets belong, both of them, to THIS NEW WORLD. Go back a little, step over an imperceptible line, to the contemporary of Dryden, Milton, and you seem to have overleaped some great chronological boundary; you have transported yourself into THAT OLD WORLD. Whether the historical date, or the gigantic soul, or the learned art, make the separation, the fact is clear, that the poet of the "Paradise Lost" stands decidedly further off; and, more or less, you must acquire the taste and intelligence of the poem. Why, up to this hour, probably, there are three-fifths of the poem that you have not read; or, if you have read all, and go along with all, you have yourself had experience of the progress, and have felt your capacity of Milton grow and dilate. So has it been with your capacity for Shakspeare, or you are a truant and an idler. To comprehend with delight Milton and Shakspeare as poets, you need, from the beginning, a soul otherwise touched, and gifted for poesy, than Pope claims of you, or Dryden. The great elder masters, being original, require of you springs of poesy welling in your own spirit; while the two latter, imitative artists of luxury, exact from you nothing more, in the way of poetical endowment, than the gusto of ease and luxurious enchantment. To prefer, for some intellectual journey, the smooth wafture of an air-gliding ear – to look with pleasure upon a dance of bright-hued images – to hear more sweetness in Philomela's descant than in a Turkish concert – to be ever so little sensible to the bliss of dreams – ever so little sick of reality, and ever so little glad to be rid of it for an hour – is qualification enough to make you a willing and able reader of verse in the latter school. But if you are to prefer the style of the antecessors, other conditions must come in. It is, then, not a question merely whether you see and love in Imogen the ideal of a wife in love with her husband, or take to the surpassing and inimitable portraiture of the "lost archangel" in Satan; but whether you feel the sweetness of Imogen's soul in the music of her expressions – whether you hear the tones of the Will that not the thunder has quelled, in that voice to which all "the hollow deep of hell resounded." If you do, assuredly you will perceive in yourself that these are discernments of a higher cast, and that place you upon a higher degree when critics on poetry come to be ranked, than when you had nothing better to say for yourself than that your bosom bled at the Elegy on an Unfortunate Young Lady, or that you varied with Alexander to the varying current of the Ode of St Cecilia's Day.

We call Chaucer the Father of our Poetry, or its Morning Star. The poetical memory of the country stretches up to him, and not beyond. The commanding impression which he has made upon the minds of his people dates from his own day. The old poets of England and Scotland constantly and unanimously acknowledge him for their master. Greatest names, Dunbar, Douglas, Spenser, Milton, carry on the tradition of his renown and his reign.

In part he belongs to, and in part he lifts himself out of, his age. The vernacular poetry of reviving Europe took a strong stamp from one principal feature in the manners of the times. The wonderful political institution of Chivalry – turned into a romance in the minds of those in whose persons the thing itself subsisted – raised up a fanciful adoration of women into a law of courtly life; or, at the least, of courtly verse, to which there was nothing answerable in the annals of the old world. For though the chief and most potent of human passions has never lacked its place at the side of war in the song that spoke of heroes – though two beautiful captives, and a runaway wife bestowed by the Goddess of Beauty, and herself the paragon of beauty to all tongues and ages, have grounded the Iliad– though the Scæan gate, from which Hector began to flee his inevitable foe, and where that goddess-born foe himself stooped to destiny, be also remembered for the last parting of a husband and a wife – though Circe and Calypso have hindered homebound Ulysses from the longing arms of Penelope – and Jason, leading the flower of a prior and yet more heroic generation, must first win the heart of Medea before he may attain the Golden Fleece – though the veritable nature of the human being have ever thus, through its strongest passion, imaged itself in its most exquisite mirror, Poetry – yet there did, in reawaking Europe, a new love-poetry arise, distinctively characterised by the omnipotence which it ascribed to the Love-god, legitimating in him an usurped supremacy, and exhibiting, in artificial and wilful excess, that passion which the older poets drew in its powerful but unexaggerated and natural proportions.

Thenceforwards the verse of the South and of the North, and alike the forgotten and the imperishable, all attest the predominancy of the same star. Diamond eyes and ruby lips stir into sound the lute of the Troubadours and the Minnesingers. Famous bearers of either name were knights distinguished in the lists and in the field. And who is it that stole from heaven the immortal fire of genius for Petrarch? Laura. Who is the guide of Dante through Paradise? Beatrice. In our own language, the spirit of love breathes, more than in any other poet, in Spenser. His great poem is one Lay of Love, embodying and associating that idealized, chivalrous, and romantic union of "fierce warres and faithful loves." It hovers above the earth in some region exempt from mortal footing – wars such as never were, loves such as never were – and all – Allegory! One ethereal extravagance! A motto may be taken from him to describe that ascendancy of the love-planet in the poetical sky of renewed Europe. It alludes to the love-freaks of the old Pagan deities upon earth, in which the King of the Gods excelled, as might be supposed, all the others.

"While thus on earth great Jove these pageants play'd,
The winged boy did thrust into his throne;
And scoffing thus, unto his mother sayde,
'Lo! now the heavens obey to me alone
And take me for their Jove, now Jove to earth is gone.'"

The pure truth of the poetical inspiration which rests upon Spenser's poems, when compared to the absolute departure from reality apparent in the manners of his heroes and heroines, and in the physical world which they inhabit, is a phenomenon which may well perplex the philosophical critic. You will hardly dare to refuse to any true poet the self-election of his materials. Grant, therefore, to Spenser knight-errantry – grant him dragons, and enchanters, and enchanted gardens, satyrs, and the goddess Night on her chariot – grant him love as the single purpose of human life – a faëry power, leading with a faëry band his faëry world! But while you accept this Poem as the lawful consummation and ending of that fabulous intellectual system or dream which had subsisted with authority for centuries, it is wonderful to see how, in the very day of Spenser, the STAGE recovers humanity and nature to poetry – recalls poetry to nature and humanity! Shakspeare and Spenser, what contemporaries! The world that is, and the world that is not, twinned in time and in power!

This exaggeration of an immense natural power, Love – making, one might almost say, man's worship of woman the great religion of the universe, and which was the "amabilis insania" of the new poetry – long exercised an unlimited monarchy in the poetical mind of the reasonable Chaucer. See the longest and most desperate of his Translations – which Tyrwhitt supposes him to have completed, though we have only two fragments – seven thousand verses in place of twenty-two thousand – the "Romaunt of the Rose," otherwise entitled the "Art of Love," "wherein are shewed the helps and furtherances, as also the lets and impediments, that lovers have in their suits." Then comes the work upon which Sir Philip Sydney seems to rest the right of Chaucer to the renown of an excellent poet having the insight of his art – the five long books which celebrate the type of all true lovers, Troilus, and of all false traitresses, Creseide. Then there is "The Legende of Goode Women," the loving heroines, fabulous and historical, of Lemprière's dictionary. The first name is decisive upon the signification of "goode" – Cleopatras, Queene of Egypt – Tisbe of Babylon – Dido, Queene of Carthage – Hipsiphile and Medea, betrayed both by the same "root of false lovers, Duk Jason" – Lucrece of Rome – Ariadne of Athens – Philomen – Phillis – Hypermnestra.

The "Assemblee of Foules" is all for love and allegory. Chaucer has been reading Scipio's dream. Whereon he himself dreams that "Affrican" comes to him, and carries him away into a sort of Love's Paradise. There were trees with leaves "grene as emeraude," a garden full of "blossomed bowis," running waters in which small fishes light, with red fins and silver-bright scales, dart to and fro, flowers of all tinctures, all manner of live creatures, and a concert commingled of stringed instruments, of leaves murmuring to the wind, and of singing-birds. Under a tree, beside a spring, was "Cupide our Lord" forging and filing his arrows – his daughter (who is she?) assisting, and tempering them to various effects. A host of allegorical persons are in attendance of course; and there, too, stands a Temple of Venus, described from the Teseida of Boccaccio. But the principal personage whom Chaucer encounters, and the most busily engaged, is the great goddess, Nature. It is St Valentine's Day, whereon all the birds choose their mates for the coming year. The particular business to which this anniversary of the genial Saint is devoted was intelligible, no doubt, to the quick wits of Chaucer's age, if to the dull ones of ours a little perplexing. Nature held in her hand "a formell eagle, of shape the gentillest," benign, goodly, and so full of every virtue, that "Nature herself had blisse to looke on her, and oft her beeke to kisse." The question is, who shall be her mate? Three "tercell eagles" offer themselves, and eagerly plead their claims. The four orders of fowl, those "of ravine," those that feed on insects, the water-fowl, and those that eat seed, are by nature required to elect each a delegate that shall opine on the matter. The birds of prey depute "the tercelet of the faucon." He gives the somewhat startling if otherwise plausible advice, that the worthiest of knighthood, and that has the longest used it, and that is of the greatest estate, and of blood the gentlest, shall be preferred, leaving the decision of those merits to the lady eagle. The goose, on the behalf of the water-fowl, merely advises that he who is rejected shall console himself by choosing another love; which ignominious and anserine suggestion is received by the "gentill foules" with a general laugh. The "turtle-dove," for the seed-eating birds, indignantly protests against this outrageous and impracticable proposal. The cuckoo, for the worm-eaters, provided that he may have his own "make," is willing that the three wooers shall live each solitary and sullen. The "sperhawke," the "gentle tercelet," and the "ermelon," severally reply in high scorn to the goose, to the duck, who seconds the goose, and to the cuckoo. Dame Nature ends the plea by referring the choice to the "formell eagle" herself, who begs a year's respite, which is granted her. The rest, for the day is now well spent, choose their mates – an elect choir sing a roundel in honour of Nature; and at the "shouting" that, when the song was done, the fowls made in flying away, the Poet awoke! Amongst the hard points of this enigmatical love-allegory are, that when the first lover, a "royal tercell," has ended his plea, the "formell eagle" blushes! as does afterwards the turtle upon the proposal made of changing an old love for a new, and that the duck swears by his hat. Be the specific intent what it may, the general bearing speaks for itself, namely, the unmeasured lifting-up of Love's supremacy – though we cannot help feeling how much nearer Chaucer was to the riddling days of poetry than we are. Did the old Poet translate from plain English into the language of Birds, and expect us to re-translate? Or are these blushes and this knighthood amongst birds merely regular adjuncts in any fable that attributes to the inferior creation human powers of reason and speech? It is curious that the rapacious fowls are presented as excelling in high and delicate sentiment! They are the aristocracy of the birds, plainly; yet an aristocracy described as of "ravine" seems to receive but an equivocal compliment.

The House of Fame is in Three Books. The title bespeaks Allegory; and the machinery which justifies the allegory, as usual is a Dream. But the title does not bespeak, what is nevertheless true, that here, too, love steals in. During the entire First Book, the poet dreams himself to be in the temple of Venus, all graven over with Æneas's history, taken point by point from the Mantuan. The history belongs properly to its place; not because Æneas is the son of Venus, but because the course of events is conducted by Jupiter consonantly to the prayer of Venus. Why the House of Venus takes up a third part of the poem to be devoted to the House of Fame is less apparent. Is the poet crazed with love? and so driven against method to dream perforce of the divinity who rules over his destiny, as she did over her son's? Or does the fame conferred by Virgil upon Æneas make it reasonable that the dream should proceed by the House of one goddess to that of the other? Having surveyed the whole, the poet goes out to look in what part of the world he is, when Jupiter's eagle seizes upon him, and carries him up to the city and palace of Fame, seated above the region of tempests, but apparently below the stars, and there sets him down. The Second Book is spent in their conversation during their flight. Some singular inventions occur. Every word spoken on earth, is carried up by natural reverberation to the House of Fame; but, there arrived, puts on the likeness of the wight, in his habit as he lives, that has uttered it. The palace itself stands upon a rock of ice, inscribed with names. Those on the southern face are nearly melted away by the heat of the sun; those on the northern stand sharp and clear. Some of the minstrels – Orpheus of old, and the later Breton Glaskirion, he hears playing yet. The great Epopeists are less agreeably occupied. 'Omer,' and aiding him, 'Dares,' 'Titus,' 'Lolius,' 'Guido' the Colempnis, that is, of Colonna, and English Galfrida, standing high upon a pillar of iron, 'are busie to bear up Troy' upon their shoulders. Virgil, upon a pillar 'of tinned iron clere,' supports 'the fame of pius Æneas.' Near, upon a pillar of iron, 'wrought full sternly,' the 'grete poete, Dan Lucan' bears upon his shoulders the 'fame of Julius and Pompee.' An innumerable company kneel before the goddess herself, beseeching her for renown. She deals out her favours capriciously – to one company of well-deservers, utter silence and oblivion – to another, like meritorious, loud slanders and infamy – to another assembly, with similar claims, golden, immortal praises. A fourth and a fifth company have done good for the pure sake of goodness, and request of her to hide their deeds and their name. To the one set she readily grants their asking. To the other not – but bids her trumpet "Eolus" ring out their works so that all the world may hear, which happens accordingly. Another throng have been sheer idlers on the earth, doers of neither good nor ill. They desire to pass for worthy, wise, good, rich, and in particular for having been favourably regarded by the brightest eyes. The whole of this undeserved reputation is instantaneously granted them. Another troop follow with like desert and with like request. Eolus takes up as bidden his "black clarioun," and blazons their dishonour. A troop of evil-doers ask for good fame. The goddess is not in the humour, and takes no notice of them. The last comers of all are delighters in wickedness for its own sake, and request their due ill fame. Amongst them is "that ilke shrewe that brente the temple of Isidis in Athenes." This is, no doubt, the gentleman who burned the Temple of Diana at Ephesus for that laudable purpose. The goddess is complaisant, and grants them exactly their desire.

There stands by the first, a second House of Fame of a strange sort. It is built cage-like of twigs, is sixty miles in length, whirls incessantly about, and is full of all imaginable noises – the rumours of all events, private and public, that happen upon earth, including murrains, tempests, and conflagrations. The eagle gets the dreamer in, and he notes the humours of the place. This is most remarkable, that as soon as any one of the innumerable persons, in press, there hears a tiding, he forthwith whispers it with an addition to another, and he, with a further eking, to a third, until in a little while it is known every where, and has attained immeasurable magnitude – as from a spark the fire is kindled that burns down a city. The tidings fly out at windows. A true and a false tiding jostled in their way out, and after some jangling for precedency, agreed to fly together. Since which time, no lie is without some truth, and no truth without some falsehood. An unknown person of great reverence and authority making his appearance, the poet, apparently disturbed with awe, awakes, wonders, and falls to writing his dream.

The criticism of so strange a composition is hardly to be attempted. It shows a bold and free spirit of invention, and some great and poetical conceiving. The wilful, now just, now perverse dispensing of fame, belongs to a mind that has meditated upon the human world. The poem is one of the smaller number, which seems hitherto to stand free from the suspicion of having been taken from other poets. For Chaucer helped himself to every thing worth using that came to hand.

The earlier writings of Chaucer have several marks that belong to the literature of the time.

First, an excessive and critical self-dedication of the writer to the service of Love, this power being for the most part arrayed as a sovereign divinity, now in the person of the classical goddess Venus, and now of her son, the god Cupid. Secondly, an ungovernable propensity to allegorical fiction. The scheme of innumerable poems is merely allegorical. In others, the allegorical vein breaks in from time to time. Thirdly, a Dream was a vehicle much in use for effecting the transit of the fancy from the real to the poetical world. Chaucer has many dreams. Fourthly, interminable delight in expatiating upon the simplest sights and sounds of the natural world. This overflows all Chaucer's earlier poems. In some, he largely describes the scene of adventure – in some, the desire of solace in field and wood leads him into the scene. Fifthly, a truly magnanimous indifference to the flight of time and to the cost of parchment, expressed in the dilatation of a slender matter through an infinite series of verses. You wonder at the facility of writing in the infancy of art. It seems to resemble the exuberant, untiring activity of children, prompted by a vital delight which overflows into the readiest utterance; and, in proportion to its display, achieving the less that is referable to any purpose of enduring use. Even the admired and elaborately-written Troilus and Creseide is a great specimen. The action is nearly null; the discoursing of the persons and of the poet endless. It is not, then, simply the facility of the eight-syllabled couplet, as in that interminable Chaucer's Dreme, that betrays; there is a dogged purpose of going on for ever.

Of the poems expressly of Love, are, "The Romaunt of the Rose – Troilus and Creseide – The Legende of Goode Women – The Assemblee of Foules – Of Queen Annelida and False Arcita – The Complaint of the Blacke Knight – The Complaint of Mars and Venus – Of the Cuckou and the Nightingale – The Court of Love – Chaucer's Dreme – The Flour and the Leaf – The First Book of the House of Fame" – and, if you choose, the "Boke of the Duchess," which is John of Gaunt's mourning for his lost wife. There must be something like thirty thousand verses, long, short, in couplets or stanzas, which may be said to be dedicated to LOVE!

And of them all, only the four following Poems tread the plain ground – have their footing upon the same earth that we walk – Troilus and Creseide, The Legende of Goode Women, Queen Annelida and False Arcita, the Complaint of the Blacke Knight. We grant them for human and real, notwithstanding that most of the persons are of a very romantic and apocryphal stamp – because they are not presented in dreams or visions, and are not allegorical creations of beings out of the air, Impersonations of Ideas. They are offered as men and women, downright flesh and blood, and so are to be understood. Nevertheless even here, when Chaucer is nearest home, taking his subject in his own day, and putting his own friend and patron in verse, there is a trick of the riddling faculty, since the Blacke Knight lodging, during the love-month of May, in the greenwood, and bemoaning all day long his hard love-hap, represents, it is presumed, old stout John of Gaunt in love, who might utter his passion, uncertain of requital,

"In groans that thunder love, in sighs of fire;"

but who, most assuredly, did not build himself a forest bower, and annually retire from court and castle, to spend there a lovesick May.

Of absolutely fanciful creations are, as we have seen, the "Assemblee of Foules," and the "Complaint of Mars and Venus," which the poet overhears a fowl singing on St Valentine's Day ere sunrise. "Of the Cuckou and Nightingale: " the poet, between waking and sleeping, hears the bird of hate and the bird of music dispute against and for love. When the nightingale takes leave of him, he wakes. "The Court of Love." The poet, at the age of eighteen, is summoned by Mercury to do his obeisance at the Court of Love, "a lite before the Mount of Citheree," called further on Citheron. He is, on this occasion, not asleep at all, but dreams away like any other poet, with his eyes open, in broad daylight.

In Chaucer thus we find every kind of possible allegory. There is the thoroughly creative allegory, when thoughts are turned into beings, and impersonated abstract ideas appear as deities, and as attendants on deities. This is the unsubstantial allegory, which has, it must be owned, a different meaning to different climes and times. For example, to the belief of the old Greeks, Aphrodite and Eros, albeit essentially thoughts, had flesh that could be touched, wounded even, and veins, in which for blood ran ichor. In the verses of our old poet and his contemporaries, Venus and Cupid are as active as they were with Homer and Anacreon; only, that now their substance has imperceptibly grown attenuate. So that in the "Assemblee of Foules," for example, these two celestial potentates are upon an equal footing, for subsistency and reality, with the great goddess Dame Nature, who seems to be more of modern than of ancient invention, and with Plesaunce, Arrai, Beautee, Courtesie, Craft, Delite, Gentlenesse, and others enow, whom the poet found in attendance upon the Love-god and his mother. With or without belief, this belongs to all the ages of poetry, from the beginning to the consummation of the world.

Then there is the disguising allegory – for by no other appellation can it be described – which may be of a substantial kind. For example, the Black Knight, as we have seen, forlorn in love, builds himself a lodge in the wild-wood, to which he resorts during the month of May, and mourns the livelong day under the green boughs. If the conjecture which Tyrwhitt throws out, but without much insisting upon it, that John of Gaunt, wooing his Duchess Blanche, is here figured, this is a disguising allegory of the lowest ideal idealization. The conjecture of Tyrwhitt, whether exact or not, quite agrees to the art of poetical invention in that age.

That old and deeply-rooted species of fable, which ascribes to the inferior animals human mind and manners, was another prevalent allegory. Usually, the picture of humanity so conveyed is of a general nature. But if, as has been guessed, the first and noblest of the Three Tercels that woo the "formell eagle," in the Assemblee of Foules, be the same John of Gaunt wooing the same Blanche, here would be two varieties of allegory – the disguising of particular persons and events, and the veiling of human actions and passions, under the semblance of the inferior kinds – mixed in this part of the poem, which, in as much as it also introduces wholly ideal personages, would, if the key to the enigma has been truly found, very fully exemplify the allegorizing genius of the old poetry.

Certainly, many of the old poems, unless they are interpreted to allude, in this manner, to particular persons and occurrences, appear to want due meaning, such as this Complaint of the nameless Black Knight, this Wooing of the Three Tercels, and the faithless Hawk whom Canace hears. We may often feel ourselves justified in presuming an allusion, although in regard to the true import of the allusion it may be that Time has first locked the door, and then thrown the key over the wall.

Of one Poem, to which we have hitherto but alluded, we feel ourselves now called on to give an analysis, both for sake of its own exquisite beauty and surpassing loveliness, and for sake of Dryden's immortal paraphrase – The Floure and the Leaf.

There is in the plan of "The Floure and the Leaf," a peculiarity which is not easily accounted for. In the other poems of Chaucer, which are thrown into the form of an adventure or occurrence personal to the relater, he relates in person his own experience. Here the parts of experiencing, and of relating an adventure, are both transferred to an unknown person of the other sex. It is also remarkable that this difference in the personality of the relater does not appear until the very close of the poem, and then incidentally, one of the imaginary persons addressing the relater as "Daughter." In the adventure, which is simply the witnessing a Vision, there is nothing that might not as well have happened to Chaucer himself as to dame or damsel.

In a sweet season of spring, a lady who, for some cause unknown to herself, cannot sleep, rises at the peep of day, and wanders out into a lofty and pleasant grove, where a slender unworn path, not easily seen, leads her to a fair arbour of elaborate workmanship, and so framed as that the sitter within sees, unseen, whatsoever passes without; adjoining which is a singularly beautiful medlar-tree in full blossom. A goldfinch leaps from bough to bough, eating buds and blossoms his fill, and then sings most 'passing sweetly,' and is answered by an unseen nightingale, in a note 'so merry' that all the wood rang again. Whilst the lady adventuress sits upon the turfed seat listening, a new burst, as if of angelical voices, is heard. The harmony proceeds from "a world of ladies," who march out from a neighbouring grove, clad in richly-jewelled surcoats of white velvet, each wearing on her head a chaplet of green leaves, laurel, or woodbine, or Agnus Castus. They dance and sing soberly, surrounding one who wears on her head a crown of gold, has a branch of Agnus Castus in her hand, excels them all in beauty, appears to be their queen, and sings a roundel having some allusion to the Green Leaf, and advance, dancing and singing, into a meadow fronting the arbour. The song is not given – its name is in half unintelligible French. Now a thundering of trumpets is heard: and innumerable "men of arms" issue from the grove from which the ladies came. Trumpets, kings-of-arms, heralds, and pursuivants clad in white, and wearing chaplets of leaves, ride foremost. Then follow Nine Knights magnificently armed, excepting that on their unhelmed heads are set crowns of laurel. Upon each three henchmen attend, clad in white, with green chaplets, and severally carrying the casque, the shield, and the lance of him they serve. Last, issue a great rout of knights, well-mounted, wearing chaplets, and bearing boughs of oak, laurel, hawthorn, woodbine, and other kinds. They joust gallantly for an hour or more: the laurel-wearers overbearing all opposition. At last, the whole company dismount, and move by two and two towards the ladies, who, at their approach, break off song and dance, and go to meet them. Every lady takes a knight by the hand, and in this fashion they pace towards a fair laurel, of such prodigious amplitude as that a hundred persons might rest at ease under the shadow of its diffused branches. All incline with obeisance to the tree; and then sing and dance around it; ever a lady and a knight going together. All these are, (but as is only afterwards at the close made known to the spectatress of these occurrences,) as you may easily surmise, the homagers of the Leaf. Now the homagers of the Flower enter upon the stage. From the depth of the wide champaign there come roaming in a great company, ladies and knights, and ever a knight and a lady hand in hand. They are all richly clad in green, and wear chaplets of flowers; green-robed minstrels, with instruments of all sorts, and wearing variegated chaplets of flowers precede. They dance up to a great tuft of flowers in the midst of the mead; about which they incline reverently, and one sings the praise of the "Margarete" or Daisy, the others answering in chorus; meanwhile the hour grows to noon; the sun waxes hot; the unsheltered flowers wither; the ladies and the knights of the Flower are scorched with his rays; then the wind rises, and furiously blows down all the flowers; then comes on a terrible storm of mixed hail and rain; wets the knights and ladies of the Flower to the skin, and at last blows over. But the white-habited servants of the Leaf have stood under their laurel, shaded from the fiery noon beams, and shrouded from the tempest; and now, moved with ruth and pity, come forwards to tender their aid. The Queen of the Leaf greets, with loving sisterly compassion, the Queen of the Flower. The party of the Leaf proceed to more effectual relief than soothing words – hewing down boughs and trees to make "stately fires" for drying their wet clothes, and searching the plain for virtuous herbs to make for the blistered and drouthy sufferers salves and salads. She of the Leaf now invites Her of the Flower to supper, who accepts as courteously. The Leaf company, at the bidding of their mistress, provide horses for the Flower company. At this juncture the Nightingale, who all day long, sitting hidden in the laurel, sang "the service longing to May," flies to the hand of the Leaf-queen, and sings on as diligently as before – the Goldfinch, whom the heat had forced from his blossom of "medle-tree" into the cool bushes, betakes himself in like manner to his Flower-queen's hand, and sings there; and fast by the arbour, where our spectatress has remained all the while seeing and unseen, ladies and knights ride along and away. Only one lady in white rides alone after the rest. To her she comes out, and enquires what the wandering show means. The answer, given with courteous explicitness, imports in sum that those who wear chaplets of Agnus Castus are virgins; the laurel wearers, knights who were never conquered; the Nine most distinguished knights being the Nine Worthies; with whom are the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne, and many "knightes olde" of the Garter. Those who wear woodbine

"Be such as never were
To love untrewe in word, thoghte, ne dede."

They wear the Leaf, because the beauty of the Leaf lasts. But the followers of the Flower are "those that loved idlenesse and not delite of no besinesse, but for to hunte and hawke and pley in medes, and many other such idle dedes." They wear the perishable Flower accordingly. The informant ends with enquiring of her auditress, whether she will, for the years to come, serve the Leaf or the Flower; who in answer vows her observance to the Leaf. The deep implication of the ancient mythology in the reviving poetry, here again discovers itself. It appears the lady of the Leaf is the goddess Diana; the lady of the Flower, Flora in person.

The invention is remarkably well purposed, and well carried through. The division of the world into those who follow virtue and those who pursue their own delight, is a good general poetico-ethical view, and the delicate emblems happily chosen for expressing the contrast. The heat and the tempest which overwhelm the dainty voluptuaries, and are harmless to the deed-worthy, express the true wisdom of virtue, even for this world, which moves not at our will; and the gentle healing kindness of the wiser to the less wise, whom they equalize with themselves, might almost seem profoundly to signify the recovery to the better wisdom of those who had set out with choosing amiss – a gracious hidden Christian lesson of charity and penitence. The contact of the simply human spectatress with beings brought from the world of imagination, is boldly designed. Here is no Dream. She walks down from her own house into the wood, and the vision comes and goes, in all the strength of true flesh and blood. The solitariness of her stealing out from a sleepless bed, "about the springing of the day, long or the brighte sonne uprisen was" – therefore, whilst common mankind lie buried in sleep – is all the saving partition that the poet has deigned betwixt the coarse and harsh Real and the splendid Unreal. As for the poetical working-out – the descriptive narrative – it is elaborate and full of beauty. The natural scene is painted with exquisite sensibility to the influences of nature, and with such determinate strokes as show a conversant eye. For example, the mixed and illuminated spring-foliage, the

– "levis new
That sprongin out agen the sonne shene:
Some very rede, and some a glad light grene,"

would seem fresh and vivid from the hand of Coleridge or Tennyson – and the

– "path of litil brede,