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

Attired in mantles all the knights were seen,
That gratified the view with cheerful green:
Their chaplets of their ladies' colours were,
Composed of white and red, to shade their shining hair.
Before the merry troop the minstrels play'd,
All in their masters' liveries were array'd,
And clad in green, and on their temples wore
The chaplets white and red their ladies bore.
Their instruments were various in their kind,
Some for the boy, and some for breathing wind;
The sawtry, pipe, and hautboy's noisy band,
And the soft lute trembling beneath the touching hand.
A tuft of daisies on a flowery lea
They saw, and thitherward they bent their way;
To this both knights and dames their homage made,
And due obeisance to the daisy paid.
And then the band of flutes began to play,
To which a lady sang a virelay;
And still at every close she would repeat
The burden of the song, The daisy is so sweet.
The daisy is so sweet, when she begun
The troop of knights and dames continued on.
The concert and the voice so charm'd my ear,
And sooth'd my soul, that it was heaven to hear."

O bardlings of Young England! withhold, we beseech you, from winsome Maga, your verse-offerings, while thus the sons of song, evoked from the visionary land, coming and going like shadows, smile to let drop at her feet the scrolls of their inspiration. Poetry indeed! "You lisp in numbers, for the numbers come." But in big boobies a lisp is only less loathsome than a burr. Some of you have both, and therefore deserve to die. Readers beloved! prefer you not such sweet, strong strains as these sounded by Dryden, when he had nearly counted threescore and ten? "Yet was not his natural force abated" – while his sense of beauty, instructed and refined by meditations that deepen amongst life's evening shades, became holier within sight of the grave. You will thank us for another quotation; for much do we fear, O lady fair! that thou hast no copy of Dryden in thy boudoir, and yet life is fast flowing on with thee, for thou art – nay, there's no denying – yea, thou art – in thy twentieth year – and if you continue to refuse our advice– will soon be an old woman.

"The Lady of the Leaf ordain'd a feast,
And made the Lady of the Flower her guest:
When lo! a bower ascended on the plain,
With sudden seats adorn'd, and large for either train.
This bower was near my pleasant arbour placed,
That I could hear and see whatever pass'd:
The ladies sat with each a knight between,
Distinguish'd by their colours, white and green;
The vanquish'd party with the victors join'd,
Nor wanted sweet discourse, the banquet of the mind.
Meantime the minstrels play'd on either side,
Vain of their art, and for the mastery vied.
The sweet contention lasted for an hour,
And reach'd my secret arbour from the bower.
The sun was set; and Vesper, to supply
His absent beams, had lighted up the sky:
When Philomel, officious all the day
To sing the service of th' ensuing May,
Fled from her laurel shade, and wing'd her flight
Directly to the queen array'd in white;
And hopping, sat familiar on her hand,
A new musician, and increased the band.
"The goldfinch, who, to shun the scalding heat,
Had changed the medlar for a safer seat,
And hid in bushes 'scaped the bitter shower,
Now perch'd upon the Lady of the Flower;
And either songster holding out their throats,
And folding up their wings, renew'd their notes;
As if all day, preluding to the fight,
They only had rehearsed, to sing by night.
The banquet ended, and the battle done,
They danced by starlight and the friendly moon:
And when they were to part, the laureat queen
Supplied with steeds the lady of the green,
Her and her train conducting on the way,
The moon to follow, and avoid the day."

Whatsoever merit of thought or of poetry may be found in the poems of which we have spoken, the world has rightly considered the Canterbury Tales as the work by which Chaucer is to be judged. In truth, common renown forgets all the rest; and it is by the Canterbury Tales only that he can properly be said to be known to his countrymen. Here it is that he appears as possessing the versatility of poetical power which ranges from the sublime, through the romantic and the pathetic, to the rudest mirth – choosing subjects the most various, and treating all alike adequately. Here he discovers himself as the shrewd and curious observer, and close painter of manners. Here he writes as one surveying the world of man with enlarged and philosophical intuition, weighing good and evil in even scale. Here, more than in any other, he is master of his matter, disposing it at his discretion, and not carried away with or mastered by it. Here he is master, too, of his English, thriftily culling the fit word, not effusing a too exuberant stream of description. Here he has acquired his own art and his own style of versification, which is here to be studied accordingly. Well therefore, and wisely, did Tyrwhitt judge, when undertaking to rescue the "mirrour of Rethoures alle" from the dust and rust of injurious time, he laid out his long and hard, but not uncheerful labour upon the Canterbury Tales alone.

Every soul alive knows something of them – but not very many more than Stothard, in his celebrated Picture, has informed their eye withal. Their plan ranks them among works which are numerous, early and late, but which rather belong to early literature. East and West such are to be found, but they belong rather to the Oriental genius. A slender narrative, the container of weightier ones – a technical contrivance, which gave to a number of slighter compositions, collectively taken, the importance of a greater work – which prolonged to the tale-teller who had once gained the ear of his auditory his right of audience – and which, in a world where the tongue was more active in the diffusion of literature than the quill, afforded to each involved tale a memorial niche that might save it from dropping entirely away into oblivion.

To Chaucer, the scheme serves a higher purpose of art, which of itself allies him to the higher poets. By it he is enabled to comprehend, as if in one picture, a more diversified and complete representation of humanity. The thought is genial and sprightly. A troop of riders, who have been stirred severally from their firesides by the searching spirit of spring, have casually fallen into company, and who pace along, breathing an air which "sweet showers" have embalmed – exhilarated by the brightening radiance of "the young sun," and made loquacious by the very power which pours out the song of the glad birds from the newly-leaved boughs by the long wayside.

And who are the riders? And what is the charm that has drawn together a company of thirty to ride on the same road at the same hour of the same day? The suddenly-spun band of a union that will be as hastily dissolved, squares happily with the large purpose of the poet, by unforcedly bringing together persons of both sexes, and of exceedingly diverse conditions, high, low, learned, unlearned, military, civil, religious, from city and from country, land and sea, of unlike occupations, buoyant with youth, grave with years. The momentary tie has poetical vitality, from the fact that it is borrowed from the heart of the time and of England. They are Pilgrims from all quarters to the shrine of England's illustrious and favourite Saint, the martyr of Canterbury. They have gradually mustered into cavalcade in coming up from the shires to the metropolis, one excepted – the Poet. He falls into their party, by the hap of sleeping the night preceding the journey out from the capital at the same inn, in the suburb towards Canterbury – Southwark.

The specific incitement of the Tale-telling is thus invented in a natural spirit, and aptly to the vivacity of the whole conception. Mine host of the Tabard, Henry Bailey, a hearty fellow no doubt, since Chaucer has thought his name worthy of his immortalizing, contrives the proceeding, and this half in good fellowship, and half in the way of his trade. To shorten the tediousness of the road, he proposes that each of them shall tell, on the way to Canterbury, one tale, and on the way back, another – or, for here the poem a little disagrees with itself, two tales going and two returning; and that he or she who tells the best tale shall have, on their return, a supper, for which all the others shall pay, and which of course, he, Henry Bailey, shall provide. Upon these terms he will, without fee, perform the part of their conductor to Canterbury and back again. In assenting, the Pilgrims constitute him the judge of the tales; and thus mine host, with his joyous temper, courtesy, where courtesy needs, worldly sense, rough, sharp, and ready wit, and unappealable dictatorship in all matters of the commonwealth, becomes a dramatic person of the very first consequence, the animating soul of the poetical action; and who, continually stepping in between the finishing of one tale and the beginning of the next, organically links together the otherwise disunited and incomposite Series.

The General Prologue contains, as was unavoidable, besides the scheme of the poem, the description of the several Pilgrims, and constitutes in itself, by the versatile feeling with which the portraits are seized, by the strength, precision, peculiarity, liveliness, rapidity, and number of the strokes with which each is individualized – a masterpiece of poetical painting. One lost generation of Old England moves before us in the warmth and hues of life.

The Knight, his son the Squire, his servant the good Yeoman – a gallant three – the Clerke of Oxenford, the "poure Person of a toun," and his brother the Ploughman, are, each in his estate, of thorough worthiness, and are all, accordingly, drawn in a spirit of full affection. The Prioress and the Franklin are laughed at a little – she for the pains she gives herself to display her imitative high breeding, and for – only think it! – A.D. 1489 – her SENTIMENTALITY! – he for his love of a plenteously-spread board, and for his "poignant sauces!" But the two are good at heart; and the satire of the poet leaves to them undisturbed their place in your good esteem. His other men of some condition – the Monk, the Friar, the "Sergeant of the Lawe," the Merchant, the "Doctour of Physike" – he lashes with a more vigorous wrist. But not like a farce-monger, who, to gain your laugh, must utterly abase his characters, and make them merely ridiculous. The hunting Monk wants nothing but his hood off to be a distinguished country squire. He is "a manly man to be an abbot able!" and, if he keeps greyhounds, they are "as swift as fowl of flight." And look but at his horse's points and condition! The rascal of a "Frere," if, by his perseverance and persuasiveness in begging, he impoverishes the county, is a noble post of his order, and well beloved and familiar with franklins, and with worthy women. The Merchant has an assumed air of importance – magnifies his gains – thinks the protection of the sea betwixt the ports from which his vessels run the first duty of civilized governments – and keeps his wit set upon the main chance. But that is the worst of him – "For sothe he was a worthy man withalle." The Lawyer is at the top of his profession – wise, witty, perfect in statutes and in precedents, high in honours. What are his faults? You can hardly tell. There is a slight ostentation of wisdom. He has got a deal of money together – he is full of business – but he "seems yet busier than he is." The Doctor, too, is an excellent physician. He calls the stars in to his aid. But that may be Chaucer's belief, not his mirth. He knows the disease, and has the remedy at command. To be sure, he and his apothecaries understand one another. He is learned in a thousand books; but not in The Book. Gold is of high esteem in medicine as a cordial. Therefore he loves gold.

Why go on? Like Shakspeare, Chaucer portrays men in a spirit of humanity. He paints his fellows; and, if he is amused with our follies, he prefers showing the fairer side of our nature. Even the merry, warm-blooded Wife of Bath, with her five wedded husbands, earns some goodwill of us by her joyous and invincible spirit. Imagine the daring, the vigour, and the stirring wit of the west-country cloth-manufacturess, who cannot rest easy till she has been three times in pilgrimage to Jerusalem!

There is a visible purpose of keeping up the RESPECTABILITY of the company. If the Miller, the Coke, the Reve, and the Sompnour, stand on a somewhat low step of the social stair – the Haberdasher, the Carpenter, the Webbe (Weaver) – the Dyer and the Tapiser – who are lumped in the poet's description —

"Were al yclothed in ye liveree,
Of a solempne and gret fraternitee.

******

Wel semed ech of hem a fayr burgeis,
To sitten in a gild halle, ON THE DEIS."

They are of wisdom qualifying them to stand for Aldermen of their wards. Their wives are 'ycleped Madame' – take precedency in going to vigils – and have

– "A mantel reallich (i. e. royally) yborne."

Even our honest friend the Southwark innkeeper, Henry Bailey, has an air of dignity thrown over him. He was

"A semely man —
For to have ben a marshal in an halle.
A large man he was, with eyen stepe,[30 - The Monk, too, has this characteristic, which is of dubious exposition. Tyrwhitt thinks that the meaning may be– "Eyes sunk deep in the head." Certainly a feature giving force and distinction to the physiognomy has been intended.]
A fairer burgeis is ther non in Chepe.