Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845

Turning over a couple of leaves, we behold a modernization of the antique with a vengeance —

"His son, a young squire, with him there I saw,
A lover and a lusty bachelor! (aw) (ah!)
With locks crisp curl'd, as they'd been laid in press,
Of twenty year of age he was, I guess."

Chaucer never once in all his writings thus rhymes off two consecutive couplets in one sentence so slovenly, as with "I saw," and "I guess." But Mr Horne is so enamoured "with the old familiar faces" of pet cockneyisms, that he must have his will of them. Of the same squire, Chaucer says —

"Of his stature he was of even length;"

and Mr Horne translates the words into —

"He was in stature of the common length,"

They mean "well proportioned." Of this young squire, Chaucer saith —

"So hote he loved, that by nightertale
He slep no more than doth the nightingale."

We all know how the nightingale employs the night – and here it is implied that so did the lover. Mr Horne spoils all by an affected prettiness suggested by a misapplied passage in Milton.

"His amorous ditties nightly fill'd the vale;
He slept no more than doth the nightingale."

Chaucer says of the Prioresse —

"Full well she sang the servicè divine
Entunèd in hire nose ful swetèly."

Mr Horne must needs say —

"Entuned in her nose with accent sweet."

The accent, to our ears, is lost in the pious snivel – pardon the somewhat unclerical word.

Chaucer says of her —

"Ful semèly after hire meat she raught,"

which Mr Horne improves into —

"And for her meat
Full seemly bent she forward on her seat."

Chaucer says —

"And peined hire to contrefeten chere
Of court, and been astatelich of manere,
And to be holden digne of reverence."

That is, she took pains to imitate the manners of the Court, &c.; whereas Mr Horne, with inconceivable ignorance of the meaning of words that occur in Chaucer a hundred times, writes "it gave her pain to counterfeit the ways of Court," thereby reversing the whole picture.

"And French she spake full fayre and fetisly,"

he translates "full properly and neat!" Dryden rightly calls her "the mincing Prioress;" Mr Horne wrongly says, "she was evidently one of the most high-bred and refined ladies of her time."

Chaucer says, of that "manly man," the Monk —

"Ne that a monk, when he is rekkeless,
Is like to a fish that is waterless;
This is to say, a monk out of his cloistre.
This ilkè text held he not worth an oistre."

Mr Horne here modernizeth thus —

"Or that a monk beyond his bricks and mortar,
Is like a fish without a drop of water,
That is to say, a monk out of his cloister."

There can be no mortar without water, but the words do not rhyme except to Cockney ears, though the blame lies at the door of the mouth. "Bricks and mortar" is an odd and somewhat vulgar version of "rekkeless;" and to say that a monk "beyond his bricks and mortar" is a monk "out of his cloister," is not in the manner of Chaucer, or of any body else.

Chaucer says slyly of the Frere, that

"He hadde ymade ful mony a mariage
Of yongè women, at his owen coste;"

and Mister Horne brazen-facedly,

"Full many a marriage had he brought to bear,
For women young, and paid the cost with sport."

O fie, Mister Horne! To hide our blushes, will no maiden for a moment lend us her fan? We cover our face with our hands. – Of this same Frere, Mr Horne, in his introduction, when exposing the faults of another translator, says that "Chaucer shows us the quaint begging rogue playing his harp among a crowd of admiring auditors, and turning up his eyes with an attempted expression of religious enthusiasm;" but Chaucer does no such thing, nor was the Frere given to any such practice.

Of the Clerk of Oxenford, Chaucer says, he "loked holwe, and thereto soberly." Mr Horne needlessly adds "ill-fed." Chaucer says —

"Ful threadbare was his overest courtepy."

Mr Horne modernizes it into —

"His uppermost short cloak was a bare thread."

Why exaggerate so? Chaucer says —

"But all that he might of his frendes hente
On bokès and on lerning he it spente."

Mr Horne says —

"But every farthing that his friends e'er lent."