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

In Chaucer, the blind encounter between the Miller and one of the Cantabs, who, mistaking him for his comrade, had whispered into his ear what had happened during the night to his daughter, is thus comically described —

"Ye falsè harlot, quod the miller, hast?
A falsè traitour, falsè clerk, (quod he)
Thou shalt be deaf by Goddès dignitee,
Who dorstè be so bold to disparage
My daughter, that is come of swiche lineage.
And by the throtè-bolle he caught Alein,
And he him hente despiteously again,
And on the nose he smote him with his fist;
Down ran the bloody streme upon his brest;
And on the flore with nose and mouth to-broke,
They walwe, as don two piggès in a poke.
And up they gon, and down again anon,
Till that the miller spurned at a stone,
And down he fell backward upon his wif,
That wistè nothing of this nicè strif,
For she was falle aslepe, a litel wight
with John the clerk," and …

Here comes Mr Horne in his strength.

"Thou slanderous ribald! quoth the miller, hast!
A traitor false, false lying clerk, quoth he,
Thou shalt be slain by heaven's dignity
Who rudely dar'st disparage with foul lie
My daughter, that is come of lineage high!
And by the throat he Allan grasp'd amain,
And caught him, yet more furiously again,
And on his nose he smote him with his fist!
Down ran the bloody stream upon his breast,
And on the floor they tumble heel and crown,
And shake the house, it seem'd all coming down.
And up they rise, and down again they roll:
Till that the Miller, stumbling o'er a coal,
Went plunging headlong like a bull at bait,
And met his wife, and both fell flat as slate."

Mr Horne cannot read Chaucer. The Miller does not, as he makes him do, accuse the Cantab of falsely slandering his daughter's virtue. He does not doubt the truth of the unluckily blabbed secret; false harlot, false traitor, false clerk, are all words that tell his belief; but Mr Horne, not understanding "disparage," as it is here used by Chaucer, wholly mistakes the cause of the father's fury. He does not even know, that it is the Miller who gets the bloody nose, not the Cantab. "As don two piggès in a poke," he leaves out, preferring, as more picturesque, "And on the floor they tumble heel and crown!" "And shake the house – it seemed all coming down," is not in Chaucer, nor could be; but the crowning stupidity is that of making the Miller meet his wife, and upset her – she being all the while in bed, and now startled out of sleep by the weight of her fallen superincumbent husband. And this is modernizing Chaucer!

What, then – after all we have written about him – we ask, can, at this day, be done with Chaucer? The true answer is – read him. The late Laureate dared to think that every one might; and in his collection, or selection, of English poets, down to Habington inclusive, he has given the prologue, and half a dozen of the finest and most finished tales; believing that every earnest lover of English poetry would by degrees acquire courage and strength to devour and digest a moderately-spread banquet. Without doubt, Southey did well. It was a challenge to poetical Young England to gird up his loins and fall to his work. If you will have the fruit, said the Laureate, you must climb the tree. He bowed some heavily-laden branches down to your eye, to tempt you; but climb you must, if you will eat. He displayed a generous trust in the growing desire and capacity of the country for her own time-shrouded poetical treasures. In the same full volume, he gave the "Faerie Queene" from the first word to the last.

Let us hope boldly, as Southey hoped. But there are, in the present world, a host of excellent, sensitive readers, whose natural taste is perfectly susceptible of Chaucer, if he spoke their language; yet who have not the courage, or the leisure, or the aptitude, to master his. They must not be too hastily blamed if they do not readily reconcile themselves to a garb of thought which disturbs and distracts all their habitual associations. Consider, the 'ingenious feeling,' the vital sensibility, with which they apprehend their own English, may place the insurmountable barrier which opposes their access to the father of our poetry. What can be done for them?

In the first place, what is it that so much removes the language from us? It is removed by the words and grammatical forms that we have lost – by its real antiquity; perhaps more by an accidental semblance of antiquity – the orthography. That last may seem a small matter; but it is not.

There are three ways in which literary craftsmen have attempted to fill up, or bridge over, the gulf of time, and bring the poet of Edward III. and Richard II. near to modern readers.

Dryden and Pope are the representatives, as they are the masters, of the first method; for the others who have trodden in their footsteps are hardly to be named or thought of. Dryden and Pope hold, in their own school of modernizing, this undoubted distinction, that under their treatment, that which was poetry remains poetry. Their followers have written, for the most part, intelligible English, but never poetry. They have told the story, and not that always; but they have distilled lethargy on the tongue of the narrator. – This first method the most boldly departs from the type. It was probably the only way that the culture of Dryden's and Pope's time admitted of. We have since gradually returned, more and more, upon our own antiquity, as all the nations of Europe have upon theirs. Then civilization seemed to herself to escape forwards out of barbarism. Now she finds herself safe; and she ventures to seek light for her mature years in the recollections of her own childhood.

But now, the altered spirit of the age has produced a new manner of modernization. The problem has been put thus. To retain of Chaucer whatever in him is our language, or is most nearly our language – only making good, always, the measure; and for expression, which time has left out of our speech, to substitute such as is in use. And several followers of the muses, as we have seen, have lately tried their hand at this kind of conversion.

It is hard to judge both the system and the specimens. For if the specimens be thought to have succeeded, the system may, upon them, be favourably judged; but if the specimens have failed, the system must not upon them be unfavourably judged, but must in candour be looked upon as possibly carrying in itself means and powers that have not yet been unfolded. But unhappily a difficulty occurs which would not have occurred with a writer in prose – the law of the verse is imperious. Ten syllables must be kept, and rhyme must be kept; and in the experiment it results, generally, that whilst the rehabiting of Chaucer is undertaken under a necessity which lies wholly in the obscurity of his dialect – the proposed ground or motive of modernization – far the greater part of the actual changes are made for the sake of that which beforehand you might not think of, namely, the Verse. This it is that puts the translators to the strangest shifts and fetches, and besets the version, in spite of their best skill, with anti-Chaucerisms as thick as blackberries.

It might, at first sight, seem as if there could be no remorse about dispersing the atmosphere of antiquity; and you might be disposed to say – a thought is a thought, a feeling a feeling, a fancy a fancy. Utter the thought, the feeling, the fancy, with what words you will, provided that they are native to the matter, and the matter will hold its own worth. No. There is more in poetry than the definite, separable matter of a fancy, a feeling, a thought. There is the indefinite, inseparable spirit, out of which they all arise, which verifies them all, harmonizes them all, interprets them all. There is the spirit of the poet himself. But the spirit of the time in which a poet lives, flows through the spirit of the poet. Therefore, a poet cannot be taken out of his own time, and rightly and wholly understood. It seems to follow that thought, feeling, fancy, which he has expressed, cannot be taken out of his own speech, and his own style, and rightly and wholly understood. Let us bring this home to Chaucer, and our occasion. The air of antiquity hangs about him, cleaves to him; therefore he is the venerable Chaucer. One word, beyond any other, expresses to us the difference betwixt his age and ours – Simplicity. To read him after his own spirit, we must be made simple. That temper is called up in us by the simplicity of his speech and style. Touched by these, and under their power, we lose our false habituations, and return to nature. But for this singular power exerted over us, this dominion of an irresistible sympathy, the hint of antiquity which lies in the language seems requisite. That summons us to put off our own, and put on another mind. In a half modernization, there lies the danger that we shall hang suspended between two minds – between two ages – taken out of one, and not effectually transported into that other. Might a poet, if it were worth while, who had imbued himself with antiquity and with Chaucer, depart more freely from him, and yet more effectually reproduce him? Imitating, not erasing, the colours of the old time – untying the strict chain that binds you to the fourteenth century, but impressing on you candour, clearness, shrewdness, ingenuous susceptibility, simplicity, Antiquity! A creative translator or imitator – Chaucer born again, a century and a half later.

Let us see how Wordsworth deals with Chaucer in the first seven stanzas of the Cuckoo and Nightingale.

"The god of love, a benedicite!
How mighty and how gret a lord is he,
For he can make of lowè hertès highe,
Of highè lowe, and likè for to dye,
And hardè hertès he can maken fre.

"And he can make, within a litel stounde,
Of sekè folkè, holè, freshe, and sounde,
Of holè folkè he can maken seke,
And he can binden and unbinden eke
That he wol have ybounden or unbounde.

"To telle his might my wit may not suffice,
For he can make of wisè folke ful nice,
For he may don al that he wol devise,
And lither folkè to destroien vice,
And proudè hertès he can make agrise.

"And shortly al that ever he wol he may,
Ayenès him dare no wight sayè nay:
For he can glade and grevè whom he liketh:
And whoso that he wol, he lougheth or siketh,
And most his might he shedeth ever in May.

"For every truè gentle hertè fre
That with him is or thinketh for to be
Ayenès May shal have now som stering,
Other to joie or elles to som mourning;
Other to joie or elles to som mourning;

In no seson so moch as thinketh me.
"For whan they mayè here the briddès singe,
And se the flourès and the levès springe,
That bringeth into hire rememberaunce
A maner esè, medled with grevaunce,

And lusty thoughtès fulle of gret longinge.
"And of that longinge cometh hevinesse,
And therof groweth oft gret sekenesse,
Al for lackinge of that that they desire;
And thus in May ben hertès sette on fire,
So that they brennen forth in gret distresse."