The Press.
London, England, 1855-04-21 00:00:00

Sittratart.

Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. V ols. 1.,
11., and 111. Annotated Edition of the
English Poets. By Robert Bell. London :
I. W. Parker and Son.
THE subject of poetry is of such importance
in the cousideration of a national literature
that we have devoted a large portion of our
space to the criticism of the continuous
edition of British poets, of which the volumes
before us are the last instalments. Partly on
account of the over production in the last age,
adorned with such names as those of Byron,
Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Moore,
Wilson, and some others, and partly from the
absorption of high mental faculties conse-
quent on the recent marvellous revelations in
the physical sciences, the poetical element in
its active powers has been much depressed.
But though contemporary poets aro few, the
readers of our great authors are as numerous
as ever, and those who in prose minister to
the mind of the age are specially familiar with
the great masters of verse.
There are some who think that the present
dearth of original poetry is likely to continue.
They sups ose that in the rest of our national
career science and the fine arts will occupy all
the higher intellects, and that people have be-
come too fond of facts fur poetry. In such
speculations there is only limited truth. We
believe, however, that mere sentimentalists,
warblers of the boudoirs, melodious composers
of mediocre verse, never had a worse chance)
than now of a week's audience. Thirty years
since we had amongst us a flourishing school
of improvisatore artists, whose names only
glimmer in the popular memory, though
numerous editions once testified to their
popularity. They were not poets ; they
created nothing out of their imagination, be-
cause they did not see into Nature or her
workings. They mistook the spasmodical for
the passionate ; and they did not feel in-
stinctively the wide difference between
poetry and versified rhetoric. In Dryden's
language—
They fagotted their notions as they fell,
And if they rhymed and rattled, all was well.
On taking up their volumes now we see that
they were only turners of couplets. What
Archbishop Whateley said of loquacious
people applies to the whole school of rhetorical
versifiers :—" It is not that they have a great
" command of language, but that language has
" a great command of them."
For minds morbidly-disposed to confound
highly-coloured verbosity with the picto-
rial effects of suggestive poetry, we know
no better cure than a study of the justly-
venerated Chaucer. It is not our object here
to offer any elaborate estimate of his works.
Posterity was once happily defined as " the
" reading and thinking few," and by that high
and select tribunal a decisive verdict has been
pronounced which cannot be reversed. In
saying so much we do not forget that the fame
of Chaucer has been assailed with some dis-
paragement, and we think that Mr. Bell ought
to have made a cento of the dicta uttered on
Chaucer by, some of our greatest authorities in
poetry. He has partly done so at the com-
mencement of his introduction :
properly designated the Father of
—quiret his right not
• earliest

THE PRESS.

modern ideas and nurtured in a totally
different school of verse have not been back-
ward in expressing hearty praise of Chaucer.
We learn from Spence that Pope said—" I read
" Chaucer still with as much pleasure as any
" of our poets," and he then added what seems
to us to be the exact merit of Chaucer :—" He
is a master of manners and description, and
" the first tale-teller in the true enlivened
" natural way." Dryden, also, in the preface
to his " Fables," has paid a sincere homage to
the author of " The Canterbury Tales," and
excited himself to the utinost in his modern
version of " The Knighte's Tale," according to
Walton " the most animated and harmonious
" piece of versification in the English lan-
" guage." In apostrophising the long line of
English worthies, after alluding to Shak-
speare and Spenser, we find Thomson writing
of the

laughing sage,
Chaucer, whose native manners•painting verse,
Well moralised, shines through the Gothic cloud
Of time and language o'er thy genius thrown !
And turning from what the masters of song
have said of him, we are content to cite from
one of our living critics the opinion of Mr.
Hallam :—" I do not know that any other
" country, except Italy, produced his equal in
"variety of invention, acuteness of observation,
"or felicity of expression."
But Mr. Hallam's remark, "except Italy,"
reminds us that Chaucer has sometimes been
injuriously compared with the illustrious
Italian writers of his own age. In his admira-
tion of his author we do not think that Mr.
Bell has sufficiently indicated what may he
said "at the other side." Thus Chalmers says
of Chaucer:—" His language will still remain
" an insurmountable obstacle with that mime-
" sous class of readers to whom poets must
" look for universal approbation." Berington,
also, in his " Literary History of the Middle
Ages," observes :—" I would willingly learn by
" how many have ' The Canterbury Tales' been
" read, and particularly by how many with the
" feeling of delight; " and we could cite other
evidence to show that Chaucer is by no means
an object of universal admiration. But the
genuine merits of his works are in nowise
better proved than that they could in mo
dern times stand close examination and obtain
such tributes as we have cited.
The edition of Chaucer by Mr. Bell is the
most copiously " annotated " of all the poets
in the series, and we think that it ought to
have been the first in publication. From the
quantity that has been written on the author
of " The Canterbury Tales," selection and com-
parison would appear to be the chief duty
devolving on a modern editor. Yet such is
not the case. There is still the difficulty of
obtaining an accurate text. The editions of
Speght, Stowe, and Urry, are admitted to be
corrupt, and though Tyrwhitt deserves in-
finitely more praise than his successor, Mr.
Wright, has allowed to him, still we have re-
ceived an immense addition of mediaeval
knowledge since the days (1775) of Tyrwhitt.
We could desire that Mr. Bell would be more
minute in presenting his readers with a full
catalogue of antecedent editions of the different
poets whom he edits. Thus many would like
to know that a volume of selections from
Chaucer, " modernised " by various hands, was
published some years ago. Amongst its con-
tributors were Miss Barrett (now Mrs. Brown-
ing), and Mr. Bell himself. There has also
been an American edition of Chaucer, which
we have never seen.
Tyrwhitt, Sir Harris Nicholas, and Mr.
Thomas Wright, are the chief predecessors of
Mr. Bell, and of their labours he has freely
availed himself, confessing his special obliga-
tions to Mr. Wright, and to the Rev. John
Mounteney Jephson. The latter gentleman
Mr. Bell says,
has rendered to me and the public an important service
in the notes on " The Canterbury Tales," and in the moe
material parts of the introduction. The variety of his 1-
taintnents, and the influence of his cultivated taste, willbe
felt in all those places which the reader may consider lest
entitled to critical approbation.
Thus it will be seen that abundant store, of
knowledge have been placed at the editir's
disposal.
In his estimate of Chaucer Mr. Bell it our
opinion trenches on the panegyrist :
With a complete oommand of the springs of usversal
interest, the tragical sad the humorous, the *oleo and

SATURDAY,

the gay, the sublime and the grotesque, he applied his
knowledge of life and nature, his' consummate art, the
copious resources of an imagination that seemed incapable
of exhaustion, and a power of expression as extensive as
the empire of his genius, to the creation of works which,
while they reflect in vivid colours the features of his own
time, possess also an enduring value for all time to come.
If Mr. Bell had been writing of the most
creative of poetical intellects he could
scarcely have said more. " The springs of
" universal interest" were certainly under the
power of Chaucer. The breadth of his mind
was even more remarkable than its sublimity.
" His knowledge of life and nature" can
never be omitted in any estimate of his
merits. But when we are told of " his con-
" summate art," and of " the resources of an
" imagination that seemed incapable of ex-
" haustion," we must recollect how frequently
indebted Chaucer was to foreign models, and
how much of his subject matter was borrowed.
On this latter phase of his undeniable genius,
we are disposed to concur with Coleridge,
when he says in his " Literary Remains,"
Chaucer must be read with an eye to the
" Norman-French Trouveres,' of whom he is
" the best representative in England."
But we thoroughly subscribe to the follow-
ing vigorous and exact passage of criti-
cism :

The peculiar interest of Chaucer's poetry arises not only
from its intrinsic merit, but from the singularly clear and
full idea it conveys of a state of society for which modem
experience furnishes no parallel, while, at the same time,
it is pregnant with elements of thought which exert an in.
fiuence even in our own day. A close observer of character,
and of all those fugitive traits that mark and indicate its
individual peculiarities, Chaucer has adopted in "The
Canterbury Tales" a plan that enables him to depict almost
every class of society, and which also combines in itself
the various kinds of composition employed as the vehicles
of popular beliefs and feel►ngs in the middle ages. From
his works may be learned much more satisfactorily than
from the chronicles of his contemporaries, or the more
elaborate compilations of later historians, the modes of
thought, habits, and manners which prevailed in the reigns
of Edward 111. and his immediate successors ; the era in
which the Norman and Saxon races became fused, and our
language and social institutions assumed forms that have
descended with some modifications to the present time.

Mr. Bell then gives a luminous historical
review of the state of European society at the
time of Chaucer, and shows us how the poet
may in many things be received as a repre•
sentative of his age. He then passes on to
the text of his author, and discusses with
great ability the questions of his ortho-
graphy, pronunciation, and prosody. It is on
this part of the subject that the obstacles are
interspersed which prevent Chaucer from
being populary read, and the grave question
arises whether English readers must be con-
tent to study him in obsolete diction or
accept him " modernised."
If ever there was a writer who could have
succeeded in giving us a poetical and popular
version of Chaucer, it was Dryden. He had
all the qualities requisite—affluence of dio-
tion, an eye for the picturesque, and majestic
harmony of numbers. He was also practised
in paraphrases and translations. Yet we
mast concur with Mr. Bell when he says:—
The " Fables" of Dryden are es well known to the mass
of the public as any poems in the language ; but it may be
doubted whether they have increased the desire for a mote
ittimate acquaintance with Chaucer, or contributed to the
ettension of his fame. On the contrary, they have helped
nither to obstruct his popularity, by encouraging the notion
fiat he must be interpolated, expanded, and purified to
slit the modern taste, and that if he is to be read at all it
oust be through the medium of an interpreter.
" The Knighte's Tale " as rendered by
Dryden in his " Pahemon and Amite" is a
glowing piece of poetry, but it really conveys
,co idea whatever of Chaucer. We are told by
Dryden himself, in his " Letter to the Duke
of Ormond," that in Chaucer's poetry "there
"is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune,
" though not perfect " ; and " glorious John "
in his versions of his original has given us,
not the melody of an air from " the North
countrie," but the luscious cadences of Italian
music. We believe that it would be impos-
sible to modernise Chaucer. The laws of
prosody alone interpose obstacles that cannot
he overcome. Wo shall see this at once by
citing one of the examples from Mr. Bell's
introduction. Before doing so we must ob-
serve that, while in his general views of the
versification of Chaucer Mr. Bell is right, we
do not think that he is sufficiently plain for
popular readers in his explanation of the
metre of the poet,. gehaare who • know-little

Geoffrey Cliau-r is properly designated the Father of
English Poetry. He acctuirek his right to that title not
only on the ground of being our earliest poet, but because
the foundations he laid still support the fabric of our
poetical literature, and will outlast the vicissitude's of taste
and language. His greatest contemporaries and succes-
sors have recognised and confirmed his claim to this dis-
tinction. Lydgate calls him " the chief poet of Bretayne,"
and the " lode-sterre" of our language, and says that he
was the first to distil and rain the gold dewdrops of speech
and eloquence into our tongue; Occleve calls him ' the
fynder of our fayre langage; " Roger Aecham describes
him as the " English Homer," and considers " his sayinges
to have as much authority as eyther Sophocles or
Euri,•• - . n greke ;"k and Spenser speaks of him as
the ' .Isfe)l-rallat and " the well of English
nude.... "
,- 1, kill/Olefin clogue " Spenser also
.e.;':•: • . • i vt .Tity us. But it might be
. 'it ' ,the • -—• s cited by Mr. Bell
. op:4
~ . th antique modes of
evidence of the last-
in, ~ ~h, . ... :x• ,i,-.., ' ono who wrote and thought
in : .: ppinite4,643. But minds reared in