4G* 
tion, that he must have beén a Catholic. 
——Proceeding, therefore, upon this 
supposition, Mr. Godwin describes, in 
his fourth chapter, the establishments and 
practices of the church of England in the 
fourteenth century. 
When the poet was a young man he 
must have heard the minstrels: so Chau- 
cer and the minstrels are the fifth chap- 
ter. This leads to a dissertation on the 
origin of the English stage, profane 
dramas, miracle plays, pageants, mys- 
teries, and masks, in which not a single 
fact is added to the information contain. 
ed in Warton and Henry. 
The feast of fools and the feast of 
the ass, feastsand pageants, hunting and 
hawking, archery, athletic exercises, rob- 
bery and tournaments fill another long 
chapter; because all these must have 
affected the tone of manners and the 
popular mind in the days of Chaucer. 
‘Chaucer must have seen castles and 
cathedrals and palaces: so the eighth. 
chapter is upon Gothic architecture, and’ 
contains a full description of a castle, 
from Grose! And the ninth chapter 
treats upon sculpture nd painting, me- 
tallic arts, embroidery and music ; be- 
cause the state of all these arts must have 
influenced the mind of Chaucer. 
In the tenth chapter we find Chaucer 
at Cambridge; and here, having travel- 
led over 185 pages, we hoped we had ar- 
rived at the subject of the book; but 
here we find the state of the universities, 
the monastic and mendicant orders, the 
schoolmen, and the natural philosophy 
of the fourteenth century. At the end 
of this comes a recapitulation. 
<' It was the good fortune of Chaucer 
that he had led the early years of his life 
ip scenes of concourse and variety, that lie 
was condemned to no ptemature and com- 
pulsory solitude, and that his mind was not 
suffered to vegetate in that indolence and va- 
cancy which, when they occupy an exten- 
sive portion of human life, are so destructive 
and deadly to the intellectual powers. He 
was born in London. In the midst of this 
famous and flourishing metropolis he was, 
as he expresses it, ‘ forth growen.’ Tis fa- 
ther was probably a merchant ; and Chaucer 
was furnished, from his earliest hours of ob- 
servation, with an opportunity of remarking 
upon the insensible growth of that new rank 
of men, the burgesses, which about this time 
gave a new face to the political constitutions 
of Europe. Private and domestic education 
had scarcely any where been heard of ; and 
Chaucer, in all probability, frequented some 
of those populous and tumultuary schools so 
BIOGRAPHY. 
circumstantially described by William Fitz+ 
stephen. Here his mind was exeited by ex- 
ample, and stimulated by tivalship 5 he pas- 
sed much of his time in the society of his 
equals, observed their passions, and acted, 
and was “acted upon in turn, by their senti- 
ments and pursuits. When he had finished 
his classes here, he was removed to Cam- 
bridge, where six thousand fellow-students 
waited to receive him. He had:no difficulty 
in finding solitude when his inclination 
prompted him to seek it; and we may be 
certain that a mind which relished so exqui- 
sitely the beauties of nature, sought it often ; 
but he was never palled with it. The effect 
of both these circumstances is conspicuous 
in his writings. He is fond of allegories 
and reveries, for oft the post 
* brush’d with hasty step the dews 
« away, 
* To meet the sun ;’ 
and he is the poet of manners, because he 
frequented the haunts of men, and was ac- 
quainted with his species tir all their varieties 
of modification.” 
Some centuries ago, when an author 
was about to write a book, he consider. 
ed that all his readers were unlearned 3 
that they who should read his volume, 
had perhaps never read another ; and; 
therefore, he usually gave them ‘the 
whole stock of his knowledge, beginning 
generally with Adam, and so proceed- 
ing regularly down to his own subject. 
This is the case with Mr. Godwin: he 
came “ in a manner a novice to the pre« 
sent undertaking ;? and taking it for 
granted that all those who read Fis book 
were to be as ignorant as he was himself — 
when he began to write it, he has there- 
fore told them all he knows. In all 
these chapters which we have noticed, 
there is positively nothing but what is to 
be found in modern authors; in War- 
ton, in Henry, in Grose, in St. Palayes 
Percy, Ritson, and Ellis; books which 
are in every private library, at least in 
every library where two quarto volumes 
upon the life of Chaucer can be expected 
to find a place. 
«¢ Before we enter upon a particular exa~ 
mination of any of Chaucer’s poems, it is 
proper that we should pay some attention to 
the circumstance of their being written in’ 
the English tongue. This language, as has 
already been remarked, after the accesssion 
of the Norman race to the throne of our 
island, was consigned to oblivion and con- — 
tempt, driven from the seats and refinement — 
of learning, and confined for the most part — 
to the cottages of the peasantry. Before the 
period of Chaucer, we had already had 
3 
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