GODWIN’S LITE 
lived to know that those men, whose fiat 
had silenced his argument, or to whose in- 
feriority of understanding, it.may be, he was 
obliged to vail his honoured head, were led 
to the basest species of execution, amidst the 
shouts of a brutish and ignorant multitede. 
«© We havea richt, however, to conclude, 
from his having early quitted the profession, 
that he did not love it. “The objections 
which might present themselves to his mind, 
are serious and weizitty. It hasan unhappy 
effect upon the human understanding and 
temper, for a man to be compelled, in his 
ravest investigation of an argument, to con- 
sider not what is true, but what is conve- 
nient. The lawyer never yet existed, who 
has not boldly urged an objection which he 
. knew to be fallacious, or endeavoured-to pass 
ff a weak reason for astrongone. Intellect 
is the greatest and most sacred of all endow- 
ments; and no man ever trifled with it, de- 
fending an action to-day which he had ar- 
zaigned yesterday, or extenuating an offence 
on one occasion, which, soon afier, he paint- 
ed in the most atrocious colours, with abso- 
lute impunity. Above all, the poet, whose 
judgment should be clear, whose feelings 
— shonld be uniform and sound, whose sense 
_ should be alive to every impression and har- 
dened to none, who is the legislator ef eene- 
fations and the moral instructor of the world, 
ought never to have been a practising lawver, 
or ought speedily to have quitted so danger- 
ous an engagement,” 
‘The first part of this extract exempli- 
fies Mr. Godwin’s design of carrying 
4 the workings of fancy into the in- 
| westigation of ages past.” ‘The latter 
part contains so much sound morality, 
_ that it is lamentable to see it tacked on 
to the tail of such trash and nonsense. 
' Tothis peried of Chaucer’s life, Pa- 
~ damon and Arcite is with some -probabi- 
lity attributed, and the translation of 
 Boethius. We next find him at Wood- 
"stock, and patronised by Edward III. 
Tt is unplexsant to observe with how in- 
decorous and invidious a spirit this 
WYi- 
_ the venerable poet is under far more 
JAasting obligations than he will ever be 
)to his present biographer. At the com- 
mencement of the work it is said that 
This father was probabiy a merchant, 
his is now assumed, and?it is inferred, 
ee at as he was the son of a merchant, 
@ probably received a competent pater- 
al inheritance. 
) From this point the work begins to 
Smprove. Hitherto we have been toiling 
through pages of common place matter 
‘we now arrive at history, though it is 
not the history of Chaucer. Mr. God- 
_ ter always speaks of Tyrwhit, to whom ° 
OF CHAUCER. f 439 
win has now laid aside Henry and 
Warton, for Walsingham, Froissart, and 
Joshua Barnes, and enters upon the his- 
tory of John of Gaunt, whom by a grand 
mistake he calls Chaucer's hinsman, be- 
cause they married two sisters. A song 
inserted in the Book of the Duchess, is 
extracted as the composition of this 
prince, and such it certainly appears te 
be by Chaucer’s expressions. 
This circumstance has escaped the 
notice of Lord Orford, and of all former 
commentators. 
In the second volume, Mr. Godwin 
enters upon the romance of the Rose, 
“a poem which, he says, may justly be 
regarded as the predecessor and proge- 
nitor of all that is most admirable inthe 
effusions of modern, in contradistinction 
to the chivalrous poetry.”? An opinion 
more foolish, and unsupported by any 
fact, or shadow of fact, was, we believe, 
never hazarded in the history of litera- 
ture. 
What the biographer calls modern, in 
contradistinction to chivalrous poetry, 
is to be traced to Petrarca himself, if to 
any individual writer. This is notorious, 
and modern poetry is as regularly dated 
from Petrarca, as the Roman empire 
from Augustus. r 
‘Yhe chapters, however, upon the ror 
mance of the Rose form, in our judg- 
ment, the best part of the present work, 
Mr. Godwin has perused the poem with: 
enthusiasm; but his praise is sometimes 
strangely inapplicable. He recommends 
a discourse upon the art of love in this 
romance, to every one who is inquisitive 
respecting the manners of distant ages ; 
whereas, in the whole eight hundred 
lines, all that relates to manners is com- 
prized in the thirty which Mr. Ellis has 
quoted. As to the great discovery that 
nen had the same passions and humours 
four hundred years ago that they have 
now,—it did not require an extract of 
eight hundred lines from Chaucer to 
convince any body of this. 
We now enter upon the affairs of 
Spain, in which John of Gaunt, who 
is indeed the great hero of this work, 
bore so principal a part. Mr. Godwin 
seems not to have been aware that there 
exists 4 History of Peter the Cruel, by 
4s, Dillon, drawn from purer sources 
than those to which he has had access.-~- 
Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess is next 
examined: from this poem Mr. Godwin 
infers some particulars’ respecting the 
marriage of the poet. 
Hh's 
ots 
vlo 
