232 CHAUCER. 



matchless prologues will not, however, surprise those who 

 remember Dryden's second spring-time. It is plain that 

 the notion of giving unity to a number of disconnected 

 stories by the device which Chaucer adopted was an after- 

 thought. These stories had been written, and some of 

 them even published, at periods far asunder, and without 

 any reference to connection among themselves. The pro- 

 logues, and those parts which internal evidence justifies 

 us in taking them to have been written after the thread 

 of plan to string them on was conceived, are in every way 

 more mature, — • in knowledge of the world, in easy mas- 

 tery of verse and language, and in the overpoise of senti- 

 ment by judgment. They may with as much probability 

 be referred to a green old age as to the middle-life of a 

 man who, upon any theory of the dates, w^as certainly 

 slow in ripening. 



The formation of a Chaucer Society, now four cen- 

 turies and a half after the poet's death, gives suitable 

 occasion for taking a new observation of him, as of a 

 fixed star, not only in our own, but in the European 

 literary heavens, " whose worth 's unknown although his 

 height be taken." The admirable work now doing by 

 this Society, whose establishment was mainly due to the 

 pious zeal of Mr. Furnivall, deserves recognition from 

 all who know how to value the too rare union of accu- 

 rate scholarship with minute exactness in reproducing 

 the text. The six-text edition of the " Canterbury Tales," 

 giving what is practically equivalent to six manuscript 

 copies, is particularly deserving of gratitude from this 

 side the water, as it for the first time affords to Ameri- 

 cans the opportunity of independent critical study and 

 comparison. This beautiful work is fittingl}^ inscribed 

 to our countrj^man, Professor Child, of Harvard, a lover 

 of Chaucer, " so proved by his wordes and his werke," 



