THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 55 



Few men have used this key of remembrance more skill- 

 fully than Chaucer, or scattered the treasures gained by its 

 agency to better purpose. That, all admit. Milton calls him : 

 " our learned Chaucer," and in doing so points out the niche 

 men of his own and of succeeding time deem ap])ropriate for 

 him. Modern scholarship has indeed mildly challenged this 

 general verdict, by its reminder that the highest learning must 

 work up vast treasures of exact knowledge into an organic 

 whole, and that Chaucer's learning was both inexact and lack- 

 ing in organic unity. Prof. Lounsbury, in his admirable studies 

 in Chaucer, follows up this subject fully. But after all, though 

 Chaucer did err, called styx the pit, not the river of hell ; 

 thought the name of Venus was taken from Mount Cithseron, 

 and not from the Island of Cythera, and committed sundry 

 other similar sins, the faults are but venial, judging him by the 

 only fair test, the standard of learning in his own time. More- 

 over, modern scholarship is exacting, if not finical, and subjects 

 everything to the test of such high magnifying powers that 

 the field sometimes is accordingly small. Lord Sherbrooke 

 said in irony : " an Oxford professor of Greek who could not 

 pluck ^Flschylus with ease would be deemed dull and inefficient," 

 and professor Rolfe said recently : " I have just spent six 

 months of stimulating work most profitably in preparing, for 

 the forthcoming Latin dictionary of Woelfflin, an article on 

 the preposition a^." If cognizance be taken of the rarity and 

 cost of books, and lack of opportunity for special studies in 

 those times, it is no wonder that weighed in the balance of 

 recent criticism Chaucer is found somewhat wanting. By 

 State records, a written bible, or book of like bulk, cost at that 

 time a sum equal to four hundred dollars of our money. 

 Teubner's three hundred volumes of Greek and Latin authors, 

 can now be bought for less than half that sum. 



Ben Jonson said Shakespear knew little Latin and less 

 Greek ; still he managed to exploit some of the richest quarries 

 of the old learning. In Latin Chaucer was more learned than 

 his great successor, though like Shakespear he knew but little 

 Greek. Few scholars in the XIV century did. They had but 



