yonge Sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne;
* * * *
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages--
* * * *
* * * *
Befelle, that in that seson, on a day."--_Prologue._

I quote these lines because I wish to show that Tyrwhitt, in taking them as
indicative of the very day on which the journey to Canterbury was
performed, committed a great mistake.

The whole of the opening of the prologue, down to the line last quoted, is
descriptive, not of any particular day, but of the usual season of
pilgrimages; and Chaucer himself plainly declares, by the words "in _that_
seson, on _a_ day"--that the day is _as yet_ indefinite. {316}

But because Tyrwhitt, who, although an excellent literary critic, was by no
means an acute reader of his author's meaning, was incapable of
appreciating the admirable combination of physical facts by which Chaucer
has not only identified the real day of the pilgrimage, but has placed it,
as it were, beyond the danger of alteration by any possible corruption in
the text, he set aside these physical facts altogether, and took in lieu of
them the seventh and eighth lines of the prologue quoted above, which, I
contend, Chaucer did not intend to bear any reference to the day of the
journey itself, but only to the general season in which it was undertaken.

But Tyrwhitt, having seized upon a favourite idea, seems to have been
determined to carry it through, at any cost, even at that of altering the
text from "_the Ram_" into "_the Bull_:" and I fear that he can scarcely be
acquitted of unfair and intentional misquotation of Chaucer's words, by
transposing "his halfe cours" into "half his course," which is by no means
an equivalent expression. Here are his own words:

"When he (Chaucer) tells us that 'the shoures of April had _perced to
the rote_ the drought of March' (ver. 1, 2.), we must suppose, in order
to allow due time for such an operation, that April was far advanced;
while, on the other hand, the place of the sun, 'having just run _half
his course in the Ram_' (ver. 7, 8.), restrains us to some day in the
very latter end of March. This difficulty may, and, I think, should, be
removed by reading in ver. 8. the BULL, instead of the RAM. All the
parts of the description will then be consistent with themselves, and
with another passage (ver. 4425.), where, in the best MSS., the _eighte
and twenty_ day of