nless one of his
matter-of-fact comic tales were attempted. The Reve's has accordingly
been selected, as presenting a graphic painting of character, equal to
those contained in the 'Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,' displayed in
action by means of a story, which may be designated _as a broad farce,
ending in a pantomime of absurd reality_. To those who are acquainted
with the original, an apology may not be considered inadmissible for
certain necessary variations and omissions." For our part, we do not
object to this tale, though at the commencement of such a work its
insertion was ill-judged, and will endanger greatly the volume. But we
do object to the hypocritical cant about the licentiousness of Pope's
fine touches, from the person who wrote the above words in italics.
Omissions there must have been--but they sadly shear the tale of its
vigour, and indeed leave it not very intelligible to readers who know
not the original. The variations are most unhappy--miserable indeed; and
by putting the miller's daughter to lie in a closet at the end of a
passage, this moral modernizer has killed Chaucer. In the matchless
original all the night's action goes on in one room--and that not a
large one--miller, miller's wife, miller's daughter, and the two
strenuous Cantabs, are within the same four narrow walls--their beds
nearly touch--the jeopardized cradle has just space to rock in--yet this
self-elected expositor of Chaucer is either so blind as not to see how
essential such allocation of the parties is to the wicked comedy, or
such a blunderer as to believe that he can improve on the greatest
master that ever dared, and with perfect success, to picture, without
our condemnation--so wide is the privilege of genius in sportive
fancy--what, but for the self-rectifying spirit of fiction, would have
been an outrage on nature, and in the number not only of forbidden but
unhallowed things. The passages interpolated by Mr Horne's own pen are
as bad as possible--clownish and anti-Chaucerian to the last degree.

For example, he thus takes upon himself, in the teeth of Chaucer, to
narrate Alein's night adventure--

"And up he rose, and crept along the floor,
Into the passage humming with their snore;
As narrow was it as a drum or tub,
And like a beetle doth he grope and _grub_,
Feeling his way, _with darkness in his hands_.
Till at the passage end he stooping stands."

Chaucer tells us, without circumlocution, why the M