, wholly
mistakes the cause of the father's fury. He does not even know, that it
is the Miller who gets the bloody nose, not the Cantab. "As don two
pigges in a poke," he leaves out, preferring, as more picturesque, "And
on the floor they tumble _heel and crown_!" "And shake the house--it
seemed all coming down," is not in Chaucer, nor could be; but the
crowning stupidity is that of making the Miller meet his wife, and upset
her--she being all the while in bed, and now startled out of sleep by
the weight of her fallen superincumbent husband. And this is modernizing
Chaucer!

What, then--after all we have written about him--we ask, can, at this
day, be done with Chaucer? The true answer is--READ HIM. The late
Laureate dared to think that every one might; and in his collection, or
selection, of English poets, down to Habington inclusive, he has given
the prologue, and half a dozen of the finest and most finished tales;
believing that every earnest lover of English poetry would by degrees
acquire courage and strength to devour and digest a moderately-spread
banquet. Without doubt, Southey did well. It was a challenge to poetical
Young England to gird up his loins and fall to his work. If you will
have the fruit, said the Laureate, you must climb the tree. He bowed
some heavily-laden branches down to your eye, to tempt you; but climb
you must, if you will eat. He displayed a generous trust in the growing
desire and capacity of the country for her own time-shrouded poetical
treasures. In the same full volume, he gave the "Faerie Queene" from the
first word to the last.

Let us hope boldly, as Southey hoped. But there are, in the present
world, a host of excellent, sensitive readers, whose natural taste is
perfectly susceptible of Chaucer, if he spoke their language; yet who
have not the courage, or the leisure, or the aptitude, to master his.
They must not be too hastily blamed if they do not readily reconcile
themselves to a garb of thought which disturbs and distracts all their
habitual associations. Consider, the 'ingenious feeling,' the vital
sensibility, with which they apprehend their own English, may place the
insurmountable barrier which opposes their access to the father of our
poetry. What can be done for them?

In the first place, what is it that so much removes the language from
us? It is removed by the words and grammatical forms that we have
lost--by its real antiquity; perhaps more by an accidental semblanc