n the selection and arrangement of
his themes, the wonderful vivacity and true pathos with which he turns
upon Tarquin or Jason as if they had personally offended him, and his
genuine flow of feeling not only FOR but WITH his unhappy heroines, add
a new charm to the old familiar faces. Proof is thus furnished, if any
proof were needed, that no story interesting in itself is too old to
admit of being told again by a poet; in Chaucer's version Ovid loses
something in polish, but nothing in pathos; and the breezy freshness of
nature seems to be blowing through tales which became the delight of a
nation's, as they have been that of many a man's, youth.

A single passage must suffice to illustrate the style of the "Legend of
Good Women"; and it shall be the lament of Ariadne, the concluding
passage of the story which is the typical tale of desertion, though
not, as it remains in Chaucer, of desertion unconsoled. It will be
seen how far the English poet's vivacity is from being extinguished by
the pathos of the situation described by him.

Right in the dawening awaketh she,
And gropeth in the bed, and found right naught.
"Alas," quoth she, "that ever I was wrought!
I am betrayed!" and her hair she rent,
And to the strande barefoot fast she went,
And criede: "Theseus, mine hearte sweet!
Where be ye, that I may not with you meet?
And mighte thus by beastes been y-slain!"
The hollow rockes answered her again.
No man she sawe; and yet shone the moon,
And high upon a rock she wente soon,
And saw his barge sailing in the sea.
Cold waxed her heart, and right thus said she:
"Meeker than ye I find the beastes wild!"
(Hath he not sin that he her thus beguiled?)
She cried, "O turn again for ruth and sin,
Thy barge hath not all thy meinie in."
Her kerchief on a pole sticked she,
Askance, that he should it well y-see,
And should remember that she was behind,
And turn again, and on the strand her find.
But all for naught; his way he is y-gone,
And down she fell aswoone on a stone;
And up she rose, and kissed, in all her care,
The steppes of his feet remaining there;
And then unto her bed she speaketh so:
"Thou bed," quoth she, "that hast received two,
Thou shalt answer for two, and not for one;
Where is the greater part away y-gone?
Alas, what shall I wretched wight become?
For though so be no help shall hither come,
Home to my country dare I not for dread,