eted, or at all events incomplete, condition. What there is of
it was, as a matter of course, not original--popular scientific books
rarely are. The little treatise, however, possesses a double interest
for the student of Chaucer. In the first place it shows explicitly,
what several passages imply, that while he was to a certain extent fond
of astronomical study (as to his capacity for which he clearly does
injustice to himself in the "House of Fame"), his good sense and his
piety alike revolted against extravagant astrological speculations. He
certainly does not wish to go as far as the honest carpenter in the
"Miller's Tale," who glories in his incredulity of aught besides his
credo, and who yet is afterwards befooled by the very impostor of whose
astrological pursuits he had reprehended the impiety. "Men," he says,
"should know nothing of that which is private to God. Yea, blessed be
alway a simple man who knows nothing but only his belief." In his
little work "On the Astrolobe," Chaucer speaks with calm reasonableness
of superstitions in which his spirit has no faith, and pleads guilty to
ignorance of the useless knowledge with which they are surrounded. But
the other, and perhaps the chief value, to us of this treatise lies in
the fact that of Chaucer in an intimate personal relation it contains
the only picture in which it is impossible to suspect any false or
exaggerated colouring. For here we have him writing to his "little
Lewis" with fatherly satisfaction in the ability displayed by the boy
"to learn sciences touching numbers and proportions," and telling how,
after making a present to the child of "a sufficient astrolabe as for
our own horizon, composed after the latitude of Oxford," he has further
resolved to explain to him a certain number of conclusions connected
with the purposes of the instrument. This he has made up his mind to
do in a forcible as well as simple way; for he has shrewdly divined a
secret, now and then overlooked by those who condense sciences for
babes, that children need to be taught a few things not only clearly
but fully--repetition being in more senses than one "the mother of
studies":--

"Now will I pray meekly every discreet person that readeth or heareth
this little treatise, to hold my rude inditing excused, and my
superfluity of words, for two causes. The first cause is: that curious
inditing and hard sentences are full heavy at once for such a child to
learn. And th