m from a French original, we have a long address to the Blessed
Virgin in twenty-three stanzas, each of which begins with one of the
letters of the alphabet arranged in proper succession. Nor, apart from
this religious sentiment, had men yet altogether lost sight of the
ideal of true knightly love, destined though this ideal was to be
obscured in the course of time, until at last the "Mort d'Arthure" was
the favourite literary nourishment of the minions and mistresses of
Edward IV's degenerate days. In his "Book of the Duchess" Chaucer has
left us a picture of true knightly love, together with one of true
maiden purity. The lady celebrated in this poem was loth, merely for
the sake of coquetting with their exploits, to send her knights upon
errands of chivalry--

into Walachy,
To Prussia, and to Tartary,
To Alexandria or Turkey.

And doubtless there was many a gentle knight or squire to whom might
have been applied the description given by the heroine of Chaucer's
"Troilus and Cressid" of her lover, and of that which attracted her in
him:--

For trust ye well that your estate royal,
Nor vain delight, nor only worthiness
Of you in war or tourney martial,
Nor pomp, array, nobility, riches,
Of these none made me rue on your distress,
BUT MORAL VIRTUE, GROUNDED UPON TRUTH,
THAT WAS THE CAUSE I FIRST HAD ON YOU RUTH.

And gentle heart, and manhood that ye had,
And that ye had (as methought) in despite
Everything that tended unto bad,
As rudeness, and as popular appetite,
And that your reason bridled your delight,
'Twas these did make 'bove every creature,
That I was yours, and shall while I may 'dure.

And if true affection under the law still secured the sympathy of the
better-balanced part of society, so the vice of those who made war upon
female virtue, or the insolence of those who falsely boasted of their
conquests, still incurred its resentment. Among the companies which in
the "House of Fame" sought the favour of its mistress, Chaucer
vigorously satirises the would-be-lady-killers, who were content with
the REPUTATION of accomplished seducers; and in "Troilus and Cressid" a
shrewd observer exclaims with the utmost vivacity against

Such sort of folk,--what shall I clepe them? what?
That vaunt themselves of women, and by name,
That yet to them ne'er promised this or that,
Nor knew them more, in sooth, than mine old hat.

The same easy but sagacious philosop