on of the motive
is equally modern with the style of the not ill-contrived witticism
which accompanies the first mention of it--

"Conscience, that of all physick works the last,
Caused him to send for Emily in haste."

But that which, upon the general comparison of the two speeches,
principally strikes us, is the great expansion, by the multiplying of
the thoughts to which expression is given, by Dryden. With old Geoffrey,
the weight of death seems actually to lie upon the tongue that speaks in
few interrupted accents. Dryden's Moribund runs on, quite at his ease,
in eloquent disquisition. Another unsatisfactory difference is the
disappearing of that distinct, commanding purpose or plan, and the due
proportion observed upon in the original. That mere cleaving desire to
Emelie, felt through the first half in word after word gushing up from
a heart in which life, but not love, ebbs, gets bewildered in the modern
version among explications of the befallen unhappiness, and lost in a
sort of argumentative lamentation. And do but just look how that "in his
colde grave," the only word, one may say, in the whole allocution which
does not expressly appertain to Emelie, and yet half belongs to her by
contrast--is extended, in Dryden, as if upon recollection of Claudio's
complaint in "Measure for Measure," until, like that complaint, it
becomes selfish.

But there is small pleasure in picking out the poetical misses of John
Dryden. It was to be foreseen that he would be worsted in this place of
the competition; for the pathetic was not his _forte_, and was
Chaucer's. So, too, instead of the summary and concise commendation of
his happier cousin to the future regard of the bereaved bride, so
touching in Chaucer, there comes in, provoked by that unlucky
repentance, an expatiating and arguing review of the now extinct
quarrel, showing a liberty and vigour of thought that agree ill with the
threatening cloud of dissolution, and somewhat overlay and encumber the
proper business to which the dying man has now turned himself--made
imperative by the occasion--the formal and energetic eulogy on Palamon.
The praise, however, is bestowed at last, and handsomely.

Have we, think ye, gentle lovers of Chaucer, rightly understood the
possibly somewhat obscure intention of the two verses at the beginning
of our extract--

"But I bequethe the service of my gost
To you?"

We have accepted "service" in the sense which, agree