ably to our
erudition, it eminently holds the old love-vocabulary--homage, devotion,
LOVE; the pure and entire dedication by the lover of his whole being to
his lady. In this meaning, the heart continually _serves_, if there
should be no opportunity of rendering any useful offices. You will see
that Dryden has taken the word in what strikes us as an inferior
sense--namely, available service; but then his verses are exquisite. And
why, gentle lovers of Chaucer, why think ye does the expiring Arcite, at
that particular juncture of his address, crave of his heart's queen
softly to take him in her arms? Is it not that he is then about pouring
out into her ear his dying design for her happiness? Received so, the
movement has great originality and an infinite beauty. His heart yearns
the more towards her as he is on the point of giving utterance to his
generous proposal. He will, by that act of love upon her part, and that
mutual attitude of love, deepen the solemnity, truth, power, impression
of his unexpected request. Will he perchance, too, approach her ear to
his voice, that grows weaker and weaker?

The two verses appear by their wording to intimate something like all
this.

"And softe take me in your armes twey,
For love of God, _and herkeneth what I sey_."

If Chaucer had any such meaning, it vanishes wholly in Dryden's version.

On re-surveying the matter at last, we feel the more that the passing
over of Emelie from the dead Arcite to the living Palamon, in Chaucer,
is by much more poetical when viewed as the voluntary concession and
gift of the now fully heroic Arcite, than as, in Dryden, the recovered
right of the fortunate survivor. However, the speech, as Dryden has it,
is vigorous, numerous, spirited, eloquent, touched with poetry, and
might please you very well, did you not compare it with the singular
truth, feeling, fitness of Chaucer's--that unparalleled picture of a
manly, sorely-wrung, lovingly-provident spirit upon its bed of untimely
death.

The process of dying has been considerately delineated by Chaucer. Death
creeps from the feet upwards to the breast--it creeps up and possesses
the arms. But the intellect which dwelled in the heart 'gan fail only
when the very heart felt death. Then dimness fell upon the eyes, and the
breath faltered. One more look--one more word--and the spirit has
forsaken its tenement. Dryden generalizes all this particularity--and
therein greatly errs. But the last