t tempered
with loyalty, but ready, where their liberties were encroached upon, to
act with legislative vigor, as well as individual boldness.

Not so directly, but still forcibly, does Chaucer present the results of
Edward's wars in France, in the status of the knight, squire, and yeoman,
and of the English sailor, and in the changes introduced into the language
and customs of the English thereby.

CHAUCER'S ENGLISH.--But we are to observe, finally, that Chaucer is the
type of progress in the language, giving it himself the momentum which
carried it forward with only technical modifications to the days of
Spenser and the Virgin Queen. The _House of Fame_ and other minor poems
are written in the octosyllabic verse of the Trouveres, but the
_Canterbury Tales_ give us the first vigorous English handling of the
decasyllabic couplet, or iambic pentameter, which was to become so
polished an instrument afterward in the hands of Dryden and Pope. The
English of all the poems is simple and vernacular.

It is known that Dante had at first intended to compose the Divina
Commedia in Latin. "But when," he said to the sympathizing Frate Ilario,
"I recalled the condition of the present age, and knew that those generous
men for whom, in better days, these things were written, had abandoned
(_ahi dolore_) the liberal arts into vulgar hands, I threw aside the
delicate lyre which armed my flank, and attuned another more befitting the
ears of moderns." It seems strange that he should have thus regretted what
to us seems a noble and original opportunity of double creation--poem and
language. What Dante thus bewailed was his real warrant for immortality.
Had he written his great work in Latin, it would have been consigned, with
the Italian latinity of the middle ages, to oblivion; while his Tuscan
still delights the ear of princes and lazzaroni. Professorships of the
Divina Commedia are instituted in Italian universities, and men are
considered accomplished when they know it by heart.

What Dante had done, not without murmuring, Chaucer did more cheerfully in
England. Claimed by both universities as a collegian, perhaps without
truth, he certainly was an educated man, and must have been sorely tempted
by Latin hexameters; but he knew his mission, and felt his power. With a
master hand he moulded the language. He is reproached for having
introduced "a wagon-load of foreign words," i.e. Norman words, which,
although frowned upon by some c