crept into these poems, I
am so far from defending it, that I disown it, _totum hoc indictum
volo_. Chaucer makes another manner of apology for his broad speaking
and Boccace makes the like; but I will follow neither of them."

An English reader is likely to have held his way through the Palamon and
Arcite of Dryden, ere arriving at the knight's Tale of Chaucer. It will
not easily happen that he overleaps that Version, so full of the fire and
vigorous grace which he delights in, and couched in the very choicest of
that English on which his ears habitually feed, to introduce himself all
at once to the antique and to him obsolete Original. The pure impression,
therefore, with which he would read the Tale in its proper place, if he
there first got acquainted with it, is hardly to be obtained. No matter!
Forget Dryden, and plunge yourself into Chaucer.

Be surprised, if you can, as you surely will be amused, at encountering
the inextricable commixture of manners, usages, tones, thinkings, and
speakings, which time and space have done their best at keeping
asunder--the chivalry of modern Europe, and of the middle ages,
transplanted into the heroic age of old Greece, and to the Court of
Theseus, "Duk of Athenes." Be surprised and amused, but do not therefore
lay the book out of your hand, or laugh the old master to scorn, or do him
other than reverent and honourable justice. Take rather the story to
pieces, convince yourself step by step how strangely at every turn the old
world and the new, the Christian and the Heathen, are confounded together,
and feel at every step how the vitality which the good poet has infused
into his work, reconciles and atones discordancies and discrepancies; and
in spite of the perplexing physiognomy, how that must needs be one body
which is informed and actuated, through all its joints and members, by one
spirit.

Take in pieces the story--untwist the intertwined classical and romantic
threads. Make sure of the fault, and then hasten to forgive it. The fault!
Are you quite sure that it is one? Recollect that it is not Chaucer who
relates the Knight's Tale. Chaucer is here a dramatic poet, and his Knight
relates his own tale. What!--Shall he, who has "full often time the bord
begun,"--

"Aboven alle natiouns in Pruce;"

who has "reysed in Lettowe, and in Ruce," has been--

"In Gernade at the siege
Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie;"

who was--

"At Leyes and at Sa