or example, the story of Patient
Grizzel is founded upon one of the legends of the 'Decameron,' while
the Knight's Tale is almost translated from the 'Teseide' of
Boccaccio, and Troilus and Creseide is derived from the 'Filostrato'
of the same author. The Franklin's Tale and the Reeve's Tale
are also based either on stories of Boccaccio or else on French
'Fabliaux,' to which Chaucer, as well as Boccaccio, had access. I do
not wish to lay too much stress upon Chaucer's direct obligations to
Boccaccio, because it is incontestable that the French 'Fabliaux,'
which supplied them both with subjects, were the common property of
the mediaeval nations. But his indirect debt in all that concerns
elegant handling of material, and in the fusion of the romantic with
the classic spirit, which forms the chief charm of such tales as the
Palamon and Arcite, can hardly be exaggerated. Lastly, the seven-lined
stanza, called _rime royal_, which Chaucer used with so much effect in
narrative poetry, was probably borrowed from the earlier Florentine
'Ballata,' the last line rhyming with its predecessor being
substituted for the recurrent refrain. Indeed, the stanza itself, as
used by our earliest poets, may be found in Guido Cavalcanti's
'Ballatetta,' beginning, _Posso degli occhi miei_.

Between Chaucer and Surrey the Muse of England fell asleep; but when
in the latter half of the reign of Henry VIII. she awoke again, it was
as a conscious pupil of the Italian that she attempted new strains and
essayed fresh metres. 'In the latter end of Henry VIII.'s reign,' says
Puttenham, 'sprang up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir T.
Wyatt the elder, and Henry Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains,
who, having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet and
stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly
crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly
polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy, from that it had
been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers
of our English metre and style.' The chief point in which Surrey
imitated his 'master, Francis Petrarcha,' was in the use of the
sonnet. He introduced this elaborate form of poetry into our
literature; and how it has thriven with us, the masterpieces of
Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Rossetti attest. As
practised by Dante and Petrarch, the sonnet is a poem of fourteen
lines, divided into two