That highte matrimoine or mariage,
By all the conseil of the baronage.
And thus with allè blisse and melodie

Hath Palamon ywedded Emilie.

And God, that all this wide world hath wrought,
Send him his love, that hath it dere ybought.

For now is Palamon in allè wele,

Living in blisse, in richisse, and in hele,
And Emelie him loveth so tendrely,
And he hire serveth all so gentilly,

That never was ther no word hem betwene
Of jalousie, ne of non other tene.

Thus endeth Palamon and Emilie,
And God save all this fayrè compagnie.

The whole oration is rendered by
Dryden with zealous diligence in
bringing out the sense into further
effect, and with a magnificent sweep
of composition. If there is in the fine
original any thing felt as a little too
stiffly formal, this impression is wholly
obliterated or lost in the streaming
poetry of the translator. Dryden may
not, on his own score, have been much
of a philosopher; but he handles a
philosophical thought in verse with a
dexterity that is entirely his own.
The sharpness and swiftness of intel-
lectual power concurring in him, join
so much ease with so much brevity,
that the poetical vein flows on un-
hindered, even when involved with
metaphysical notions and with scho-
lastic recollections. The comparison
of the following noble strain with the
original now quoted, decisively and
successfully shows the character of an
embellishing transformation, which we
have all along attributed to Dryden's
treatment of Chaucer. The full thought
of the original is often but as the seed
of thought to the version, or at least
the ungrown plant of the one throws
out the luxuriance and majesty of
leaves, blossoms, and branches in the
other. The growth and decay of the
oak in the two, and still more of the
human being, are marked instances.
Dryden does not himself acknowledge
the bold license which he has used in
regenerating; he does himself less
than justice. The worth of his work

is not the giving to modern England
her ancient poet, without the trouble
of acquiring his language, or of learn-
ing to sympathize with his manner. It
would almost seem as if that were an
enterprise which there is no accom-
plishing. Rightly to speak, it was
not Dryden's. He really undertook,
from a great old poem lying before
him, to write a great modern poem,
which he has done; and in the new
Knight's Tale, we see Dryden, the
great poet-we do not see Chaucer,
the greater poet. But we see in it
presumptive proof that the old poem
worked from was great and interesting;
and we must be lazy and unprofitable
students if we do not, from the proud
and splendid modernization, derive a
yearning and a craving towards the
unknown simple antique. Unknown
to us, in our first studies, as we read
upward from our own day into the
past glories of our vernacular litera-
ture; but which, when, with gradually
mounting courage, endeavour, and
acquirement, we have made our way
up so far, we find

"Worthy to have not remain'd so long
unknown,"

So, Dryden has done honour and rendered service to his mighty predecessor-truer honour and better service-not by superseding, but by guiding and impelling towards the knowledge of the old Knight's Tale.

DRYDEN.

The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees,
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees;
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays,
Supreme in state, and in three more decays:
So wears the paving pebble in the street,
And towns and towers their fatal periods meet:
VOL. LVII. NO. CCCLVI.

3 F

So rivers, rapid once, now naked lie,

Forsaken of their springs, and leave their channels dry:
So man, at first a drop, dilates with heat;

Then form'd, the little heart begins to beat;
Secret he feeds, unknowing in the cell;

At length, for hatching ripe, he breaks the shell,
And struggles into breath, and cries for aid;
Then helpless in his mother's lap is laid.
He creeps, he walks, and, issuing into man,
Grudges their life, from whence his own began;
Retchless of laws, affects to rule alone,

Anxious to reign, and restless on the throne;
First vegetive, then feels, and reasons last;
Rich of three souls, and lives all three to waste.
Some thus, but thousands more, in flower of age,
For few arrive to run the latter stage.
Sunk in the first, in battle some are slain,
And others whelm'd beneath the stormy main.
What makes all this but Jupiter the king,
At whose command we perish, and we spring?
Then 'tis our best, since thus ordain'd to die,
To make a virtue of necessity;

Take what he gives, since to rebel is vain;
The bad grows better, which we well sustain ;
And could we choose the time, and choose aright,
'Tis best to die, our honour at the height.
When we have done our ancestors no shame,
But served our friends, and well secured our fame,
Then should we wish our happy life to close,
And leave no more for fortune to dispose.
So should we make our death a glad relief
From future shame, from sickness, and from grief;
Enjoying, while we live, the present hour,
And dying in our excellence and flower.

Then round our death-bed every friend should run,
And joyous of our conquest early won;

While the malicious world, with envious tears,
Should grudge our happy end, and wish it theirs.
Since then our Arcite is with honour dead,
Why should we mourn that he so soon is freed,
Or call untimely what the gods decreed?
With grief as just, a friend may be deplored,
From a foul prison to free air restored,
Ought he to thank his kinsman or his wife,
Could tears recal him into wretched life?
Their sorrow hurts themselves; on him is lost;
And worse than both, offends his happy ghost.
What then remains, but after past annoy,
To take the good vicissitude of joy;

To thank the gracious gods for what they give,
Possess our souls, and while we live, to live?
Ordain we then two sorrows to combine,

And in one point the extremes of grief to join;
That thence resulting joy may be renew'd,
As jarring notes in harmony conclude.
Then I propose, that Palamon shall be
In marriage join'd with beauteous Emily;
For which already I have gain'd the assent
Of my free people in full parliament.
Long love to her has borne the faithful knight,
And well deserved, had fortune done him right;
'Tis time to mend her fault, since Emily,
By Arcite's death, from former vows is free.-

If you, fair sister, ratify the accord,
And take him for your husband and your lord,
"Tis no dishonour to confer your grace
On one descended from a royal race;
And were he less, yet years of service past,
From grateful souls, exact reward at last.
Pity is heaven's and your's; nor can she find
A throne so soft as in a woman's mind.-

He said she blush'd; and, as o'erawed by might,
Seem'd to give Theseus what she gave the knight.
Then, turning to the Theban, thus he said:-
Small arguments are needful to persuade
Your temper to comply with my command:
And, speaking thus, he gave Emilia's hand.
Smiled Venus to behold her own true knight
Obtain the conquest, though he lost the fight;

And bless'd, with nuptial bliss, the sweet laborious night.
Eros and Anteros, on either side,

One fired the bridegroom, and one warm'd the bride;
And long-attending Hymen, from above,

Shower'd on the bed the whole Idalian grove.

All of a tenor was their after-life,

No day discolour'd with domestic strife;
No jealousy, but mutual truth believed,
Secure repose, and kindness undeceived.

Thus Heaven, beyond the compass of his thought,
Sent him the blessing he so dearly bought.

So may the Queen of Love long duty bless,
And all true lovers find the same success.

The time is come in which a curious and instructive chapter in English criticism-a long one too, possibly might be written on the Versification of Chaucer, and upon the history of opinions respecting it. Tyrwhitt laid the basis, in his edition of the Canterbury Tales-the only work of the ancestral poet that can yet fairly be said to have found an editor-by a text, of which the admirable diligence, fidelity, skill, and sound discretion, wrung energetic and unqualified praise from the illaudatory pen of Ritson. But the Grammar of Chaucer has yet to be fully drawn out. The profound labours of the continental scholars, late or living, on the language that was immediate mother to our own, the Anglo-Saxon, makes that which was in Tyrwhitt's day a thing impossible to be done, now almost an easy adventure. Accomplished, it would at once considerably rectify even Tyrwhitt's text. The Rules of the Verse, which are many, and evince a systematic and cautious framing, no less than a sensitive musical ear in the patriarch, would follow of themselves. In the mean time, a few observations, for which the materials lie at hand, are

called for in this place, by the colli-
sion of the two great names, Chaucer
Dryden says—
and Dryden.

"The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is
not harmonious to us; but it is like the
eloquence of one whom Tacitus com-
mends, it was auribus istius temporis
accommodata. They who lived with
him, and some time after him, thought
it musical; and it continues so, even in
our judgment, if compared with the num-
bers of Lidgate and Gower, his contem-
poraries: there is the rude sweetness of
a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and
pleasing, though not perfect. It is true,
I cannot go so far as he who published

the last edition of him; for he would
make us believe the fault is in our ears,
and that there were really ten syllables
in a verse where we find but nine; but
this opinion is not worth confuting; it
is so gross and obvious an error, that
common sense (which is a rule in every
thing but matters of faith and revela-
tion) must convince the reader that
equality of numbers, in every verse
which we call heroic, was either not
known, or not always practised in Chau-
cer's age. It were an easy matter to
produce some thousands of his verses
which are lame for want of half a foot,

1

We

and sometimes a whole one, and which
no pronunciation can make otherwise.
We can only say, that he lived in the
infancy of our poetry, and that nothing
is brought to perfection at first.
must be children before we grow men.
There was an Ennius, and in process
of time a Lucilius and a Lucretius,
before Virgil and Horace; even after
Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Har-
rington, a Fairfax, before Waller and
Denham were in being; and our num-
bers were in their nonage till these last
appeared."

Strange to say, by the changing pronunciation of the language, there grew with time upon the minds of men a doubt, whether or no the Father of our Poetry wrote verse! The tone of Dryden, in the above passage, when animadverting upon Speght, shows that that editor, in standing up for ten syllables, put forth an unusual opinion; whilst the poet, in alleging the deficiency, manifestly agrees with the opinion of the antique versification that had become current in the world. He taxes Chaucer, it will be observed, with going wrong on the side of deficiency, not of excess; nor does he blame the interchange even of deficiency and excess, as if the syllables were often nine and often eleven. His words leave no room for misconception of their meaning. They are as definite as language can supply. "Thousands of the verses are lame for want of half a foot, or of a whole

one.

." In this sense, then, he intends: "That equality of numbers, in every verse which we call heroic, was either not known, or not always practised. in Chaucer's age."

But as Dryden has been severely taken to task by some insignificant writers of our day for the above passage, let us, not for his vindication, but excuse, take a moment's glance at Speght's edition (1602,) which, in Dryden's day, was in high esteem, and had been at first published on the recommendation of Speght's "assured and ever-loving friend," the illustrious Francis Beaumont. his preface, Speght says-" and his verses, although in divers places they may seem to us to stand of unequal measures, yet a skilful reader that can scan them in their nature, shall find it otherwise. And if a verse

In

here and there fal out a sillable shorter
or longer than another, I rather aret
it to the negligence and rape of Adam
Scrivener, that I may speak as Chau-
cer doth, than to any unconning or
oversight in the Author. For how
fearful he was to have his works mis-
written, or his verse mismeasured,
may appear in the end of his fifth
book of Troilus and Cresside, where
he writeth thus:-

And for there is so great diversitie,
In English and in writing of our tongue,
So pray I God, that none miswrite thee,
Ne thee mismetre for defaut of
tongue,'" &c.

How Speght made up the measure to his own satisfaction does not appear; nor what those methods of pronunciation may have been which Dryden tried, and which left some thousand verses deficient by half a foot, or a foot.

But believing Speght's text to be accurate, Dryden could not but believe in the artlessness and irregularity of Chaucer's versification. Speght's text is most inaccurate, and altogether undeserving of his own very high opinion, thus expressed in the Dedication to Sir Robert Cecil

แ Now, therefore, that both by old written copies, and by Master William Thynn's praiseworthy labours, I have reformed the whole worke, whereby Chaucer for the most part is restored to his owne antiquitic." In his Chaucer, Dryden met every where such lines as these

"When that April with his shours sote."
"And small foules maken melodie
That slepen all night with open eie.”
"It befell that season on a day."
"Ready to wend in my pilgrimage."
"That toward Canterbury would ride-
The chambres and stables weren wide."
"To tell you all the condition.”
"Full worthy was he in his lords
warre."

"Aboven all nations in Pruce."
“For to tell you of his array.”

We suspect that there was all along a lingering tradition amongst the learned about the virtue of the Mute E's. Vestiges of the use occur in the poets of Elizabeth's time.