The Canterbury tales and Faerie queene &c., &c., &c., ed. for popular perusal with current illustrations and explanatory notes, by D. Laing Purves.

14 LIFE OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
says he preferred it to all other sports and diversions.l He lived within himself,
neither desirous to hear nor busy to concern himself with the affairs of his neighbours. His course of living was temperate and regular; he went to rest with the
sun, and rose before it; and by that means enjoyed the pleasures of the better part
of the day, his morning walk and fresh contemplations. This gave him the advantage of describing the morning in so lively a manner as he does everywhere in his
works. The springing sun glows warm in his lines, and the fragrant air blows cool
in his descriptions; we smell the sweets of the bloomy haws, and hear the music
of the feathered choir, whenever we take a forest walk with him. The hour of the
day is not easier to be discovered from the reflection of the sun in Titian's paintings,
than in Chaucer's morning landscapes.... His reading was deep and extensive, his
judgment sound and discerning.... In one word, he was a great scholar, a
pleasant wit, a candid critic, a sociable companion, a steadfast friend, a grave philosopher, a temperate economist, and a pious Christian."
Chaucer's most important poems are " Troilus and Cressida," " The Romaunt of
the Rose," and " The Canterbury Tales." Of the first, containing 8246 lines, an
abridgment, with a prose connecting outline of the story, is given in this volumepages 247-274. With the second, consisting of 7699 octosyllabic verses, like those
in which "The House of Fame " is written, it was found impossible to deal in the
present edition. The poem is a curtailed translation from the French " Roman de
la Rose "-commenced by Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, after contributing
4070 verses, and completed, in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, by Jean
de Meun, who added some 18,000 verses. It is a satirical allegory, in which the vices
of courts, the corruptions of the clergy, the disorders and inequalities of society in
general, are unsparingly attacked, and the most revolutionary doctrines are advanced;
and though, in making his translation, Chaucer softened or eliminated much of
the satire of the poem, still it remained, in his verse, a caustic exposure of the
abuses of the time, especially those which discredited the Church.
The Canterbury Tales are presented in this edition with as near an approach to
completeness as regard for the popular character of the volume permitted. The
17,385 verses, of which the poetical Tales consist, have been given without abridgment or purgation-save in a single couplet; but, the main purpose of the volume
being to make the general reader acquainted with the " poems" of Chaucer and
Spenser, the Editor has ventured to contract the two prose Tales-Chaucer's Tale
of Melibceus, and the Parson's Sermon or Treatise on Penitence-so as to save about
thirty pages for the introduction of Chaucer's minor pieces. At the same time, by
giving prose outlines of the omitted parts, it has been sought to guard the reader
against the fear that he was losing anything essential, or even valuable. It is
almost needless to describe the plot, or point out the literary place, of the Canterbury Tales. Perhaps in the entire range of ancient and modern literature there is
no work that so clearly and freshly paints for future times the picture of the past;
certainly no Englishman has ever approached Chaucer in the power of fixing for ever
the fleeting traits of his own time. The plan of the poem had been adopted before
Chaucer chose it; notably in the " Decameron " of Boccaccio-although, there, the
circumstances under which the tales were told, with the terror of the plague hanging over the merry company, lend a grim grotesqueness to the narrative, unless we
can look at it abstracted from its setting. Chaucer, on the other hand, strikes a
perpetual key-note of gaiety whenever he mentions the word " pilgrimage;" and at
1 See the opening of the Prologue to "The Legend of Good Women," page 282; and the
poet's account of his habits in " The House of Fame," page 235.