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places but a few years ago unknown except to the hunter and the trapper. The influence on such countries has been great, yet a greater influence still has been exerted on industry within the older and more settled seats of commerce. It was thus in the sixteenth century, it has been thus again in the nineteenth. At the earlier date Antwerp was to Europe much what Liverpool is now. Guicciardini in his description of the Netherlands gives an animated description of the vigour of commercial activity in that city. We see how the spices of India, the silks of Italy, the wines of the South, the wood and draperies of England, the wheat of Poland, the timber and furs of the North, with countless products more of these and other countries, were all dealt with in that great mart, the mainspring of whose commerce was the gold of Spain. And thus it has been in the present century. The wealth of the otherwise unproductive regions of Australia and America, filled with a hard-working, hard-spending population, rapidly found its way to Europe, and there, being exchanged for the manufactures and luxuries of civilized life, stimulated the trade of the old world in a greater degree even than that of the new. It has been something far more than a mere counting with It has been pouring fresh life-blood into the veins of a giant. Adam Smith, in a well-known passage, in speaking of the effect of the circulating medium, has compared the operation of paper money to a road made through the air, enabling the country to convert, as it were, a 'great part of its highways into good pastures and cornfields, and thereby to increase very considerably the annual produce of its land and labour. The gold and silver money which circulates in any country may very properly be compared to a highway, which, while it circulates and carries to market all the grass and corn of the country, produces itself not a single pile of either.' This form of the means of communication, this great highway of the country may, as Mr. Newmarch has very truly remarked, be insufficient in various ways. It may be too narrow for the traffic which should be carried over it. Or though perfect in itself, and sufficient in width, it may not be long enough. It may be too short to reach some important town, some fresh field for the employment of capital; some fertile region rich with produce, laden with grain, like the vast plains of Southern Russia; wealth may be there, or what would be wealth in the proper place, but, for want of the means of communication, it cannot be made use of. These means have been supplied by the new gold brought into Europe. New forces will hence be called into action, new fields for productive industry will be rendered available, and the general result cannot be doubted.

We

We look back to the ante-Elizabethan period, and read with something like wonder how scanty were the resources in the way of what we consider essential comforts of the castles even of the wealthiest. A few more years and this wonder will probably be repeated at the expense of a later age. People will look back to the time of George II., and to the early years of the century which Professor Levi has chronicled, with the same feeling with which the reigns of Henry VII. and his son are now regarded. They will wonder, as we wonder, at the removal of the glass from the windows of the Percys when the Earl left his castle, at the absence of some luxury unknown to us, deemed essential by them. They will wonder most likely at our having considered triumphs in engineering, things that are of everyday occurrence to them; of our pride in a prosperity which will seem to them far less than the results of trade in the days of Elizabeth seem to us.

The century through which Professor Levi has conducted his readers is one chequered with many vicissitudes, brightened with great and increasing prosperity. Brightened also far more, as the true lover of his country will feel, with a growing improvement in the condition and habits of the people. Once again the Professor has unrolled, for the instruction of this generation, the histories of great deeds, the description also of the application of human ingenuity to the increase of material prosperity. Once again, while we are reminded of the glories of the past, we are reminded too of what still remains to be done. There is still to weave our Colonial possessions into a firmly framed Colonial Empire. There is still to unite those powerful, those rising kingdoms into a compacted league, such as the world has never seen for power. There is still to improve the organization of our towns, so as to diminish the moral and physical injuries that spring from the herding together of large masses of mankind. There are still to combat in our rural districts the ignorance and debasement which are our standing disgrace.

We said a few pages back that the survey of the commercial progress of England during the last century, contained in Professor Levi's careful work, might be compared to a journey through such a country as Holland, which owes more to the industry of the inhabitants than to the fertility of the soil. In parting company with him this feeling is strengthened. He has shewn us, so to say, the stately cities built where, till recently, all was solitude, the regions now rendered fertile, till recently rugged wastes. He has shewn us untiring industry in its most attractive aspect, devoted to useful and beneficial

works;

works; and as the busy scene is brought before the mind, we forget for the moment that so much of this accumulated wealth, that so much of what we admire, is not indigenous to the soil, but brought with vast labour from a distance, to be re-exported in exchange for the materials of further industry. Though our position is a proud one, it rests on a foundation so artificial that unflagging toil is ever needed to preserve it from collapse; toil as incessant as that which on the banks of the Waal or the Maas has compacted wharfs and quays standing firm like the hi!l sides; yet only maintained in their solid strength by unwearied and constant care. The long list of cities once flourishing with commercial industry, now silent and deserted, warns us how short-lived may be mere mercantile prosperity. We must defend by skill the position won by enterprise. We must show that successful trade does not enervate the race; that the increase of wealth does not only mean increased expenditure on useless luxury, but also increased comfort to all classes in the nation. And in an age of material prosperity, we must not neglect to preserve those constitutional bulwarks raised in far different times. Yet these also are worthy of preservation.

ART. X.-Chaucer Society's Publications for 1868-72. London. FIRST SERIES: Texts.-1. The Prologue and First Sixteen Tales of the Canterbury Tales from the six best inedited Manuscripts, namely, the Ellesmere, Hengwrt, 154; Cambridge, Gg. 4, 27; Corpus (Oxford), Petworth and Lansdowne, 851; both in parallel columns and separate octavos, with coloured facsimiles of the Tellers of all the Tales, from the Ellesmere MS. 2. A Parallel Text Edition of the first four Minor Poems of Chaucer from all the existing unprinted MSS., together with the French original of his A B C, and the hitherto unpublished first cast of his Prologue to the Legends of Good Women, &c. SECOND SERIES: Illustrations.-1. Mr. A. J. Ellis, Early English Pronunciation, with special reference to Shakspere and Chaucer.

2. Essays on Chaucer. By Professor Ebert, &c.

3. Mr. Furnivall on the Right Order of the Canterbury Tales, and the Stages of the Pilgrimage.

4. Mr. Furnivall's try to set Chaucer's Works in their right order of time.'

5. Originals and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

IT

T is now about a century since the study of Chaucer began to revive. Between the time of Verstegan and TyrwhittVol. 134.-No. 267.

Q

the

the 'Restitution of Decayed Intelligences' was published in 1605, Tyrwhitt's memorable work in 1775-he had, by slow degrees, fallen nearly altogether out of the general knowledge of men. He, whóm Spenser called 'the well of English undefiled,' was vulgarly accused of having poisoned and corrupted the springs of his native tongue. He whom that same Spenserthe sweetest melodist of our literature-looked up to as his versemaster and exemplar, was stigmatised as a very metrical cripple and idiot. And what little acquaintance there was maintained with him was due to versions of certain of his poems made by the facile pens of Dryden, and of Pope; so completely had he fallen on what were for him 'evil days' and 'evil tongues.' To Tyrwhitt belongs the honour of first reinstating the old poet on the pedestal from which he had been so rudely deposed so long a time. Proper consideration being made for the age in which that admirable scholar lived, his edition of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' must be pronounced a wonder of erudition and of faithful labour. Certainly the figure of Chaucer which he presented to the eyes of his time is not a quite genuine thing; there are traces on it of the whitewash or the paint with which the eighteenth century thought it well to touch up' ancestral images; but yet it is not easy to overstate the importance or the merit of the service he performed. From the publication of his volumes may be dated the renewal of the critical and the appreciative study of the greatest literary productions of the English Middle Ages. The impulse they gave has been perpetually strengthened and multiplied by various tendencies and movements, both of a general and a particular character. At the present time a Chaucer Society has been formed, and under the zealous leadership of Mr. Furnivall, its founder and organizer and almost sole worker, is doing excellent service in bringing within common reach the original texts of the great poet. Of various other ways in which in the course of this century, and especially in our own generation, some popular, as well as scholarly, familiarity with one of our greatest minds has been encouraged and promoted, it is not our purpose now to speak. Let it suffice to say that Chaucer has never been known since his own day more intelligently and more admiringly than he seems likely to be during the last quarter of this nineteenth century.

It is certain that this Chaucerian revival is not the result of any mere antiquarianism, but of a genuine poetic vitality. There can be no better testimony to the true greatness of the old poet than that half a thousand years after the age in which

*So far as its funds, which, we are sorry to say, are by no means flourishing, allow it.

he

he wrote he is held in higher estimation than ever; that, whatever intermissions of his popularity there may have been in times that cared nothing for, as they knew little of, the great Romantic School to which he belonged, and that were wholly incapable of understanding the very language in which he expressed and transcribed his genius, he this day speaks with increasing force and power. Through all the obsoletenesses of his language, and all the lets and impediments to a full enjoyment of his melody caused by our ignorance of fourteenthcentury English, through all the conventional and social differences which separate his time from ours, we yet recognise a profoundly human soul, with a marvellous power of speech. We are discovering that he is not only a great poet, but one of our greatest. It is not too much to say that the better acquaintance with Chaucer's transcendent merits is gradually establishing the conviction that not one among all poets deserves so well as he the second place.

Chaucer and Shakespeare have much in common. However diverse the form of their greatest works, yet in spirit there is a remarkable likeness and sympathy. Their geniuses differ rather in degree than in kind. Chaucer is in many respects a lesser Shakespeare.

Chaucer lived generations before the dramatic form was ripe for the use of genius. In his day it had scarcely yet advanced beyond the rude dialogue and grotesque portraiture of the Miracle-play.* In fact at that time that rare growth, which two centuries later was to put forth such exquisite imperishable flowers, had hardly yet emerged from its native earth; it was yet only embryonic. Chaucer stands in relation to the supreme Dramatic Age in a correspondent position to that held by Scott. Chaucer lived in the morning twilight of it, Scott in the evening. There can be little doubt that both would have added to its lustre that England would have boasted one more, and Scotland at least one great dramatist-had they been born later and earlier respectively; but Chaucer could not even descry it in the future, so far off was it, and it was Scott's fortune to look back upon it in the swiftly receding distance.

* Absalon of the 'Milleres Tale' :

'Sometime to shew his lightnesse and maistrie

He plaieth Herode on a skaffold hie.'

In the Elizabethan age this part of Herod had become a proverb of rant; so that Hamlet uses the name as the very superlative of noise (act iii. scene 2). The Miller himself cries out in Pilate's voice.' The wife of Bath, with Clerk Jankin and her gossip dame Ales, goes to 'Playes of Miracles.' Shakespeare laughs at the rough amateurs of the old stage in the by-play of the Midsummer Night's Dream.' In Chaucer's age perhaps Bottom would have been regarded as a very Roscius, and that interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe might have drawn genuine tears down mediæval cheeks.