(_b_) The second or Italian stage shows a decided advance upon the first. In the handling of the meters the technical ability is greater, and there is a growing keenness of perception and a greater stretch of originality. _Troilus and Cressida_ is a long poem adapted from Boccaccio. By far the greater part of the poem is original, and the rhyme royal stanzas, of much dexterity and beauty, abound in excellent lines that often suggest the sonnets of Shakespeare. The poem suffers from the prevailing diffuseness; but the pathos of the story is touched upon with a passionate intensity. “If no love is, O God, what fele I so? And if love is, what thing and which is he? If love be good, from whennes com’th my wo? If it be wikke, a wonder thinketh me When every torment and adversite That com’th of him may to me savory thinke; For ay thurste I the more that ich it drinke. “And if that in myn owne lust I brenne, From whennes com’th my wailing and my pleynte? If harm agree me, wher-to pleyne I thenne? I n’ot, ne why unwery that I fainte. O quike deth! O swete harm so queynte! How may of thee in me swich quantite, But if I consente that it be?” _The Hous of Fame_, a shorter poem in octosyllabic couplets, is of the dream-allegory type, as most of Chaucer’s poems of this period are; and it is of special importance because it shows gleams of the genuine Chaucerian humor. In this group is also included _The Legende of Good Women_, in which Chaucer, starting with the intention of telling nineteen affecting tales of virtuous women of antiquity, finishes with eight accomplished and the ninth only begun. After a charming introduction on the daisy, there is some masterly narrative, particularly in the portion dealing with Cleopatra. The meter is the heroic couplet, with which Chaucer was to familiarize us in _The Canterbury Tales_.