We never possessed a tolerably correct edition of this master-poet; and the very circumstance of the continued popularity of the poems with the many has occasioned their present wretched condition. When works circulated in their manuscript state, before the era of printing, the popularity of a poet made his text the more liable to corruption. Multiplied transcripts were produced by heedless or licentious scribes, whose careless omissions, and whose perpetuated blunders and even interpolations can only be credited by the collators of the manuscripts of Chaucer. This happened with the very first printed edition by Caxton. Our patriarchal publisher discovered that he had printed from a very faulty manuscript, and, in that primitive age of simplicity and printing, nobly suppressed the edition which dishonoured the author, and substituted an improved one. Doubtless GOWER, a grave and learned poet, whose copies are remarkably elegant, has descended to us in a purer condition than CHAUCER, for he was rarely transcribed. Speght was the first editor who gave a more complete edition of Chaucer, with the useful appendage of a glossary, the first of its kind, and which has been a fortunate acquisition for later glossographers. But Speght, with the aid of Stowe, who was equally industrious, was so deficient in critical acumen, as to have impounded any stray on the common stamped with the initials of Chaucer. Thus our poet has suffered all the mischances of faithless scribes, unintelligent printers, and uncritical editors. To make the bad worse, the last modern edition of Chaucer, by URRY, though recommended by the white letter, offering this bland relief to a modern reader, is a showy volume, of which we are forbidden to read a line! The history of this edition is an evidence how ill our scholars, at no remote period, were qualified to decide on the fate of a great vernacular author. Urry, the pupil of Dean Aldrich, and the friend of Bishop Atterbury, appears to have been one of that galaxy or confederacy of wits called "the Wits of Christ Church." The "Student of Christ Church, Oxon," offered a title and a place which would sanction an edition of Chaucer; one object of which was to contribute five hundred pounds to finish Peckwater Quadrangle. The pompous folio appeared heralded by the queen's licence for the exclusive sale for fourteen years. Our editor at first seems to have been reluctant and modest, till instigated by his great patrons to divest himself of all fear of the author. In his innocence conceiving that the strokes of his own pen would silently improve an obsolete genius, this merciless interpolator, changing words and syllables at pleasure, has furnished a text which Chaucer never wrote![7] If the worst edition that was ever published contributed to finish Peckwater Quadrangle, it is amusing to be reminded that causes are often strangely disproportionate to their effects.