Mr Horne, the author of "The False Medium," "Orion," the "Spirit of the Age," and some other clever brochures in prose and in verse, in the laboured rather than elaborate introduction to "The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, modernized," (1841,) by Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth, Robert Bell, Thomas Powell, Elizabeth Barrett, and Zachariah Azed, gives us some threescore pages on Chaucer's versification; but, though they have an imposing air at first sight, on inspection they prove stark-naught. He seems to have a just enough general notion of the principle of the verse in the Canterbury Tales; but with the many ways of its working--the how, the why, and the wherefore--he is wholly unacquainted, though he dogmatizes like a doctor. He soon makes his escape from the real difficulties with which the subject is beset, and mouths away at immense length and width about what he calls "the _secret_ of Chaucer's rhythm in his heroic verse, which has been the baffling subject of so much discussion among scholars, a trifling increase in the syllables occasionally introduced for variety, and founded upon the same laws of contraction by apostrophe, syncope, &c., as those followed by all modern poets; but employed in a more free and varied manner, all the words being fully written out, the vowels sounded, and not subjected to the disruption of inverted commas, as used in after times." This "secret" was patent to all the world before Mr Horne took pen in hand, and his eternal blazon of it is too much now for ears of flesh and blood. The modernized versions, however, are respectably executed--Leigh Hunt's admirably; and we hope for another volume. But Mr Horne himself must be more careful in his future modernizations. The very opening of the Prologue is not happy. In Chaucer it runs thus:-- "Whanne that April with his shoures sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veine in swiche licour, Of whiche vertue engendered is the flour; When Zephyrus eke with his sote brethe, Enspired hath in every holt and hethe The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, And smale foules maken melodie, That slepen alle night with open eye, So priketh hem nature in hire corages; Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken strange strondes, To serve halwes couthe in sondry londes," &c. Thus modernized by Mr Home:-- "When that sweet April showers with downward shoot The drought of March have pierc'd unto the root, And bathed every vein with liquid power, Whose virtue rare engendereth the flower; When Zephyrus also with his fragrant breath Inspired hath in every grove and heath The tender shoots of green, and the young sun Hath in the Ram one half his journey run, And small birds in the trees make melody, That sleep and dream all night with open eye; So nature stirs all energies and ages That folk are bent to go on pilgrimages," &c.