Look back to Chaucer's own lines, and you will see that Mr Horne's variations are all for the worse. How flat and tame "sweet April showers," in comparison with "April with his shoures sote." In Chaucer the month comes boldly on, in his own person--in Mr Horne he is diluted into his own showers. 'Tis ominous thus to stumble on the threshold. "Downward shoot" is very bad indeed in itself, and all unlike the natural strength of Chaucer. "Liquid power" is even worse and more unlike; and most tautological the "virtue of power." In Chaucer the virtue is in the "licour." "Rare" is poorly dropped in to fill up. Chaucer purposely uses "sote" twice--and the repetition tells. Mr Horne must needs change it into "fragrant." "In the trees" is not in Chaucer--for he knew that "smale foules" shelter in the "hethe" as well as in the "holt"--among broom and bracken, and heath and rushes. Chaucer does not _say_, as Mr Horne does, that the birds _dream_--he leaves you to think for yourself whether they do so or not, while sleeping with open eye all night. Such conjectural emendations are injurious to Chaucer. We presume Mr Horne believes he has authority for applying "so pricketh hem nature in hire corages" to the folks that "longen to go on pilgrimages"--and not to the "smale foules." Or is it intended for a happy innovation? To us it seems an unhappy blunder--taking away a fine touch of nature from Chaucer, and hardening it into horn; while "all energies and ages" is indeed a free and affected version of "corages." "For to wander thro'," is a mistranslation of "to seken;" and to "sing the holy mass," is not the meaning of to "serve halwes couthe," _i.e._ to worship saints known, &c. Turning over a couple of leaves, we behold a modernization of the antique with a vengeance-- "His son, a young squire, with him there I _saw_, A lover and a lusty bache_lor_! (aw) (ah!) With locks crisp curl'd, as they'd been laid in press, Of twenty year of age he was, I guess." Chaucer never once in all his writings thus rhymes off two consecutive couplets in one sentence so slovenly, as with "I saw," and "I guess." But Mr Horne is so enamoured "with the old familiar faces" of pet cockneyisms, that he must have his will of them. Of the same squire, Chaucer says-- "Of his stature he was of _even length_;" and Mr Horne translates the words into-- "He was in stature of the common length," They mean "well proportioned." Of this young squire, Chaucer saith-- "So hote he loved, that by nightertale He slep no more than doth the nightingale." We all know how the nightingale employs the night--and here it is implied that so did the lover. Mr Horne spoils all by an affected prettiness suggested by a misapplied passage in Milton. "His amorous ditties nightly fill'd the vale; He slept no more than doth the nightingale." Chaucer says of the Prioresse-- "Full well she sang the service divine Entuned in hire nose ful swetely." Mr Horne must needs say--