and spits his spite on Pope, which we wipe off that it may not corrode. "This translation was done at sixteen or seventeen," says Pope in a note to his January and May--and there is not, among the achievements of early genius, to be found another such specimen of finished art and of perfect mastery. Mr. Horne has ventured to give in his volume the Reve's Tale. "It has been thought," he says, "that an idea of the extraordinary versatility of Chaucer's genius could not be adequately conveyed, unless one of his matter-of-fact comic tales were attempted. The Reve's has accordingly been selected, as presenting a graphic painting of character, equal to those contained in the 'Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,' displayed in action by means of a story, which may be designated _as a broad farce, ending in a pantomime of absurd reality_. To those who are acquainted with the original, an apology may not be considered inadmissible for certain necessary variations and omissions." For our part, we do not object to this tale, though at the commencement of such a work its insertion was ill-judged, and will endanger greatly the volume. But we do object to the hypocritical cant about the licentiousness of Pope's fine touches, from the person who wrote the above words in italics. Omissions there must have been--but they sadly shear the tale of its vigour, and indeed leave it not very intelligible to readers who know not the original. The variations are most unhappy--miserable indeed; and by putting the miller's daughter to lie in a closet at the end of a passage, this moral modernizer has killed Chaucer. In the matchless original all the night's action goes on in one room--and that not a large one--miller, miller's wife, miller's daughter, and the two strenuous Cantabs, are within the same four narrow walls--their beds nearly touch--the jeopardized cradle has just space to rock in--yet this self-elected expositor of Chaucer is either so blind as not to see how essential such allocation of the parties is to the wicked comedy, or such a blunderer as to believe that he can improve on the greatest master that ever dared, and with perfect success, to picture, without our condemnation--so wide is the privilege of genius in sportive fancy--what, but for the self-rectifying spirit of fiction, would have been an outrage on nature, and in the number not only of forbidden but unhallowed things. The passages interpolated by Mr Horne's own pen are as bad as possible--clownish and anti-Chaucerian to the last degree. For example, he thus takes upon himself, in the teeth of Chaucer, to narrate Alein's night adventure-- "And up he rose, and crept along the floor, Into the passage humming with their snore; As narrow was it as a drum or tub, And like a beetle doth he grope and _grub_, Feeling his way, _with darkness in his hands_. Till at the passage end he stooping stands."