Whatsoever merit of thought or of poetry may be found in the poems of which we have spoken, the world has rightly considered the CANTERBURY TALES as the work by which Chaucer is to be judged. In truth, common renown forgets all the rest; and it is by the Canterbury Tales only that he can properly be said to be known to his countrymen. Here it is that he appears as possessing the versatility of poetical power which ranges from the sublime, through the romantic and the pathetic, to the rudest mirth--choosing subjects the most various, and treating all alike adequately. Here he discovers himself as the shrewd and curious observer, and close painter of manners. Here he writes as one surveying the world of man with enlarged and philosophical intuition, weighing good and evil in even scale. Here, more than in any other, he is master of his matter, disposing it at his discretion, and not carried away with or mastered by it. Here he is master, too, of his English, thriftily culling the fit word, not effusing a too exuberant stream of description. Here he has acquired his own art and his own style of versification, which is here to be studied accordingly. Well therefore, and wisely, did Tyrwhitt judge, when undertaking to rescue the "mirrour of Rethoures alle" from the dust and rust of injurious time, he laid out his long and hard, but not uncheerful labour upon the Canterbury Tales alone. Every soul alive knows something of them--but not very many more than Stothard, in his celebrated Picture, has informed their eye withal. Their plan ranks them among works which are numerous, early and late, but which rather belong to early literature. East and West such are to be found, but they belong rather to the Oriental genius. A slender narrative, the container of weightier ones--a technical contrivance, which gave to a number of slighter compositions, collectively taken, the importance of a greater work--which prolonged to the tale-teller who had once gained the ear of his auditory his right of audience--and which, in a world where the tongue was more active in the diffusion of literature than the quill, afforded to each involved tale a memorial niche that might save it from dropping entirely away into oblivion. To Chaucer, the scheme serves a higher purpose of art, which of itself allies him to the higher poets. By it he is enabled to comprehend, as if in one picture, a more diversified and complete representation of humanity. The thought is genial and sprightly. A troop of riders, who have been stirred severally from their firesides by the searching spirit of spring, have casually fallen into company, and who pace along, breathing an air which "sweet showers" have embalmed--exhilarated by the brightening radiance of "the young sun," and made loquacious by the very power which pours out the song of the glad birds from the newly-leaved boughs by the long wayside.