Successless wars, and poverty behind: Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores, And the rash hunter strangled by the boars; The new-born babe by nurses overlaid; And the cook caught within the raging fire he made. All ills of Mars his nature, flame and steel; The gasping charioteer beneath the wheel Of his own car; the ruin'd house that falls And intercepts her lord betwixt the walls. The whole division that to Mars pertains, All trades of death that deal in steel for gains, Were there; the butcher, armourer, and smith, Who forges sharpen'd faulchions, or the scythe. The scarlet conquest on a tower was placed With shouts, and soldiers' acclamations graced; A pointed sword hung threat'ning o'er his head, Sustain'd but by a slender twine of thread. There saw I Mars his Ides, the Capitol, The seer in vain foretelling Caesar's fall; The last Triumvirs, and the wars they move, And Antony, who lost the world for love: These, and a thousand more, the Fane adorn, Their fates were painted ere the men were born; All copied from the heavens, and ruling force Of the red star, in his revolving course. The form of Mars high on a chariot stood, All sheathed in arms, and gruffly look'd the God: Two geomantic figures were display'd Above his head, a warrior and a maid, One when direct, and one when retrograde." "The Knight's Tale, the longest and most laboured of Chaucer's stories, possesses a degree of regularity which might satisfy the most severe critic. It is true that the honour arising from thence must be assigned to the more ancient bard, who had himself drawn his subject from an Italian model; but the high and decided preference which Dryden has given to this story, although somewhat censured by Trapp, enables us to judge how much the poet held an accurate combination of parts, and coherence of narrative, essentials of epic poetry." This is in Sir Walter's happiest natural vein; not so the astounding passage that follows it. "_That a classic scholar_ like Trapp should think the plan of the Knight's Tale equal to that of the Iliad, _is a degree of candour not to be hoped for_; but surely to an unprejudiced reader, a story which exhausts in its conclusion all the interest which it has excited in its progress; which, when terminated, leaves no question to be asked, no personage undisposed of, and no curiosity unsatisfied, _is abstractedly considered more gratifying than the history of a few weeks of a ten years' war, commenced long after the siege had begun, and ending long before the city was taken_!" Why, is not this the true and magnificent praise of the Iliad, that from the heart of the immense war it has taken out a story of individual interest, which begins where your curiosity asks, and where your sympathy finds repose? Achilles--his quarrel with Agamemnon--his loss of Patrocles--his vengeance on Hector--accomplished when he willingly