Let see now of your womanly pitee. He is a kinge's brother's sone pardee, And though he were a poure bachelere, Sin he hath served you so many a yere, And had for you so gret adversitie, It moste ben considered, leveth me. For gentil mercy oweth to passen right. Then sayd he thus to Palamon the knight: I trow ther nedeth little sermoning To maken you assenten to this thing. Cometh ner, and take your lady by the hond. Betwixen hem was maked anon the bond, That highte matrimoine or mariage, By all the conseil of the baronage. And thus with alle blisse and melodie Hath Palamon ywedded Emilie. And God, that all this wide world hath wrought, Send him his love, that hath it dere ybought. For now is Palamon in alle wele, Living in blisse, in richisse, and in hele, And Emelie him loveth so tendrely, And he hire serveth all so gentilly, That never was ther no word hem betwene Of jalousie, ne of non other tene. Thus endeth Palamon and Emilie And God save all this fayre compagnie. The whole oration is rendered by Dryden with zealous diligence in bringing out the sense into further effect, and with a magnificent sweep of composition. If there is in the fine original any thing felt as a little too stiffly formal, this impression is wholly obliterated or lost in the streaming poetry of the translator. Dryden may not, on his own score, have been much of a philosopher; but he handles a philosophical thought in verse with a dexterity that is entirely his own. The sharpness and swiftness of intellectual power concurring in him, join so much ease with so much brevity, that the poetical vein flows on unhindered, even when involved with metaphysical notions and with scholastic recollections. The comparison of the following noble strain with the original now quoted, decisively and successfully shows the character of an embellishing transformation, which we have all along attributed to Dryden's treatment of Chaucer. The full thought of the original is often but as the seed of thought to the version, or at least the ungrown plant of the one throws out the luxuriance and majesty of leaves, blossoms, and branches in the other. The growth and decay of the oak in the two, and still more of the human being, are marked instances. Dryden does not himself acknowledge the bold license which he has used in regenerating; he does himself less than justice. The worth of his work is not the giving to modern England her ancient poet, without the trouble of acquiring his language, or of learning to sympathize with his manner. It would almost seem as if that were an enterprise which there is no accomplishing. Rightly to speak, it was not Dryden's. He really undertook, from a great old poem lying before him, to write a great modern poem, which he has done; and in the new Knight's Tale, we see Dryden, the great poet--we do not see Chaucer, the greater poet. But we