some of these in this essay, the author of which would gladly have abstained from printing a single modernised phrase or word--most of all any which he has himself been guilty of re-casting. The time cannot be far distant when even the least unsuccessful of such attempts will no longer be accepted, because no such attempts whatever will be any longer required. No Englishman or Englishwoman need go through a very long or very laborious apprenticeship in order to become able to read, understand, and enjoy what Chaucer himself wrote. But if this apprenticeship be too hard, then some sort of makeshift must be accepted, or antiquity must remain the "canker-worm" even of a great national poet, as Spenser said it had already in his day proved to be of Chaucer. Meanwhile, since our poetic literature has long thrown off the shackles which forced it to adhere to one particular group of models, he is not a true English poet who should remain uninfluenced by any of the really great among his predecessors. If Chaucer has again, in a special sense, become the "master dear and father reverent" of some of our living poets, in a wider sense he must hold this relation to them all and to all their successors, so long as he continues to be known and understood. As it is, there are few worthies of our literature whose names seem to awaken throughout the English-speaking world a readier sentiment of familiar regard; and in New England, where the earliest great poet of Old England is cherished not less warmly than among ourselves, a kindly cunning had thus limned his likeness:-- An old man in a lodge within a park; The chamber walls depicted all around With portraiture of huntsman, hawk and hound, And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound; He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, Then writeth in a book like any clerk. He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Made beautiful with song; and as I read I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note Of lark and linnet, and from every page Rise odours of ploughed field or flowery mead. GLOSSARY. Bencite = benedicite. Clepe, call. Deem, judge. Despitous, angry to excess. Digne, fit;--disdainful. Frere, friar. Gentle, well-born. Keep, care. Languor, grief. Meinie, following, household. Meet, mate (?), measure (?). Overthwart, across. Parage, rank, degree. Press, crowd. Rede, advise, counsel. Reeve, steward, bailiff. Ruth, pity. Scall, scab. Shapely, fit. Sithe, time. Spiced, nice, scrupulous. Targe, target, shield. Y prefix of past participle as in, y-bee = bee(n). While, time; to quite his while, to reward his pains. Wieldy, active. Wone, custom, habit. INDEX. "A.B.C." ("La Priere de Notre Dame"). "Adam" (Chaucer's Scrivener). "African." Albert of Brescia. "Alcestis."