And thus, with the courage of a good or at all events easy conscience, he sets about his task which unfortunately--it is conjectured by reason of domestic calamities, probably including the death of his wife--remained, or at least has come down to us unfinished. We have only nine of the nineteen stories which he appears to have intended to present (though indeed a manuscript of Henry IV's reign quotes Chaucer's book of "25 good women"). It is by no means necessary to suppose that all these nine stories were written continuously; maybe, too, Chaucer, with all his virtuous intentions, grew tired of his rather monotonous scheme, at a time when he was beginning to busy himself with stories meant to be fitted into the more liberal framework of the "Canterbury Tales." All these illustrations of female constancy are of classical origin, as Chaucer is glad to make known and most of them are taken from Ovid. But though the thread of the English poet's narratives is supplied by such established favourites as the stories of Cleopatra the Martyr Queen of Egypt, of Thisbe of Babylon the Martyr, and of Dido to whom "Aeneas was forsworn," yet he by no means slavishly adheres to his authorities, but alters or omits in accordance with the design of his book. Thus, for instance, we read of Medea's desertion by Jason, but hear nothing of her as the murderess of her children; while, on the other hand, the tragedy of Dido is enhanced by pathetic additions not to be found in Virgil. Modern taste may dislike the way in which this poem mixes up the terms and ideas of Christian martyrology with classical myths, and as "the Legend of the Saints of Cupid" assumes the character of a kind of calendar of women canonised by reason of their faithfulness to earthly love. But obviously this is a method of treatment belonging to an age, not to a single poem or poet. Chaucer's artistic judgment in the selection and arrangement of his themes, the wonderful vivacity and true pathos with which he turns upon Tarquin or Jason as if they had personally offended him, and his genuine flow of feeling not only FOR but WITH his unhappy heroines, add a new charm to the old familiar faces. Proof is thus furnished, if any proof were needed, that no story interesting in itself is too old to admit of being told again by a poet; in Chaucer's version Ovid loses something in polish, but nothing in pathos; and the breezy freshness of nature seems to be blowing through tales which became the delight of a nation's, as they have been that of many a man's, youth. A single passage must suffice to illustrate the style of the "Legend of Good Women"; and it shall be the lament of Ariadne, the concluding passage of the story which is the typical tale of desertion, though not, as it remains in Chaucer, of desertion unconsoled. It will be seen how far the English poet's vivacity is from being extinguished by the pathos of the situation described by him.