Next in order was his _Troilus and Creseide_, a mediæval tale, already attempted by Boccaccio in his Filostrate, but borrowed by Chaucer, according to his own account, from _Lollius_, a mysterious name without an owner. The story is similar to that dramatized by Shakspeare in his tragedy of the same title. This is in decasyllabic verse, arranged in stanzas of seven lines each. The _House of Fame_, another of his principal poems, is a curious description--probably his first original effort--of the Temple of Fame, an immense cage, sixty miles long, and its inhabitants the great writers of classic times, and is chiefly valuable as showing the estimation in which the classic writers were held in that day. This is also in octosyllabic verses, and is further remarkable for the opulence of its imagery and its variety of description. The poet is carried in the claws of a great eagle into this house, and sees its distinguished occupants standing upon columns of different kinds of metal, according to their merits. The poem ends with the third book, very abruptly, as Chaucer awakes from his vision. "The Legend of Good Women" is a record of the loves and misfortunes of celebrated women, and is supposed to have been written to make amends for the author's other unjust portraitures of female character. THE CANTERBURY TALES.--In order to give system to our historic inquiries, we shall now present an outline of the Canterbury Tales, in order that we may show-- I. The indications of a general desire in that period for a reformation in religion. II. The social condition of the English people. III. The important changes in government. IV. The condition and progress of the English language. The Canterbury Tales were begun in 1386, when Chaucer was fifty-eight years old, and in a period of comparative quiet, after the minority of Richard II. was over, and before his troubles had begun. They form a beautiful gallery of cabinet pictures of English society in all its grades, except the very highest and the lowest; and, in this respect, they supplement in exact lineaments and the freshest coloring those compendiums of English history which only present to us, on the one hand, the persons and deeds of kings and their nobles, and, on the other, the general laws which so long oppressed the lower orders of the people, and the action of which is illustrated by disorders among them. But in Chaucer we find the true philosophy of English society, the principle of the guilds, or fraternities, to which his pilgrims belong--the character and avocation of the knight, squire, yeoman, franklin, bailiff, sompnour, reeve, etc., names, many of them, now obsolete. Who can find these in our compendiums? they must be dug--and dry work it is--out of profounder histories, or found, with greater pleasure, in poems like that of Chaucer. CHARACTERS.--Let us consider, then, a few of his principal characters which most truly represent the age and nation.