Mr. Wordsworth has modernized one of Chaucer's Poems with “no farther deviation from the original than was necessary for the fluent reading and instant understanding of the author, supplying the place of whatever he removed as obsolete with as little incongruity as possible.” This he has done very skilfully. But the same skill could not be exercised upon the Faery Queen with the same success. The peculiarities of language there are systematic; to modernize the spelling as Mr. Smedley proposed would in very many cases interfere with the rhyme and thus dislocate the stanza. The task therefore would have been extremely difficult; it would have been useless, because no one who is capable of enjoying that delightful Poem ever found any difficulty in understanding its dialect, and it would have been mischievous because it would have destroyed the character of the Poem. And this in the expectation of rendering Spenser more attractive by a new coat and waistcoat! Spenser of whom it has been truly said that more poets have sprung from him than from all other English writers; Spenser by whom Cowley tells us he was made a Poet; of whom Milton acknowledged to Dryden that he was his original; and in whom Pope says “there is something that pleases one as strongly in ones old age as it did in ones youth. I read the Faery Queen,” he proceeds, “when I was about twelve with a vast deal of delight, and I think it gave me as much when I read it over about a year or two ago.” No, a new suit of clothes would not render Spenser more attractive, not even if to a coat and waistcoat of Stultz's fabric, white satin pantaloons were added, such as the handsomest and best dressed of modern patriots, novelists and poets was known by on the public walk of a fashionable watering place. Save us from the Ultradelicates and the Extrasuperfines! for if these are to prevail— What can it avail To drive forth a snail Or to make a sail Of a herring's tail? To rhyme or to rail, To write or to indite Either for delight Or else for despite? Or books to compile Of divers manner of style, Vice to revile, And sin to exile, To teach or to preach As reason will reach? So said Skelton three centuries ago, and for myself I say once more what Skelton would have been well pleased to have heard said by any one. Aballiboozo! Dear Author, says one of those Readers who deserve to be pleased, and whom therefore there is a pleasure in pleasing, dear Author! may I not ask wherefore you have twice in this Chapter Extraordinary given us part of your long mysterious word, and only part, instead of setting it before us at full length? Dear Reader! you may; and you may also ask unblamed whether a part of the word is not as good, that is to say as significant, as the whole? You shall have a full and satisfactory answer in the next Chapter. CHAPTER CXLVIII.