may be the accord of founds, yet the language of mufic, taken feparately from words, is loose, obfcure, and enigmatical, fufceptible of various interpretations, and guiding us with no fufficient decision to any. When we hear a tune unaccompanied with words, (unless that tune, by past association, is enabled to raife up in our minds the image or general purpose of certain words), or when we hear a tune, in which the luxuriance and multiplicity of mufical founds obfcures and tramples with difdain upon the majeftic fimplicity of words, our attention will almost univerfally be fixed lefs upon the paffion which ought to be communicated, than upon the fkill of the artift; we fhall adinire much, and feel comparatively little. In a tune in which the number and time of the mufical founds are regulated by the Syllabic meafure of the verfe, there will be an awful, or a fafcinating, fimplicity, which is capable of powerfully moving the heart. Refined and fcientifical mufic can delight no man, but from affectation, unless it be aided by previous habits or education. The tafte for it is confequently an artificial tafte; and, when moft perfeveringly and fuccefsfully cultivated, yet its power over the mind will never rife to fo great a degree of ftrength, as, the pleafures of natural tafte." (Pp. 181, 182.) Chaucer is fupposed to have studied at Cambridge. The evidence of this, however, is but flight. In his "Court of Love," written at the age of 18 years, he defigns himself "Philogenet, of Cam-. bridge, Clerk." Chaucer may have ftudied at Cambridge, and probably did fo; but the fact cannot, furely, be inferred with certainty from a defignation which is evidently fictitious. Mr. G. here gives an interetting sketch of the rife, amazing profperity for a time, and fubfequent decline, of the two universities. In the year 1209, 3000 Members of the Univerfity of Oxford, exafperated by fome arbitrary proceedings of King John, withdrew to Cambridge and other places, where they hoped to purfue their, ftudies in peace. In 1357, the Archbishop of Armagh, in a difcourfe. delivered at Avignon before Innocent VI. affirmed that, even in his time, Oxford had contained 30,000 Scholars; though he adds that, at the time when he was fpeaking, it fcarcely contained 6000. This decay he afcribes to the prodigious influx of the Mendicant Friars, who first obtained permisfion to establish their fraternities at Oxford in the beginning of the 13th century, and foon became fuch formidable rivals to the Univerfity as to threaten its total ruin. It is Chaucer's "Court of Love" was first printed by Stow, the refpectable compiler of the Annals of England, in an edition which he gave of the poet's works in 1561. It confifts, at prefent, of 1443 lines, but muft originally have confifted of not less than 2000. particularly examined in our author's 12th chapter, which appreciates very juftly its merits and defects. But, previously to this examina-, tion, Mr. Godwin thinks it neceffary to confider Chaucer's claim to be confidered as the father of English poetry. This he does in the 11th chapter; in which alfo is contained a most curious difquifition on the state of poetry in Europe before the time of Chaucer, and a moft excellent delineation of the characters of William de Lorris, Dante, Z 4 Dante, and Petrarca. Of this excellent chapter we are forry that we can afford to lay before our readers only a skeleton. By all who have traced the hiftory of our language Gower has, hitherto, been supposed to have preceded Chaucer as an English poet: to have advised him to compofe in his native tongue, and to have fhewed him the way. But our author has, we think, demonftrably fhewn that this prepoffeffion in favour of Gower, however general, is a mistake. Gower is commonly thought to have been the elder of the two. But the difference, if any, could not have been great; fince Gower was, in fome degree, an active man and a courtier at the acceffion of Henry IV., when Chaucer was upwards of 70. lowing two lines in Gower's poem "De Confeffione Amantis," And grete well Chaucer, whan ye mete, The fol have been conftrued to import that Gower modelled the literary character of Chaucer, affifting him with his advice, and guiding him by his example. The lines, however, are spoken, not by Gower, but by Venus; and, from the information of Gower himfelf, we know that the "Confeffio Amantis," the only work of his in English, was written at the request of Richard II. and published in 1392 or 1393. Before that time Chaucer had produced all his great works, except the Canterbury Tales. They were already in every one's hands, and every one contended who fhould be loudest in their praife; fo that Gower really feems to have been ftimulated to the cultivation of his native language, by the fplendid fuccefs and loud fame of his friend. Gower, at the age of 60 and upwards, learned to write English, which Chaucer had written at the age of 18. The remainder of this eleventh chapter is peculiarly'excellent. It treats of the poets on the continent previous to Chaucer; of the Romance of Provencal languages, which were feparated by the Loire ; of the comparative merits of the writers in each; and of the fingular inftitutions called Parliaments or Courts of Love, which made a figure in the 12th and 13th centuries, and in which the niceft questions of gallantry were decided. These courts confifted of members of both fexes, although the ladies, as was to be expected in an age when they were looked up to with a deference bordering on adoration, had clearly the greatest weight and pre-eminence. Mr. G. in fpeaking of William de Lorris, (fo called from the name of the place where he was born, a town in the Orleannois) the original author of the highly popular poem the "Roman de la Rofe," has favoured us with a moft judicious criticism on the French poetry of the two laft centuries. (Pp. 221, 222.) The portrait of Dante is drawn with admirable fpirit and truth. We fhall copy a few of its principal features. "Dante is one of thofe geniuses, who, in the whole series of human exiftence, most baffle all calculation, and excite unbounded aftonishment. Dark as was the age in which he studied and wrote, unfixed and fluctuating as as were the then half-formed languages of modern nations; he trampled upon thefe difadvantages, and presents us with fallies of imagination, and energies of compofition, which no past age of literature has excelled, and no future can ever hope to excel.-Science has a gradual and progreflive march; one difcovery prepares the way for another. It is not fo in poetry. There the matter geniules, a Homer, a Shakespeare, and a Milton, feem to belong to no age, but to be the property of the world. They bear indeed fome marks of the period in which, and the people among whom, they lived, fome token of human weakness and'infirmity; but what is best in them refembles nothing in their contemporaries, was prepared by no progreffion, was copied by no future imitation, and ftands off as wide from competition in all which came immediately after, as in all that had gone before it. age. "Such a man was Dante: He is not infected, in his immortal part, with the weakness of his He does not march with the uncertain and halfdetermined step of William de Lorris. His fatire is as biting, his fublime as wonderful, his tragic narratives [are] as deep and difireffing as any which the age of Pericles or of Virgil could boaft. His grand poem embraces the whole compass of human invention. He has thought proper to render it the receptacle of all his animofities and averfions. No author has exhibited craft, and impofture, and tyranny, and hard-heartednefs, in bolder and more glowing colours than Dante. No poet has fhewn himself a greater mafter of the terrible, of all which makes the flesh of man creep on his bones, and perfuades us, for the moment, to regard exiftence, and confcioufness, and the condition of human beings, with loathing and abhorrence. Dante exhibits powers, of which we did not before know that the heart of man was fufceptible, and which teach us to confider our nature as fomething greater and more aftonishing than we had ever been accustomed to conceive it. Dante died seven years before Chaucer was born." (Pp. 223-225.) A finer paffage than this will not eafily be found in any author. Into our author's examination of the "Court of Love" we cannot enter. But he has fhewn that the verfification has great merit, and that the antient appearance of the poem prefents no very formidable difficulties, except to those whofe poetical researches have never been extended beyond Dryden and Pope. This is true, indeed, of Chaucer's works in general, The following affertions of Mr. G. will be found, by thofe who fhall make the experiment, to be perfectly well grounded: All that repels us, in the language of Chaucer, is merely fuperficial appearance and firft impreffion: contemplate it only with a little perfeverance, and what feemed to be deformity will, in many inftances, be converted into beauty. A fortnight's application would be fufficient to make us feel ourselves perfectly at home with this patriarch of our poetry." (p. 248.) He complains, however, of the wretched form in which the greater part of Chaucer's works now appear. "Mr. Tyrwhitt, indeed," he fays, "has taken much pains, and, in many refpects, to excellent purpofe, with the Canterbury Tales; but nothing can be more miferable than the condition of the printed copies of the reft." (p. 245.) It is certainly very much to be defired that a correct edition fhould be given of the whole, accompa nied with exertions, by way of illuftration, fimilar to those which have of late years been fo liberally employed on Shakespeare and Milton. We would seriously recommend it to our very able and ingenious author to undertake the conducting of fuch an edition. We are perfecty fatisfied that, in the indifpenfible qualifications of difcernment, erudition, and taste, he is well qualified for the tafk; and if he were to iffue proposals for fuch a publication, we think that he could hardly fail of fuccefs. We conceive that he would be liberally encouraged by the public, and affifted by many valuable communications from those whofe ftudies have been directed to our ancient literature. This twelfth chapter finishes with fome reflections on war, fuggefted by the memorable battle of Creffey, which was fought in the fame year in which Chaucer wrote the "Court of Love.” In these reflections, Mr. G. appears, in our eyes, to no advantage. He feems equally afraid to avow and to renounce his former principles on the fubject. "War," he fays "in the eye of a found moralift, is the most humiliating attitude in which human nature can exhibit itself. A thousand men murdered on a field, by other men to whom they are total ftrangers, for a miferable queftion of political fpeculation, by which, ninety-nine times out of an hundred, whichever party obtains the victory, no party is the gainer, is a fpectacle to make us curfe existence, and the human form [which] we bear." (p. 250.) Why any spectacle whatever fhould make us curfe the human form is not easily conceived; and from what code of laws our author derives his notion of murder we cannot conjecture. The truth is, that this is the miferable howl of that affected philanthropy, which, we hoped, had now been univerfally understood: which, while it teaches us to regard all the quarrels of Kings (whom our author here, as in fome other places, has dignified with the democratical title of the first magiftrate,) as flagrant tranfgreffions of the laws of humanity, can exult in the extermination of millions for the elevation of the mob, and for the unattainable phantoms called liberty and equality. Yet Mr. G. informs us that "war may be neceffary, and, if neceffary, then juft." If fo, he himself is, in our opinion, here engaged in a very unneceffary war; for he has, as far as we know, no antagonist. It is certainly true that, as he obferves, "The ftrength of muscle and finew, any more than the ftrength of intellect and imagination, ought not to be defpifed, and deferves to be cultivated." But when he fays that," abftracting from the moral application of military prowess, it is on every fuppofition an energy, and, as fuch, is worthy of honour," (p. 251.) he talks a language which we do not underftand. We thought that the moral application of an energy had been the very circumftance which conftituted the honour or difhonour of the energizer; and we cannot help obferving that the very term ENERGY might have been avoided by our author without any breach of prudence. In fhort, we fufpect that these reflections on war will neither conciliate Mr. G's old friends, nor procure him new ones. Mr. G. thinks it probable that, from Cambridge, Chaucer re moved to Oxford. Leland fays exprefsly, "Ifiacas fcholas-diligenter celebravit ;" and mentions, John Somme and friar Nicholas Lynne, two eminent mathematicians, as the tutors under whom he studied. His poem entituled "The Boke of Troilus and Crefeide," a juvenile work, and composed before his connections with the court, is dedicated to Gower and Strodę, two scholars, of whom both, as we have reafon to believe, were educated at Oxford; and it was probably written during Chaucer's refidence there, or foon after his quitting it. This poem is avowedly a tranflation; and there has arifen fome enquiry concerning the original author, and the language in which it was firft compofed. Chaucer himself, in the courfe of his poem, calls the author Lollius, and the language Latin. Lydgate afferts that the title of the original work was Trophe. Mr. Tyrwhitt, however, has attempted to fhew that the "Troilus and Crefeide" is taken from the Filoftrate of Boccaccio; though how Boccaccio fhould have acquired the name of Lollius, and, the Filoftrato the title of Trophe, he confefles himself unable to explain. Mr. Godwin here gives us a very good sketch of the hiftory and literary character of Boccaccio, and combats the opinion of Mr. Fyrwhitt, with fuccefs we think, but certainly with an air of unbecoming petulance, which we are really forry to fee him indulge almost on every occafion where Mr. Tyrwhitt's name occurs in his work. He fuppofes that Lollius was an author to whom, though his work has now perifhed, both Chaucer and Boccaccio were indebted, and from whom both the Troilus and Crefcide of the former, and the Filoftrato of the latter, were equally tranflations. A ftrong confirmarion of his hypothefis is derived from one of Chaucer's most confiderable productions, his "Houfe of Fame." In this work the poet thus enumerates the authors who had recorded the story of Troy: Homer, Dares, Titus, [Dictys], Lollius, Guido dalla Colonna, and Geoffrey of Monmouth. Befides, Boccacio himself affures us, that he tranflated his Thefeida from a Latin original, What more likely' than that the Filoftrato came from a like fource? Tranflation was deemed an honourable employment by the first revivers of learning, who were eager to lay open to their igno rant countrymen the facred fountains of knowledge, which had fo long been concealed in obfcurity and neglect. Mr. G., therefore, is of opinion that Lollius may, with fome probability, be confidered as an author of the 12th century, who, like many others, was captivated with the tale of Troy divine," at a period when the different nations of Europe were feized with the affectation of deducing themfelves from a Trojan original. Our author's XV. chapter contains a very masterly analysis of the "Troilus and Crefeide," in which both its beauties and its defects are pointed out with impartial difcrimination. Yet fome of his criticifms are evidently wrong: "There are lines," he fays, "interfperfed in the poem, which are not more degraded by the meannefs of the expreffion, than by the rudeness, not to say the brutality, of the fentiment," Of thefe he produces the following fpecimen: "We may well |