first company in their respective countries. Both display an acute sense of the ludicrous, and can readily enliven, by a witty turn or lively expression, the dull or absurd details which they are occasionally obliged to narrate. We question, however, whether this is not sometimes too much in. dulged by both authors, since such license, when frequently taken, is rather irreverent, and looks as if the jest were levelled at once against the reader, the editor, and the original minstrel. In other respects, Mr. Ellis has a decided superiority over Mons. de Tressan. He is infinitely more faithful as an editor; and, as an author, exhibits much deeper research; which appears from his having chosen the metrical romances for his subject: whereas the count has confined his attention to those in prose, though far less ancient, and in every respect less interesting. But Mr. Ellis's introduction sufficiently illustrates his superior skill as an antiquary, although he has brought forward fewer materials than Mr. Ritson, and makes no parade of those which he has acquired: it is evidently because he wished to be an architect, not a mere collector of stones and rubbish. Everything which he quotes is adapted to fill a place in his system; and thus he avoids the great error of antiquaries, who are too much busied with insulated facts, to present to their readers a connected historical view of the subject under discussion.

Notwithstanding this ingenious and lively publication, we still desire even the more to see a genuine edition of these ancient poems. It is painful to reflect, that they, with many unedited chronicles, the materials of our national history, are lying unhonoured and unconsulted amid the rubbish of large libraries.

GODWIN'S LIFE OF CHAUCER.*

[Edinburg Review, 1804.]

THE perusal of this title excited no small surprise in our critical fraternity. The authenticated passages of Chaucer's life may be comprised in half a dozen pages; and behold two voluminous quartos! The more sanguine of our num ber anticipated the recovery of the "Boke of the Lioun," and the other long lost labours of Adam Scrivenere, the bard's amanuensis; the more cautious predicted a new edi tion of the Chest of Rowley, and the Skakspeare cabinet of Ireland. Our expectations were yet farther heightened, by the lofty tone in which Mr. Godwin contrasts his own labours and discoveries with those of the former biographers of Chaucer. Tyrwhitt, the learned and indefatigable editor of the Canterbury Tales, had professed himself unable to produce more than a short abstract of the historical passages of the poet's life; and Ellis, the elegant historian of our early poetry, has (to use his own words) "followed Tyrwhitt, in reciting a few genuine anecdotes, instead of attempting to work them into a connected narrative, in which much must have been supplied by mere conjecture, or by a forced interpretation of the allusions scattered through the works of the poet." But Mr. Godwin censures this resolution, as having been adopted to save the fatigue of minute research after the documents from which a full and formal life of Chaucer might have been compiled.

"The fact is, however, that Tyrwhitt made no exertions as to the history of the poet, but contented himself with examining what other biographers had related, and adding a few memorandums,

*On the Life of GEOFFREY CHAUCER, the early English Poet; including Memoirs of his near Friend and Kinsman, JOHN OF GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster; with Sketches of the Manners, Opinions, Arts, and Literature of England in the 14th century. By WILLIAM GODWIN. 2 vols. 4to. London, 1803.

taken from Rymer's Manuscript Collections, now in the British Museum. He has not, in a single instance, resorted to the national repositories in which our records are preserved. In this sort of labour I had been indefatigable, and I have many obligations to acknowledge to the politeness and liberality of the persons to whose custody these monuments are confided. I encountered, indeed, no obstacle, whenever I had occasion to direct my inquiries among the different offices of government. After all my diligence, however, I am by no means confident that I may not have left some particulars to be gleaned by the compilers who shall come after me."-Preface, p. xii.

After this heavy imputation upon a former editor, to whose industry and labours Chaucer is chiefly indebted for the revival of his fame; after the grave self-congratulation of the biographer; his thanks to those who aided, or did not impede his researches; and his modest apprehensions that, notwithstanding all his diligence, some gleanings may remain for future compilers; the reader will learn with admiration that Mr. William Godwin's two quarto volumes contain hardly the vestige of an authenticated fact concerning Chaucer, which is not to be found in the eight pages of Messrs Thomas Tyrwhitt and George Ellis. The researches into the records have only produced one or two writs, addressed to Chaucer, while clerk of the works; the several grants and passports granted to him by Edward III and Richard II, which had been referred to by former biographers; together with the poet's evidence in a court of chivalry, a contract about a house, and a solitary receipt for a half year's salary. These, with a few documents referring to John of Gaunt, make the Appendix to the book, and are the only original materials brought to light by the labours of the author. Our readers must be curious to know how, out of such slender materials, Mr. Godwin has contrived to rear such an immense fabric. For this purpose he has had recourse to two fruitful expedients. In the first place, when the name of a town, of a person, or of a science, happens to occur in his narrative, he stops short, to give the history of the city ab urbe condita; the life of the man, from his cradle upwards, with a brief account of his ancestors; or a full essay upon the laws and principles of the science, with a sketch of the lives of its most eminent professors. We will not do Mr. Godwin the injustice to suppose, that this mode of biography is copied from some respectable old gentleman prosing by his fireside, who halts in the story of Tom, till he

has given the yawning audience the exploits and genealogy of honest Dick. We believe he profited by instructions derived from no less a person than Miguel Cervantes.

"If you have occasion," says that author, "to mention a giant in your piece, be sure to bring in Goliah, and on this very Goliah (who will not cost you one farthing) you may spin out a swinging annotation. You may say, The Giant Goliah, or Goliat, was a Philistine, whom David the shepherd slew with the thundering stroke of a pebble, in the valley of Terebinthus. Vide Kings, such a chapter and such a verse, where you may find it written. If not satisfied with this, you would appear a great humanist, and would show your knowledge in geography, take some occasion to draw the river Tagus into your discourse, out of which you may fish a most notable remark: The river Tagus, say you, was so called from a certain king of Spain. It takes its rise from such a place, and buries its waters in the ocean, kissing the walls of the famous city of Lisbon; and some are of opinion that the sands are gold," &c. &c. &c.

So well has Mr. Godwin profited by these instructions, that the incidents of Chaucer's life, serving as a sort of thread upon which to string his multifarious digressions, bear the same proportion to the book that the alphabet does to the Encyclopedia, or the texts of a volume of sermons to the sermons themselves. A short glance at the work will fully justify this assertion.

Chaucer was born in London.-This is the subject of the first chapter. The commentary is a sketch of the history of London from the year of Christ 50, down to the reign of Edward III, with notices respecting the principal citizens and Lords Mayor, Henry Picard, John Philpot, Sir William Walworth; not forgetting Whittington and his cat. The proportion of the commentary to the text is as twelve pages to as many lines.-Chaucer must have gone to school.

This is text the second, and forms a sufficient apology for a long essay on the learning of the age; while the probability that, during the vacation, Chaucer must have read romances,* introduces a long dissertation on these compositions, awkwardly abridged from Warton and Ellis. But Chaucer must have gone sometimes to church,-and therefore Mr. Godwin feels himself obliged to give an account of the peculiar tenets of the Church of Rome; some of which, par

* Mr. Godwin may have himself read Valentine and Orson, while at school; but during the 13th century romances were the amusement of grown gentlemen.

ticula y those of purgatory and auricular confession, seem greaty to the taste of our philosophical biographer. The author proceeds, with the most unfeeling prolixity, to give a minute detail of the civil and common law, of the feudal instit ions, of the architecture of churches and castles, of sculture and painting, of minstrels, of players, of parish clerks, &c. &c.; while poor Chaucer, like Tristram Shandy, can hardly be said to be fairly born, although his life has attained the size of half a volume. How these various dissertations are executed, is another consideration; but we at present confine ourselves to the propriety of introducing them as part of the life of Chaucer. We are aware that Mr. Godwin has informed us, that, "to delineate the state of England, such as Chaucer saw it, in every point of view in which it can be delineated, is the subject of this book;" and that "the person of Chaucer may in this view be considered as the central piece in a miscellaneous painting, giving unity and individual application to the otherwise disjointed particulars with which the canvass is diversified." Now, had the biographer either possessed, from the labours of others, or recovered, by his own industry, facts sufficient to make a regular and connected history of Chaucer, bearing some proportion to the "disjointed particulars" so miscellaneously piled together, we could have objected less to the digressive matter, although even then we might have required it to be abridged and condensed. But where the central figure, from which the whole piece takes its name and character, is dimly discoverable in the background, obscured and overshadowed by the motley group of abbeys, castles, colleges, and halls, fantastically portrayed around it, we cannot perceive either unity or individuality in so whimsical a performance. The work may be a view of the manners of the 13th century, containing right good information, not much the worse for the wear; but has no more title to be called a life of Chaucer, than a life of Petrarch.

We have said that Mr. Godwin had two modes of wiredrawing and prolonging his narrative. The first is, as we have seen, by hooking in the description and history of everything that existed upon the earth at the same time with Chaucer. In this kind of composition, we usually lose sight entirely of the proposed subject of Mr. Godwin's lucubrations, travelling to Rome or Palestine with as little remorse