The Alexander legend, setting forth the life and exploits of Alexander the Great, was no less famous than that of Troy. "The storie of Alisaundre is so comune That every wight that hath discrecioun Of this narrative-the great versions were the French Roman D'Alexandre and the English King Alisaunder—the chief source appears to have been a book of obscure origins and very early date, declared, probably not without warrant, to have had more readers than any other except the Bible, a Greek book by the unknown Pseudo-Callisthenes, which obtained currency through a fourth-century translation by Julius Valerius, supplemented by later versions and traditions. The Oriental flavours and colours, the Eastern marvels of this fabulous biography profoundly influenced the Middle Age and permeated its romance. So incongruous are its elements-one meets there Darius and Aristotle, Gog and Magog, Amazons and flower-maidens, whose raiment grew on their bodies, red like flowers and white as snow, one hears of Greeks and Babylonians, rivers of Paradise and fountains of immortality--that we accept Alexander as a Christian king without surprise, an earlier Charlemagne surrounded by a feudal court. Dreams of childhood rather than history indeed it all seems, pieced from a nurse's evening tales. Yet misunderstood and misrepresented as antiquity was in these accounts, and in the medieval romances which they inspired, they did something by their popularity to prepare the medieval mind for the acceptance of the same material in the far nobler but still untutored presentation of Chaucer. To know them is to approach him with sympathy, to appreciate his “infantine familiar clasp" of the ancient and divine myths, by which, as by some early Italian painter of the Renaissance, things already rare and lovely are made to yield for us new and exquisite sensation. The exclusion of Chaucer from an account of English heroic poetry might quite well be justified but for his authorship of a 1 Chaucer, Monk's Tale, 3821-3823. single poem, The Knight's Tale. Here, because he is the disciple of Boccaccio in an attempt to follow the epic tradition, and because this poem illustrates perhaps better than any other in English the peculiarities of the mediaval treatment of an antique heroic subject, he may be permitted to fall within our range. Boccaccio, like Chaucer, viewed the chivalric romance with amused disdain, and turned, when he proposed to himself an epic, to classic models. With these he was familiar, for he had made Latin versions of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and in his Teseide, the first epic in a modern language-a conscious imitation the most painstaking-omitted none of the traditional requirements such as Swift in the eighteenth century sarcastically enumerated in his Recipe to Make an Epic Poem. Deities, battles, episodes, similes-all the ingredients are there and duly mixed in their proper proportions. But the Teseide is a tale of love rather than war, for Boccaccio, like Virgil, was not at his best in war, to which "the hero tears himself away from king's daughters at the call of country." His poem fixed for his more successful followers, Pulci, Boiardo, and Tasso, the metre —ottava rima—suited to their purposes and gave to Chaucer the suggestion for The Knight's Tale; for the rest it hardly rose to distinction. Chaucer's poem, a more skilful narrative, reduces to less than three thousand the ten thousand lines of Boccaccio's epic, excels it in art and interest, but illustrates in the same vivid fashion the odd transformation of the classical into the medieval, the cross lights of the feudal and chivalric conceptions playing across the life of the antique world. Nothing can well be stranger to a reader fresh from the Iliad than the easy familiarity and gaiety of tone, as of one telling a story to children, with which Chaucer begins his narrative— 66 Whylom, as olde stories tellen us, Ther was a duk that highte Theseus or the lightness of touch with which he passes over preliminary details "I have, God woot, a large feeld to ere The remenant of the tale is long y-nough." With what an unsophisticated air he takes his readers into his confidence, and puts to them the question 66 Yow loveres axe I now this questioun, Who hath the worse, Arcite or Palamoun? or inquires blandly, with humorous self-depreciation— Who coude ryme in English proprely His martirdom? for soothe, it am nat I." How novel too the heroic type now presented to us. The duke is "a trewe knight," "gentil," " of herte piteous," a philosopher who ponders on the flux of human things— "Considereth eek, how that the harde stone Than may ye see that al this thing hath ende." A moral philosopher is he likewise "Thanne is it wisdom, as it thinketh me, To maken vertu of necessitee." Note too the feudal and heraldic accessories. The duke displays his banner, and by it is borne his pennon "Of gold ful riche, in which ther was y-bete The Minotaur, which that he slough in Crete." With what pleasure Chaucer dwells upon "the riche array of Theseus paleys," where "haukes sitten on the perche above" and houndes liggen on the floor adoun," the marble gates of the tourney ground, the oratories, the ways crowded with spectators, greedy of wonder and eagerly gossiping on the sights and probable issue of the contest in the lists "Heer three, ther ten, holding hir question." How he lingers over his description of the bustle and colour, the pageantry so loved by the Middle Age "And on the morwe, whan that day gan springe, Of hors and harneys, noise and clateringe Ther was in hostelryes al aboute; And to the paleys rood ther many a route So uncouth and so riche, and wroght so weel The sheeldes brighte, testeres and trappures; That in the bataille blowen bloody sounes." How remote from the classical spirit and manner are the tapestried picturesqueness, the personified abstractions, the symbolism of the chapels of Venus, of Mars, and of Diana, as of oratories in a Gothic minster.— "First in the temple of Venus maystow see Nat was foryeten the porter Ydelnesse . . ... And downward from an hille, under a bente, Ther saugh I first the derke imagining The smyler with the knyf under the cloke. Saw I conquest sitting in greet honour." 1 How remote too the amorous atmosphere of the tale, the references to May, to the lark, to the dolorous lover Welcome be thou, faire freshe May-" "The bisy larke, messager of day Salüeth in hir song the morwe grey." "His eyen holwe, and grisly to biholde; His hewe falwe, and pale as asshen colde, And wailling al the night, making his mone." 1 As Warton points out (History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 196) the groundwork of this description is taken from the Thebaid of Statius, a favourite author in the Middle Ages. Love, the tyrant, is master of this tale, that Love which in the Argonautica refused sleep to Medea when she thought of Jason though it brought happy forgetfulness" to the mother of sons but lately dead " "The God of love, A! benedicite, How mighty and how great a lord is he!" The lover's first sight of the lady is like a swift sword-thrust "He caste his eye upon Emelya, And ther-with-al he bleynte, and cryde 'a!' As though he stongen were unto the herte." The lady herself is “fresher than the May," "fairer than the lilie upon his stalke grene." There is here matter for a Court of Love-whether the knight who first sees and loves the lady, but thinks her a goddess, or he who loves her second but knows her to be a human creature, is to be the fortunate lover? The delicacy of the final award is in the best manner of the subtle science; Chaucer with infinite art reverses Boccaccio's decision. In the Teseide Arcite first sees the lady, but his prize is not her hand-it is victory in the tourney and death. Chaucer gives the first sight of Emely to Palamon, and though to Arcite goes the triumph in the lists, it is by him who loved her first that the lady is finally won. And behind Love, and behind the decorative classical deities, what dark power of Fate or Fortune in the stars presides over this tale told in Christian times?— "Sum wikke aspect or disposicioun Of Saturne, by sum constellacioun, Hath yeven us this, al-though we hadde it sworn; So stood the heven whan that we were born." What a self-concious touch is that in the description of Arcite's resolution— "And with that word he caughte a greet mirour And saugh that chaunged was al his colour." How refined are the chivalric manners when Arcite, about to fight to the death with his rival, offers to bring arms and armour for both "And chees the beste, and leve the worste for me |