Samson Stockfish the fruiterer? Again, it is probable the quarrel originated in some theological dispute,-and the vast and thorny field of controversy might have been accurately surveyed, to enable the reader to fix upon the precise spot occupied by the disputants. Perhaps Chaucer offended the friar by the freedom of his conversation,—and why not insert all the jocose and satirical passages of the Canterbury Tales? To illustrate the nature of the beating, Mr. Godwin might have desrcibed

"Your souse, your wherit and your dowst,

Tugs on the hair, your bob o' the lips, the thump,
-your kick, the fury of a foot,

Whose indignation commonly is stamped
Upon the hinder quarters of a man,-

With all your blows and blow-men whatsoever,
Set in their lively colours, givers and takers."

All which knowledge is unfortunately lost to the world, perhaps through the ill-considered interference of Mr. Phillips the publisher.

Some particular passages of the life are less fancifully and more correctly delineated. Mr. Godwin combats, and in our opinion successfully, the opinion of those who deny the honourable claim of Thomas Chaucer, to call the poet father: and he has vindicated the relation, which the Dreme of Chaucer unquestionably bears to the History of John of Gaunt.

The critical dissertations upon Troilus and Creseide, and Chaucer's other poems, have considerable merit. They are the production of a man who has read poetry with taste and feeling; and we wish sincerely, that instead of the strange farrago which he calls the Life of Chaucer, he had given us a correct edition of the miscellaneous poetry of the author, upon the same plan with Mr. Tyrwhitt's admirable Canterbury Tales. It is true, that we could not have expected from Mr. Godwin, either the extensive learning or the accuracy of illustration which Mr. Tyrwhitt has displayed. But, as already noticed, his critical disquisitions have occasional merit; and he might have pleaded the ancient prerogative of commentators, for writing in a more rambling and diffusive style than is consistent with the dignity of history or biography. Mr. Godwin is sometimes rather hasty in his critical conclusions. He exclaims against Chaucer, for "polluting the portrait of Creseide's

virgin character in the beginning of the poem, with so low and pitiful a joke as this

"But whether that she children had or none,

I rede it not, therefore I let it gone."-Vol. i, p. 305.

If Mr. Godwin had perused the poem attentively, he would have seen that no joke was intended, and that Creseide was no maiden, but in fact a young widow.

"And as a widowe was she andalone."

And again, when invited by Pandarus to do honour to May,

"Eighe! God forbid, quod she, what, be ye mad?

Is that a widowe's life, so God you save?

It sate me wele better, aie in a cave
'To bide, and rede on holy saintis lives;

Let maidins gon to dance and young wives."

We were much surprised to find, that the Canterbury Tales, the most important, as well as the most exquisite of Chaucer's productions, have attracted so little of Mr. Godwin's attention. He might have displayed, in commenting upon poems as varied in subject as in beauty, his whole knowledge of the manners of the middle ages, were it ten times more extensive. But Mr. Godwin, beginning probably to write before he had considered either the nature of his subject, or the probable length of his work, had exhausted both his limits and materials ere he came to the topic upon which he ought principally to have dwelt. The characters, therefore, of the several pilgrims, so exquisitely described, that each individual passes before the eyes of the reader, and so admirably contrasted with each other; their conversation and manners, the gallantry of the Knight and Squire, the affected sentimentality of the Abbess, the humour of mine Host and the Wife of Bath; the pride of the Monk, the humility of the Parson, the learning and poverty of the Scholar, with the rude but comic portraits of the inferior characters, are, in the history of the life and age of Chaucer, of which they form a living picture, passed over in profound silence, or with very slight notice. The truth is, Mr. Godwin's speed and strength were expended before he came within sight of the goal, and he saw himself compelled with a faint apology to abandon that part of his subject which must have been universally interesting. The VOL. I.-5

few remarks which he has made upon the Canterbury Tales, induce us to believe that he has seen and regretted his error; but it is a poor excuse, after writing a huge book, to tell the reader that it is but "superficial work," because the author" came a novice to such an undertaking." (See Preface). It is the duty of an editor, to collect and arrange his materials before he begins to print his work; nor will the public be satisfied with an apology, which ought either to have deterred him from the undertaking entirely, or at least to have retarded the execution of it, till study and labour had supplied the defects of superficial information. As Mr. Godwin is unquestionably a man of strong parts, we by no means discourage him from applying himself to illustrate the history of his country, but we would advise him in future, to read before he writes, and not merely while he is writing.

The history of "Old John of Gaunt time honoured Lancaster," occupies a considerable portion of these volumes. He is styled in the titlepage, Chaucer's "near friend and kinsman;" an abuse of words, if, as we conceive, kinsman can only be correctly used to express a blood relation. John of Gaunt was undoubtedly Chaucer's patron, and ultimately stood in a certain degree of affinity to him, by marrying his concubine, a sister of the poet's wife; but this connection could not give to the bard a portion of the blood of the Plantagenets, or render him in any sense the kinsman of the Duke of Lancaster. In the historical part of his work, Mr. Godwin has proposed to himself a splendid plan. Antiquities had, in his opinion, hitherto been the province of

-"men of cold tempers, and sterile imaginations," whose works are compiled "with such narrow views, so total an absence of discrimination, and such an unsuspecting ignorance of the materials of which man is made, that the perusal of them tends for the most part to stupify the sense, and to imbue the soul with moping and lifeless dejection. It was my wish, had my power held equal pace with my strong inclination, to carry the workings of fancy and the spirit of philosophy into the investigation of ages past. I was anxious to rescue, for a moment, the illustrious dead from the jaws of the grave, to make them pass in review before me, to question their spirits, and record their answers. I wished to make myself their master of ceremonies, to introduce my reader to their familiar speech, and to enable him to feel, for the instant, as if he had lived with Chaucer."-Preface, x.

This is well proposed, and expressed with that dignified

contempt of his predecessors' labours, which especially becomes an author at the moment when he is about to avail himself of the information they afford him. But it is one thing to call spirits from the vasty deep, and another to compel their obedience to the invocation. When we expected to see the heroes of Cressy and Poitiers stalk past in the rude and antiquated splendour of chivalry, as perchance they might have appeared upon the summons of Warton, Ellis, or some such cold-tempered, sterile-minded antiquary, the philosophical phantasmagoria of Mr. Godwin presented us with a very different set of beings. It seems to have been his rule, that if it be difficult to think like our ancestors, it is very easy to make them think like ourselves; and therefore, whatever motives Mr. Godwin himself esteems praiseworthy and laudable, he imputes to his hero John of Gaunt, with all the liberality and contempt for congruity of the worthy squire who equipped his Vandyke portraits with modern periwigs. In this respect, the work reminds us of a particular class of novels, said to be "founded on real history," in which the dramatis personæ, are assumed from the ages of chivalry, but apparelled in the sickly trim of sentiment peculiar to the Grevilles and Julias of Mr. Lane's half-bound duodecimos. Mr. Godwin's dukes and knights hold, in like manner, the language, we had almost said the cant, of his soi-disant philosophy; and argue as learnedly of the nature of the human mind, of cause and effect, and all that, as if they had occasionally presided at Coachmakers' Hall. The Duke of Lancaster was unquestionably the wisest prince of his time; yet his honoured shade must forgive us, if we deem him incapable of framing the profound and polite oration which he has here supposed to address to Chaucer, upon his being appointed an ambassador. We can only afford room to insert the following grand finale: "Man is a complex being, and is affected with mixed considerations; and your contempora ries will listen with far different feelings to your beautiful and elevated productions, if they flow from an ambassador and a minister of state, than if you remained obscurely sheltered under your natal roof, in the city in which you were born, or sequestered among the groves and streams which adorn your neighbourhood at Woodstock." And this twaddling stuff is supposed to be spoken by John of Gaunt, and

to Geoffrey Chaucer! And this is carrying "the workings of fancy," and the "spirit of philosophy," into the investigation of ages past, and "rescuing the illustrious dead from the jaws of the grave!" Imbued" with moping and lifeless dejection, and stupified" as we are, after the perusal of two huge quarto volumes of incoherent narrative and trite sentiment, we cannot help feeling, at such absurdity, a momentary impulse of surprise and indignation!

Of the miscellaneous information contained in these volumes, we cannot be expected to treat at length, especially as the greater part of it has nothing to do with the proper subject of the book. It seems to us, that Mr. Godwin, a novice, as he himself informs us, in the study of ancient history, had applied himself to his task with the ardour of a proselyte. Every fact, every peculiar view of manners which occurred in the course of his reading, had to him the charms of novelty; and he was benevolently eager to communicate to others the information which he had just acquired. But, unfortunately, a mind which has newly received a fresh train of ideas, is almost invariably found incapable to abridge or digest them, as no man can draw a map of a country which he traverses for the first time. Upon subjects not familiar to our thoughts, we must be contented to express ourselves with the crude prolixity of the works from which we have derived our information; and our attempts to be copious and distinct, will commonly produce but a string of tedious and ill-combined extracts, instead of a concise and luminous system. Hence the long, dull, and unnecessary details with which Mr. Godwin has favoured us upon every subject which crossed his path. He could but write in proportion as he read, and empty his commonplace as fast only as he filled it. A comprehensive view of his subject we cannot possibly find in his writings; for it was at no time wholly before his own eyes. He knew not when or where to stop; and, in fact, was forced, from mere want of room, to abandon his work, half-finished, at the moment it became most interesting.

Some of the dissertations, considered abstractedly, possess considerable merit; and we cannot refuse praise to the industry of Mr. Godwin, who has acquired a great fund of knowledge, however ill-arranged, upon subjects to which he was so lately an utter stranger. We have already said, that we