Bad as it was, the French of the nobles had the advantage of being spoken in a uniform and regular manner, while the English of the same period was rude and disjointed, and made up of idioms and combinations of Norman and Saxon, which differed in every province, and even in every town. Chaucer even appears to be apprehensive, that owing to this multiplicity of dialects, his book would not be understood out of London, and prays God, that it may be comprehended by all who read it.

"Read where so thou be, or elles sung

That thou beest understood, God I beseech."

In

Every individual, according to his fancy, or the degree of knowledge which he possessed of each of the two languages, borrowed phrases, and combined in an arbitrary manner whatever words first presented themselves to his memory. general, each man sedulously introduced into his conversation the little French that he was master of, in order to imitate the great, and have the appearance of a person of distinction. The two languages were often combined in the same poem, changed every alternate couplet, and sometimes at every second line.

The Semi-Saxon, mixed with Gael, Latin, and NormanFrench; full of irregularities, undisciplined by grammar, was the rude instrument with which the genius of Chaucer had to work.

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London, in the year 1328. He was married to a sister of Catherine Swinford, maid of honour to Philippa, the queen of Edward III. Catherine was first mistress, and afterwards wife of John of Gaunt, and this connexion attached the poet to the Lancaster party, in whose vicissitudes his own fortunes were involved. In his thirty-ninth year he received a pension from the king of twenty marks, equal to £200 or £300 of our present currency. Five years later he received the title of scutifer, or esquire. Edward showed the estimation in which he held the man who sustained the literary reputation of the country, by appointing him as a joint envoy to Genoa, with Sir James Provan and Sir John de Mari. At this time he lived in affluence and splendour, a favourite at court, respected by the nobility, maintaining a generous hospitality in his own house; in person, as he tells us, "fat and jolly," and enjoying a share of happiness which rarely falls to the lot of poets. This state of things continued during Edward's reign. In 1374, he got a grant of a pitcher of wine daily. The next year the king gave him the wardenship of an heir, which was worth £104, and soon after a quantity of forfeited wool, worth £71; sums which then represented fifteen or twenty times the value that they do at present. In the last year of Edward's reign he was one of three envoys sent to France, to negotiate a marriage between Richard, Prince of Wales, and a daughter of the French king.

During the reign of Richard II., Chaucer was involved in great disasters. He was implicated in a seditious movement in London, headed by John of Northampton, a Wycliffite, who, in politics belonged to the Lancasterian party. In conseof this, he was compelled to leave the kingdom, proquence ceeding first to Hainault, then to France, and last to Zealand. His pension, however, was not taken from him, and he was even permitted to hold by deputy, the office of comptroller, which he had received from the late king. While abroad, he impoverished himself by liberality to his fellow-fugitives,—and those who had charge of his property at home embezzled it,— his partizans, having treacherously become his enemies, and doing all they could, he said, to make him perish by absolute

want.

In 1388, we find him a political prisoner in London, compelled to dispose of his pensions-all that his persecutors had left him. As a necessary condition of his release, he made disclosures concerning the late conspiracy. To this he says, he felt bound by his "leigiaunce," by which he was charged on his "kinge's behalfe." In 1389, the Duke of Lancaster returned from Spain, and became once more his warm and steady protector. He was appointed Clerk of the Works at

Westminster and Windsor, with a salary of £360 per annum. After about two years, he resigned these offices, and retired to the country, probably to Woodstock. It was there, in his 66th year, that he began to compose his immortal "Canterbury Tales," the greatest of his works-a remarkable instance of the vigour of genius surving to the verge of three-score years and ten. In 1394, he received a pension of £20 per annum, equal to £300 or £400 of our money; and in the last year of Richard II. he had assigned him, as a token of royal favour, a tun of wine yearly. In 1398, he obtained a patent of protection, "Contra æmulos suos,"-which are supposed to mean his creditors, whose duns must have seriously interrupted the great old poet's meditations, and disturbed the inspirations of his muse.

A year and a half after this, Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, ascended the throne as Henry IV. The new king continued the annuity of the poet, and added a pension of 40 marks. But he did not long remain to enjoy the favour of the house of Lancaster. He died on the 25th of October, 1400. He was buried in the South Cross Aisle of Westminster Abbey. For 150 years, the greatest poet which England had ever known had no monument to mark the spot where his ashes lay. At length this disgrace was removed from the national character by Nicholas Brigham, a gentleman of Oxford, whose admiration of the works of Chaucer induced him to erect a monument in Westminster Abbey at his own expense.

It has been remarked by Thomas Campbell, that Chaucer has a double claim to be regarded as the founder of English poetry. He was the first to use the despised English language as the vehicle of spirited representations of life and manners; and was also the first great architect of our versification, having introduced the heroic measure of ten syllables —“ the new and stately fabric of English numbers," which Dryden and Pope adorned with such exquisite beauty.

Dryden ascribes to Chaucer the first refinement of our numbers, the first production of easy and natural rhymes, and the improvement of our languages by words borrowed from the more polished language of the continent. Skinner, on the other hand, censures him for having vitiated his native speech by "whole cart-loads of foreign words." Dr. Johnson pronounces both these judgments to be unjust; alleging that Gower, Mandeville, and Colville, who were his contemporaries, wrote with equal correctness; and that his important troop of French words was not greater than was customary with good writers in the infant state of the language. From the charge of Skinner he has been fully vindicated by Tyrwhitt.

When a language has arrived at maturity, foreign words that may be required are easily assimilated. Like a new clerk in the Bank of England, or a new hand in a cotton factory, it is instantly controlled by the established system-of which it forms a part, and to whose laws it must submit. But where many of the hands must necessarily be strange, the task of the manager becomes more difficult; such unquestionably was the case with Chaucer. He was a man of large experience and keen observation. He had known all the vicissitudes of life in his own person,--opulence and poverty, court favour and exile, popular applause and factious animosity, a happy home, and the horrors of a prison, and the agonies of debt. He had studied the manners of his own country, and had looked with interest on the various phases of life on the continent. He had noted all, and in bodying forth what he had seen and felt, with a sharpness of outline, and a vivid reality, in which he has been scarcely surpassed by Cowper or Crabbe; he must often have found the scanty vocabulary of his native language defective. He added to it, therefore, not rashly or ignorantly, but with taste and judgment. He used his materials with a plastic hand, and wrought them into symmetry and beauty. He grafted and pruned till he produced a tree covered with loveliest blossoms, and bearing the sweetest fruits.

He was only nineteen years of age when he ventured to innovate so far as to write a long poem in the heroic

couplet. This is the "Court of Love," referring to a tribunal which existed in the ages of chivalry, before which cases of casuistry relating to the tender passion were debated by both sexes, and decided by the goddess of love. His "History of Troilus and Cresscide" was the delight of Sir Philip Sydney, and, next to the "Canterbury Tales," was the most popular poem in England till the age of Elizabeth, notwithstanding its great length and simplicity. "The Flower and the Leaf," modernised by Dryden, has been pronounced by the poet Campbell "an exquisite piece of fairy fancy," having "an air of wonder and sweetness, an easy and surprising transition that is truly magical." Pope has, in like manner, given "The

"And specially fro every shire' is end

Of England to Canterbury they wend,
The holy blissfull martyr for to seke,
That them hath holpen when that they were sick.
Befell that in that seson on a day,
In Southwark, at the Tabherd as I lay,
Redy to wendin on my pilgrimage,
To Canterbury with devote corage,
At night were come into that hostery,
Wele nine-and-twenty in a company,
Of sundry folk, by aventure yfall

In felaship; and pilgrims were they all,
That toward Canterbury wouldin ride."
He then proceeds to tell the condition, degree,

and

array of

66

House of Fame" in modern dress, with some improvements. While in prison, the poet commenced his Testament of Love," an allegory, in which he relates his griefs to the goddess of love. His last and greatest work, which was not published till after his death, is his "Canterbury Tales," in which he gives the adventures of twenty-nine pilgrims, who met at an inn in Southwark, on their way to the shrine of Thomas a'Becket. Each pilgrim tells his own story, after the manner of the Decameron of Boccaccio. The following lines from the prologue will show the state of the language at the end of the thirteenth century :

each of the pilgrims, before reciting their stories. In their language, dress, manners, modes of life, thoughts, feelings, experiences, and adventures, we have presented to us a picture of life in the thirteenth century such as we should look for in vain in any history. The people live and move before our eyes. For Chaucer was pre-eminently the poet of reality. He did not etherealise what he saw before him, but painted characters just as they were. If he did not excel in grandeur of conception, or of language, and if in his moralising moods he was languid and diffuse, his rich genius and humour poured themselves forth in comic satire and merry narrative, while

his airy numbers moved along with delightful grace and gaiety,-all combined with descriptive power of the first

order.

His

In the Edinburgh Review (June, 1815), there is a fine parallel drawn between Spencer and Chaucer. The critic says, “It is not possible for any two writers to be more opposite than Spencer and Chaucer. Spencer delighted in luxurious enjoyment; Chaucer, in severe activity of mind. Spencer was, perhaps, the most visionary of all the poets; Chaucer the most a man of observation and of the world. He appealed directly to the bosoms and business of men. He dealt only in realities; and, relying throughout on facts or common tradition, could always produce his vouchers in nature. sentiment is not the voluntary indulgence of the poet's fancy; but is founded on the habitual prejudices and passions of the very characters he introduces. His poetry, therefore, is essentially picturesque and dramatic; in this he chiefly differs from Boccaccio, whose power was that of sentiment. The picturesque and the dramatic in Chaucer are in a great measure the same thing; for he only describes external objects as connected with character as the symbols of internal passion. The costume and dress of the Canterbury Pilgrims,—of the Knight, the Squire, the gat-toothed Wife of Bath,-speak for themselves. Again, the description of the equipage and accoutrements of the two kings of Thrace and Inde, in the 'Knight's Tale,' are as striking and grand as the others are lively and natural. His descriptions of natural scenery are in the same style of excellence; their beauty consists in their truth and characteristic propriety. They have a local freshness about them, which renders them almost tangible; which gives the very feeling of the air, the coldness and moisture of the ground. Nature after all is the soul of art,-and there is a strength in the imagination which reposes immediately on nature, which nothing else can supply. It was this trust in nature and reliance on his subject which enabled Chaucer to describe the grief and patience of Griselda-the faith of Constance-and the heroic perseverance of the little child, who, going to school through the streets of Jewry,

Oh, alma Redemptoris mater, loudly sung,'

and who, after his death, still triumphed in his song. Chaucer has more of this deep, internal, sustained sentiment than any other writer, except Boccaccio, to whom Chaucer owed much, though he did not owe all to him; for he writes just as well where he did not borrow from that quarter as where he did, as in the characters of the pilgrims; the Wife of Bath's Prologue; the Squire's Tale, and innumerable others. The poetry of Chaucer has a religious sanctity about it, connected with the manners of the age. It has all the spirit of martyrdom!"

The same eloquent writer well remarks, that the chefs-d'œuvre of genius-of incommensurable power-have always leaped at once from infancy to manhood. The greatest poets, orators, painters, sculptors, have been the most ancient: "Homer, Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare, Dante, and Ariosto (Milton alone was of a later period, and not the worse for it), Raphael, Titian, and Michael Angelo, Corregio, Cervantes, and Boccaccio-all lived near the beginning of their arts, perfected, and all but created them. These giant sons of genius stand indeed upon the earth; but they tower above their fellows, and the long line of their successors does not interpose any object to obstruct their view, or lessen their brightness. In strength and stature they are unrivalled, in grace and beauty they have never been surpassed."

Yet it is strange that these heroes of the pen, their quiet conquests on the fields of thought, the revolutions which they effect in national literature, their influence on society, and the blessings they confer on posterity, are so seldom and so slightly noticed by the historian. The splendour of courts, the array of armies, bloody battles, the strifes of parties, the rise and fall of politicians and tyrants-these are the staple of history; while the men who illumine the dark valleys of life with the light of their genius, who scatter broadcast the seeds

of truth, from which posterity reaps a perennial harvest of purifying, elevating, and consoling thought, are almost forgotten. Chaucer, for example, delighted and instructed England for two centuries-as the bright morning star of that glorious literature whose day broke with such splendour in the Elizabethan age-and yet his name is scarcely mentioned in the popular histories of England. Strange, that even in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, the world should still worship the warrior as its only hero-recognising divine lineaments in the destroyer, and ignoring them in the creator and benefactor, as if the evil principle was the deity of Christendom, and the homage of men was inspired only by their fears!

BY

number of persons the pursuits of the antiquary are looked upon with but little consideration, and his seemingly dry studies thought of small consequence in comparison with matters of progress and the concerns of every-day life. To look to the past with a view towards present improvement is not however à useless task. "In old things there are new" is a well-known proverb, the truth of which is made evident by the frequent discovery amongst the remains of past ages, of objects not only useful to the historian, architect, and artist, but of important interest to all.

In n the present series of papers, it will be our endeavour to illustrate such rare fragments of the past as are either remarkable for their means of application to present use, or, which show the progress of civilisation, or explain the old manners and customs of our country. With these few lines of preface We will at once proceed with our subject.

Rings of metal and various other materials are found Amongst the art manufactures of various nations in different parts of the world; from Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon, Ancient Greece, and other places of the past, we have specimens of hand rings adapted to the uses of all classes; and, at the present time, over the known surface of the earth, their use is almost universal; the Queen on the British throne, the Irish applewoman, the luxurious dwellers in the East, and the savage natives of the Sandwich Islands, are all in the use of this familiar ornament, which has amongst us become a symbol of one of our most solemn engagements.

Amongst the ancient Egyptians, upwards of 4,000 years since, rings for the fingers and thumbs were in general use, and are several times alluded to in the sacred writings, as tokens of authority and good faith. In Genesis, xli. 41, 42, is the following passage: "And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh took off his ring from off his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck."

The extensive use of rings amongst the ancient Egyptians is also shown by the number and variety which have been discovered, and by representations on their monuments, mummy cases, &c.

The Egyptian women wore many rings, sometimes two or three on the same finger; the left was considered the hand peculiarly privileged to bear these ornaments, and it is remarkable that its third finger was decorated with a greater number than any other, and was considered by them as by us, par excellence, the ring finger, though there is no evidence of it having been so honoured at the marriage ceremony. On the case which contains the mummy of a priestess of Amer-ka, now in the British Museum, there are 8 rings on the fingers, and one on the thumb of the left hand (see engraving No. 7), and two on the fingers, and one on the thumb of the right hand. Some of the Egyptian rings were simple, others were made with a scarabaeus, or an engraved stone, and they were occasionally in the form of a snail, a knot, a snake, or some fancy device; they were mostly of gold or silver, brass Egyptian rings are, however, occasionally met with, and also a

workers in gold and silver, and exported, even at that remote time, their productions to different parts of the world. It is supposed, that this skill was partly acquired by the visits of the early Christians, skilled in the arts of Italy, and who not only instructed them in the principles of art, but also left objects of beautiful workmanship for imitation; the rings (Nos. 10 A, 10 B, 11 A, 11 B), are of this period. The letters on No. 11 A, read-"Athstan," and possibly had belonged to Athstan, bishop of Sherburn, born 817 to 867.

Rings, throughout the middle ages, were greatly in use amongst the nobility, clergy, &c. The ring formed a portion of the consecration service of kings, bishops, and abbots, and

sisted of a massive ring, half an inch in its largest diameter, bearing an oblong plinth, on which the devices were engraved -on one face was the successor of Amunaph III., who lived B.C. 1400; on the other, a lion, with the legend, "lord of strength," referring to the monarch; on the other side a scorpion, and on the other a crocodile.

At the time of the meridian and decline of the glory of the Roman empire, the use of rings became such a passion, that the practice is written against by several of their philosophers; and it is said, that some of the Roman ladies, although their fingers were mostly covered with rings, made a practice of not using the same on a second occasion.

in the two last-mentioned instances was the finishing portion of the ceremonial. On the effigy of King John, in Worcester cathedral, a ring is placed outside the glove on the second finger of the right hand, and on that of William of Colchester, are rings on the third finger of each hand.

Rings, during this period, besides being used for the purposes of marriage, dignity, and business, were often looked upon as being possessed with magical properties. The following inscription in the Runic character (see No. 12), on a jasper ring, was exhibited several years since at the Society of Antiquarians, and was shown to have been a Dano-Saxon

* MR MRI·MF:AM.

12

ARLARIN EN

PIMY TM ↑M. TEN

amulet against the plague; the translation has been given by Mr. Hamper in the "Archæologia," as follows:"Raise us from dust we pray to thee, From Pestilence, O set us free, Although the Grave unwilling be."

On another ring, inscribed with similar characters, and evidently intended for the same purpose, the legend is as follows:-'hether in fever or leprosy, let the patient be happy, and confident in hope of recovery."

The use of talismanic rings appears to have been in great and general use amongst the ancients-as charms against disease, personal danger, witchcraft, &c. Medicated rings were also believed to cure divers complaints, and to counteract the effect of poison, &c. The ancient physicians and empyrics were much addicted to the process of attempting to cure diseases by charms of various kinds, and this practice was much in fashion amongst the medical professors of the Middle and Lower Roman empire-in whose works we trace the most ridiculous receipts. Trallian, a physician living in the fourth century, cures the cholic and all bilious complaints by means of an octagonal ring of iron, on which eight words are to be engraved, commanding the bile to take possession of a Turk, &c. &c.

Michaelis, a physician at Leipsic, had a ring made of the tooth of a sea-horse, with which he pretended to cure diseases of all kinds. Rings of lead mixed with quicksilver were used against headaches, and even the chains of criminals, and iron used in the construction of gibbets, were applied to the removal of various complaints. The very beautiful

charged by Olivia to reveal the circumstances, which he does in the following lines :

"A contract of eternal bond of love

Confirmed by mutual joinder of your hands,

Attested by the holy close of lips,

Strengthened by the interchangement of your rings;
And all the ceremony of this compact

Sealed in my functions, by my testimony."

On the occasion of betrothals, a ring called a Gimmel was frequently used, and often alluded to by the writers of Queen Elizabeth's time. These rings were so constructed that they might be worn separate, and afterwards joined together, and were most probably used by the contracted parties at the time of marriage. The construction of the Gimmel ring will be understood by referring to the engraving (No. 21,) although it

may not be out of place to give the following description of
one, by Dryden, in his play of Don Sebastian:-
"A curious artist wrought 'em-
With joints so close as not to be perceived;
Yet are they both each other's counterparts?

(Her part had Jaun inscribed; and his had Laydor;
You knew those names were theirs) and in the midst

A heart divided in two-halfs was placed.
Now if the rivets of those rings, inclosed,
Fit not each other, I have forged this lie,

But if they join, you must for ever part."

The engraving of mottoes on wedding rings, most probably,

108

began to go out of use in England about the time of the Reformation. This we cannot but regret; and will conclude by suggesting, for the adoption of any of our readers who should