His posthumous influence GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

Chaucer was the contemporary of Wyclif, with whom the Middle Ages may appropriately be said to close, or modern history to begin.

In the midst of these popular agitations, aggressive and needless wars, public miseries and calamities, baronial aggrandizement, religious inquiries, parliamentary encroachment, and reviving taste for literature and art, Chaucer arose.

It was to describe the habits and customs of these people, as well as those of the classes above them, to give dignity to consecrated sentiments and to shape the English language, that Chaucer was raised up.

In this unfortunate campaign Chaucer was taken prisoner, but was ransomed by his sovereign for £16,about equal to £300 in these times.

So Chaucer, with less claim, received valuable offices and land-grants, which made him a wealthy man; and he was also sent on important missions in the company of nobles.

Chaucer's wife's sister married the Duke of Lancaster himself; so he was allied with the royal family, if not by blood, at least by ambitious marriage connections.

While the Duke of Gloucester was in power, Chaucer was deprived of his offices and revenues for two or three years, and was even imprisoned in the Tower; but when Lancaster returned from the Continent, his offices and revenues were restored.

Who can add anything to the Prologue in which Chaucer himself describes the varied characters and habits and appearance of the pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury?

Geoffrey Chaucer can tell you the legend of her martyrdom with the crystal charm of all his poesy.

The sun is up at last, and Colonel Pennant's grim slate castle, towering above black woods, glitters metallic in its rays, like Chaucer's house of fame.

Goldsmith, for example, drew an immortal picture of the village pastor, closely modelled upon Chaucer's "poor parson of a town," his piety, humility, and never failing goodness to his flock.

The English language of Chaucer's day, is based on the Frisic, Belgic, and Low Dutch; and not on the Saxon.

Dante, Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Plutarch, Montaigne, and many another hero of old is waiting there.

If Mr. Arnold must change the measure, Chaucer's "Nonnes Preestes Tale" would have been a safer guide to follow.

Thus, Chaucer is perfumed with early spring; Homer resounds like the sea; in the Greek Anthology the sun always shines on the fisherman's cottage by the beach; we associate the Vishnu Purana with lakes and houses, Keats with nightingales in forest dim, while the long grass waving on the lonely heath is the last memorial of the fading fame of Ossian.

Upon the principle, no doubt, of expanding the imagination, we find, so early as 1374, old Geoffrey Chaucer had a pitcher of wine a day allowed him.

Chaucer describes his archer as carrying "a mighty bowe;" and the "cloth-yard shaft," which was discharged from this engine, is often mentioned by our old poets and chroniclers.

Thus the British Navy is really national because it is natural; it has co-hered out of hundreds of accidental adventures of ships and shipmen before Chaucer's time and after it.

Every line in poetry, except what is regarded as making but one verse with the line preceding, should begin with a capital; as, "Our sons their fathers' failing language see, And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.

"The Poet Lydgate was a disciple and admirer of Chaucer: he died in 1440."Id.

Some new light on Chaucer.

A Chaucer handbook.

A Chaucer handbook.

SEE Chaucer, Geoffrey.