It re-arose, and in Chaucer's day would seem to have been in a flourishing condition; at any rate it continued till the spoliation.

See also Skeat's collected edition of Chaucer's Works, brought out under the auspices of the Early English Text Society.

Pitts positively asserts, without producing any authority to support it, that Woodstock was the place; which opinion Mr. Camden seems to hint at, where he mentions that town; but it may be suspected that Pitts had no other ground for the assertion, than Chaucer's mentioning Woodstock park in his works, and having a house there.

Mr. Speight in his life of Chaucer, printed in 1602, mentions a tale in William Thynne's first printed book of Chaucer's works more odious to the clergy than the Plowman's Tale.

Perhaps the best poem of this period is the "Dethe of Blanche the Duchesse," better known, as the "Boke of the Duchesse," a poem of considerable dramatic and emotional power, written after the death of Blanche, wife of Chaucer's patron, John of Gaunt.

CHAUCER'S CONTEMPORARIES WILLIAM LANGLAND (1332?

(3) Texts and selections: The Oxford Chaucer, 6 vols., edited by Skeat, is the standard; Skeat's Student's Chaucer; The Globe Chaucer (Macmillan); Works of Chaucer, edited by Lounsbury (Crowell); Pollard's The Canterbury Tales, Eversley edition; Skeat's Selections from Chaucer (Clarendon Press); Chaucer's Prologue, and various tales, in Standard English Classics (Ginn and Company), and in other school series.

In fact, nearly two centuries passed after Chaucer's death,years of enormous political and intellectual development,and not only did Chaucer have no successor but our language had changed so rapidly that Englishmen had lost the ability to read his lines correctly.

How do Dryden's couplets compare with Chaucer's?

CHAPTER II: FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 1066, TO CHAUCER'S DEATH, 1400 [Illustration: THE DEATH OF HAROLD AT HASTINGS.

Certainly no one who has ever read the Prologue to the Tales will question Chaucer's right to be considered a great original poet, no matter how much he may have owed to foreign teachers.

I. Chaucer's descriptions are unusually clear-cut and vivid.

Compare Chaucer's verse with Langland's in point of subject matter.

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.

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

Both writ with wonderful facility and clearness: neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the Grecian fables, and most of Chaucer's stories were taken from his Italian contemporaries, or their predecessors.

" Chaucer's English is nearly as easy for a modern reader as Shakspere's, and few of his words have become obsolete.

Chaucer's influence wrought more fruitfully in Scotland, whither it was carried by James I., who had been captured by the English when a boy of eleven, and brought up at Windsor as a prisoner of state.

Chaucer's use of proverbs.

New ed. Prom the text of Chaucer's Canterbury tales, by F. N. Robinson.

We may therefore conclude that they were not unusual in Chaucer's time.

[Footnote D: "Chaucer's text is: 'Thus hath this widow her litel child i-taught Our blissful lady, Criste's moder deere, To worschip ay, and he forgat it nought; For sely child wil alway soone leere.' 'For sely child wil alway soone leere,' i.e. for a happy child will always learn soon.

"Chaucer's acting as divisional

Chaucer's Cook was a personage of unusually wide experience, having, in his capacity as the keeper of an eating-house, to cater for so many customers of varying tastes and resources.

WIFE OF BATH, one of the pilgrims in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales.