Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845

For example, he thus takes upon himself, in the teeth of Chaucer, to narrate Alein's night adventure —

"And up he rose, and crept along the floor,Into the passage humming with their snore;As narrow was it as a drum or tub,And like a beetle doth he grope and grub,Feeling his way, with darkness in his hands.Till at the passage end he stooping stands."

Chaucer tells us, without circumlocution, why the Miller's Wife for while had left her husband's side; but Mr Horne is intolerant of the indelicate, and thus elegantly paraphrases the one original word —

"The wife her routing ceased soon after that:And woke and left her bed; for she was painedWith nightmare dreams of skies that madly rained.Eastern astrologers and clerks, I wis,In time of Apis tell of storms like this."

Such is modern refinement!

In Chaucer, the blind encounter between the Miller and one of the Cantabs, who, mistaking him for his comrade, had whispered into his ear what had happened during the night to his daughter, is thus comically described —

"Ye falsè harlot, quod the miller, hast?A falsè traitour, falsè clerk, (quod he)Thou shalt be deaf by Goddès dignitee,Who dorstè be so bold to disparageMy daughter, that is come of swiche lineage.And by the throtè-bolle he caught Alein,And he him hente despiteously again,And on the nose he smote him with his fist;Down ran the bloody streme upon his brest;And on the flore with nose and mouth to-broke,They walwe, as don two piggès in a poke.And up they gon, and down again anon,Till that the miller spurned at a stone,And down he fell backward upon his wif,That wistè nothing of this nicè strif,For she was falle aslepe, a litel wightwith John the clerk," and …

Here comes Mr Horne in his strength.

"Thou slanderous ribald! quoth the miller, hast!A traitor false, false lying clerk, quoth he,Thou shalt be slain by heaven's dignityWho rudely dar'st disparage with foul lieMy daughter, that is come of lineage high!And by the throat he Allan grasp'd amain,And caught him, yet more furiously again,And on his nose he smote him with his fist!Down ran the bloody stream upon his breast,And on the floor they tumble heel and crown,And shake the house, it seem'd all coming down.And up they rise, and down again they roll:Till that the Miller, stumbling o'er a coal,Went plunging headlong like a bull at bait,And met his wife, and both fell flat as slate."

Mr Horne cannot read Chaucer. The Miller does not, as he makes him do, accuse the Cantab of falsely slandering his daughter's virtue. He does not doubt the truth of the unluckily blabbed secret; false harlot, false traitor, false clerk, are all words that tell his belief; but Mr Horne, not understanding "disparage," as it is here used by Chaucer, wholly mistakes the cause of the father's fury. He does not even know, that it is the Miller who gets the bloody nose, not the Cantab. "As don two piggès in a poke," he leaves out, preferring, as more picturesque, "And on the floor they tumble heel and crown!" "And shake the house – it seemed all coming down," is not in Chaucer, nor could be; but the crowning stupidity is that of making the Miller meet his wife, and upset her – she being all the while in bed, and now startled out of sleep by the weight of her fallen superincumbent husband. And this is modernizing Chaucer!

What, then – after all we have written about him – we ask, can, at this day, be done with Chaucer? The true answer is – read him. The late Laureate dared to think that every one might; and in his collection, or selection, of English poets, down to Habington inclusive, he has given the prologue, and half a dozen of the finest and most finished tales; believing that every earnest lover of English poetry would by degrees acquire courage and strength to devour and digest a moderately-spread banquet. Without doubt, Southey did well. It was a challenge to poetical Young England to gird up his loins and fall to his work. If you will have the fruit, said the Laureate, you must climb the tree. He bowed some heavily-laden branches down to your eye, to tempt you; but climb you must, if you will eat. He displayed a generous trust in the growing desire and capacity of the country for her own time-shrouded poetical treasures. In the same full volume, he gave the "Faerie Queene" from the first word to the last.

Let us hope boldly, as Southey hoped. But there are, in the present world, a host of excellent, sensitive readers, whose natural taste is perfectly susceptible of Chaucer, if he spoke their language; yet who have not the courage, or the leisure, or the aptitude, to master his. They must not be too hastily blamed if they do not readily reconcile themselves to a garb of thought which disturbs and distracts all their habitual associations. Consider, the 'ingenious feeling,' the vital sensibility, with which they apprehend their own English, may place the insurmountable barrier which opposes their access to the father of our poetry. What can be done for them?

In the first place, what is it that so much removes the language from us? It is removed by the words and grammatical forms that we have lost – by its real antiquity; perhaps more by an accidental semblance of antiquity – the orthography. That last may seem a small matter; but it is not.

There are three ways in which literary craftsmen have attempted to fill up, or bridge over, the gulf of time, and bring the poet of Edward III. and Richard II. near to modern readers.

Dryden and Pope are the representatives, as they are the masters, of the first method; for the others who have trodden in their footsteps are hardly to be named or thought of. Dryden and Pope hold, in their own school of modernizing, this undoubted distinction, that under their treatment, that which was poetry remains poetry. Their followers have written, for the most part, intelligible English, but never poetry. They have told the story, and not that always; but they have distilled lethargy on the tongue of the narrator. – This first method the most boldly departs from the type. It was probably the only way that the culture of Dryden's and Pope's time admitted of. We have since gradually returned, more and more, upon our own antiquity, as all the nations of Europe have upon theirs. Then civilization seemed to herself to escape forwards out of barbarism. Now she finds herself safe; and she ventures to seek light for her mature years in the recollections of her own childhood.

But now, the altered spirit of the age has produced a new manner of modernization. The problem has been put thus. To retain of Chaucer whatever in him is our language, or is most nearly our language – only making good, always, the measure; and for expression, which time has left out of our speech, to substitute such as is in use. And several followers of the muses, as we have seen, have lately tried their hand at this kind of conversion.

It is hard to judge both the system and the specimens. For if the specimens be thought to have succeeded, the system may, upon them, be favourably judged; but if the specimens have failed, the system must not upon them be unfavourably judged, but must in candour be looked upon as possibly carrying in itself means and powers that have not yet been unfolded. But unhappily a difficulty occurs which would not have occurred with a writer in prose – the law of the verse is imperious. Ten syllables must be kept, and rhyme must be kept; and in the experiment it results, generally, that whilst the rehabiting of Chaucer is undertaken under a necessity which lies wholly in the obscurity of his dialect – the proposed ground or motive of modernization – far the greater part of the actual changes are made for the sake of that which beforehand you might not think of, namely, the Verse. This it is that puts the translators to the strangest shifts and fetches, and besets the version, in spite of their best skill, with anti-Chaucerisms as thick as blackberries.

It might, at first sight, seem as if there could be no remorse about dispersing the atmosphere of antiquity; and you might be disposed to say – a thought is a thought, a feeling a feeling, a fancy a fancy. Utter the thought, the feeling, the fancy, with what words you will, provided that they are native to the matter, and the matter will hold its own worth. No. There is more in poetry than the definite, separable matter of a fancy, a feeling, a thought. There is the indefinite, inseparable spirit, out of which they all arise, which verifies them all, harmonizes them all, interprets them all. There is the spirit of the poet himself. But the spirit of the time in which a poet lives, flows through the spirit of the poet. Therefore, a poet cannot be taken out of his own time, and rightly and wholly understood. It seems to follow that thought, feeling, fancy, which he has expressed, cannot be taken out of his own speech, and his own style, and rightly and wholly understood. Let us bring this home to Chaucer, and our occasion. The air of antiquity hangs about him, cleaves to him; therefore he is the venerable Chaucer. One word, beyond any other, expresses to us the difference betwixt his age and ours – Simplicity. To read him after his own spirit, we must be made simple. That temper is called up in us by the simplicity of his speech and style. Touched by these, and under their power, we lose our false habituations, and return to nature. But for this singular power exerted over us, this dominion of an irresistible sympathy, the hint of antiquity which lies in the language seems requisite. That summons us to put off our own, and put on another mind. In a half modernization, there lies the danger that we shall hang suspended between two minds – between two ages – taken out of one, and not effectually transported into that other. Might a poet, if it were worth while, who had imbued himself with antiquity and with Chaucer, depart more freely from him, and yet more effectually reproduce him? Imitating, not erasing, the colours of the old time – untying the strict chain that binds you to the fourteenth century, but impressing on you candour, clearness, shrewdness, ingenuous susceptibility, simplicity, Antiquity! A creative translator or imitator – Chaucer born again, a century and a half later.

Let us see how Wordsworth deals with Chaucer in the first seven stanzas of the Cuckoo and Nightingale.

"The god of love, a benedicite!How mighty and how gret a lord is he,For he can make of lowè hertès highe,Of highè lowe, and likè for to dye,And hardè hertès he can maken fre."And he can make, within a litel stounde,Of sekè folkè, holè, freshe, and sounde,Of holè folkè he can maken seke,And he can binden and unbinden ekeThat he wol have ybounden or unbounde."To telle his might my wit may not suffice,For he can make of wisè folke ful nice,For he may don al that he wol devise,And lither folkè to destroien vice,And proudè hertès he can make agrise."And shortly al that ever he wol he may,Ayenès him dare no wight sayè nay:For he can glade and grevè whom he liketh:And whoso that he wol, he lougheth or siketh,And most his might he shedeth ever in May."For every truè gentle hertè freThat with him is or thinketh for to beAyenès May shal have now som stering,Other to joie or elles to som mourning;Other to joie or elles to som mourning;In no seson so moch as thinketh me."For whan they mayè here the briddès singe,And se the flourès and the levès springe,That bringeth into hire rememberaunceA maner esè, medled with grevaunce,And lusty thoughtès fulle of gret longinge."And of that longinge cometh hevinesse,And therof groweth oft gret sekenesse,Al for lackinge of that that they desire;And thus in May ben hertès sette on fire,So that they brennen forth in gret distresse."Wordsworth"The God of love! Ah, benedicite,How mighty and how great a lord is he,For he of low hearts can make high, of highHe can make low and unto death bring nigh,And hard hearts he can make them kind and free."Within a little time, as hath been found,He can make sick folk whole, and fresh, and sound.Them who are whole in body and in mindHe can make sick, bind can he and unbindAll that he will have bound, or have unbound."To tell his might my wit may not suffice,Foolish men he can make them out of wise;For he may do all that he will devise,Loose livers he can make abate their vice,And proud hearts can make tremble in a trice."In brief, the whole of what he will, he may;Against him dare not any wight say nay;To humble or afflict whome'er he will,To gladden or to grieve, he hath like skill;But most his might he sheds on the eve of May."For every true heart, gentle heart and free,That with him is, or thinketh so to be,Now against May shall have some stirring – whetherTo joy, or be it to some mourning; neverAt other time, methinks, in like degree."For now when they may hear the small birds' song,And see the budding leaves the branches throng,This unto their rememberance doth bringAll kinds of pleasure, mix'd with sorrowing,And longing of sweet thoughts that ever long."And of that longing heaviness doth come,Whence oft great sickness grows of heart and home;Sick are they all for lack of their desire;And thus in May their hearts are set on fire,So that they burn forth in great martyrdom."

Here is the master of the art; and his work, most of all, therefore, makes us doubt the practicability of the thing undertaken. He works reverently, lovingly, surely with full apprehension of Chaucer; and yet, at every word where he leaves Chaucer, the spirit of Chaucer leaves the verse. You see plainly that his rule is to change the least that can possibly be changed. Yet the gentle grace, the lingering musical sweetness, the taking simplicity, of the wise old poet, vanishes – brushed away like the down from the butterfly's wing, by the lightest and most timorous touch.

"For he can make of lowè hertès highe."

There is the soul of the lover's poet, of the poet himself a lover, poured out and along in one fond verse, gratefully consecrated to the mystery of love, which he, too, has experienced when he – the shy, the fearful, the reserved – was yet by the touch of that all-powerful ray which enkindled, and to his own surprise made elate to hope and to dare.

"Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep,"

But now contract, as Wordsworth does, the dedicated verse into a half verse, and bring together the two distinct and opposite mysteries under one enunciation – in short, divide the one verse to two subjects —

"For he of low hearts can make high – of highHe can make low;"

and the fact vouched remains the same, the simplicity of the words is kept, for they are the very words, and yet something is gone – and in that something every thing! There is no longer the dwelling upon the words, no longer the dilated utterance of a heart that melts with its own thoughts, no longer the consecration of the verse to its matter, no longer the softness, the light, the fragrance, the charm – no longer, in a word, the old manner. Here is, in short, the philosophical observation touching love, "the saw of might" still; but the love itself here is not. A kindly and moved observer speaks, not a lover.

In one of the above-cited stanzas, Urry seems to have misled Wordsworth. Stanza iv. verse 4, Chaucer says: —

"And whoso that he wol, he lougheth or siketh."

The sense undoubtedly is, "and whosoever he" – namely, the God of Love – "will, he" – namely, the Lover – "laugheth or sigheth accordingly." But Urry mistaking the construction – supposed that he, in both places, meant the god only. He had, therefore, to find out in "lougheth" and "siketh," actions predicable of the love-god. The verse accordingly runs thus with him,

"And who that he wol, he loweth or siketh."

Now, it is true, that, after all, we do not exactly know how Urry understood his own reading; for he did not make his own glossary. But from his glossary, we find that "to lowe" is to praise, to allow, to approve – furthermore that "siketh" in this place means "maketh sick." Wordsworth, following as it would appear the lection of Urry, but only half agreeing to the interpretation of Urry's glossarist, has rendered the line

"To humble or afflict whome'er he will."

He has understood in his own way, from an obvious suggestion, "loweth," to mean, maketh low, humbleth; whilst "afflict" is a ready turn for "maketh sick" of the glossary. But here Wordsworth cannot be in the right. For Chaucer is now busied with magnifying the kingdom of love by accumulated antitheses – high, low – sick, whole – wise, foolish – the wicked turns good, the proud shrink and fear – the God, at his pleasure, gladdens or grieves. The phrase under question must conform to the manner of the place where it appears. An opposition of meanings is indispensable. "Humble or afflict," which are both on one side, cannot be right. "Approveth or maketh sick," are on opposite sides, but will hardly pick one another out for antagonists. "Laugheth or sigheth," has the vividness and simplicity of Chaucer, the most exact contrariety matches them – and the two phenomena cannot be left out of a lover's enumeration.

Chaucer says of his 'bosom's lord,'

"And most his might he sheddeth ever in May" —

renowning here, as we saw that he does elsewhere, the whole month, as love's own segment of the zodiacal circle. The time of the poem itself is accordingly 'the thridde night of May.' Wordsworth has rendered,

"But most his might he sheds on the eve of May."

Why so? Is the approaching visitation of the power more strongly felt than the power itself in presence? Chaucer says distinctly the contrary, and why with a word lose, or obscure, or hazard the appropriation of the month entire, so conspicuous a tenet in the old poetical mind? And is Eve here taken strictly – the night before May-day, like the Pervigilium Veneris? Or loosely, on the verge of May, answerably to 'ayenes May' afterwards? To the former sense, we might be inclined to propose on the contrary part,

"But sheds his might most on the morrow of May,"

i. e. in prose on May-day morning, consonantly to all the testimonies.

Chaucer says that the coming-on of the love-month produces in the heart of the lover

"A maner easè medled with grevaunce."

That is to say, a kind of joy or pleasure, (Fr. aise,) mixed with sadness. He insists, by this expression, upon the strangeness of the kind, peculiar to the willing sufferers under this unique passion, "love's pleasing smart." Did Wordsworth, by intention or misapprehension, leave out this turn of expression, by which, in an age less forward than ours in sentimental researches, Chaucer drew notice to the contradictory nature of the internal state which he described? As if Chaucer had said, "al maner esè," Wordsworth says, "all kinds of pleasure mixed with sorrowing."

In the next line he adds to the intuitions of his master, one of his own profound intuitions, if we construe aright —

"And longing of sweet thoughts that ever long."

That ever long! The sweetest of thoughts are never satisfied with their own deliciousness. Earthly delight, or heavenly delight upon earth, penetrating the soul, stirs in it the perception of its native illimitable capacity for delight. Bliss, which should wholly possess the blest being, plays traitor to itself, turns into a sort of divine dissatisfaction, and brings forth from its teeming and infinite bosom a brood of winged wishes, bright with hues which memory has bestowed, and restless with innate aspirations. Such is our commentary on the truly Wordsworthian line, but it is not a line answerable to Chaucer's —

"And lusty thoughtès full of gret longinge."

Is this hypercriticism? It is the only criticism that can be tolerated betwixt two such rivals as Chaucer and Wordsworth. The scales that weigh poetry should turn with a grain of dust, with the weight of a sunbeam, for they weigh spirit. Or is it saying that Wordsworth has not done his work as well as it was possible to be done? Rather it is inferring, from the failure of the work in his hand, that he and his colleagues have attempted that which was impossible to be done. We will not here hunt down line by line. We put before the reader the means of comparing verse with verse. We have, with 'a thoughtful heart of love,' made the comparison, and feel throughout that the modern will not, cannot, do justice to the old English. The quick sensibility which thrills through the antique strain deserts the most cautious version of it. In short, we fall back upon the old conviction, that verse is a sacred, and song an inspired thing; that the feeling, the thought, the word, and the musical breath spring together out of the soul in one creation; that a translation is a thing not given in rerum natura; consequently that there is nothing else to be done with a great poet saving to leave him in his glory.

And our friend John Dryden? Oh, he is safe enough; for the new translators all agree that his are no translations at all of Chaucer, but original and excellent poems of his own.

A language that is half Chaucer's, and half that of his renderer, is in great danger to be the language of nobody. But Chaucer's has its own energy and vivacity which attaches you, and as soon as you have undergone the due transformation by sympathy, carries you effectually with it. In the moderate versions that are best done, you miss this indispensable force of attraction. But Dryden boldly and freely gives you himself, and along you sweep, or are swept rejoicingly along. "The grand charge to which his translations are amenable," says Mr Horne, "is, that he acted upon an erroneous principle." Be it so. Nevertheless, they are among the glories of our poetical literature. Mr Horne's, literal as he supposes them to be, are unreadable. He, too, acts on an erroneous principle; and his execution betrays throughout the unskilful hand of a presumptuous apprentice. But he has "every respect for the genius, and for every thing that belongs to the memory, of Dryden;" and thus magniloquently eulogizes his most splendid achievement: – "The fact is, Dryden's version of the 'Knight's Tale' would be most appropriately read by the towering shade of one of Virgil's heroes, walking up and down a battlement, and waving a long, gleaming spear, to the roll and sweep of his sonorous numbers."

1

Letters and Despatches of John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, from 1702 to 1712. Edited by Sir George Murray, G.C.B., Master-General of the Ordnance, &c. 3 vols. London, 1845.

2

"Marlborough," says Swift, "is as voracious as hell, and as ambitious as the devil. What he desires above every thing is to be made commander-in-chief for life, and it is to satisfy his ambition and his avarice that he has opposed so many intrigues to the efforts made for the restoration of peace."

3

"During the interval between the liberation of Marlborough and the death of Queen Mary, we find him, in conjunction with Godolphin and many others, maintaining a clandestine intercourse with the exiled family. On the 2d May 1694, only a few days before he offered his services to King William, he communicated to James, through Colonel Sackville, intelligence of an expedition then fitting out, for the purpose of destroying the fleet in Brest harbour." – Coxe's Marlborough, i. 75. "Marlborough's conduct to the Stuarts," says Lord Mahon, "was a foul blot on his memory. To the last he persevered in those deplorable intrigues. In October 1713, he protested to a Jacobite agent he would rather have his hands cut off than do any thing to prejudice King James." – Mahon, i. 21-22.

4

"Galli turpe esse ducunt frumentum manu quærere; itaque armati alienos agros demetunt." – Cæsar.

5

Despatches, 21st September 1702.

6

Despatches, 23d October 1702.

7

Memorial, 24th August 1703. —Despatches, i. 165.

8

Marlborough was much chagrined at being interrupted in his meditated decisive operations by the States-General, on this occasion. On the 6th September, he wrote to them: – "Vos Hautes Puissances jugeront bien par le camp que nous venons de prendre, qu'on n'a pas voulu se résoudre à tenter les lignes. J'ai été convaincu de plus en plus, depuis l'honneur que j'ai eu de vous écrire, par les avis que j'ai reçu journellement de la situation des ennemis, que cette entreprise n'était pas seulement practicable, mais même qu'on pourrait en espérer tout le succès que je m'étais proposé: enfin l'occasion en est perdue, et je souhaite de tout mon cœur qu'elle n'ait aucune fâcheuse suite, et qu'on n'ait pas lieu de s'en repentir quand il sera trop tard." – Marlborough aux Etats Généraux; 6 Septembre 1703. Despatches, i. 173.