of the Invasion of the Crimea, Vols. i., ii. Elizabeth C. Gaskell, Sylvia's Lovers. John Keble, Life of Bishop Wilson. A. P. Stanley, History of the Jewish Church. Florence Nightingale (b. 1820) Notes on Hospitals. George Macdonald, David Elginbrod. 1864. Alfred Tennyson, Enoch Arden. Robert Browning, Dramatis Persona. John Forster, Life of Sir John Eliot. Algernon Charles Swinburne (b. 1843), Atalanta in Calydon. John Henry Newman (b. 1801), Apologia pro Vita Suâ. William Allingham, Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland. G H. Lewes, Aristotle. Thomas Carlyle, Life of Friedrich II., Vol. iv. Alexander Dyce, Revised Edition of Shakespeare. E. B. Pusey, Lectures on Daniel, An Eirenicon. John William Kaye (b. 1814), History of the Sepoy War. John Doran, Their Majesties' Servants. 1865. Dickens, Our Mutual Friend. Algernon C. Swinburne, Chastelard. John Stuart Mill, Comte and Positivism. Fortnightly Review established. Thomas Carlyle, Life of Friedrich II., Vols. v., vi. Elizabeth C. Gaskell, Wives and Daughters. W. H. Dixon, The Holy Land. F. D. Maurice, Conflict of Good and Evil in Our Day. George Grote, Plato. 1866 "George Eliot," Felix Holt. Lord Lytton, The Lost Tales of Miletus. James A. Froude, History of England, Vols. ix., x. W. Wilkie Collins, Armadale. Matthew Arnold, New Poems. Bryan W. Procter, Charles Lamb: a Memoir. Christiana Rosetti, The Prince's Progress, &c. 1867. William Morris, Life and Death of Jason. Edward A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, Vol. i. Thackeray, Denis Duval. Jean Ingelow, A Story of Doom. G. H. Lewes, Biographical History of Philosophy (Enlarged Ed.). Thomas Carlyle, Shooting Niagara, and After? W. H. Dixon, New America. Theodore Martin, Memoir of W. E. Aytoun. Matthew Arnold, Study of Celtic Literature. J. A. Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects. Augusta Webster, A Woman Sold, &c. John Hill Burton, History of Scotland, Vols. i.—iv. 1868. "George Eliot," The Spanish Gypsey: a Poem. Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book. William Morris, The Earthly Paradise. Gerald 1869. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy. E. A. Freeman, History of Norman Conquest, Vol. iii. John Forster, Life of W. S. Landor. Harriet Martineau, Biographical Sketches. W. H. Dixon, Her Majesty's Tower. Vols. 1, ii. Alexander Dyce, Ed. Ford. 1870. Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Brood. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women. Matthew Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism. Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Poems. Thomas Henry Huxley, Lay Sermons, Essays and Reviews. John Henry Newman, Miscellanies. 1871. Robert Browning, Balaustion's Adventure. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. Robert Buchanan, Napoleon Fallen: a Lyrical Drama. Lord Lytton, The Coming Race. David Masson, Life of Milton, Vol. ii. W. H. Dixon, Her Majesty's Tower, Vols. iii., iv. Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato translated, with Analyses and Introductions. Charles Kingsley, At Last: a Christmas in the West Indies. John Morley, Voltaire. A. C. Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise. Anthony Trollope, Ralph the Heir. 1872. George Eliot," Middlemarch. Alfred Tennyson, Gareth and Lynette. TO A.D. 1873.] ANNALS. 895 George Grote, Aristotle, edited by Alexander Bain and George Croom 1873. Lord Lytton, Keneim Chillingly. Anthony Trollope, Australia and New Some of our best Chaucer scholars, while doing great service to literature by the publication of texts, and fresh scrutiny into the authority for current opinions, have arrived at a few conclusions which I do not yet accept, and therefore have not embodied in my narrative. This book, however, would be incomplete without a proper statement of them; and that has, at my request, been kindly furnished by one of their ablest supporters, Mr. F. J. Furnivall, to whose enthusiasm we are mainly indebted for the Chaucer Society, the Early English Text Society, and other valuable aids to a true study of our literature. THE first thing for a critical student of Chaucer to do, is to examine carefully the evidence for the genuineness or spuriousness of the works attributed to him. This evidence is either external or internal. The external evidence is mainly that from early MSS. naming Chaucer as the author of this work or the other; and the internal evidence is that from the use of rymes, constructions, phrases, allusions, besides general tone and spirit. Of the works ascribed to Chaucer only the following have external evidence in their favour:-"A B C," "Compleynte of Pity" (ab. 1367); "Parlament of Fowles" (ab. 1374); “Mars," "Anelida," "Boece," "Troylus," "Adam Scrivener," "House of Fame" (? 1384); "Legende of Good Women" (? 1386); "Canterbury Tales" (? 1373-1400); "Truth (Fle fro the presse)" (1386–87); "Astrolabe" (1391); "Venus," "Envoy to Skogan," Marriage (Envoy to Bukton)," "Gentlenesse," "Lack of Stedfastness," (? 1397); "Fortune," "Compleynte to his Purse" (September, 1399). To these must be added the pretty "Former Age" (? 1381), in the best Cambridge University MS. of Boece; and the death of "Blaunche the Duchesse" (ab. 1369), which has internal evidence in its favour, and is linked indissolubly to the "Compleynte of Pity," Chaucer's earliest original work. Testing the rymes of the poems above-named, we find that out of the many thousand rymes they contain, Chaucer has always avoided ryming the infinitive in ye, the Latin-derived noun in ye, and the adverb in ye, with the pronoun I, the adverb in ly, and other words in y; except in one instance in "Sir Thopas," where he rymes Sir "Guy" with "chyvalrye." This proves that Chaucer's law is not to ryme ye-y; and we may fairly conclude that if any poem frequently rymes ye with y, that poem is almost certainly not Chaucer's. Now all the following poems do frequently ryme ye-y, besides breaking other laws of Chaucer's ryme, and containing CHAUCER. STUDENTS BOOKS. 897 phrases, poverties, &c., inconsistent with his work. There is no external evidence in favour of these poems; many of them are ridiculously inferior to, and many plainly later than, his genuine works; and they must be considered as spurious till some one can establish their genuineness, which I make bold to doubt whether any one ever can or will do:-" Court of Love," "Craft of Lovers and Remedy of Love" (both too bad); "Lamentation of Mary Magdalene" (very poor); "Romaunt of the Rose" (Chaucer's version is lost); "Complaint of the Black Knight" (stated to be Lydgate's by Shirley, the contemporary of him and Chaucer); Chaucer's Dream" (or, "Isle of Ladies"-late); "Flower and the Leaf" ? after 1450 A.D.); "Cuckoo and Nightingale." The author of the prose "Testament of Love" makes Love call Chaucer "myne owne true servaunt, the noble Phylosophicall Poete in English all that willen me good, owe to doe hym worship and reverence both: truely his better ne his pere, in schoole of my rules could I never find. . . . Certainely his noble sayings can I not amend: in goodnesse of gentle manliche speech, wythout any manner of nycetie of stafieres imagination, in wit and in good reason of sentence, he passeth all other makers." Compare this with the author's own description of his own "rude wordes and boistous," ," "dull witte and thoughtful soule," in the Prologue of the "Testament." There is no evidence whatever that Thomas Chaucer was the poet Geoffrey's son or relative-Lydgate, when addressing Thomas, never hints at any relationship-and no evidence that Geoffrey was born in 1328. His own statement, and that order of his poems which I contend is right, leave little doubt that he was born about 1340 A.D. Besides the ordinary printed cast of the Prologue to the "Legende of Good Women," there is another in the Cambridge University MS., Gg. iv. 27, containing most interesting differences, and with no praise of his own "lady," but only of Alcestis. October 28, 1872. F. J. FURNIVALL. II. STUDENTS' BOOKS, Old English History. By Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L. Macmillan. Price 6s. [The best short sketch of English history before the Conquest.] The Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times. By E. A. Freeman. Price 5s. Macmillan and Co. Select Charters, and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History, from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward I. Arranged and Edited by William Stubbs, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern History. Price 8s. 6d. Clarendon Press Series. Macmillan. [A thorough manual of early constitutional history, with citation of the whole text of important documents, and many illustrative extracts, chiefly in Latin.] The Student's Hume. Being the history of England abridged, continued to the present time, incorporating the researches of recent historians. Price 75. 6d. John Murray. Charles Knight's School History of England; from the Earliest Period to FFF our own Times. Abridged from the "Popular History of England," under the superintendence of the author. Price 7s. 6d. Bradbury and Evans. [Charles Knight's original work, "The Popular History of England," is in eight volumes, 8vo. It is a careful "History of the English People,' freely illustrated with woodcuts, but not to be confounded with the "Pictorial History of England." That was by other writers, and its political chapters are less satisfactory.] A Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue, from the Danish of Erasmus Rask. By Benjamin Thorpe. Second edition. Price 5s. Trübner and Co. A Compendious Anglo-Saxon and English Dictionary. By the Rev. Joseph Bosworth, D.D. Price 125. J. R. Smith. Analecta Anglosaxonica. By Benjamin Thorpe. Price 7s. 6d. J. R. Smith. Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Poesie, von C. W. M. Grein. Two vols., price 185. Göttingen: Wigand. London: D. Nutt, 270, Strand; or Asher, 13, Bedford Street, Covent Garden. [Contains "Beowulf," "Cadmon," the poems of the Exeter and Vercelli Book, and all the chief pieces of First English poetry. There is an elaborate glossary, First English and Latin, in two companion volumes.] Beowulf alone has been edited with a full glossary (German), by C. W. M. Grein (price 3s. 6d.) and by Moritz Heyne (price 4s. 6d.). Cadmon has been edited by K, W. Bouterwek, with Glossary, First English and Latin (price about 75.). Specimens of Early English. A new and revised Edition, with Introduction, Notes, and Glossarial Index. By the Rev. Richard Morris, LL.D., and the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, M.A. First Volume preparing. Second Volume (price 7s. 6d.), from Robert of Gloucester to Gower, A.D. 1298 to A.D. 1393. Clarendon Press Series. Macmillan. Specimens of English Literature from the "Ploughman's Crede" to the 'Shepheardes' Calendar," A.D. 1394-A.D. 1579. With Introduction, Notes, and Glossarial Index. By the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, M.A. Price 7s. 6d. Clarendon Press. Macmillan. " Chaucer: the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the Knighte's Tale, The The Riches of Chaucer. Clarendon Press By Charles Cowden Clarke. Price os. 6d. Lockwood and Co. [A very good Chaucer for young readers and ladies, with omissions, and with the spelling modernized.] The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, by William Langland. Edited by the Rev. W. W. Skeat, M.A. With Introduction, Notes, and Glossary. Price 2s. 6d. Clarendon Press. Macmillan. No books produced in this country give more efficient help than those of Mr. Skeat and Dr. Morris to the student who begins to make acquaintance with our early English authors. Other good aids to the study of English literature in the Clarendon Press series are Mr. Kitchin's school |