hire meat she raught,"

which Mr Horne improves into---

"And for her meat
Full seemly bent she forward on her seat."

Chaucer says--

"_And peined hire_ to contrefeten chere
Of court, and been astatelich of manere,
And to be holden digne of reverence."

That is, she took pains to imitate the manners of the Court, &c.;
whereas Mr Horne, with inconceivable ignorance of the meaning of words
that occur in Chaucer a hundred times, writes "_it gave her pain_ to
counterfeit the ways of Court," thereby reversing the whole picture.

"And French she spake full fayre and fetisly,"

he translates "full properly _and neat_!" Dryden rightly calls her "the
mincing Prioress;" Mr Horne wrongly says, "she was evidently one of the
most high-bred and refined ladies of her time."

Chaucer says, of that "manly man," the Monk--

"Ne that a monk, when he is rekkeless,
Is like to a fish that is waterless;
This is to say, a monk out of his cloistre.
This ilke text held he not worth an oistre."

Mr Horne here modernizeth thus--

"Or that a monk beyond his bricks and _mortar_,
Is like a fish without a drop of _water_,
That is to say, a monk out of his cloister."

There can be no mortar without water, but the words do not rhyme except
to Cockney ears, though the blame lies at the door of the mouth. "Bricks
and mortar" is an odd and somewhat vulgar version of "rekkeless;" and to
say that a monk "beyond his bricks and mortar" is a monk "out of his
cloister," is not in the manner of Chaucer, or of any body else.

Chaucer says slyly of the Frere, that

"He hadde ymade ful mony a mariage
Of yonge women, at his owen coste;"

and Mister Horne brazen-facedly,

"Full many a marriage had he brought to bear,
For women young, and _paid the cost with sport_."

O fie, Mister Horne! To hide our blushes, will no maiden for a moment
lend us her fan? We cover our face with our hands.--Of this same Frere,
Mr Horne, in his introduction, when exposing the faults of another
translator, says that "Chaucer shows us the quaint begging rogue playing
his harp among a crowd of admiring auditors, and _turning up his eyes_
with an attempted expression of religious enthusiasm;" but Chaucer does
no such thing, nor was the Frere given to any such practice.

Of the Clerk of Oxenford, Chaucer says, he "loked holwe, and thereto
soberly." Mr Horne needlessly adds "ill-fed." Chaucer says--

"Ful threadbar