e was his overest courtepy."

Mr Horne modernizes it into--

"His uppermost short cloak _was a bare thread_."

Why exaggerate so? Chaucer says--

"But all that he might of _his frendes hente_
On bokes and on lerning he it spente."

Mr Horne says--

"But every farthing that his friends e'er _lent_."

They did not _lend_, they gave outright to the poor scholar.

The Reve's Prologue opens thus in Chaucer--

"Whan folk han laughed at this nice cas
Of Absalom and _hendy_ Nicholas."

Mr Horne says--

"Of Absalom and _credulous_ Nicholas!"

He manifestly mistakes the sly scholar for the credulous carpenter, whom
on the tenderest point he outwitted! To those who know the nature of the
story, the blunder is extreme.

What is to be thought of such rhymes as these?

"And for to drink strong wine as red as _blood_,
Then would he jest, and shout as he were _mad_."

"Toward the mill, the bay nag in his _hand_,
The miller sitting by the fire they _found_."

"And on she went, till she the cradle _found_,
While through the dark still groping with her _hand_."

These to our ears, are not happy modernizations of Chaucer.

Here come a few more Cockneyisms.

"Alas! our warden's palfrey it is _gone_.
Allen at once forgot both meal and _corn_."

"Allen stole back, and thought ere that it _dawn_,
I will creep in by John that lieth for_lorn_."

"For, from the town Arviragus was _gone_,
But to herself she spoke thus, all _forlorn_."

"Aurelius, thinking of his substance _gone_,
Curseth the time that ever he was _born_."

"An arm-brace wore he that was rich and _broad_,
And by his side a buckler and a _sword_."

"Now grant my ship, that some smooth haven _win her_;
I follow Statius first, and then _Corinna_."

Alas! this worst of all is Elizabeth Barrett's! "Well of English
_undefiled_!"

In Chaucer we have--

"A SERGEANT OF THE LAWE, ware and wise,
That often hadde yben _at the Parvis_."

Mr Horne gives us--

"A Sergeant of the Law, wise, wary, _arch_!
_Who oft had gossip'd long in the church porch._"

The word "arch" is here interpolated to give some colour to the charge
of "gossiping," absurdly asserted of the learned Sergeant. The Parvis
was the place of conference, where suitors met with their counsel and
legal advisers; and Chaucer merely intimates thereby the extent of the
Sergeant's practice. In Chaucer we have--

"In termes hadde he c