tusti._
_Vi si sentia grandissimo romore,_
_Ne vera bestia anchora ne pastore._"
_Teseide_, book vii.

There is a purposed grisly ruggedness in the corresponding passage of the
_Knightes Tale_, which heightens the horrors of "thilke colde and frosty
region:"

"First on the wall was peinted _a forest,_
_In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best,_
_With knotty knarry barrein trees old_
_Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to behold_;
In which ther ran _a romble and a swough_,
As though a storme shuld bresten every bough."
_The Knightes Tale_, 1977.

The death of Arcite is thus related by Boccaccio:

"La morte in ciascun membro era venuta
Da piedi in su, venendo verso il petto,
Ed ancor nelle braccia era perduta
La vital forza; sol nello intelletto
E nel cuore era ancora sostenuta
La poca vita, ma gia si ristretto
Eragli 'l tristo cor del mortal gelo
Che agli occhi fe' subitamente velo.

"Ma po' ch' egli ebbe perduto il vedere,
Con seco comincio a mormorare,
Ognor mancando piu del suo podere:
Ne troppo fece in cio lungo durare;
Ma il mormorare trasportato in vere
Parole, con assai basso parlare
Addio Emilia; e piu oltre non disse,
Che l' anima convenne si partisse."
_Teseide_, book x. 112.

Chaucer loses nothing of this description in his condensed translation:

"For from his feet up to his brest was come
The cold of deth, that had him overnome.
And yet moreover in his armes two
The vital strength is lost, and all ago.
Only the intellect, withouten more,
That dwelled in his herte sike and sore,
Gan feillen, when the herte felte deth;
Dusked his eyen two, and failled his breth.
But on his ladie yet cast he his eye;
His laste word was; Mercy, Emelie!"
_The Knightes Tale_, 2301.

_Troilus and Creseide_ seems to have been translated from the _Filostrato_
of Boccaccio, when {519} Chaucer was a young man, as we are informed by Dan
John Lydgate in the Prologue to his Translation of Boccaccio's _Fall of
Princes_, where he speaks of his "Maister Chaucer" as the "chefe poete of
Bretayne," and tells us that--

"_In youthe he made a translacion_
Of a boke which called is Trophe,
In Lumbard tongue, as men may rede and se,
_And in our vulgar, long or that he deyde_
Gave it the name of Troylous and Cresseyde."

Chaucer's translation is sometimes very close, sometimes rather free and
paraphr