ne is reminded of
Aristophanes' feathered chorus; but birds are naturally the delight of
poets, and were befriended by Dante himself.

Hereupon the action of the poem opens. A female eagle is wooed by
three suitors--all eagles; but among them the first, or royal eagle,
discourses in the manner most likely to conciliate favour. Before the
answer is given, a pause furnishes an opportunity to the other fowls
for delighting in the sound of their own voices, Dame Nature proposing
that each class of birds shall, through the beak of its representative
"agitator," express its opinion on the problem before the assembly.
There is much humour in the readiness of the goose to rush in with a
ready-made resolution, and in the smart reproof administered by the
sparrow-hawk amidst the uproar of "the gentle fowls all." At last
Nature silences the tumult, and the lady-eagle delivers her answer, to
the effect that she cannot make up her mind for a year to come; but
inasmuch as Nature has advised her to choose the royal eagle, his is
clearly the most favourable prospect. Whereupon, after certain fowls
had sung a roundel, "as was always the usance," the assembly, like some
human Parliaments, breaks up with shouting;

(Than all the birdis song with sic a schout
That I annone awoik quhair that I lay
Dunbar, "The Thrissil and the Rois.")

and the dreamer awakes to resume his reading.

Very possibly the "Assembly of Fowls" was at no great interval of time
either followed or preceded by two poems of far inferior interest--the
"Complaint of Mars" (apparently afterwards amalgamated with that of
"Venus"), which is supposed to be sung by a bird on St. Valentine's
morning, and the fragment of "Queen Anelida and false Arcite." There
are, however, reasons which make a less early date probable in the case
of the latter production, the history of the origin and purpose of
which can hardly be said as yet to be removed out of the region of mere
speculation. In any case, neither of these poems can be looked upon as
preparations, on Chaucer's part, for the longer work on which he was to
expend so much labour; but in a sense this description would apply to
the translation which, probably before he wrote "Troilus and Cressid,"
certainly before he wrote the Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women,"
he made of the famous Latin work of Boethius, "the just man in prison,"
on the "Consolation of Philosophy." This book was, and very justly so,
one of