ect choir sing a roundel in honour of Nature; and at the
"shouting" that, when the song was done, the fowls made in flying away,
the Poet awoke! Amongst the hard points of this enigmatical love-allegory
are, that when the first lover, a "royal tercell," has ended his plea, the
"formell eagle" _blushes_! as does afterwards the turtle upon the proposal
made of changing an old love for a new, and that the duck swears by his
_hat_. Be the specific intent what it may, the general bearing speaks for
itself, namely, the unmeasured lifting-up of Love's supremacy--though we
cannot help feeling how much nearer Chaucer was to the riddling days of
poetry than we are. Did the old Poet translate from plain English into the
language of Birds, and expect us to re-translate? Or are these blushes and
this knighthood amongst birds merely regular adjuncts in any fable that
attributes to the inferior creation human powers of reason and speech? It
is curious that the _rapacious_ fowls are presented as excelling in high
and delicate sentiment! They are the aristocracy of the birds, plainly;
yet an aristocracy described as of "ravine" seems to receive but an
equivocal compliment.

The HOUSE OF FAME is in Three Books. The title bespeaks Allegory; and the
machinery which justifies the allegory, as usual is a Dream. But the title
does not bespeak, what is nevertheless true, that here, too, love steals
in. During the entire First Book, the poet dreams himself to be in the
temple of Venus, all graven over with AEneas's history, taken point by
point from the Mantuan. The history belongs properly to its place; not
because AEneas is the son of Venus, but because the course of events is
conducted by Jupiter consonantly to the prayer of Venus. Why the House of
Venus takes up a third part of the poem to be devoted to the House of Fame
is less apparent. Is the poet crazed with love? and so driven against
method to dream perforce of the divinity who rules over his destiny, as
she did over her son's? Or does the _fame_ conferred by Virgil upon AEneas
make it reasonable that the dream should proceed by the House of one
goddess to that of the other? Having surveyed the whole, the poet goes out
to look in what part of the world he is, when Jupiter's eagle seizes upon
him, and carries him up to the city and palace of Fame, seated above the
region of tempests, but apparently below the stars, and there sets him
down. The Second Book is spent in their conversation d