olutions and
vicissitudes, as resolutely as thus far it is, upon its own meet
self-sustained wing. It would have been! Oh, vex not the shade of the true
Maker with saucy doubts and fears! "Call up Him!" Yes--were there
evocations of such potency; but "call Him" in the simplicity of your soul,
because he has moved in you the lawful desire of hearing--because you
long, insatiably, to know what was done, found, suffered, enjoyed, by
Cambalo, Algarsif, Canace: which none other segger, disour, maker, harper
and carper, that shall ever arise shall have wit to tell you--not because
you would fain sit in the chair of criticism, awarding or withholding the
palm of dramatic skill, claimed by Dan Geffrey. Ay! "call up Him!" But
call up no substitute for Him.

The Sergeant of Laws' Tale, and the Clerke of Oxenford's, have an
affinity. Each describes a tried wife, an exemplar for all her sex, two
perfectly pure-souled women. And nothing is more honourable to Chaucer
than the love with which he has dwelt upon the story of both. Both suffer
to extremity; but Custance, the Sergeant's heroine, under the hand of
Providence, who proves her with strange calamities, and when she has
well-endured the ordeal, restores her to deserved happiness. For the
loving wife, whom the Clerke of Oxenford praises, a loving husband is
pleased to devise a course of sharp assaying, which might have been
conveniently spared. The manner of telling in the two stories is marked
with a difference. In both it is somewhat of the copious kind; and it may
be observed, generally, that the style of the narrative, in the
seven-lined stanza, or "rime roiall," is more diffuse than in the
couplets. There is a difference between the two which appears to belong to
the characters of the speakers. The Man of Law has not a few passages of
exclamatory and apostrophical moral and sentimental rhetoric. They compel
you to recollect his portrait--

"Discret he was, and of gret reverence
He _seemed_ swiche, his _wordes were so wise_."

The Clerk has nothing of the kind. The largeness in his manner of
relating, is rather an explicit and lucid fulness in representing an
interesting subject, than what is properly called diffuseness. Chaucer has
said of him--

"Not a word spake he more than was nede;"

and you will see accordingly, that although he _details_ his narrative,
every word, in its place, is pertinent and serviceable. He ends with a
freak, which carries him, you are