ust keep my word."
"Indeed!--and shall a squire not know how to do a 'gentil dede,' as well
as a knight? I release you your promise."--He carries L500--all of the
agreed sum that he can muster to the conjurer, and prays of him time for
the rest. "Have I performed my undertaking?" "Yes!"--"And the lady
hers?"--The squire is obliged to relate the sequence of events.--"And is a
clerk," exclaims the master, "less able to do a gentil dede, than squire
and knight? Keep thy money, Sir Squire!"

That is a creditable tale for a country gentleman--

"Whose table dormant in the halle alway
Stood redy covered alle the longe day."

There is much feeling in the detail of the story, and the magical shows,
by which the enchanter, before striking his bargain, demonstrates his
competency, and by which he afterwards executes his engagement, are
dressed out with vivid imagination.

But now it is really high time that you should hear Dryden on Chaucer. For
is not this Number IV. of our Specimens of the British Critics?

"With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue; from Chaucer the
purity of the English tongue began. The manners of the poets were not
unlike: both of them were well bred, well natured, amorous, and
libertine, at least in their writings; it may be also in their lives.
Their studies were the same--philosophy and philology. Both of them
were knowing in astronomy; of which Ovid's _Books of the Roman
Feasts_, and Chaucer's _Treatise of the Astrolabe_, are sufficient
witnesses. But Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil,
Horace, Persius, and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and
clearness; neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the
Grecian fables, and most of Chaucer's stories were taken from his
Italian contemporaries, or their predecessors--Boccace his
'Decameron' was first published; and from thence our Englishman has
borrowed many of his 'Canterbury Tales.' Yet that of _Palamon and
Arcite_ was written, in all probability, by some Italian wit, in a
former age, as I shall prove hereafter. The tale of _Grisilde_ was
the invention of Petrarch; by him sent to Boccace, from whom it came
to Chaucer. _Troilus and Cressida_ was also written by a Lombard
author, but much amplified by our English translator, as well as
beautified; the genius of our countrymen, in general, being rather to