talie,
When they were wonne; and in the Grete See,
At many a noble armee;"--

he who has been at--

"Mortal battailes fiftene,
And foughten for our faith at Tramisene,
In listes thries, and ay slain his fo"--

shall he, upon the qualm of a queasy criticism, not be allowed to transfer
something of the

"Chevalrie,
Truth and honor, fredom and courtesie,"

which, "from the time that he first began to riden out," he has
loved--across a gap of a few hundred leagues and years? To what end else,
it may be asked, has he approved himself, "full worthy in his lordes
werre," and "ridden thereto no man ferre,"--

"As well in Christendom as in Hethenesse,
And ever honor'd for his worthinesse?"

Why, the Knight would have been no knight at all if he had been Richard
Bentley or John Milton, and not, as there is every reason to hope he was,
_le noble et vaillant Chivaler_ MATHEU DE GOURNEY, whose marble tells us
that he had fought at Benamaryn and Algezire, and been at abundance of
battles and sieges, named and unnamed, in Christendom and
Heathenesse--"_en les quex il gaigna noblement graunt los et honour_"--and
who "died in 1406 at the age of 96." It is therefore Sir Matheu de Gourney
who speaks, like a knight, of knighthood--and let him speak--

"Who never yet no vilainie ne sayde,
In all his life unto no manere wight."--

Let him speak, justifying his eulogist, and showing us, as well as may be
by his words, what his deeds showed the world, that--

"He was a veray parfit gentil knight!"

The first transaction that is related with some full process, is the
chivalrous enterprise of Theseus against Creon; King of Thebes. This
dispiteous and abominable tyrant prohibits the bodies of the warriors
fallen in the celebrated siege of that city from burial. The widows of the
slain princes and nobles move Theseus for vengeance and redress, which he
instantly undertakes, and forthwith executes. And now mark the admixture
of times and manners. In the first place, the heinousness of the crime,
and even the imagination of such an impiety, are purely antique, as, in
truth, the fact itself is on classical record in the "Antigone" of
Sophocles. Again, the suppliant, bereaved, and woebegone wives have
awaited Theseus's coming "in the temple of the goddess Clemency," than
which nothing can be more classical; and the manner in which, at his
return home from his victorious war upon the "Amasones," t