nducted to this pass, that you look upon history as useful for
ministering materials to poetry, not upon poetry as bound to teach
history. But Chaucer _has_ wonderfully put life into the classical part of
the poem, so that you can hardly say that he seems more at home in giving
the manners which he had seen, than in reviving the manners which he had
only read. He has this in common with Shakspeare. In common with
Shakspeare he has, too, the apology for the confusion of manners--of
having lived before we were as critical in the costume of ages and nations
as we now are.

The 'Knight's Tale,' after the requisition usually laid upon an epic
fable, makes use, and skilfully, of preternatural machinery. And here we
will venture a vindication against an illustrious critic. The first
suggestion to the banished Arcite of returning to Athens, comes to him in
sleep. There is a slight invoking of the supernatural--at least of the
fabulous. He dreams that Mercury appears, and announces to him an end of
his woe at Athens. On awaking, he casts his eyes on a mirror, and sees
that he is so changed with love-pining that he no longer knows
himself--goes in disguise to Athens, offers himself to serve in the
household of Emelie, and is accepted. Sir W. Scott blames this
introduction of Mercury as needless, but let it be remembered:----

_First_, That this is introductory to far more important divine
interpositions, is in keeping with them, and prepares the imagination for
them.

_Secondly_, That, so managed, it is the least violent intervention of a
god; the apparition being ambiguous between a natural dream and a real
divine manifestation: an ambiguity which, by the by, is quite after the
antique. So, Mercury appears to AEneas in a dream in the Fifth Book of the
AEneid: and compare Hector's Ghost, &c.

_Thirdly_, That a psychological fact may be understood as here "lively
shadowed:"--namely, that active purposes have often their birth during the
mystery of sleep; and it would be a very felicitous poetical expression of
this phenomenon to turn the oracular suggestion of the soul into a
deity--_Sua cuique_ DEUS _fit dira cupido_.

_Fourthly_, It is completely probable, that the fancy of a believer in
Mercury would actually shape his own dreaming thought into the suitable
deity.--The vision is lightly touched by Chaucer, and gracefully
translated by Dryden. The classical inventions throughout appear to be
very much from Boccaccio; but th