The Canterbury Tales/Source/PREFACE

PREFACE.

THE object of this volume is to place before the general reader our two
early poetic masterpieces -- The Canterbury Tales and The Faerie Queen;
to do so in a way that will render their "popular perusal" easy in a
time of little leisure and unbounded temptations to intellectual
languor; and, on the same conditions, to present a liberal and fairly
representative selection from the less important and familiar poems of
Chaucer and Spenser. There is, it may be said at the outset, peculiar
advantage and propriety in placing the two poets side by side in the
manner now attempted for the first time. Although two centuries divide
them, yet Spenser is the direct and really the immediate successor to
the poetical inheritance of Chaucer. Those two hundred years, eventful
as they were, produced no poet at all worthy to take up the mantle that
fell from Chaucer's shoulders; and Spenser does not need his affected
archaisms, nor his frequent and reverent appeals to "Dan Geffrey," to
vindicate for himself a place very close to his great predecessor in
the literary history of England. If Chaucer is the "Well of English
undefiled," Spenser is the broad and stately river that yet holds the
tenure of its very life from the fountain far away in other and ruder
scenes.

The Canterbury Tales, so far as they are in verse, have been printed
without any abridgement or designed change in the sense. But the two
Tales in prose -- Chaucer's Tale of Meliboeus, and the Parson's long
Sermon on Penitence -- have been contracted, so as to exclude thirty
pages of unattractive prose, and to admit the same amount of
interesting and characteristic poetry. The gaps thus made in the prose
Tales, however, are supplied by careful outlines of the omitted matter,
so that the reader need be at no loss to comprehend the whole scope and
sequence of the original. With The Faerie Queen a bolder course has
been pursued. The great obstacle to the popularity of Spencer's
splendid work has lain less in its language than in its length. If we
add together the three great poems of antiquity -- the twenty-four
books of the Iliad, the twenty-four books of the Odyssey, and the
twelve books of the Aeneid -- we get at the dimensions of only one-half
of The Faerie Queen. The six books, and the fragment of a seventh,
which alone exist of the author's contemplated twelve, number about
35,000 verses; the sixty books of Homer and Virgil number no more than
37,000. The mere bulk of the poem, then, has opposed a formidable
barrier to its popularity; to say nothing of the distracting effect
produced by the numberless episodes, the tedious narrations, and the
constant repetitions, which have largely swelled that bulk. In this
volume the poem is compressed into two-thirds of its original space,
through the expedient of representing the less interesting and more
mechanical passages by a condensed prose outline, in which it has been
sought as far as possible to preserve the very words of the poet. While
deprecating a too critical judgement on the bare and constrained precis
standing in such trying juxtaposition, it is hoped that the labour
bestowed in saving the reader the trouble of wading through much that
is not essential for the enjoyment of Spencer's marvellous allegory,
will not be unappreciated.

As regards the manner in which the text of the two great works,
especially of The Canterbury Tales, is presented, the Editor is aware
that some whose judgement is weighty will differ from him. This volume
has been prepared "for popular perusal;" and its very raison d'etre
would have failed, if the ancient orthography had been retained. It has
often been affirmed by editors of Chaucer in the old forms of the
language, that a little trouble at first would render the antiquated
spelling and obsolete inflections a continual source, not of
difficulty, but of actual delight, for the reader coming to the study
of Chaucer without any preliminary acquaintance with the English of his
day -- or of his copyists' days. Despite this complacent assurance, the
obvious fact is, that Chaucer in the old forms has not become popular,
in the true sense of the word; he is not "understanded of the vulgar."
In this volume, therefore, the text of Chaucer has been presented in
nineteenth-century garb. But there has been not the slightest attempt
to "modernise" Chaucer, in the wider meaning of the phrase; to replace
his words by words which he did not use; or, following the example of
some operators, to translate him into English of the modern spirit as
well as the modern forms. So far from that, in every case where the old
spelling or form seemed essential to metre, to rhyme, or meaning, no
change has been attempted. But, wherever its preservation was not
essential, the spelling of the monkish transcribers -- for the most
ardent purist must now despair of getting at the spelling of Chaucer
himself -- has been discarded for that of the reader's own day. It is a
poor compliment to the Father of English Poetry, to say that by such
treatment the bouquet and individuality of his works must be lost. If
his masterpiece is valuable for one thing more than any other, it is
the vivid distinctness with which English men and women of the
fourteenth century are there painted, for the study of all the
centuries to follow. But we wantonly balk the artist's own purpose, and
discredit his labour, when we keep before his picture the screen of
dust and cobwebs which, for the English people in these days, the crude
forms of the infant language have practically become. Shakespeare has
not suffered by similar changes; Spencer has not suffered; it would be
surprising if Chaucer should suffer, when the loss of popular
comprehension and favour in his case are necessarily all the greater
for his remoteness from our day. In a much smaller degree -- since
previous labours in the same direction had left far less to do -- the
same work has been performed for the spelling of Spenser; and the whole
endeavour in this department of the Editor's task has been, to present
a text plain and easily intelligible to the modern reader, without any
injustice to the old poet. It would be presumptuous to believe that in
every case both ends have been achieved together; but the laudatores
temporis acti - the students who may differ most from the plan pursued
in this volume -- will best appreciate the difficulty of the
enterprise, and most leniently regard any failure in the details of its
accomplishment.

With all the works of Chaucer, outside The Canterbury Tales, it would
have been absolutely impossible to deal within the scope of this
volume. But nearly one hundred pages, have been devoted to his minor
poems; and, by dint of careful selection and judicious abridgement -- a
connecting outline of the story in all such cases being given -- the
Editor ventures to hope that he has presented fair and acceptable
specimens of Chaucer's workmanship in all styles. The preparation of
this part of the volume has been a laborious task; no similar attempt
on the same scale has been made; and, while here also the truth of the
text in matters essential has been in nowise sacrificed to mere ease of
perusal, the general reader will find opened up for him a new view of
Chaucer and his works. Before a perusal of these hundred pages, will
melt away for ever the lingering tradition or prejudice that Chaucer
was only, or characteristically, a coarse buffoon, who pandered to a
base and licentious appetite by painting and exaggerating the lowest
vices of his time. In these selections -- made without a thought of
taking only what is to the poet's credit from a wide range of poems in
which hardly a word is to his discredit -- we behold Chaucer as he was;
a courtier, a gallant, pure-hearted gentleman, a scholar, a
philosopher, a poet of gay and vivid fancy, playing around themes of
chivalric convention, of deep human interest, or broad-sighted satire.
In The Canterbury Tales, we see, not Chaucer, but Chaucer's times and
neighbours; the artist has lost himself in his work. To show him
honestly and without disguise, as he lived his own life and sung his
own songs at the brilliant Court of Edward III, is to do his memory a
moral justice far more material than any wrong that can ever come out
of spelling. As to the minor poems of Spenser, which follow The Faerie
Queen, the choice has been governed by the desire to give at once the
most interesting, and the most characteristic of the poet's several
styles; and, save in the case of the Sonnets, the poems so selected are
given entire. It is manifest that the endeavours to adapt this volume
for popular use, have been already noticed, would imperfectly succeed
without the aid of notes and glossary, to explain allusions that have
become obsolete, or antiquated words which it was necessary to retain.
An endeavour has been made to render each page self-explanatory, by
placing on it all the glossarial and illustrative notes required for
its elucidation, or -- to avoid repetitions that would have occupied
space -- the references to the spot where information may be found. The
great advantage of such a plan to the reader, is the measure of its
difficulty for the editor. It permits much more flexibility in the
choice of glossarial explanations or equivalents; it saves the
distracting and time-consuming reference to the end or the beginning of
the book; but, at the same time, it largely enhances the liability to
error. The Editor is conscious that in the 12,000 or 13,000 notes, as
well as in the innumerable minute points of spelling, accentuation, and
rhythm, he must now and again be found tripping; he can only ask any
reader who may detect all that he could himself point out as being
amiss, to set off against inevitable mistakes and misjudgements, the
conscientious labour bestowed on the book, and the broad consideration
of its fitness for the object contemplated.

From books the Editor has derived valuable help; as from Mr Cowden
Clarke's revised modern text of The Canterbury Tales, published in
Mr Nimmo's Library Edition of the English Poets; from Mr Wright's
scholarly edition of the same work; from the indispensable Tyrwhitt;
from Mr Bell's edition of Chaucer's Poem; from Professor Craik's
"Spenser and his Poetry," published twenty-five years ago by Charles
Knight; and from many others. In the abridgement of the Faerie Queen,
the plan may at first sight seem to be modelled on the lines of
Mr Craik's painstaking condensation; but the coincidences are either
inevitable or involuntary. Many of the notes, especially of those
explaining classical references and those attached to the minor poems
of Chaucer, have been prepared specially for this edition. The Editor
leaves his task with the hope that his attempt to remove artificial
obstacles to the popularity of England's earliest poets, will not
altogether miscarry.

D. LAING PURVES.