Chauncers Author:John Saunders Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 6 INTRODUCTION. in imitating not only Chaucer's language anil style, but in embodying so much of the original author's spirit into his version, is so great, t... more »hat we should not be surprised to find Chaucer speedily dividing with Shakspere the admiration and attention of our critical brethren in Germany." But why is it that Chaucer has been thus neglected in his own country ? Not, certain!)', on account of his occasional grossucss; for all his serious tales, and some of his humorous, are unobjectionable on this score. Neither do we think that it is owing to any inherent or irremediable difficulties connected with Chaucer's verse; though were these as real as is commonly assumed, there would be w hat we may term gie.it poetical injustice in doing so little for Chaucer, who has done almost everything for us; who not only created for us a national poetry, but restored to us a national tongue. It is, we believe, simply this — that the people, the many, who, added to the " few," form the only " fit " audience for so robust and comprehensive an intellect as Chaucer's, have, in truth, had no opportunities of making his acquaintance. The cheapest editions of Chaucer have been as much beyond their pockets, as the works themselves, in most of those editions, have been beyond their ready intellectual comprehension, on account of their antique garb : hence the prevailing notion of the difficulty of understanding the language in which they are written. Now what would have been Shakspere's fate under such treatment? What would his popularity and influence have been now, as compared with what they are, if there had been no theatre chapter{Section 4INTRODUCTION. 7 to make him known to his humbler countrymen ? if none but the wealthier classes had been able to purchase his published w...« less