hell in his Paradise Lost, while his Lycidas, Arcades, Allegro and
Penseroso, may be called Italian poems done into English.

In the time of Chaucer, this Italian influence marks the extended
relations of English letters; and, serving to remove the trammels of the
French, it gave to the now vigorous and growing English that opportunity
of development for which it had so long waited. Out of the serfdom and
obscurity to which it had been condemned by the Normans, it had sprung
forth in reality, as in name, the English language. Books, few at the
best, long used in Latin or French, were now demanded by English mind, and
being produced in answer to the demand.


THE FOUNDER OF THE LITERATURE.--But there was still wanted a man who could
use the elements and influences of the time--a great poet--a maker--a
creator of literature. The language needed a forming, controlling, fixing
hand. The English mind needed a leader and master, English imagination a
guide, English literature a father.

The person who answered to this call, and who was equal to all these
demands, was Chaucer. But he was something more. He claimed only to be a
poet, while he was to figure in after times as historian, philosopher, and
artist.

The scope of this work does not permit an examination of Chaucer's
writings in detail, but the position we have taken will be best
illustrated by his greatest work, the Canterbury Tales. Of the others, a
few preliminary words only need be said. Like most writers in an early
literary period, Chaucer began with translations, which were extended into
paraphrases or versions, and thus his "'prentice hand" gained the