practice and skill with which to attempt original poems.


MINOR POEMS.--His earliest attempt, doubtless, was the _Romaunt of the
Rose_, an allegorical poem in French, by William de Lorris, continued,
after his death in 1260, by Jean de Meun, who figured as a poet in the
court of Charles le Bel, of France. This poem, esteemed by the French as
the finest of their old romances, was rendered by Chaucer, with
considerable alterations and improvements, into octosyllabic verse. The
Romaunt portrays the trials which a lover meets and the obstacles he
overcomes in pursuit of his mistress, under the allegory of a rose in an
inaccessible garden. It has been variously construed--by theologians as
the yearning of man for the celestial city; by chemists as the search for
the philosopher's stone; by jurists as that for equity, and by medical men
as the attempt to produce a panacea for all human ailments.

Next in order was his _Troilus and Creseide_, a mediæval tale, already
attempted by Boccaccio in his Filostrate, but borrowed by Chaucer,
according to his own account, from _Lollius_, a mysterious name without an
owner. The story is similar to that dramatized by Shakspeare in his
tragedy of the same title. This is in decasyllabic verse, arranged in
stanzas of seven lines each.

The _House of Fame_, another of his principal poems, is a curious
description--probably his first original effort--of the Temple of Fame, an
immense cage, sixty miles long, and its inhabitants the great writers of
classic times, and is chiefly valuable as showing the estimation in which
the classic writers were held in that day. This is also in octosyllabic
verses, and is further remarkable for the opulence of its imagery and its
variety of description. The poet is carried in the claws of a great eagle