opus of Chaucer was in his own time received with immense
favour; manuscript copies are numerous even now -- no slight
proof of its popularity; and when the invention of printing was
introduced into England by William Caxton, The Canterbury
Tales issued from his press in the year after the first English-
printed book, "The Game of the Chesse," had been struck off.
Innumerable editions have since been published; and it may
fairly be affirmed, that few books have been so much in favour
with the reading public of every generation as this book, which
the lapse of every generation has been rendering more
unreadable.

Apart from "The Romaunt of the Rose," no really important
poetical work of Chaucer's is omitted from or unrepresented in
the present edition. Of "The Legend of Good Women," the
Prologue only is given -- but it is the most genuinely Chaucerian
part of the poem. Of "The Court of Love," three-fourths are
here presented; of "The Assembly of Fowls," "The Cuckoo and
the Nightingale," "The Flower and the Leaf," all; of "Chaucer's
Dream," one-fourth; of "The House of Fame," two-thirds; and
of the minor poems such a selection as may give an idea of
Chaucer's power in the "occasional" department of verse.
Necessarily, no space whatever could be given to Chaucer's
prose works -- his translation of Boethius' Treatise on the
Consolation of Philosophy; his Treatise on the Astrolabe,
written for the use of his son Lewis; and his "Testament of
Love," composed in his later years, and reflecting the troubles
that then beset the poet. If, after studying in a simplified form
the salient works of England's first great bard, the reader is
tempted to regret that he was not introduced to a wider