subject which has at all times excited the intelligent curiosity of the
young. The treatise "On the Astrolabe," after describing the instrument
itself, and showing how to work it, proceeded, or was intended to proceed,
to fulfil the purposes of a general astronomical manual; but, like other
and more important works of its author, it has come down to us in an
uncompleted, or at all events incomplete, condition. What there is of it
was, as a matter of course, not original--popular scientific books rarely
are. The little treatise, however, possesses a double interest for the
student of Chaucer. In the first place it shows explicitly, what several
passages imply, that while he was to a certain extent fond of astronomical
study (as to his capacity for which he clearly does injustice to himself
in the "House of Fame"), his good sense and his piety alike revolted
against extravagant astrological speculations. He certainly does not wish
to go as far as the honest carpenter in the "Miller's Tale," who glories
in his incredulity of aught besides his credo, and who yet is afterwards
befooled by the very impostor of whose astrological pursuits he had
reprehended the impiety. "Men," he says, "should know nothing of that
which is private to God. Yea, blessed be alway a simple man who knows
nothing but only his belief." In his little work "On the Astrolobe,"
Chaucer speaks with calm reasonableness of superstitions in which his
spirit has no faith, and pleads guilty to ignorance of the useless
knowledge with which they are surrounded. But the other, and perhaps the
chief value, to us of this treatise lies in the fact that of Chaucer in an
intimate personal relation it contains the only picture in which it is
impossible to suspect any false or exaggerated colouring. For here we
have him writing to his "little Lewis" with fatherly satisfaction in the
ability displayed by the boy "to learn sciences touching numbers and
proportions," and telling how, after making a present to the child of "a
sufficient astrolabe as for our own horizon, composed after the latitude
of Oxford," he has further resolved to explain to him a certain number of