Lo, thus saith Arnold of the Newe-toun,
As his Rosarie maketh mencioun,'

He saith right thus, withouten eny lye:
Ther may no man Mercury mortifye,

But it be with his brother knowleching.

2

Lo,2 how that he, which that first sayd this thing,
Of philosophres fader was, Hermes ;*

He saith, how that the dragoun douteles
He dyeth nought, but if that he be slayn
With his brother. And that is for to sayn,
By the dragoun, Mercury, and noon other
He understood, and brimstoon be his brother,
That out of Sol and Luna were i-drawe.
'And therfore,' sayde he, 'take heed to my sawe;
Let no man besy him this art to seche,
But if that he thentencioun and speche
Of philosophres understonde can;

And if he do, he is a lewed man.

For this sciens, and this connyng,' quod he,
Is of the Secre of secretz,* parde.'
Also ther was a disciple of Plato,

5

That on a tyme sayde his maister to,

1 Arnald de Villeneuve, in France, a physician of the fourteenth century, and author of the Rosarius Philosophorum.

2 Lo is not found in Harl. and Lansd. MSS. It is supplied from Tyrwhitt.

3 The astrological and philosophical works attributed to this writer are supposititious, none of his genuine writings having come down to us. See Cor. Agrip. Van. Scient., cap. xlviii. This strange jargon about the dragon Mercury, &c., is that of the Rosicrucians, and their pretended philosophy.

4 The meaning seems to be, And yet if he do understand this jargon, he is still a lewd or unlearned man; for the art of multiplying belongs, after all, to the secret of secrets,' (alluding to the treatise called Secreta Secretorum, and purporting to be the sum of Aristotle's instructions to Alexander,) that is to say, it cannot be discovered by learned or unlearned.'

5 This story is told in the Senioris Zadith fil. Hamuelis Chymica, and is there attributed to Solomon. 'Dixit Solomon rex, Recipe lapidem qui dicitur Thitarios. Dixit sapiens, Assigna mihi illum. Dixit, est corpus magnesiæ. Dixit, quid est magnesia? Respondit, Magnesia

est aqua composita.-See Tyrwhitt.

As his book Senior wil bere witnesse,

And this was his demaunde in sothfastnesse:

Tel me the name of thilke prive stoon.'

And Plato answered unto him anoon,

'Take the stoon that titanos men name.'
'Which is that?' quod he.
Sayde Plato.

Magnasia is the same,'

'Ye, sire, and is it thus? That is ignotum per ignotius.

What is magnasia, good sir, I you pray?'
'It is a water that is maad, I say,
Of elementes foure,' quod Plato.

'Telle me the rote,' good sire,' quod he tho,
Of that water, if it be your wille.'

'Nay, nay,' quod Plato, 'certeyn that I nylle.
The philosophres sworn were everichoon,
That thay ne scholde discovere it unto noon,
Ne in no book it write in no manere;
For unto Crist it is so leef and deere,
That he wil not that it discovered be,2
But wher it liketh to his deite

Man to enspire, and eek for to defende
Whom that him liketh; lo, this is the ende.'

Than thus conclude I, syn that God of hevene
Ne wol not that the philosophres nevene,
How that a man schal come unto this stoon,
I rede as for the beste, let it goon.
For who so maketh God his adversarie,
As for to werke eny thing in contrarie
Unto his wil, certes never schal he thrive,
Though that he multiplie terme of al his lyve.3

1 Harl. MS. reads rooche, which is corrected by Mr. Wright.

2 Perhaps an allusion to Prov. xxv. 2. It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.'

3 This is a difficult line to scan. It consists of eleven syllables, as many others do, but the manner in which the accented and unaccented ones are combined is very unusual. [If, however, the word al be omitted, as in other MSS., the line is easily scanned.-W.W.S.]

And ther a poynt; for ended is my tale.

God send every trewe man boote of his bale!'

'YE

THE DOCTOURES PROLOGE.2

let that passen,' quod oure Hoste, ' as now. Sire Doctour of Physike, I praye you,

Tel us a tale of som honest matere.'

'It schal be don, if that ye wol it here,'

Said this Doctour, and his tale began anon.

'Now, good men,' quod he, herkeneth everichon.'

THE TALE OF THE DOCTOR OF PHISIK.

[THE original narrator of this tale is Livy; but it is not easy to determine whether Chaucer derived it directly from him, or through the medium of some translation or version. It is introduced in the Roman de la Rose and in Gower's Confessio Amantis; from which works some have supposed it was taken by Chaucer. The conjecture that the story was borrowed from either of these sources is hardly reconcileable with probability; for it seems almost incredible that a man of Chaucer's erudition should not have known in the original an author so much read in the middle ages, and whose works were to be found in the library of every con

1 This is the usual termination of tales by medieval writers, who thought it necessary to begin and end every work with an act of religion. The phrase occurs in the ballad of Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, (see vol. 1, p. 241, note 1,) and means,' May God send every true man relief in his misfortune.'

2 In the Harl. and other good MSS., there is no prologue to The Doctor's Tale. The Lansd. MS. has one not at all in Chaucer's style, in the metre of The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn, a kind of verse which Chaucer never uses. The prologue given in the text is adopted by Tyrwhitt from one MS., and though not in the poet's style, is, at least, in his metre.

siderable abbey in the country. Warton, in his second dissertation, enumerates Livy among the authors whose works were most frequently transcribed between the eighth and thirteenth centuries, and they occur in the catalogue of the library at Glastonbury, given in Hearne's edition of the Chron. Joh. Glaston., written in 1248. They were among the first classical works translated into the modern languages. A French version was undertaken before the year 1364, by Pierre Bercheur, Prior of St. Eloi, at Paris, at the desire of King John of France; and a beautiful copy of his works was presented by the Regent Bedford, in the next century, to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the celebrated patron of learning. If, therefore, Chaucer did not apply to the original Latin, he probably derived his knowledge of the story at least from a French translation, rather than from the poetical versions of his predecessors or contemporaries. That he appreciated the Patavinian may be inferred from his placing his name on the same pillar with Homer's in his House of Fame.]

[The story itself, thus clothed in Chaucer's pure and expressive English, and illumined by his brilliant imagination, yields in interest to few, if to any, in the series. It may be assumed that the incident which forms its groundwork was not of unusual occurrence; but the case of Virginius had acquired special prominence from the fact of its having brought about a political revolution. In this aspect the historical episode has in the highest degree those elements of 'gravity and deep import' which are defined as constituting true tragedy.

The reader will doubtless call to mind the graphic and striking manner in which the same theme has been treated by Lord Macaulay in his "Lays of Ancient Rome."]

THER was, as telleth Titus Lyvius,

A knight, that cleped was Virginius,
Fulfild of honours and of worthines.
And strong of frendes, and of gret riches.

This knight a doughter hadde by his wyf,1
And never ne hadde he mo in al his lyf.
Fair was this mayde in excellent beaute
Above every wight that men may se;
For Nature hath with sovereyn diligence
I-formed hir in so gret excellence,

2

As though sche wolde say, 'Lo, I, Nature,
Thus can I forme and peynte a creature,
Whan that me lust; who can me counterfete?
Pigmalion? nought, though he alwey forge and bete,
Or grave, or peynte; for I dar wel sayn,
Apelles, Zeuxis, schulde wirche in vayn,
Other to grave, or paynte, or forge or bete,
If thay presumed me to counterfete.
For He that is the Former principal
Hath maad me his viker general,
To forme and peynte erthely creature
Right as me lust, al thing is in my cure
Under the moone that may wane and waxe,*
And for my werke no thing wol I axe;
My lord and I ben fully at accord.
I made hir to the worschip of my Lord;
So do I alle myn other creatures,

What colour that thay been, or what figures.'
Thus semeth me that Nature wolde say.
This mayde was of age twelf yer and tway,

1 The Harl. and Lansd. MSS. omit This knight.

2 Ovid, Metamorph., lib. x.

3 The Harl. and Lansd. MSS. read corruptly Apollus, Zepherus.

4 The introduction of Nature as a power between the Creator and the creature is the germ of the heathen pantheism, which revived with the revival of classical learning, and manifested itself in the general infidelity of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This subtle form

of atheism is thus reproved by Cowper:
:-

The Lord of all, himself through all diffused,
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.

Nature is but a name for an effect

Whose cause is God.'-Task; Winter Walk at Noon.

St. Paul's doctrine, that angels are the 'ministers of God,' to exe cute his decrees with regard to the creation, is quite a different thing.