“I am glad that you enter so warmly into the Chaucerian project, and that Mr. L. Hunt is disposed to give his valuable aid to it.  For myself, I cannot do more than I offered, to place at your disposal ‘The Prioress’ Tale’ already published, ’The Cuckoo and the Nightingale’, ‘The Manciple’s Tale’, and I rather think (but I cannot just now find it) a small portion of the ‘Troilus and Cressida’.  You ask my opinion about that poem.  Speaking from a recollection only, of many years past, I should say it would be found too long and probably tedious.  ‘The Knight’s Tale’ is also very long; but, though Dryden has executed it, in his own way observe, with great spirit and harmony, he has suffered so much of the simplicity, and with that of the beauty and occasional pathos of the original to escape, that I should be pleased to hear that a new version was to be attempted upon my principle by some competent person.  It would delight me to read every part of Chaucer over again—­for I reverence and admire him above measure—­with a view to your work; but my eyes will not permit me to do so.  Who will undertake the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales?  For your publication that is indispensable, and I fear it will prove very difficult.  It is written, as you know, in the couplet measure; and therefore I have nothing to say upon its metre, but in respect to the poems in stanza, neither in ‘The Prioress’ Tale’ nor in ’The Cuckoo and Nightingale’ have I kept to the rule of the original as to the form, and number, and position of the rhymes; thinking it enough if I kept the same number of lines in each stanza; and this is, I think, all that is necessary, and all that can be done without sacrificing the substance of sense too often to the mere form of sound.”

In a subsequent letter to Professor Henry Reed of Philadelphia, dated “Rydal Mount, January 13th, 1841,” Wordsworth said: 

“So great is my admiration of Chaucer’s genius, and so profound my reverence for him as an instrument in the hands of Providence, for spreading the light of literature through his native land, that notwithstanding the defects and faults in this publication” (referring, I presume, to the volume, ’The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer Modernised’), “I am glad of it, as a means of making many acquainted with the original, who would otherwise be ignorant of everything about him but his name.”

Ed.

* * * * *

THE PRIORESS’ TALE

Translated 1801. [A]—­Published 1820

  “Call up him who left half told
  The story of Cambuscan bold.” [B]

In the following Piece I have allowed myself no farther deviations from the original than were necessary for the fluent reading, and instant understanding, of the Author:  so much however is the language altered since Chaucer’s time, especially in pronunciation, that much was to be removed, and its place supplied with as little incongruity as possible.  The ancient accent has been retained in a few conjunctions, such as also and alway, from a conviction that such sprinklings of antiquity would be admitted, by persons of taste, to have a graceful accordance with the subject.—­W.  W. (1820).