very phyfiognomies and perfons. Baptifta Porta could not have described their natures better than by the marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are fo fuited to their different educations, humours, and callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and ferious characters are diftinguished by their several forts of gravity; their difcourfes are fuch as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding, fuch as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his perfons are vicious, and fome vertuous; fome are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and fome are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different; the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are several men, and diftinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady Priorefs and the broad-speaking gap-toothed Wife of Bath. From Mr. Hayly's Effay of Epick Poetry. 6 CERTAINE BALADES, &c. A ballade in comendacion of our Ladie, A balade teching what is gentilnes, A proverbe agaynft covetife and negligence, 9 23 44 A balade declaring that womens chastite doeth moche excel all trefure worldly, Chaucer's wordes unto his own scrivenere, John Gower unto the noble King Henry IV. END OF VOLUME THIRTEENTH. |