Historical Allusions in Sundry English Poets

Abstract

It is quite unnecessary, in addressing such a Society as this, for me to enlarge on the help that may be obtained in historical investigations from other researches that are purely literary. I may, however, venture to express a regret that so little mutual assistance is usually afforded by those who confine themselves, too exclusively, to one or other of these branches of seeking after truth. A remarkable instance of this want of co-operation is afforded us in the earliest of the poems, which I shall now bring under your notice: Chaucer's ‘Dream,’ or, as it has well been renamed in our time, his ‘Isle of Ladies.’ For as, on the one hand, by establishing the true meaning of this poem, we present to the historian new pastures, whence he may here and there glean, by comparison with known historical facts, some additions to the story of the time; so, on the other, by a due use of history, we may throw new light on the works of our first and almost our greatest poet. I know that the school of modern criticism, which trusts the counting of its fingers rather than the evidence of its ears or its reason, has pronounced this poem spurious; but I trust to show you that its agreement with history prevents our taking that view, which rests wholly on the ungrounded assumption that because Chaucer used no rhymes of –y and –ye in his later poems, he could not have done so in this, his very earliest that has come down to us.