Excerpt from The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, Vol. 3 of 3: To Which Are Added an Essay on His Language and Versification; And an Introductory Discourse, Together With Notes and a Glossary There is something true as well as striking in what this writer says about the vast scale and colossal magnitude of Chaucer's works. Some of them remind us of an Object we at present be hold from our study window, - a great square steeple, older than The Canterbury Tales, soaring up into the middle ages, dwell ing among, but not being of the spires and mill - stalks and masts which surround it, overlooking from the height of the eleventh century a city of souls, with what strikes the imagina tion as a mixture of condescending protection and calm severity of survey - the bell in which rises above all the j angling or jarring sounds beneath, like a voice from the Eternal Past, and which, in the careless grandeur and solid greatness of its structure, seems built by another species of beings, and to point, not like a finger, but like a hand, stiffened with awe, to a sublimer heaven. In this, however, it may be compared not to Chaucer's greater writ ings merely, but to all the Titanic products of the earlier ages of the world. Truly there were giants in those days. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.