The Half-Told Tale

The lines quoted are by Milton in his "Il Penseroso." Spenser finished the untold tale.

"Cambuscan" is the hero of the "Squire's Tale," one of the "Canterbury Tales" of Chaucer, "the father of English poetry." Chaucer was born in London in 1328, and died in 1400.

The "Canterbury Tales" are eighteen in number, told by a company of pilgrims on their way to visit the shrine of "St. Thomas a Becket" at Canterbury.

There were twenty-nine pilgrims. They assembled at the Tabard, an inn in Southwark, a suburb of London, and there agreed to tell one tale each, both going and returning; and the person who told the best tale was to be treated by the rest to a supper at the Tabard on their return.

The whole number of tales should have been fifty-eight; but only eighteen were told, not one being narrated on the homeward journey.

"In these tales, English life as it then existed is wonderfully portrayed,--when the king tilted in tournament; when the knight and the lady rode over the down, with falcon on wrist; when pilgrims bound for the tomb of St. Thomas passed on from village to village; when friars, sitting in taverns over wine, sang songs that formed a remarkable contrast with the services they so piously and sweetly intoned in church and chapel.

"All that stirring and gayly apparelled time--so different from our own--is seen in Chaucer's work: as in every other, when the superficial tumults and noises that so stun the contemporary ear have faded away, leaving behind that which is elemental and eternal, the poet is found to be the truest historian."

Geoffrey Chaucer died on the 25th October, 1400, aged seventy-four, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, the first of that long line of English poets who make the "Poets' Corner" a spot of such world-wide interest and renown.

Cambuscan was a rich and powerful king who lived at Sarra, in Tartary. He excelled in all the qualities which belong to a wise and good king.

Twenty years after Cambuscan had been in possession of the crown, he celebrated his birthday by a splendid festival.

The story is based upon the events of this feast, during which a knight rode into the court, with presents from the king of Arabia and India, sent to Cambuscan on his natal day, and to the Princess Canace. The presents were, a horse of brass, a broad glass mirror, a ring of gold, and a naked sword. These all possessed a magic power.

whose language she shall not understand, and also to answer the bird in its own speech. It also bestowed the knowledge of the healing properties of--

"Every gras that groweth upon roote.

Most critics agree with Milton, in his declaration that Chaucer left this tale "half told." Spenser finishes the story in his own inimitable style, first stepping aside to speak of--