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It is no part of our plan to consider Chaucer's
language or diction, a special study which the reader can pursue for
himself. Occleve, in his work "_De Regimine Principium"_ calls him "the
honour of English tonge," "floure of eloquence," and "universal fadir in
science," and, above all, "the firste findere of our faire language." To
Lydgate he was the "Floure of Poetes throughout all Bretaine." Measured by
our standard, he is not always musical, "and," in the language of Dryden,
"many of his verses are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a
whole one;" but he must be measured by the standards of his age, by the
judgment of his contemporaries, and by a thorough intelligence of the
language as he found it and as he left it. Edward III., a practical
reformer in many things, gave additional importance to English, by
restoring it in the courts of law, and administering justice to the people
in their own tongue. When we read of the _English_ kings of this early
period, it is curious to reflect that these monarchs, up to the time of
Edward I.


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