“ Now, stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,

Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,So let us welcome peaceful Evening in."

Chaucer,

Surrey, Sidney, Raleigh, Spenser, Shakspeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Shirley, Carew, Lovelace, Lyly, Titchbourne.

Marlow, Daniel, Lodge, Herrick,

King, Wotton,

Suckling.

CEOFFREY CHAUCER, that

worthy minstrel-monk, first in the order of Anglican poets, thus prefaces his Canterbury Tales :

Befelle, that, in that seson on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay,
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devoute corage,