Excerpt from The Parlament of Foules Of the minor works of Chaucer, "The Parlament of Foules," or, as it is sometimes called, "The Assemble of Briddes," stands confessedly at the head. Even through lines defective in metre, and passages out of which, as ordinarily printed, no meaning can be gathered, the beauty of the poetry makes itself felt. Still this production has been comparatively little read, partly owing to the fact that it has not been accessible, save in complete editions of the poet's works, and partly on account of the difficulties, both as regards measure and meaning, presented by the generally-received text. For a long time these difficulties seemed insurmountable. When Robert Bell's edition of Chaucer was published in 1862, only two manuscripts of this poem were known to exist; but in 1871, almost entirely through the agency of the Chaucer Society, ten manuscripts had been discovered and published, one of which, much the best of all, had been previously unknown- to editors. With this as a basis, and a careful collation of it with the rest, it seemed possible to present a text which might be regarded as at least a close approximation to what the poet really wrote; and in the increasing attention paid in schools to the English language and literature, and the necessity, constantly existing, of new texts to aid in its pursuit, it seemed desirable that one of the most beautiful productions of early English poetry should be brought to the notice of students. 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.