"His son, a young squire, with him there I saw, A lover and a lusty bachelor! (aw) (ah!) With locks crisp curl'd, as they'd been laid in press, Of twenty year of age he was, I guess."
Chaucer never once in all his writings thus rhymes off two consecutive couplets in one sentence so slovenly, as with "I saw," and "I guess." But Mr Horne is so enamoured "with the old familiar faces" of pet cockneyisms, that he must have his will of them. Of the same squire, Chaucer says—
"Of his stature he was of even length;"
and Mr Horne translates the words into—
"He was in stature of the common length,"
They mean "well proportioned." Of this young squire, Chaucer saith—
"So hote he loved, that by nightertale He slep no more than doth the nightingale."
We all know how the nightingale employs the night—and here it is implied that so did the lover. Mr Horne spoils all by an affected prettiness suggested by a misapplied passage in Milton.
"His amorous ditties nightly fill'd the vale; He slept no more than doth the nightingale."
Chaucer says of the Prioresse—