26 JUNE 1915, Page 42

Chaucer and his Poetry is the subject of a book

(originally a course of lectures) by Mr. G. L. Kittredge, tbe Professor of English at Harvard (Humphrey Milford for the Harvard University Press, Is. Id. net). Professor Kittredge writes with the greatest enthusiasm and high spirits about his sub- ject, and begins with a fierce attack upon the patronizing attitude which pronounces Chaucer to be "naïf, quaint, and modern." "For it is we that are naif ; quaintness is incom- patible with art ; and as for modernity, what we mistake for that is the everlasting truth, the enduring quality that consists in conformity to changeless human nature."