Note 102 — ARABIAN NIGHTS’ (continued 28)

Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, the poem by which Milton describes and characterises him, is founded on this adventure. The imagination of this story consists in Arabian fiction, engrafted on Gothic chivalry. Nor is this Arabian fiction purely the sport of arbitrary fancy; it is, in a great measure, founded on Arabian learning. The idea of a horse of brass took its rise from the mechanical knowledge of the Arabians, and their experiments in metals. The poets of romance, Lydgate, and Gower, who deal in Arabian ideas, describe the Trojan horse to be made of brass. —Wharton’s Hist. of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 398-400. Chaucer has borrowed only the description of the horse and the two pins, the ascending one in his ear, and the use to be made of him. That Chaucer never finished the story is more than probable, from Milton’s speaking of it as ‘left untold,’ which does not apply to loss after finishing.