[Thanks partly to Pope’s brief and elegant paraphrase, in his 'Temple of Fame,' and partly to the familiar force of the style and the satirical significance of the allegory, 'The House of Fame' is among the best known and relished of Chaucer’s minor poems.
The octosyllabic measure in which it is written — the same which the author of 'Hudibras' used with such admirable effect — is excellently adapted for the vivid descriptions, the lively sallies of humour and sarcasm, with which the poem abounds; and when the poet actually does get to his subject, he treats it with a zest, and a corresponding interest on the part of the reader, which are scarcely surpassed by the best of The Canterbury Tales.
The poet, however, tarries long on the way to the House of Fame; as Pope says in his advertisement, the reader who would compare his with Chaucer’s poem, 'may begin with [Chaucer’s] third Book of Fame, there being nothing in the two first books that answers to their title.
' The first book opens with a kind of prologue (actually so marked and called in earlier editions) in which the author speculates on the causes of dreams; avers that never any man had such a dream as he had on the tenth of December; and prays the God of Sleep to help him to interpret the dream, and the Mover of all things to reward or afflict those readers who take the dream well or ill.
Then he relates that, having fallen asleep, he fancied himself within a temple of glass — the abode of Venus — the walls of which were painted with the story of Aeneas.
The paintings are described at length; and then the poet tells us that, coming out of the temple, he found himself