The works of the fourteenth century poet Geoffrey Chaucer had been amongst Morris and Burne-Jones’s favourite reading in their student days at Oxford. A medieval reworking of romantic stories, particularly those of classical origin, held an appeal for both men, and influenced Morris in the shaping of his cycle of narrative poems The Earthly Paradise as much as it did Burne-Jones in the choice of subjects for paintings and decorative designs. Burne-Jones was especially fond of Chaucer's "The Legend of Goode Wimmen," a long poem in the form of a dream in which Amor (Love) introduces the poet to famous women from antiquity who have suffered for love. Ideally suitable for a sequence of images of romantic heroines, the theme was first used for a series of tiles Burne-Jones designed for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1862, which exist in a number of variations. 1 The following year he devised a running frieze of roughly similar figures, as a design for an embroidery to be made by the girls of Winnington Hall school, Cheshire, as a gift for Ruskin, who in 1863 was considering leaving England to settle in Switzerland; neither plan came to fruition. 2 In 1864 the designs were again revised, this time for a set of seven stained-glass windows for The Hill at Witley, Surrey, the house that the watercolorist Myles Birket Foster was gradually filling with decorative art by Morris and Burne- Jones (see cat. nos. 23-25). The first two show Chaucer asleep and his vision of Amor and Aleestis, the latter symbolic of faithfulness and eternal love. Then follow five pairs of unhap- py heroines: Cleopatra and Dido, Thisbe and Philomela, Hypsipile and Medea, Ariadne and Lucretia, Phyllis and Hypermnestra. Burne-Jones s cartoons look simple, but are very carefully contrived to place the figures within a great vari- ety of detail, with lively stylized foliage set off against an imag- inative architectural background. To remind Morris of the work that had gone into them, Burne-Jones's account for January 1864 is "To 7 windows of Good Women at ditto ditto [i.e., the mean and unremunerative] price of £3 ea[ch] £21"; the previous entry was for designs for the Sleeping Beauty tiles (cat. no. 25). 3 The panels shown here are duplicates made for display at the Exhibition of Stained Glass, Mosaic etc., held at the South Kensington Museum in 1864, where they were bought (together with a third, Cleopatra and Dido) for the permanent collection of the museum, the forerunner of the Victoria and Albert. The glass made for The Hill has been dispersed, but a set of six of the Legend of Good Women subjects (lacking the image of Chaucer) survives in the Combination Room at Peterhouse, Cambridge. 4 This was made in 1869, and must have necessitated some reworking of the cartoons, occasioning the remark in Burne-Jones's account book: "to touching up some Good Women, & I would rather have been boiled ten times over. £1 1s." 5 From the scrappy but intriguing sketch of 1863, Burne-Jones produced a number of large individual designs for embroidery, having gone to Winnington for the purpose in the spring of 1864. 6 These included a different and more elaborate version of Chaucer Asleep (Ruskin Library, Lancaster University), which shows the poet in his study, with books and medieval furni- ture. 7 This passed to Ruskin, who gave two other cartoons, Amor and Aleestis and Hypsipile and Medea, to Oxford University in 1875 as part of a collection supporting the work of the Ruskin Drawing School. In a lecture entitled "On the Present State of Modern Art," delivered at the British Institution on June 7, 1867, Ruskin, in his first public appraisal of Burne- Jones's work, enthused over the cartoons. Noting the artist's fidelity to the poet's description of Love — "And in his hand methought I saw him hold / Two fiery darts . . . / And angel- like his wings I saw him spread" — Ruskin judged that Burne- Jones had superseded Chaucer's image of "perfect human passion," and had "gone farther into the meaning of the old Greek myth, and . . . given the Spirit of the Love that lies beyond the grave — pilgrim love, which goes forth into another country and to a far distant shrine." 8 Burne-Jones returned to the theme again for a watercolor, Chaucer $ Dream of Good Women (private collection), painted in 1865 and exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society in 1867, which shows Chaucer asleep at a fountain, with Love (hold- ing one larger arrow) leading Alcestis and a group of the other heroines. 9 1. Myers and Myers 1996, pp. 21-25. 2. The sketch design is in Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (i3'o4); see Whitworth Art Gallery 1984, pp. 197-202. 3. Sewter 1974-75, vol. 2, pp. 103, 206. 4. See Fitzwilliam Museum 1980, pp. 45-46. 5. Sewter 1974-75, vol. 2, p. 45. 6. "We stayed on at Winnington until Edward had finished many cartoons of 'Good Women/ but the joint embroidery scheme proved impractica- ble, and the drawings alone remained as a symbol of loving intentions" {Memorials y vol. 1, p. 276). 7. Whitworth Art Gallery 1984, no. 162, illus. 8. Ruskin, Works, vol. 19 (1905), pp. 207-8, pis. 6, 7. Another cartoon in the series formerly belonging to Ruskin, Philomela, was sold at Sotheby's, November 26, 1986, lot 21. 9. Christie's, October 25, 1991, lot 26; its first owner was the painter Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), who hung it above his bed