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ence of that master there can be no may be believed, to his own sound judgdoubt, though perhaps it has not been, ment—that he never became in any way and is not, as adequately recognized and a satellite or retainer of the Court of acknowledged as it should be by Shake- James I., but escaped from the rapidly sperian critics and commentators. And degenerating atmosphere of the BlackMarlowe did not stand alone; he was one, friars and the Whitehall of the sevencertainly the most eminent one, of a group teenth century to his home at Stratford. whose starry lights it is not easy to see in Chaucer was not so fortunate. He was the intense brightness flowing from the attached to one of the most extravagant great sun that uprose amongst them; but and frivolous circles that ever gathered they were and are, of no faint brilliancy, round a monarch of a like description. so long as they had the firmament to However noble-natured, he could scarcely themselves, unsuffused by an overpower- live in such company without some coning glory. But for Chaucer there were no tamination. Assuredly his works have such predecessors at home or abroad. stains upon them contracted in that evil Naturally enough, it would seem that it air, much as Beaumont and Fletcher are was not till comparatively late in life that he flushed and spotted by the contagions of discovered the best vehicle of self-expres- James I.'s time. And with that Court sion. For many years his genius strug- connection it is impossible not to assogled for a fitting language. Like all ciate the extreme pecuniary difficulties, of poets, he began by imitating the models which there are only too manifest signs he found current. He dreamed dreams, at a certain period of Chaucer's life. and saw visions in the conventional | Probably it was these piteous, but seemmode. He echoed whatever sweet ingly not inevitable or reproachless, dissounds reached his quick sensitive ears from any quarter. He translated, with a quite touching humble-mindedness, received masterpieces of French and of Italian literature. Through all these labours his originality was gradually developing. For all his efforts his genius would not keep to the beaten path, but would perpetually strike out some new way for itself and forget the appointed route. At last he started altogether alone, looking no longer for old footprints to retrace or any established guide-posts. He discovered a fair wide country that had lain untrodden for ages, over whose tracks the grass or the moss had grown, and here he advanced as in some fresh new world:

Parnassi deserta per ardua dulcis Raptat amor; juvat ire jugis, qua nulla priorum Castaliam molli devertitur orbita clivo.

Chaucer's great work is but a noble fragment. It seems certain that many troubles beset the declining years of his life. We think it may be doubted whether he was endowed with that excellent commercial prudence which so eminently distinguished Shakespeare. It was certainly a happy circumstance for Shakespeare

tresses that impeded the completion of the "Canterbury Tales." The original design, indeed, is in itself too vast for realization. Chaucer commits the same error in this respect as Spenser does. But it may well be believed that had Chaucer matured his work, he would either have retrenched his plan, or by some device have brought its execution within tolerable dimensions. The part that happily was written has evidently not received the finishing touch. The Prologue itself, perhaps, was never finally revised; in our opinion the "wel nyne and twenty in a companye," of line 24,* requires correction, for the poet added to his pilgrims as his work proceeded; in the case of the "Persoun" he deviates from his programme in not telling us

"in what array that " he "was inne." Had the work been fully completed, especially had more of those Inter-prologues been written, in which Chaucer's dramatic power. more particularly displays itself, and the figures portrayed in the initial Prologue are with admirable skill shown in self-consistent action, being permitted

*For another solution of this difficulty see the Aldine

a circumstance due in a great measure, it | Chaucer, i. 209, ed. 1872.

to speak for themselves and develop their the treasury is always overflowing, beown natures, there can be little doubt cause all things bring them tribute. that the claims upon our admiration would have been greatly multiplied. Chaucer then stands at a considerable disadvantage as compared with Shakespeare, both in respect of the dramatic appliances of his time and in respect of the works representative of his genius. Chaucer, as we have seen, found ready to hand no literary form such as should worthily interpret his mind, and was many years searching before he found one, and, when at last he found it, was somewhat obstructed in the free use of it by troubles and cares that divorced him from his proper task. Moreover the English of his day, though already a copious and versatile tongue, was something rude and inflexible in comparison with the Elizabethan language. In several passages it is clear that he is conscious of certain difficulties attendant on the use of such an instrument. A true instinct led him to choose English for his service rather than French, which his less far-seeing contemporary Gower chose at least for his early piece, the "Speculum Meditantis," and for his "Balades ; but his choice exposed him to various perplexities inseparable from the transitional condition of the object of it.

Fragmentary as his great work is, it is enough to show how consummate was his genius. Not more surely did that famous foot-print on the sands tell the lonely islander of Defoe's story of a human presence than Chaucer's remains assure us that a great poet was amongst us when such pieces were produced.

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For skill in characterization who can be ranked between Chaucer and Shakespeare? Is there any work, except the "theatre" of Shakespeare, that attempts, with a success in any way comparable, the astonishing task which Chaucer sets himself? He attempts to portray the entire society of his age from the crown of its head to the sole of its foot - from the knight, the topmost figure of mediaval life, down to the ploughman and the cook; and the result is a gallery of lifelike portraits, which has no parallel anywhere, with one exception, for variety, truthfulness, humanity. These are no roughly drawn rudely featured outlines, without expression and definiteness, only recognizable by some impertinent symbol, or when we see the name attached, like some collection of ancient kings or of ancestors" where there prevails one uniform vacuity of countenance, and, but for the costume or the legend, one cannot distinguish the First of his house from the Last. They are all drawn with an amazing discrimination and delicacy.* There is nothing of caricature, but yet the individuality is perfect. That the same pencil should have given us the Prioress and the Wife of Bath, the Knight and the Sompnour, the Parson and the Pardoner! These various beings, for beings they are, are as distinct to us now as when he who has made them immortal saw them move out through the gates of the "Tabard," a motley procession, nearly five hundred years since. So far as merely external matters go, the Society of the Middle Ages is perpetuated with a minuteness not approached elsewhere. We know exactly how it looked to the bodily eye. Chaucer addresses himself deliberately to this exhaustive portrayal:

But natheles whiles I have tyme and space,
Or that I ferthere in this tale pace,
Me thinketh it accordant to resoun
To telle you alle the condicioun
Of eche of hem, so as it semed me,
And which they weren and of what degre,
And eek in what array that they were inne.

We have said that his genius exhibits a remarkable affinity to that of Shakespeare -a closer affinity, we think, than that of any other English poet. Chaucer belongs in a high measure what marks Shakespeare supremely — a certain indefinable grace and brightness of style, an incomparable archness and vivacity, an incessant elasticity and freshness, an indescribable ease, a never faltering variety, an incapability of dulness. These men "toil not, neither do they spin," at least so far as one can see. The mountain comes to them; they do not go to it. They wear their art "lightly, like a flow-form of caricature. They never pant or stoop with efforts and strainings. They are kings that never quit their thrones, with a world at their feet. The sceptre is natural in their hands; the purple seems their proper wearing. They never cease to scatter their jewels for fear of poverty;

er."

Chaucer's sound taste shrunk altogether from every His humor, boisterous enough sometimes, at others wonderfully fine and delicate, is always truthful. His "Tale of Sir Thopas" is one of the best parodies in our language. He tells it with the utmost possible gravity, looking as serious as Defoe or Swift in their driest" moments; and, only if you watch well, can you detect a certain mischievous twinkle in his eyes. Some worthy people, indeed, have not detected this twinkle, and have soberly registered Sir Topas amongst the legitimate heroes of chivalrous romance.

Surely a quite unique programme; and it is carried out with profound conscientiousness and power.

We ask, who among our poets, except Shakespeare, shall be placed above Chaucer in this domain of art? In our opinion there is not one of the Elizabethans that deserves that honour. There is an endless variety of creative power, and the offspring is according. Spenser is, in a way, a great creator; he fills the air around him with a population born of his own teeming fancy but these children of Spenser are not human children, but rather exquisite phantoms, with bodies, if they may be called embodied, of no earthly tissue, mere delicate configurations of cloud and mist. They are very ghosts, each one of whom pales and vanishes if a cock crows, or any mortal sound strikes their fine ears:

Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, Par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno. And yet, as man is made in the image of God, so certainly the creatures of the poet should be made in the image of men. There is no higher model to be aimed at. Man is the culminating form of the world as we know it, or can know it. Spenser's creatures may thrive in their native land of "Faerie; but their "lungs cannot receive our air." Something more existent and real are the lovely presences that owe their being to Beaumont and FletcherAspatia, Bellario, Ordella. Assuredly Ordella is rich in sons and daughters such as she spoke of in that high dialogue with Thierry:

He that reads me

When I am ashes, is my son in wishes; And those chaste dames that keep my memory, Singing my yearly requiems, are my daughters. But scarcely are she and that passing fair sisterhood of which she is one formed of human clay. They stand out from the crowd with whom they mix as shapes of a celestial texture. One can only think of them as white-robed sanctities. In fact, they are the natural counterparts of those grosser beings that are only too common in the plays of the authors who drew them. A painter of devils must now and then paint angels by way of relief. Perhaps it is not too much to say that all the characters of these writers are either above or below human nature. They cannot show us humanity without some sort of exaggeration. Ben Jonson has hardly succeeded better in this respect. One grave defect in all his creations is what may be called their mo

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notony. There is no flexibility of disposition, no free play of nature. Moreover, his works exhibit too plainly the travail and effort with which they were posed. One seems to be taken into his workshop, and see him toiling and groaning, and, in the very act of elaboration, shaping now this limb and now that. The greatest master of characterization of that age next to Shakespeare is certainly Massinger. Sir Giles Overreach and Luke are both real men. Luke is a true piece of nature, not all black-souled, nor all white, but of a mixed complexion. But the area which Massinger could make his own was of limited dimensions. When he stepped across its limits, his strength failed him, and he was even as other men.

To pass on in this necessarily rapid survey to a later period. Goldsmith alone amongst our later poets has left us a portrait that deserves to compare with one by Chaucer. It is that ever-charming portrait of the Village Preacher, a not unworthy pendant of the " Parson." He has given us duplicates of it in prose in the persons of the Vicar of Wakefield and of the Man in Black. There is a tradition that he who sat to Chaucer for the Parson was no other than Wiclif. It seems fairly certain that Goldsmith's original was his own father. That was the one figure he could draw with the utmost skill, the deepest feeling. Since Goldsmith there has arisen in our literature no consummate portrait-painter in verse, unless an exception be made in favour of Browning. Scott's creative power did not come to him when he wrote in metre. Shelley's creations are of the Spenserian type fair visions, refined immaterialities,

Shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses. Has Tennyson's Arthur human veins and pulses? He lived and lives somewhat, perhaps, in that earliest of the Arthurian books- -the "Morte d'Arthur "- the supposed relic of an Epic; but in the later treatments he has become more and more impalpable and airy.

With regard to Chaucer, as to Shakespeare, it has been disputed whether he is greater as a humorous or a pathetic writer. It is a common observation that the gifts of humour and pathos are generally found together, a statement that, perhaps, requires some little qualification. Ben Jonson, Addison, and Fielding, for instance, are humorous without being pathetic; on the other hand, Richardson is pathetic and not humorous. Sterne's

pathos is a mere trick. Let those who that all pilgrimages were not as easy as please weep by the death-bed side of Le that one he sings of to Canterbury, that Fevre; for our part we will not be so cheat- was lightened with stories and jests; but ed of our tears. Sterne, in that famous that certain spirits must go on in darkscene, is nothing better than an exquisite ness and weariness, with aching limbs "mute". -a_masterpiece of mercenary and breaking hearts, through much tribmourning. One may see him, if one looks ulation. In both works, perhaps, surintently, arranging his pocket-handker- veyed from the purely aesthetic point of chief in effective folds, with one eye tear-view, there is an excess of woeful incistreaming, while the other watches that dent; the bitter cup which Constance all the proper manœuvres of woe are and Griselda have to drain seems too duly executed. Flet nec dolet. And large for mortal lips. In this regard we something of this is true of Dickens. In must remember that both these tales, the great masters of pathos our tears are though inserted into the grand work of not drawn from us; they flow of them- Chaucer's maturity, yet were certainly selves. There is no design on the soft- written in his youth. The Man of Law, ness of our hearts, no insidious under- in his Prologue, gives us to understand mining, no painful and elaborate besiege- that the tale he proposes to narrate was ment. For writers to kill, merely to melt written by Chaucer, of whose writings he their readers with a scene of tender emo- speaks, both expressly and fully, in that tion, is unjustifiable manslaughter. There highly interesting and important passage is, in short, nothing to be said for those "Of olde time." A careful study of whose delight it is with malice_afore- the "Clerk's Tale undoubtedly demonthought to spread a feast of woe and serve strates that it, too, was a previous proup little children, or any sweet human duction. In both cases, so far as the thing they can lay hands on, that their mere facts go, Chaucer closely follows his guests may enjoy the luxury of tears. authorities, much after the manner of These are the Herods of literature. Shakespeare. In the latter case the Shakespeare never slays or butchers after closeness Petrarch's well-known letter this fashion. He would have saved Cor- to Boccaccio is the authority is so delia if it had been in his power; but it strict that Chaucer is compelled to speak was a moral necessity that she should die. for himself in an envoy at the conclusion. He could no more have kept alive and Perhaps the most pathetic passage in blooming the fair flower of the field when Chaucer's later writings is in the evil winds blew than preserved that lovely" Knight's Tale," which also, however, was form from perishing amidst the wild pas-written before the noon of his genius. sions that Lear's sad error had let loose. This passage is, of course, the death of "Sin entered into the world, and death Arcite. The event is necessary.* Arcite by sin;" and this death falls not only on had been untrue to that solemnest of the the guilty. Goneril and Regan perish; pacts of chivalry-the pact of sworn and so the true daughter, though with all brotherhood (see especially Palamon's our hearts we cry with the old "child- words to him in vv. 271-293, and the changed "father, "Cordelia, stay a little." quibble with which the other palliates his It cannot be otherwise. And so always conduct, vv. 295-303); and Arcite must there is nothing arbitrary in the pathetic die. His triumph in the lists had been scenes of the supreme artists. Of purely pathetic writing there are, perhaps, no better specimens in all our literature than the tales of the Clerk of Oxford and of the Man of Law. Both poems aim at showing how the "meek shall inherit the earth"-how true and genuine natures do in the end triumph, however desperately defeated and crushed they may for a time, or for many times, seem to be. Chaucer weeps himself, or grows, indeed, something impatient, as he conducts his heroines along their most sad course. The thorns of the way pierce his feet also; and he would fain uproot them, and scatter soft flowers for the treading of his woeful wayfarers. But he knew well

but as the flourishing of a green bay-tree. The final scene is described with the ut most simplicity. The evil spirits that ought never to have found a harbour in his heart have at last been expelled from it, and the old fealty has returned; and the last words of his speech to Emily, whom he has bade take him softly in her "armes twaye " "for love of God," and harken what he says, are a generous commendation of his rival :

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I have heer with my cosyn Palomon
Had stryf and rancour many a day i-gon

Prof. Ebert is of opinion that Chaucer's grasp of the moral intention of the "Knight's Tale" is less vigorous and firm than that of Boccaccio, and it may be so.

For love of yow, and eek for jelousie.
And Jupiter so wis my sowle gye,
To speken of a servaunt proprely
With alle circumstaunces trewely,

hede,

That is to seyn, truthe, honour, and knight-
Wysdom, humblesse, astaat, and hye kinrede,
Fredam, and al that longeth to that art,
So Jupiter have of my soule part,
As in this world right now ne knowe I non
So worthy to be loved as Palomon,
That serveth you, and wol do al his lyf.
And if that ye schul ever be a wyf,
Forget not Palomon, that gentil man.
Assuredly Chaucer was endowed in a
very high degree with what we may call
the pathetic sense. It would seem to
have been a favourite truth with him that
Pite renneth sone in gentil herte.*

It ran "sone" and abundantly in his own
most tender bosom. But he is never
merely sentimental or maudlin. We can
believe that the Levite of the Parable
shed a tear or two as he crossed over to
the "other side" from where that robbed
and wounded traveller lay, and perhaps
subsequently drew a moving picture of
the sad spectacle he had so carefully
avoided. Chaucer's pity is of no such
quality. It springs from the depths of his
nature; nay, from the depths of Nature
herself moving in and through her inter-
preter.

The eyes that scrutinize the world most keenly, though they may see infinite noblenesses that escape a coarser vision, yet certainly see also much meanness and pravity. Hence, to speak generally, for exceptions do not concern us, there is no such thing amongst the deep-seeing and really man-learned as unqualified and absolute admiration. And thus the supremest writers have no heroes in the ordinary acceptation of that term. There is not a hero in all Shakespeare; not even Harry the Fifth is absolutely so. For a like reason, there is no quite perfect villain. Neither monsters of perfection nor of imperfection find favour with them that really know mankind. Thus a real master never completely identifies himself with any one of his characters. To say that he does so is merely a façon de parler. They are all his children, and it cannot but be that some are dearer to him than others, but not one, if he is wise, is an idol unto him. His irony consists in the earnest, heartfelt, profound representation of them, while yet he is fully alive to their failings and failures. It is observable only in the supremest geniuses. Men of inferior knowledge and dimmer light are more easily satisfied. They make golden images for themselves and fall down and worship them. Shakespeare stands outside each one of his plays, a little apart Another respect in which Chaucer is and above the fervent figures that move not unworthy of some comparison with in them, like some Homeric god that from his greater successor is his irony. We the skies watches the furious struggle, use the word in the sense in which Dr. whose issue is irreversibly ordered by Thirlwall uses it of Sophocles in his Moipa кparain—that cannot save Sarpeexcellent paper printed in the "Philologi- don or prolong the days of Achilles. cal Museum" some forty years ago, and Chaucer, too, in a similar way abounds in in which Schlegel, in his "Lectures on secondary meanings. What he teaches Dramatic Literature," uses it of Shake- does not lie on the surface. He never speare, to denote that dissembling, so to resigns his judgment or ceases to be a speak, that self-retention and reticence, free agent in honour of any of the or, at least, indirect presentment, that is characters he draws. He never turns a frequent characteristic of the consum- fanatic. He hates without bigotry; he mate dramatist, or the consummate loves without folly; he worships withwriter of any kind who aims at portraying life in all its breadth. We are told often enough of the universal sympathy that inspires the greatest souls, and it is well; but let us consider that universal sympathy does not mean blind, undiscriminating, wholesale sympathy, but precisely the opposite. Only that sympathy can be all-inclusive that is profoundly intelligent as well as intense; and this profound intelligence is incompatible with any complete and unmitigated adoration.

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out idolatry. This excellent temper of his mind displays itself strikingly in the Prologue, which, with all its ardour, is wholly free from extravagance or selfabandonment.

It is because his spirit enjoyed and retained this lofty freedom that it was so tolerant and capacious. He, like Shakespeare, was eminently a Human Catholic, no mere sectary. He refused to no man an acknowledgment of kindred; for him there were no poor relations whom he forbade his house, or neighbours so fallen and debased that in their faces the image of God in which man was made was wholly

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