"wise and tender, full of a sweet and kindly sadness at first sight, but with much bonhomie in it on a further look, and with deep-set far-looking gray eyes." The moustache is gray, the hair shows white under the black hood; "two tufts of white beard are on the chin." In the Tales Chaucer is described by Harry Bailey the host as shaped in the waist like himself, that is, a very fat man; the poet, moreover, "semeth elvyssh by his contenaunce," in other words, is shy, or like a stranger, in his general bearing, and abstains from familiar talk with the other pilgrims. Portrait and description agree with the character which Chaucer has impressed upon his poetic work. He is above all an observer of men and their ways, an interested, if reticent, spectator of the life about him. He is quite contented with the spectacle and has no mind to peer beyond it into those mysteries in which poets like Milton delight. He takes his stories, his ideas, from the stock of mediæval literature, borrowing at will, as was the custom in those days. But his shrewd observations of human nature, his kindly tolerance, and above all his humor, are his own. In a very garrulous age, when long-winded romances and interminable descriptions were the fashion, he contrives to be terse and to the point. No English poet has held so closely to the language of common life. Chaucer combines the modern and the mediæval in what seems to be a startling contrast, until one reflects upon the peculiar conditions of his time. All the traditions of his day were of the Middle Ages, but new ideas and new ideals were in the air. Like Petrarch, he could say of himself that he was set like a sentinel on the confines of two ages and looked both forward and back. He died on the eve of a long and wasting civil war, in which the literary life in England sank to its lowest ebb; and for a century he remained a pattern to be imitated indeed, but in a hopelessly distant and inferior way. Father of English poetry he remained, no less to Spenser and to Dryden than to Hoccleve himself. To the last-named he was "the first fyndere of our faire langage;" to Spenser he was "Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled;" to Dryden he was "God's Plenty ;" and so great a poet as Keats was content to "stammer where old Chaucer used to sing." CHAUCER TO RALEGH THE fourteenth century in English literature means for most readers Chaucer and Chaucer alone. It was, however, marked by great productivity, and by poetic achievements which remain unknown to modern times, mainly because they were confined, as regards expression, to remote dialects or, as regards their subject, to themes in which there is scant interest to-day. One of the best of English romances was written in the North of England in Chaucer's time, and can be matched by an allegorical poem, the Pearl, striking for its pathos and beautiful in its style. Other religious poetry could be cited of a power seldom rivaled in the whole reach of our literature. Popular verse, too, must have flourished in notable degree; no better narrative can be found anywhere than in the Robin Hood cycle, which came to perfection in the fourteenth century. Lyric, again, was in full flower; but to all this richness and poetic activity we are wont to shut our eyes and consider Chaucer alone. It is true that with his death, in 1400, there is an abrupt decline, so far as those literary traditions are concerned which were formed in London and Oxford and have continued down to the present time as national literature in contrast to the literature of the various dialects. Chaucer's own disciples were ridiculously inadequate; and before three decades of the new century had elapsed the Wars of the Roses, with their resulting barbarism, drove poetry from court and palace into the fields. The real succession of English literature for this time must be sought in Scotland, and it was not until the comparative quiet under Henry VIII that the old traditions asserted themselves on English soil. Meanwhile the fifteenth century is not without its poetry, though we must go afield to find it. Mr. Pollard has pointed out that English poetry could not be dead in times that produced deep and sincere religious verse, "such a dramatic lyric" as the Nut-Brown Maid, such Christmas carols as are found in a manuscript at Balliol College, and some of the miracle plays and moralities. Morever, two events of supreme importance mark this period of transition, the English Bible is advancing on its sure way to the hearts of the people, and the printing-press is beginning its career. Add to these innovations such tremendous changes as the Reformation, the New Learning, the discovery of America,above all the new attitude of men's minds toward life itself, and one sees that "transition" is a word powerless to express the change from the time of Chaucer to the time of Ralegh. Separated from Chaucer by an interval of time not much greater than that which separates us from Dr. Johnson, the men of Ralegh's day looked back on Chaucer through changes in language, changes in thought, and still more in the habit of thought, which baffled any attempt at connection. For us, Dr. Johnson lived but yesterday; for the Elizabethan, Chaucer was a dim and venerable, only half understood, figure of the remote literary past. Spenser, as we shall see, affected to follow him, but this was very much as Virgil followed Homer. To all intents and purposes, therefore, we begin English literature anew with the poets at the court of Henry VIII; |