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 that all pilgrimages were not as easy as that one he sings of to Canterbury, that was lightened with stories and jests; but that certain spirits must go on in darkness and weariness, with aching limbs and breaking hearts, through much tribulation. In both works, perhaps, surveyed from the purely æsthetic point of view, there is an excess of woeful incident; the bitter cup which Constance and Griselda have to drain seems too large for mortal lips. In this regard we must remember that both these tales, though inserted into the grand work of Chaucer's maturity, yet were certainly written in his youth. The Man of Law, in his Prologue, gives us to understand that the tale he proposes to narrate was written by Chaucer, of whose writings he speaks, both expressly and fully, in that highly interesting and important passage "of olde time." careful study of the Clerk's Tale undoubtedly demonstrates that it, too, was an earlier production. In both cases, so far as the mere facts go, Chaucer closely follows his authorities, much after the manner of Shakespeare. In the latter case the closeness-Petrarch's well-known letter to Boccaccio is the authority-is so strict that Chaucer is compelled to speak for himself in an envoy at the conclusion. Perhaps the most pathetic passage in Chaucer's later writings is in the Knight's Tale, which also, however, was first written before A the noon of his genius. This passage is, of course, the death of Arcite. The event is necessary.' Arcite had been untrue to that solemnest of the pacts of chivalry-to the pact of sworn brotherhood (see especially Palamon's words to him in vv. 271-293, and the quibble with which the other palliates his conduct, vv. 295-303); and Arcite must die. His triumph in the lists had been but as the flourishing of a green bay-tree. The final scene is described with the utmost 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 hearken what he says, are a generous commendation of his rival : : "I have heer with my cosyn Palomon That is to seyn, truthe, honour, and knighthede, 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. been a favourite truth with him that It would seem to have 1 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. "Pite renneth sone in gentil herte." 1 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 interpreter. Another respect in which Chaucer is not unworthy of some comparison with his greater successor is his irony. We use the word in the sense in which Dr. Thirlwall uses it of Sophocles in his excellent paper printed in the Philological Museum some forty years ago, and in which Schlegel, in his Lectures on Dramatic Literature, uses it of Shakespeare, to denote that dissembling, so to speak, that selfretention and reticence, or, at least, indirect presentment, that is a frequent characteristic of the consummate dramatist, or the consummate writer 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. 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 This line occurs in several of his poems-in the Knight's Tale and in the Legend of Good Women, &c. and pravity. Hence, to speak generally, for exceptions do not concern us, there is no such thing amongst the deepseeing 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 those 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 and above the fervent figures that move in them, like some Homeric god that from the skies watches the furious struggle, whose issue is irreversibly ordered by Moipa Kρarain-that cannot save Sarpedon or prolong the days of Achilles. Chaucer, too, in a similar way abounds in secondary meanings. What he teaches does not lie on the surface. He never resigns his judgment or ceases to be a free agent in honour of any of the characters he draws. He never turns fanatic. He hates without bigotry; he loves without folly; he worships without 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 obliterated. And it is because his understanding is thus wide and deep, and his sympathies commensurate with that understanding, that his ethical teaching is, for all time, sound and true. He is no formal or formulating moralist; he never adds his voice to the mere party cries of his day, or concentrates his energies on any dogma. To speak of him as a zealous religious reformer is ridiculous;1 far other was his business. But yet he was a great moral teacher, one of our greatest-μer' duvμova ПInλeiwva. All the world's a school, if we may adapt Jaques' words, and all the men and women merely school-children. Chaucer is a teacher in this great world-school, and in no lesser or special seminary; and the lessons he gives are "exceeding broad." They are such as life itself gives. They breathe out of his works in a natural stream, no mere accidents, but the essential spirit of them, to be discovered not by the labels but in the works themselves :— "Oh! to what uses shall we put The wildweed-flower that simply blows? Within the bosom of the rose? "But any man that walks the mead, In bud, or blade, or bloom may find, 1 Chaucer was just as much of a Lollard as Shakespeare was of a Puritan. A recent writer has, we believe, demonstrated-to his own satisfaction-that Shakespeare was the latter. Certainly he was no Anti-Puritan; nor was Chaucer an Anti-Wicliffite. |
