are from the frequency of their digressions from it. The chain of his story is composed of a number of fine links, closely connected together, and rivetted by a single blow. There is an instance of the minuteness which he introduces into his most serious descriptions in his account of Palamon when left alone in his cell: "Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grete tour Resouned of his yelling and clamour : The pure fetters on his shinnes grete The mention of this last circumstance looks like a part of the instructions he had to follow, which he had no discretionary power to leave out or introduce at pleasure. He is contented to find grace and beauty in truth. He exhibits for the most part the naked object, with little drapery thrown over it. His metaphors, which are few, are not for ornament, but use, and as like as possible to the things themselves. He does not affect to shew his power over the reader's mind, but the power which his subject has over his own. The readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly what the persons he describes. must have felt, than perhaps those of any other poet. His sentiments are not voluntary effusions of the poet's fancy, but founded on the natural impulses and habitual prejudices of the characters he has to represent. There is an inveteracy of purpose, a sincerity of feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid, in whatever they do or say. There is no artificial, pompous display, but a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing from the ground, rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no "babbling gossip of the air,' fluent and redundant; but, like a stammerer, or a dumb person, that has just found the use of speech, crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and fond repetitions to prevent mistake. His words point as an index to the objects, like the eye or finger. There were none of the common-places of poetic diction in our author's time, no reflected lights of fancy, no borrowed roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things for himself, to look narrowly, and almost to handle the object, as in the obscurity of morning we partly see and partly grope our way; so that his descriptions have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce the effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of nature and discrimination of character; and his interest in what he saw gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation. The picturesque and the dramatic are in him closely blended together, and hardly distinguishable; for he principally describes external appearances as indicating character, as symbols of internal sentiment. There is a meaning in what he sees; and it is this which catches his eye by sympathy. Thus the costume and dress of the Canterbury Pilgrims of the Knight-the Squire the Oxford Scholar-the Gaptoothed Wife of Bath, and the rest, speak for themselves. To take one or two of these at random : "There was also a nonne, a Prioresse, That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy; And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly, And sikerly she was of great disport, But for to speken of hire conscience, Or if men smote it with a yerde smerte : Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was; It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe." "A Monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie, A manly man, to ben an abbot able. Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable : The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit, Because that it was olde and somdele streit, He yave not of the text a pulled hen, The Serjeant at Law is the same identical individual as Lawyer Dowling in Tom Jones, who wished to divide himself into a hundred pieces, to be in a hundred places at once. "No wher so besy a man as he ther n'as, The Frankelein, in "whose hous it snewed of mete and drinke;" the Shipman, "who rode upon a rouncie, as he couthe; the Doctour of Phisike, "whose studie was but litel of the Bible; " the Wif of Bath, in "All whose parish ther was non, That to the offring before hire shulde gon, -the poure Persone of a toun, "whose parish was wide, and houses fer asonder; the Miller, and the Reve, "a slendre colerike man," are all of the same stamp. They are every one samples of a kind; abstract definitions of a species. Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the classes of men, as Linnæus numbered the plants. Most of them remain to this day: others that are obsolete, and may well be dispensed with, still live in his descriptions of them. Such is the Sompnoure : "A Sompnoure was ther with us in that place, It would be a curious speculation (at least for those who think that the characters of men never change, though manners, opinions, and institutions may) to know what has become of this character of the Sompnoure in the present day; whether or not it has any technical representative in existing professions; into what channels and conduits it has withdrawn itself, where it lurks unseen in cunning obscurity, or else shews its face boldly, pampered into all the insolence of office, in some other shape, as it is deterred or encouraged by circumstances. Chaucer's characters modernised, upon this principle of historic derivation, would be a useful addition to our knowledge of human nature. But who is there to undertake it? The descriptions of the equipage, and accoutrements of the two kings of Thrace and Inde, in the Knight's Tale, are as striking and grand, as the others are lively and natural : "Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon With kemped heres on his browes stout; His limmes gret, his braunes hard and stronge, And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound.- |