CHAUCER. 169 



When Zephyrus eek with his swete breth 

 Enspired hath in every holt and heth 

 The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne 

 Hath in the ram his halfe cors yronne, 

 And smale foules maken melodic, 



and still at the thousandth time a breath of tmcontaminate 

 springtide seems to lift the hair upon my forehead. If here be 

 not the largior ether, the serene and motionless atmosphere of 

 classical antiquity, we find at least the seclusum nemus, the 

 domos placidas, and the oubliance, as Froissart so sweetly calls 

 it, that persuade us we are in an Elysium none the less sweet 

 that it appeals to our more purely human, one might almost say 

 domestic, sympathies. We may say of Chaucer s muse, as Over- 

 bury of his milkmaid, her breath is her own, which scents all 

 the year long of Jime like a new-made haycock. The most 

 hardened rout of literature can scarce confront these simple and 

 winning graces without feeling somewhat of the unworn sen 

 timent of his youth revive in him. Modern imaginative litera 

 ture has become so self-conscious, and therefore so melancholy, 

 that Art, which should be the world s sweet inn, whither we 

 repair for refreshment and repose, has become rather a watering- 

 place, where one s own private touch of the liver-complaint is 

 exasperated by the affluence of other sufferers whose talk is a 

 narrative of morbid symptoms. Poets have forgotten that the 

 first lesson of literature, no less than of life, is the learning how 

 to burn your own smoke ; that the way to be original is to be 

 healthy ; that the fresh colour, so delightful in all good writing, 

 is won by escaping from the fixed air of self into the brisk 

 atmosphere of universal sentiments; and that to make the 

 common marvellous, as if it were a revelation, is the test of 

 genius. It is good to retreat now and then beyond earshot of 

 the introspective confidences of modern literature, and to lose 

 ourselves in the gracious worldliness of Chaucer. Here was a 

 healthy and hearty man, so genuine that he need not ask whether 

 he was genuine or no, so sincere as quite to forget his own sin 

 cerity, so truly pious that he could be happy in the best world 

 that God chose to make, so humane that he loved even the foi 

 bles of his kind. Here was a truly epic poet, without knowing 

 it, who did not waste time in considering whether his age were 

 good or bad, but quietly taking it for granted as the best that 

 ever was or could be for him, has left us such a picture of con 

 temporary life as no man ever painted. A perpetual fountain 

 of good-sense, Dryden calls him; yes, and of good-humour, 

 too, and wholesome thought, He was one of those rare authors 



