174 CHAUCER. 



of forgotten ones. Nay, in proportion as the genius is vigorous 

 and original will its indebtedness be greater, will its roots strike 

 deeper into the past and grope in remoter fields for the virtue 

 that must sustain it. Indeed, if the works of the great poets 

 teach anything, it is to hold mere invention somewhat cheap. 

 It is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of 

 it after it is found, that is of consequence. Accordingly, Chaucer, 

 like Shakspeare, invented almost nothing. Wherever he found any 

 thing directed to Geoffrey Chaucer, he took it and made the most 

 of it. It was not the subject treated, but himself, that was the new 

 thing. Cela m appartient de droit, Moliere is reported to have 

 said when accused of plagiarism. Chaucer pays that { usurious 

 interest which genius/ as Coleridge says, always pays in bor 

 rowing/ The characteristic touch is his own. In the famous 

 passage about the caged bird, copied from the * Romaunt of the 

 Rose/ the gon eten wormes was added by him. We must let 

 him, if he will, eat the heart out of the literature that had pre 

 ceded him, as we sacrifice the mulberry-leaves to the silkworm, 

 because he knows how to convert them into something richer 

 and more lasting. The question of originality is not one of form, 

 but of substance; not of cleverness, but of imaginative power. 

 Given your material, in other words the life in which you live, 

 how much can you see in it? For on that depends how much 

 you can make of it. Is it merely an arrangement of man s con 

 trivance, a patchwork of expediencies for temporary comfort and 

 convenience, good enough if it last your time; or is it so much of 

 the surface of that ever-flowing deity which we call Time, wherein 

 we catch such fleeting reflection as is possible for us, of our rela 

 tion to perdurable things ? This is what makes the difference 

 between ^Eschylus and Euripides, between Shakspeare and 

 Fletcher, between Goethe and Heine, between literature and 

 rhetoric. Something of this depth of insight, if not in the fullest, 

 yet in no inconsiderable measure, characterises Chaucer. We 

 must not let his playfulness, his delight in the world as mere 

 spectacle, mislead us into thinking that he was incapable of 

 serious purpose or insensible to the deeper meanings of life. 



There are four principal sources from which Chaucer may be 

 presumed to have drawn for poetical suggestion or literary cul 

 ture the Latins, the Troubadours, the Trouveres, and the 

 Italians. It is only the two latter who can fairly claim any im 

 mediate influence in the direction of his thought or tht formation 

 of his style. The only Latin poet who can be supposed to have 

 influenced the spirit of mediaeval literature is Ovid. In his sen- 



