CHAUCER. 189 



times to have been smeared with the burning pitch of his own. 

 fiery lake. Chaucer s pencil is dipped in the cheerful colour- 

 box of the old illuminators, and he has their patient delicacy of 

 touch, with a freedom far beyond their somewhat mechanic 

 brilliancy. 



English narrative poetry, as Chaucer found it, though it had 

 not altogether escaped from the primal curse of long-windedness 

 so painfully characteristic of its prototype, the French Romance 

 of Chivalry, had certainly shown a feeling for the picturesque, 

 a sense of colour, a directness of phrase, and a simplicity of 

 treatment which give it graces of its own and a turn peculiar to 

 itself. In the easy knack of story-telling, the popular minstrels 

 cannot compare with Marie de France. The lightsomeness of 

 fancy, that leaves a touch of sunshine and is gone, is painfully 

 missed in them all. Their incidents enter dispersedly, as the 

 old stage directions used to say, and they have not learned the 

 art of concentrating their force on the key-point of their hearers 

 interest. They neither get fairly hold of their subject, nor, what 

 is more important, does it get hold of them. But they some 

 times yield to an instinctive hint of leaving-off at the right 

 moment, and in their happy negligence achieve an effect only to 

 be matched by the highest successes of art. 



That lady heard his mourning all 

 Right under her chamber wall, 

 In her oriel where she was, 

 Closed well with royal glass ; 

 Fulfilled it was with imagery 

 Every window, by and by ; 

 On each side had there a gin 

 Sperred with many a divers pin ; 

 Anon that lady fair and free 

 Undid a pin of ivory 

 And wide the window she open set, 

 The sun shone in at her closet. 



It is true the old rhymer relapses a little into the habitual drons 

 of his class, and shows half a mind to bolt into their common 

 inventory style when he comes to his^ttf and jfcJKf, but he with 

 stands the temptation manfully, and his sunshine fills our hearts 

 with a gush as sudden as that which illumines the lady s oriel. 

 Coleridge and Keats have each in his way felt the charm of 

 this winsome picture, but have hardly equalled its hearty honesty, 

 its economy of material, the supreme test of artistic skill. I 

 admit that the phrase had there a gin is suspicious, and sug 

 gests a French original, but I remember nothing altogether so 

 good in the romances from the other side of the Channel. One 



