212 CHAUCER, 



In thus turning frankly and gayly to the actual world, and 

 drinking inspiration from sources open to all ; in turning away 

 from a colourless abstraction to the solid earth and to emotions 

 common to every pulse;, in discovering that to make the best cf 

 nature, and not to grope vaguely after something better than 

 nature, was the true office of Art; in insisting on a definite 

 purpose, on veracity, cheerfulness, and simplicity, Chaucer shows 

 himself the true father and founder of what is characteristically 

 English literature. He has a hatred of cant as hearty as Dr. 

 Johnson s, though he has a slyer way of showing it; he has the 

 placid common-sense of Franklin, the sweet, grave humour of 

 Addison, the exquisite taste of Gray; but the whole texture of 

 his mind, though its substance seem plain and grave, shows 

 itself at every turn iridescent with poetic feeling like shot silk. 

 Above all, he has an eye for character that seems to have caught 

 at once not only its mental and physical features, but even its ex 

 pression in variety of costume an eye, indeed, second only, if it 

 should be called second in some respects, to that of Shakspeare. 



I know of nothing that may be compared with the prologue 

 to the * Canterbury Tales/ and with that to the story of the 

 1 Chanon s Yeoman/ before Chaucer. Characters and portraits 

 from real life had never been drawn with such discrimination, or 

 with such variety, never with such bold precision of outline, and 

 with such a lively sense of the picturesque. His Parson is still 

 unmatched, though Dryden and Goldsmith have both tried their 

 hands in emulation of him. And the humour also in its suavity, 

 its perpetual presence and its shy unobtrusiveness, is something 

 wholly new in literature. For anything that deserves to be called 

 like it in English we must wait for Henry Fielding. 



Chaucer is the first great poet who has treated To-day as if it 

 were as good as Yesterday, the first who held up a mirror to 

 contemporary life in its infinite variety of high and low, of humour 

 and pathos. But he reflected life in its large sense as the life of 

 men, from the knight to the ploughman the life of every day as 

 it is made up of that curious compound of human nature with 

 manners. The very form of the Canterbury Tales was imagi 

 native. The garden of Boccaccio, the supper-party of Grazzini, 

 and the voyage of Giraldi make a good enough thread for their 

 stories, but exclude all save equals and friends, exclude conse 

 quently human nature in its wider meaning. But by choosing a 

 pilgrimage, Chaucer puts us on a plane where all men are equal, 

 with souls to be saved, and with another world in view that abol 

 ishes all distinctions. By this choice, and by making the Host 



