CHAUCER. 



205 



past has ever led to anything but just enough galvanic 

 twitching of the limbs to remind us unpleasantly of life. 

 The romantic movement of the school of German poets 

 which succeeded Goethe and Schiller ended in extravagant 

 unreality, and Goethe himself, with his unerring common- 

 sense, has given us, in the second part of &quot;Faust,&quot; the 

 result of his own and Schiller s common striving after a 

 Grecian ideal. Euphorion, the child of Faust and Helen, 

 falls dead at their feet ; and Helen herself soon follows him 

 to the shades, leaving only her mantle in the hands of her 

 lover. This, he is told, shall lift him above the earth. We 

 fancy we can interpret the symbol. Whether we can or 

 not, it is certainly suggestive of thought that the only 

 immortal production of the greatest of recent poets was 

 conceived and carried out in that Gothic spirit and form 

 from which he was all his life struggling to break loose. 



CHA UCER* 



WILL it do to say anything more about Chaucer ? Can 

 anyone hope to say anything, not new, but even fresh, on a 

 topic so well worn ? It may well be doubted ; and yet one 

 is always the better for a walk in the morning air a 

 medicine which may be taken over and over again without 

 any sense of sameness, or any failure of its invigorating 

 quality. There is a pervading wholesomeness in the 

 writings of this man a vernal property that soothes and 



* Publications of the Chaucer Society. London. 1869-70. 



Etude sur G. Chaucer consid6r6 comme imitateur des Trouveres. Par 

 E. G. SANDRAS, Agrege de 1 Universite. Paris : Auguste Dusand. 

 1859. 8vo. pp. 298. 



Geoffrey Chaucer s Canter bury-Geschichten, ubersetzt in den Vers- 

 massen der Urschrift, und durch Einleitung und AnmerTcungen erlautert. 

 Von WIHLELM HERTZBERG. Hildburghausen. 1866. 12mo. pp. 674. 



Chaucer in seinen Beziehungen zur italienischen Literatur. 

 Inaugural- Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doctorwilrde. Von ALFONS 

 KISSNER, Bonn. 1867. 8vo. pp. 81. 



