206 CHAUCER. 



refreshes in a way of which no other has ever found the 

 secret. I repeat to myself a thousand times 



&quot; Whan that April e with his showres sote 

 The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, 

 And bathed every veine in swich licour 

 Of which vertue engendered is the flour, 

 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 foule s maken melodie,&quot; 



and still at the thousandth time a breath of uncontaminate 

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

 be not the largior ether, the serene and motionless atmos 

 phere 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 Overbury of his milkmaid, 

 &quot; her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of 

 June like a new-made haycock.&quot; The most hardened roue 

 of literature can scarce confront these simple and winning 

 graces without feeling somewhat of the unworn sentiment 

 of his youth revive in him. Modern imaginative literature 

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

 that Art, which should be &quot; the world s sweet inn,&quot; 

 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 atmos 

 phere of universal sentiments; and that to make the 

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



