CHAUCER. 235 



invented by the first reader of Gower s works, the only 

 inspiration of which they were ever capable. Our 

 literature had to lie by and recruit for more than four 

 centuries ere it could give us an equal vacuity in Tupper, 

 so persistent a uniformity of commonplace in the t( Recrea 

 tions of a Country Parson.&quot; Let us be thankful that the 

 industrious Gower never found time for recreation ! 



But a fairer as well as more instructive comparison lies 

 between Chaucer and the author of &quot; Piers Ploughman.&quot; 

 Langland has as much tenderness, as much interest in 

 the varied picture of life, as hearty a contempt for hypocrisy, 

 and almost an equal sense of fun. He has the same easy 

 abundance of matter. But what a difference ! It is the 

 difference between the poet and the man of poetic tempera 

 ment. The abundance of the one is a continual fulness 

 within the fixed limits of good taste ; that of the other is 

 squandered in overflow. The one can be profuse on 

 occasion ; the other is diffuse whether he will or no. The 

 one is full of talk ; the other is garrulous. What in one is 

 the refined bonhomie of a man of the world, is a rustic 

 shrewdness in the other. Both are kindly in their satire, 

 and have not (like too many reformers) that vindictive love 

 of virtue which spreads the stool of repentance with thistle- 

 burrs before they invite the erring to seat themselves 

 therein. But what in &quot;Piers Ploughman&quot; is sly fun, has 

 the breadth and depth of humour in Chaucer ; and it is plain 

 that while the former was taken up by his moral purpose, 

 the main interest of the latter turned to perfecting the form 

 of his work. In short, Chaucer had that fine literary sense 

 which is as rare as genius, and, united with it, as it was in 

 him, assures an immortality of fame. It is not merely what 

 he has to say, but even more the agreeable way he has of 

 saying it, that captivates our attention and gives him an 

 assured place in literature. Above all, it is not in detached 

 passages that his charm lies, but in the entirety of expres 

 sion and the cumulative effect of many particulars working 

 toward a common end. Now though ex ungue leonem be 

 a good rule in comparative anatomy, its application, except 



