CHAUCER. 253 



Upon a courser startling as the fire, 

 jEneas sits.&quot; 



Paiidarus, looking at Troilus, 



&quot; Took up a light and found his countenance 

 As for to look upon an old romance.&quot; 



With Chaucer it is always the thing itself and not the de 

 scription of it that is the main object. His picturesque 

 bits are incidental to the story, glimpsed in passing ; they 

 never stop the way. His key is so low that his high lights 

 are never obtrusive. His imitators, like Leigh Hunt, and 

 Keats in his &quot; Endymion,&quot; missing the nice gradation with 

 which the master toned everything down, become streaky. 

 Hogarth, who reminds one of him in the variety and 

 natural action of his figures, is like him also in the subdued 

 brilliancy of his colouring. When Chaucer condenses, it is 

 because his conception is vivid. He does not need to per 

 sonify Revenge, for personification is but the subterfuge of 

 unimaginative and professional poets ; but he embodies the 

 very passion itself in a verse that makes us glance over our 

 shoulder as if we heard a stealthy tread behind us : 



&quot; The smiler with the knife hid under the cloak.* &quot; 



And yet how unlike is the operation of the imaginative 

 faculty in him and Shakespeare ! When the latter de 

 scribes, his epithet simply leaves always an impression on the 

 moral sense (so to speak) of the person who hears or sees. 

 The sun &quot; flatters the mountain-tops with sovereign eye ; &quot; 

 the bending &quot; weeds lacquey the dull stream ; &quot; the shadow 

 of the falcon &quot; coucheth the fowl below ; &quot; the smoke is 

 &quot; helpless ; &quot; when Tarquin enters the chamber of Lucrece 

 &quot; the threshold grates the door to have him heard.&quot; His 

 outward sense is merely a window through which the 

 metaphysical eye looks forth, and his mind passes over at 

 once from the simple sensation to the complex meaning of 

 it feels with the object instead of merely feeling it. His 

 imagination is for ever dramatising. Chaucer gives only 



* Compare this with the Mumbo-Jumbo Revenge in Collins s Ode. 



