CHAUCER. 255 



prevailed of late in which every other word seems to be 

 underscored as in a school-girl s letter. The poet seems 

 intent on showing his sinew, as if the power of the slim 

 Apollo lay in the girth of his biceps. Force for the mere 

 sake of force ends like Milo, caught and held mockingly fast 

 by the recoil of the log he undertook to rive. In the race 

 of fame, there are a score capable of brilliant spurts for one 

 who comes in winner after a steady pull with wind and 

 muscle to spare. Chaucer never shows any signs of effort, 

 and it- is a main proof of his excellence that he can be so 

 inadequately sampled by detached passages by single lines 

 taken away from the connection in which they contribute to 

 the general effect. He has that continuity of thought, that 

 evenly prolonged power, and that delightful equanimity, 

 which characterise the higher orders of mind. There is 

 something in him of the disinterestedness that made the 

 Greeks masters in art. His phrase is never importunate. 

 His simplicity is that of elegance, not of poverty. The 

 quiet unconcern with which he says his best things is 

 peculiar to him among English poets, though Goldsmith, 

 Addison, and Thackeray have approached it in prose. 

 He prattles inadvertently away, and all the while, like the 

 princess in the story, lets fall a pearl at every other word. 

 It is such a piece of good luck to be natural ! It is the good 

 gift which the fairy godmother brings to her prime favourites 

 in the cradle. If not genius, it is alone what makes genius 

 amiable in the arts. If a man have it not, he will never find 

 it, for when it is sought it is gone. 



When Chaucer describes anything, it is commonly by one 

 of those simple and obvious epithets or qualities that are so 

 easy to miss. Is it a woman ? He tells us she is fresh; that 

 she has glad eyes ; that &quot; every day her beauty newed : &quot; that 



&quot;Methought all fellowship as naked 

 Withouten her that I saw once, 

 As a coroiie without the stones.&quot; 



Sometimes he describes amply by the merest hint, as where 

 the Friar, before setting himself softly down, drives away 



