CHAUCER. 259 



so deftly. Gower has positively raised tediousness to the 

 precision of science, he has made dulness an heirloom for 

 the students of our literary history. As you slip to and 

 fro on the frozen levels of his verse, which give no foot- 

 hold to the mind, as your nervous ear awaits the inevita- 

 ble recurrence of his rhyme, regularly pertinacious as 

 the tick of an eight-day clock and reminding you of 

 Wordsworth's 



" Once more the ass did lengthen out 

 The hard, dry, seesaw of his horrible bray," 



you learn to dread, almost to respect, the powers of this 

 indefatigable man. He is the undertaker of the fair 

 mediaeval legend, and his style has the hateful gloss, the 

 seemingly unnatural length, of a coffin. Love, beauty, 

 passion, nature, art, life, the natural and theological vir- 

 tues, there is nothing beyond his power to disenchant, 

 nothing out of which the tremendous hydraulic press of 

 his allegory (or whatever it is, for I am not sure if it be 

 not something even worse) will not squeeze all feeling 

 and freshness and leave it a juiceless pulp. It matters 

 not where you try him, whether his story be Christian 

 or pagan, borrowed from history or fable, you cannot 

 escape him. Dip in at the middle or the end, dodge 

 back to the beginning, the patient old man is there to 

 take you by the button and go on with his imperturba- 

 ble narrative. You may have left off with Clytemnes- 

 tra, and you begin again with Samson ; it makes no 

 odds, for you cannot tell one from tother. His tedious- 

 ness is omnipresent, and like Dogberry he could find in 

 his heart to bestow it all (and more if he had it) on your 

 worship. The word lengthy has been charged to our 

 American account, but it must have been 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 



