258 CHAUCER. 



such fashion, still less are they the achievement of any 

 single man, however great his genius, however powerful 

 his individuality. They shape themselves by laws as 

 definite as those which guide and limit the growth of 

 other living organisms. Dante, indeed, has told us that 

 he chose to write in the tongue that might be learned of 

 nurses and chafferers in the market. His practice shows 

 that he knew perfectly well that poetry has needs which 

 cannot be answered by the vehicle of vulgar commerce 

 between man and man. What he instinctively felt was, 

 that there was the living heart of all speech, without 

 whose help the brain were powerless to send will, motion, 

 meaning, to the limbs and extremities. But it is true 

 that a language, as respects the uses of literature, is lia 

 ble to a kind of syncope. No matter how complete its 

 vocabulary may be, how thorough an outfit of inflections 

 and case-endings it may have, it is a mere dead body 

 without a soul till some man of genius set its arrested 

 pulses once more athrob, and show what wealth of sweet 

 ness, scorn, persuasion, and passion lay there awaiting its 

 liberator. In this sense it is hardly too much to say 

 that Chaucer, like Dante, found his native tongue a dia 

 lect and left it a language. But it was not what he did 

 with deliberate purpose of reform, it was his kindly and 

 plastic genius that wrought this magic of renewal and 

 inspiration. It was not the new words he introduced,* 

 but his way of using the old ones, that surprised them 

 into grace, ease, and dignity in their own despite. In 

 order to feel fully how much he achieved, let any one 

 subject himself to a penitential course of reading in his 

 contemporary, Gower, who worked in a material to all 

 intents and purposes the same, or listen for a moment 

 to the barbarous jangle which Lydgate and Occleve con 

 trive to draw from the instrument their master had tuned 



* I think he tried one now and then, like " eyen columbine.' 1 ' 1 



