CHAUCER. 277 



That after, when the storm is all ago, 

 Yet will the water quap a day or two, 

 Right so, though that her forme were absent, 

 The pleasance of her forme was present." 



And this passage leads me to say a few words of 

 Chaucer as a descriptive poet ; for I think it a great 

 mistake to attribute to him any properly dramatic 

 power, as some have done. Even Herr Hertzberg, in 

 his remarkably intelligent essay, is led a little astray on 

 this point by his enthusiasm. Chaucer is a great narra 

 tive poet ; and, in this species of poetry, though the 

 author's personality should never be obtruded, it yet 

 unconsciously pervades the whole, and communicates an 

 individual quality, a kind of flavor of its own. This 

 very quality, and it is one of the highest in its way and 

 place, would be fatal to all dramatic force. The narra 

 tive poet is occupied with his characters as picture, with 

 their grouping, even their costume, it may be, and he 

 feels for and with them instead of being they for the 

 moment, as the dramatist must always be. The story 

 teller must possess the situation perfectly in all its de 

 tails, while the imagination of the dramatist must be 

 possessed and mastered by it. The latter puts before 

 us the very passion or emotion itself in its iitmost inten 

 sity ; the former gives them, not in their primary form, 

 but in that derivative one which they have acquired by 

 passing through his own mind and being modified by his 

 reflection. The deepest pathos of the drama, like the 

 quiet " no more but so 1 " with which Shakespeare tells 

 us that Ophelia's heart is bursting, is sudden as a stab, 

 while in narrative it is more or less suffused with pity, 

 a feeling capable of prolonged sustention. This pres 

 ence of the author's own sympathy is noticeable in all 

 Chaucer's pathetic passages, as, for instance, in the 

 lamentation of Constance over her child in the " Man of 



