252 CHAUCER. 



the home-baked Saxon loaf. The flour had been honest, 

 the paste well kneaded, but the inspiring leaven was 

 wanting till the Norman brought it over. Chaucer 

 works still in the solid material of his race, but with 

 what airy lightness has he not infused it] Without 

 ceasing to be English, he has escaped from being insular. 

 But he was something more than this ; he was a scholar, 

 a thinker, and a critic. He had studied the Divina 

 Commedia of Dante, he had read Petrarca and Boccaccio, 

 and some of the Latin poets. He calls Dante the great 

 poet of Italy, and Petrarch a learned clerk. It is plain 

 that he knew very well the truer purpose of poetry, and 

 had even arrived at the higher wisdom of comprehend- 

 ing the aptitudes and limitations of his own genius. 

 He saw clearly and felt keenly what were the faults 

 and what the wants of the prevailing literature of his 

 country. In the " Monk's Tale " he slyly satirizes the 

 long-winded morality of Gower, as his prose antitype, 

 Fielding, was to satirize the prolix sentimentality of 

 Richardson. In the rhyme of Sir Thopas he gives the 

 coup de grace to the romances of Chivalry, and in his 

 own choice of a subject he heralds that new world in 

 which the actual and the popular were to supplant the 

 fantastic and the heroic. 



Before Chaucer, modern Europe had given birth to one 

 great poet, Dante ; and contemporary with him was one 

 supremely elegant one, Petrarch. Dante died only 

 seven years before Chaucer was born, and, so far as 

 culture is derived from books, the moral and intellect- 

 ual influences they had been subjected to, the specu- 

 lative stimulus that may have given an impulse to 

 their minds, there could have been no essential differ- 

 ence between them. Yet there are certain points of resem- 

 blance and of contrast, and those not entirely fanci- 

 ful, which seem to me of considerable interest. Both 



