CHAUCER. 265 



monotony of the couplet, and gave to the rhymed pen- 

 tameter, which he made our heroic measm'e, somethmg 

 of the architectural repose of blank verse. He found 

 our language lumpish, stiff, unwilling, too apt to speak 

 Saxonly in grouty monosyllables; he left it enriched 

 with the longer measure of the Italian and Provencal 

 poets. He reconciled, in the harmony of his verse, the 

 English bluntness with the dignity and elegance of the 

 less homely Southern speech. Though he did not and 

 could not create our language (for he who writes to be 

 read does not write for linguisters), yet it is true that he 

 first made it easy, and to that extent modern, so that 

 Spenser, two hundred years later, studied his method 

 and called him master. He first ^Tote English ; and it 

 was a feeling of this, I suspect, that made it fashionable 

 in Elizabeth's day to " talk pm-e Chaucer." Already we 

 find in his works verses that might pass without question 

 in Milton or even Wordsworth, so mainly unchanged 

 have the lang-uage of poetry and the movement of verse 

 remained from his day to our own. 



" Thou Polymnia 

 On Pc^rnaso, that, with* thy sisters ghide, 

 By Helicon, not tar from Cirrea, 

 Singest with voice memorial in the shade, 

 Under the laurel which that may not fade." 

 " And downward from a hill under a bent 

 There stood the temple of Mars omnipotent 

 Wrought all of burned steel, of which th' entree 

 Was long and strait and ghastly for to see: 

 The northern light in at the doores shone 

 For window in the wall ne was there none 

 Through which men mighten any light discerne; 

 The dore was all of adamant eteme." 



And here are some lines that would not seem out of 



place in the " Paradise of Dainty Devises " : — 



" Hide, Absolom, thy gilte [gilded] tresses clear, 

 Esther lay thou thy meekness all adown. 



♦ Commonly printed hath. 

 12 



