288 CHAUCER. 



prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," and with that to the 

 story of the '• Chanon's Yeoman" before Chaucer. Char- 

 acters and portraits fi'om real life had never been drawn 

 with such discrimination, or with such variety, never 

 with such bold precision of outline, and with such a 

 lively sense of the picturesque. His Parson is still un- 

 matched, though Dryden and Goldsmith have both tried 

 their hands in emulation of him. And the humor also 

 in its suavity, its perpetual presence and its shy unob- 

 trusiveness, is something wholly new in literature. For 

 anything that deserves to be called like it in English we 

 must wait for Henry Fielding. 



Chaucer is the first great poet w^ho has treated To-day 

 as if it were as good as Yesterday, the first who held up 

 a mirror to contemporary life in its infinite variety of 

 high and low, of hnmor and pathos. But he reflected 

 life in its large sense as the life of men, from the knight 

 to the ploughman, — the life of every day as it is made 

 up of that curious compound of human nature with 

 manners. The very form of the " Canterbiu-y Tales " was 

 imaginative. The garden of Boccaccio, the supper-party 

 of Grazzini, and the voyage of Giraldi make a good enough 

 thread for their stories, but exclude all save equals and 

 friends, exclude consequently himian nature in its wider 

 meaning. But by choosing a pilgrimage, Chaucer puts 

 us on a plane w^here all men are equal, with souls to be 

 saved, and with another world in view that abolishes all 

 distinctions. By this choice, and by making the Host 

 of the Tabard always the central figure, he has happily 

 united the two most fiimiliar emblems of life, — the 

 short journey and the inn. We find more and more as 

 we study him that he rises quietly from the conventional 

 to the universal, and may fairly take his place with 

 Homer in virtue of the bi-eadth of his humanity. 



In spite of some external stains, which those who 



