April — His Description of Spring. 105 



no landscape art but such as existed in the backgrounds 

 of illuminated manuscripts or the sylvan scenery of 

 hunting-pieces in mediaeval tapestry, who had read no 

 literature in which the landscape sentiment was more 

 developed than it is in the Eclogues of Virgil, should 

 have felt as Chaucer felt, and seen what he perceived. 

 I do not mean that he wrote from the landscape-painter's 

 point of view, for that has only been done by quite 

 recent poets, and the attempt has in most instances been 

 injurious to their compositions as literature, which is not 

 painting, and ought not to imitate painting ; but I mean, 

 that to any one who thoroughly realizes what Chaucer's 

 situation was, it must be matter of astonishment that he 

 loved Nature with such intensity. There is a sort of 

 quiet enjoyment of Nature in the classical pastorals. 

 Theocritus and Virgil evidently liked a country life, and 

 they mention different kinds of trees and shrubs, and a 

 few flowers, with a tranquil contentment that occasion- 

 ally becomes almost affectionate ; but they have nothing 

 like Chaucer's passion. The note of the following ex- 

 tract from ' The Flower and the Leaf ' may, it is true, 

 seem delicate and tender rather than passionate, yet its 

 tenderness is passion in repose : — 



* When shoures sweet of raine descended soft, 

 Causing the grounde fele times and oft 

 Up for to give many an wholesome aire, 

 And every plaine was clothed faire 



1 With new grene, and maketh small floures 

 To springen here and there in field and mede, 

 So very good and wholesome be the shoures 



