A LIVING COMPANION 75 



a romantic savagery more offensive to common sense 

 than the fantastic conventions of the seventeenth 

 century: and finally the Victorian giants who long 

 survived these offensive ones — great Browning, cheer- 

 ful in his white tie and shirt front; Tennyson, now 

 under a cloud, sad and prophetic like the Druids of 

 old, with beard that rests on his bosom; and last to 

 follow, Swinburne, tattooed all over with beautiful 

 female faces in rainbow colours, still valorously piping 

 on his shrill everlasting pipe. Dead — dead are they 

 all! But if you think of Chaucer as dead you are 

 greatly mistaken; and when you read him you need 

 not reflect mournfully, as you would in the case of 

 another, that he no longer treads this green earth; 

 that he who was most alive and loved life more than 

 all men is now lying in the colde grave, alone, 

 withouten any companie. 



I know it, because I am so often with him, walking 

 in many a crowded thoroughfare, watching the faces 

 of the passers-by with an enduring interest in their 

 individual lives and characters. But I appreciate his 

 company and love him best amid all rural scenes, 

 especially in early spring, when we together delight 

 our souls with the sight of the glad light green of 

 the opening oak leaves and the cold fresh wholesome 

 smells of earth and grass and herbage. He alone at 

 such times is capable of expressing what I feel. Read- 

 ing Wordsworth and Ruskin, nature appears to me 

 as a picture — it has no sound, no smell, no feel. In 

 Chaucer you have it all in its fullest expression; he 

 alone is capable of saying, in some open woodland 



