SHAKESPEARE AND CHAUCER 73 



it into words ? If he did, what a ridiculous, extrava- 

 gant person he would seem, to be sure! But, as I 

 have already hinted, it is possible that Chaucer, albeit 

 so great intellectually, was nearer to primitive man 

 physically than we are in the acuteness of his senses 

 and child-like delight in sights and sounds and smells. 



I am tempted to go a little further with this subject, 

 as in taxing my memory for some adequate expression 

 concerning the sweet-briar, I can only recall these 

 lines from Shakespeare and Chaucer — these two who 

 are never coupled. They are not the tivo greatest in 

 our poetic literature, but to me they are the greatest, 

 and one I worship and the other I love. Alike in 

 their all-embracing view of humanity and power of 

 characterisation, they are yet wide apart as East 

 from West in spirit. One would say off-hand that 

 the contrary of this is the truth; that they are alike 

 in spirit, since only in virtue of great sympathy and 

 love for their fellows — with the insight that comes of 

 genius — could they have produced all that crowd of 

 wonderfully true portraits that adorn their galleries. 



Nevertheless, to me they differ essentially in feeling. 

 It was sympathy and love with insight in one, and 

 pure intellect with simulated sympathy in the other. 



There's Hamlet sickened o'er with the pale cast of 

 thought, and there's gross Falstaff with his rapscallion 

 followers and his old friend Justice Shallow; and 

 there's Malvolio and Richard the Second, and pas- 

 sionate Romeo, and the melancholy Jaques, and old 

 crazed King Lear, and many, many more. They are 

 an immense crowd, for they have now come down out 



