CHAUCER. 281 



cer's sights and sounds ; we listen to Spenser's musical 

 reproduction of them. In the same way, the pleasure 

 which Chaucer takes in telling his stories has in itself 

 the effect of consummate skill, and makes us follow all 

 the windings of his fancy with sympathetic interest. His 

 best tales run on like one of our inland rivers, sometimes 

 hastening a little and turning upon themselves in eddies 

 that dimple without retarding the current ; sometimes 

 loitering smoothly, while here and there a quiet thought, 

 a tender feeling, a pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse, 

 opens quietly as a water-lily, to float on the surface with- 

 out breaking it into ripple. The vulgar intellectual pal- 

 ate hankers after the titillation of foaming phrase, and 

 thinks nothing good for much that does not go off with a 

 pop like a champagne cork. The mellow suavity of more 

 precious vintages seems insipid : but the taste, in pro- 

 portion as it refines, learns to appreciate the indefinable 

 flavor, too subtile for analysis. A manner has prevailed 

 of late in which every other word seems to be under- 

 scored as in a school-girl's letter. The poet seems intent 

 on showing his sinew, as if the power of the slim Apollo 

 lay in the girth of his biceps. Force for the mere sake 

 of force ends like Milo, caught and held mockingly fast 

 by the recoil of the log he undertook to rive. In the race 

 of fame, there are a score capable of brilliant spurts for 

 one who comes in winner after a steady pull with wind 

 and muscle to spare. Chaucer never shows any signs of 

 effort, and it is a main proof of his excellence that he can 

 be so inadequately sampled by detached passages, — by 

 single lines taken away from the connection in which 

 they contribute to the general effect. He has that con- 

 tinuity of thought, that evenly prolonged power, and that 

 delightful equanimity, which characterize the higher 

 orders of mind. There is something in him of the disin- 

 terestedness that made the Greeks masters in art. His 



