"Have ye not seen somtime a pale face So stant Custance, and loketh hire aboute." The beauty, the pathos here does not seem to be of the poet's seeking, but a part of the necessary texture of the fable. He speaks of what he wishes to describe with the accuracy, the discrimination of one who relates what has happened to himself, or has had the best information from those who have been eye-witnesses of it. The strokes of his pencil always tell. He dwells only on the essential, on that which would be interesting to the persons really concerned: yet as he never omits any material circumstance, he is prolix from the number of points on which he touches, without being diffuse on any one; and is sometimes tedious from the fidelity with which he adheres to his subject, as other writers are from the frequency of their digressions from it. The chain of his story is composed of a number of fine links, closely connected together, and riveted by a single blow. There is an instance of the minuteness which he introduces into his most serious descriptions in his account of Palamon when left alone in his cell: "Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grete tour The mention of this last circumstance seemed a part of the instructions he had to follow, which he had no discretionary power to omit or introduce at pleasure. He is contented to find grace and beauty in truth. He exhibits for the most part the naked object, with little drapery thrown over it. His metaphors, which are few, are not for ornament, but use, and as like as possible to the things themselves. He does not affect to shew his power over the reader's mind, but the power which his subject has over his own. The readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly what the persons he describes must have felt, than perhaps those of any other poet. His sentiments are not voluntary effusions of the poet's fancy, but founded on the natural impulses and habitual prejudices of the characters he has to represent. There is an inveteracy of purpose, a sincerity of feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid, in whatever they do or say. There is no artificial, pompous display, but a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing from the ground, rather than the fullblown flower. His muse is no His muse is no "blabbling gossip of the air," fluent and redundant; but, like a stammerer, or a dumb person, that has just found the use of speech, crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and fond repetitions to prevent mistake. His words point as an index to the objects, like the eye or finger. There were none of the common-places of poetic diction in our author's time, no reflected lights of fancy, no borrowed roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things for himself, to look narrowly, and almost to handle the object, as in the obscurity of morning we partly see and partly grope our way; so that his descriptions have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce the effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of nature and discrimination of character; and his interest in what he saw gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation. The picturesque and the dramatic are in him closely blended together, and hardly distinguishable; for he principally describes external appearances as indicating character, as symbols of internal sentiment. There is a meaning in what he sees; and it is this which catches his eye by sympathy. Thus the costume and dress of the Canterbury Pilgrims-of the Knight -the Squire the Oxford Scholar--the Gaptoothed Wife of Bath, and the rest, speak for themselves. To take one or two of these at random: "There was also a nonne, a Prioresse, That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy; And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly, And sikerly she was of great disport, But for to speken of hire conscience, Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was; Hire nose tretis; hire eyen grey as glas; Hire mouth ful smale; and therto soft and red; But sickerly she hadde a fayre forehed. It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe." "A Monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie, An out-rider, that loved venerie : A manly man, to ben an abbot able. Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable: And whan he rode, men mighte his bridel here, The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit, And held after the newe world the trace. He yave not of the text a pulled hen, I saw his sleves purfiled at the hond With gris, and that the finest of the lond. |