contemptible: he owes his celebrity merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve so well as Pierce Plowman, or Thomas of Erceldoune.-BYRON, LORD, 1807, Detached Thoughts. For variety of power has no competitor except Shakspeare.-SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1811, Letter to Landor, Life and Correspondence, ch. xvi. In the passages where Chaucer dramatises the manners of his day, or carries the voice of nature to the heart, or exhibits his characters and incidents as if passing in living motion before us, he produces an interest which neither the little feebleness that even here intermingle themselves, nor their unpruned prolixity, can destroy; but beyond these, he, like Gower, is dull, unmeaning now, and unreadable. Few poets have written so much, which so few desire to peruse or attempt to disturb.-TURNER, SHARON, 1814-23, The History of England During the Middle Ages, vol. v, p. 331. In the fourteenth century Chaucer's verse is not unlike our homely rhymesters of the sixteenth century in Germany. SCHLEGEL, FREDERICK, 1815, Lectures on the History of Literature, ed. Bohn, p. 273. My admiration for him is very ardent. His poetry seems to me so healthy, so vigorous, so much in the thought, and so little in the expression; his powers are so various, so pliable, ranging at will from the thrilling pathos of Griselda to the wild fancy of "Cambuscan bold." Setting Milton and Shakspeare aside, I am not sure that I don't prefer him to almost any writer in the circle of English poetry. I speak, of course, of his best works, and not of his poems en masse; but two or three of his "Canterbury Tales, " and some select passages from his other productions, are worth all that the age of Queen Anne, our Augustan age as it has been called, ever produced.MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL, 1815, Letters, -Life ed. L'Estrange, vol. 1, p. 239. I cannot, in my own taste, go completely along with the eulogies that some have bestowed upon Chaucer, who seems to me to have wanted grandeur, where he is original, both in conception and in language. But in vivacity of imagination and ease of expression, he is above all poets of the middle time, and comparable perhaps to the greatest of those who have followed. He invented, or rather introduced from France, and employed with facility the regular iambic couplet; and though it was not to be expected that he should perceive the capacities latent in that measure, his versification, to which he accommodated a very licentious and arbitrary pronunciation, is uniform and harmonious.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1818, View of the State of Europe During the Middle Ages, ch. ix, Part II. His poetry resembles the root just springing from the ground rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no "babbling 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 ob jects, 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. --HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1818, Lectures on the English Poets, Lecture ii. In what terms some speak of him! while I confess I find him unreadable.--MOORE, THOMAS, 1819, Diary, Memoirs, ed. Russell, vol. II, p. 290. I would rather read Chaucer than Ariosto. KEATS, JOHN, 1819, Letters, ed. Colvin, p. 333. loved Bard! whose spirit often dwelt In the clear land of vision O great Precursor, genuine morning Star. WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, 1821-22, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, pt i, xxxi. He is famed rather as the animated painter of character, and manners, and external nature, than the poet of love and sentiment; and yet no writer, Shakespeare always excepted, (and perhaps Spenser) contains so many beautiful and tender passages relating to, or inspired by, women. JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL, 1829, The Loves of the Poets, vol. I, p. 137. It is idle at this day to say any thing of the moral influence of Chaucer: we might as well enlarge upon the absurdity of the Koran.-PEABODY, WILLIAM B. O., 1830, Studies in Poetry, Literary Remains, p. 10. I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my old age. How exquisitely tender he is, and yet how perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melancholy or morbid drooping! The sympathy of the poet with the subjects of his poetry is particularly remarkable in Shakspere and Chaucer; but what the first effects by a strong act of imagination and mental metamorphosis, the last does without any effort, merely by the inborn kindly joyousness of his nature. How well we seem to know Chaucer! How absolutely nothing do we know of Shakspere! COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1834, Table Talk, March 15. The line of English poets begins with him, as that of English kings with William the Conqueror; and if the change introduced by him was not so great, his title is better. Kings there were before the conquest, and of great and glorious memory too; but the poets before Chaucer are like the heroes before Agamemnon; even of those whose works have escaped oblivion, the names of most have perished. Father Chaucer, throwing off all trammels, simplified our verse. Nature had given him the ear and the eye and the imagination of a poet; and his diction was such as that of all great poets has ever been, and ever will be, in all countries, neither cramped by pedantic rules, vitiated by prevailing fashions, nor raised on stilts, nor drooping for want of strength, but rising and falling with the subject, and always suited to it. -SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1835, Life of Cowper, Bohn ed., p. 295. The English language of Chaucer is far from possessing the polish of old French, *Ballads. which already attains some degree of perfection in this* minor species of literature. Nevertheless, the idiom of the Anglo-Saxon poet, a heterogeneous medley of various dialects, has become the stock of modern English.-DE CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANÇOIS RENÉ, VICOMTE, 1837, Sketches of English Literature, vol. I, p. 99. That Chaucer was a master of English versification no one, that reads him with due care and attention, can well doubt. There are many passages in his works, which, from the agreement of MSS. and the absence of all those peculiarities of structure that leave matter for doubt, have, in all probability, come down to us as Chaucer wrote them-and in these the versification is as exquisite as the poetry. It needs not the somewhat suspicious apology of Dryden. I am not one of those who assert, that Chaucer has always "ten syllables in a verse, where we find but nine;" but I am as far from believing, that "he lived in the infancy of our poetry," because the scheme of his metre somewhat differs from our own. As far as we have the means of judging, it was not only "auribus istius temporis accommodata," but fulfilled every requisite that modern criticism has laid down, as either essential to the science, or conducive to the beauty of a versification. GUEST, EDWIN, 1838, A History of English Rhythms, vol. II, p. 237. Chaucer excels in pathos, in humor, in satire, character, and description. His graphic faculty, and healthy sense of the material, strongly ally him to the painter; and perhaps a better idea could not be given of his universality than by saying that he was at once the Italian and the Flemish painter of his time, and exhibited the pure expression of Raphael, the devotional intensity of Domenechino, the color and corporeal fire of Titian, the manners of Hogarth, and the homely domesticities of Ostade and Teniers! His faults are coarseness, which was that of his age; and, in some of his poems, tediousness, which is to be attributed to the same cause.-HUNT, LEIGH, 1840, Specimens of Chaucer, No. I., The Seer; or, Common-places Refreshed. The herculean labor of Chaucer was the creation of a new style. In this he was as fortunate as he was likewise unhappy. He mingled, with the native rudeness of our English, words of Provencal fancy, and some of French and of Latin growth. He banished the superannuated and the uncouth, and softened the churlish nature of our hard Anglo-Saxon; but the poet had nearly endangered the novel diction when his artificial pedantry assumed what he called "the ornate style" in "the Romaunt of the Rose" and in his "Troilus and Cressida." This "ornate style" introduced sesquipedalian Latinisms, words of immense dimensions, that could not hide their vacuity of thought. Chaucer seems deserted by his genius when "the ornate style" betrays his pangs and his anxiety. Are the works of our great poet to be consigned to the literary dungeon of the antiquary's closet? I fear that there is more than one obstruction which intervenes between the poet's name, which will never die, and the poet's works, which will never be read.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1841, Chaucer, Amenities of Literature. Now, what was the character of Chaucer's diction? A great delusion exists on that point. Some ninety or one hundred words that are now obsolete, certainly not many more, vein the whole surface of Chaucer; and thus a primâ facie impression is conveyed that Chaucer is difficult to understand, whereas a very slight practice familiarises his language. -DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, 1841, Homer and the Homerida, Collected Writings, ed. Masson, vol. VI, p. 70. Had Chaucer's poems been written in Greek or Hebrew, they would have been a thousand times better known. Our position is, that Chaucer was a most harmonious and melodious poet, and that he was a perfect master of the various forms of versification in which he wrote; that the principle on which his rhythm is founded fuses and subjects within itself all the minor details of metre; that this principle, though it has been understood only by the few, and never systematically explained, is, more or less, inseparable from the composition of an harmonious. versification in the English language; and that he, the first man, if not unrivalled in the varied music of his verse, has scarcely been surpassed by any succeeding poet. Of the occasional deficiencies or "lameness" in his verse, of which Chaucer has been accused, it is hoped that little need now be said. In the first place, we are to allow for his quantities, so far as we know them, or can feasibly conjecture what they were. In the second place, we are to give to a great poet who has accomplished so much harmony which is manifest, due credit for many instances where we are unable to perceive it, from our deficiency of knowledge. Thirdly, we are to allow for the errors of copyists, of whose ungodly pens Chaucer shows himself to be in much dread,in his address to Adam Scrivener, his amanuensis, and on other occasions. It might be suggested, fifthly, that something should be allowed for the unsettled condition of the English language at his time, and that it was accounted an accomplishment for a man to be able even to write his own name. But this consideration I do not care to dwell upon in the case of one who shows such mastery.HORNE, R. H., 1841, The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer Modernized, Introduction, pp. v, xxxviii, lxxvi. He was made for an early poet, and the metaphors of dawn and spring doubly become him. He is a king and inherits the earth, and expands his great soul smilingly to embrace his great heritage. Nothing is too high for him to touch with a thought, nothing too low to dower with an affection. As a complete creature cognate of life and death, he cries upon God, as a sympathetic creature he singles out a daisy from the universe (si douce est la marguerite, ") to lie down by half a summer's day and bless it for fellowship. His senses are open and delicate, like a young child'shis sensibilities capacious of supersensual relations, like an experienced thinker's. Child-like, too, his tears and smiles lie at the edge of his eyes, and he is one proof more among the many, that the deepest pathos and the quickest gayeties hide together in the same nature. too wakeful and curious to lose the stirring of a leaf, yet not too wide awake to see visions of green and white ladies between the branches; and a fair house of fame and a noble court of love are built and holden in the winking of his eyelash. Not one of the "Queen Anne's men," measuring out tuneful breath upon their fingers, like ribbons for topnots, He is did know the art of versification as the old rude Chaucer knew it. Call him rude for the picturesqueness of the epithet; but his verse has, at least, as much regularity in the sense of true art, and more manifestly in proportion to our increasing acquaintance with his dialect and pronunciation, as can be discovered dreamed in the French school.-BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, 1843-63, The Book of the Poets, pp. 111, 113. or And Chaucer, with his infantine To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee, It may be safely asserted that very few poets in any modern language are more exquisitely and uniformly musical than Chaucer. SHAW, THOMAS B., 1847, Outlines of English Literature, p. 37. read the works of both.-TICKNOR, GEORGE, 1849-91, History of Spanish Literature, vol. 1, p. 92. The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in all our early literature; and, more recently, not only Pope and Dryden have been beholden to him, but, in the whole society of English writers, a large unacknowledged debt is easily traced. One is charmed with the opulence which feeds. so many pensioners. But Chaucer is a huge borrower. Chaucer, it seems, drew continually, through Lydgate and Caxton, from Guido di Colonna, whose Latin romance of the Trojan war was in turn a compilation from Dares Phrygius, Ovid and Statius. Then Petrarch, Boccaccio and the Provençal poets, are his benefactors: the Romaunt of the Rose is only judicious translation from William of Lorris and John of Meun: Troilus and Creseide, from Lollius of Urbino: The Cock and the Fox, from the Lais of Marie: The House of Fame, from the French or Italian: and poor Gower he uses as if he were only a brick-kiln or stone-quarry, out of which to build his house. He steals by this apology,-that what he takes has no worth where he finds it, and the greatest where he leaves it.— EMERSON, RALPH WALDO, 1850, Shakespeare; or, the Poet, Representative Men. Grey with all honours of age! but freshfeatured and ruddy As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere. Tender to tearfulness-childlike, and manly and motherly; Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English ground hap--MEREDITH, GEORGE, 1851, Poems, Works, vol. xxxi. What strikes us most, however, and remains with us longest after reading his* poetry, is the natural and spirited tone that prevails over every other. In this he is like Chaucer, who wrote in the latter part of the same century. Indeed, the resemblance between the two poets is remarkable in some other particulars. Both often sought their materials in the Northern French poetry; both have that mixture of devotion and a licentious immorality, much of which belonged to their age, but some of it to their personal characters; and both show a wide knowledge of human nature, and a great piness in sketching the details of individual manners. The original temper of each made him satirical and humorous; and each, in his own country, became the founder of some of the forms of its popular poetry, introducing new metres and combinations, and carrying them out in a versification which, though generally rude and irregular, is often flowing and nervous, and always natural. The Archpriest has not, indeed, the tenderness, the elevation, or the general power of Chaucer; but his genius has a compass, and his verse a skill and success, that show him to be more nearly akin to the great English master than will be believed, except by those who have carefully *Archpriest of Hita. Indeed I do admire him, or rather love him. In my opinion, he is fairly worth a score or two of Spensers. He had a knowledge of human nature, and not of doll-making and fantoccini dressing. Pardon me if I say I would rather see Chaucer quite alone, in the dew of his sunny morning, than with twenty clever gentlefolks about him, arranging his shoestrings and buttoning his doublet. I like even his language. I will have no hand in breaking his dun but rich-painted glass, to put in (if clearer) much thinner panes. -LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE, 1851, Letter to R. H. Horne, Letters of Mrs. Browning, vol. 1, p. 78. If any man or woman will not take the trifling trouble which is necessary to understand Chaucer's antique orthography, let them be ignorant. The last "Minerva" novel will prove metal more attractive to such painstaking "students of English Literature."-ALLIBONE, S. AUSTIN, 185458, Dictionary of English Literature, vol. I, p. 374. rich as Chaucer's speech. -DOBELL, SYDNEY, 1855, America, Sonnets on the War. Ah! Dan Chaucer!-art thou he, Highest hill - touched first with fire. ARNOLD, SIR EDWIN, 1856, Alla Mano Della Mia Donna. On every page and every line of his writings, a reminiscence of our trouvères betrays itself, sometimes veiled, sometimes apparent. SANDRAS, E.-G., 1859, Etude sur G. Chaucer considéré comme Imitateur des Trouvères. He is in Compared with his productions, all that precedes is barbarism. But what is much more remarkable is that very little of what has followed in the space of nearly five centuries that has elapsed since he lived and wrote is worthy of being compared with what he has left us. our English poetry almost what Homer is in that of Greece, and Dante in that of Italy, at least in his own sphere still the greatest light.-CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. I, p. 267. From this Babylonish confusion of speech, the influence and example of Chaucer did more to rescue his native tongue than any other single cause; and if we compare his dialect with that of any writer of an earlier date, we shall find that in compass, flexibility, expressiveness, grace, and all the higher qualities of poetical diction, he gave it at once the utmost perfection which the materials at his hand would admit of. . . . In the hands of Chaucer, the English language advanced, at one bound, to that superiority over the French which it has ever since maintained, as a medium of the expression of poetical imagery and thought. Chaucer, in fine, was a genuine product of the union of Saxon and Norman genius, and the first well-characterized specimen of the intellectual results of a combination, which has given to the world a literature so splendid, and a history so noble. . . . May fairly be said to be not only the earliest dramatic genius of modern Europe, but to have been a dramatist before that which is technically known as the existing drama was invented.-MARSH, GEORGE P., 1862, The Origin and History of the English Language, etc., pp. 381, 390, 401, 419. And Chaucer is admitted on all hands to be a great poet, but, by the general public at least, he is not frequently read. He is like a cardinal virtue, a good deal talked about, a good deal praised, honoured by a vast amount of distant admiration, but with little practical acquaintance. for this there are many and obvious reasons. He is an ancient, and the rich old mahogany is neglected for the new and glittering veneer. He is occasionally gross; often tedious and obscure; he frequently leaves a couple of lovers to cite the opinions of Greek and Roman authors; and practice and patience are required to melt the frost of his orthography, and let his music flow freely. In the conduct of his stories he is garrulous, homely, and slow-paced. He wrote in a leisurely world, when there was plenty of time for writing and reading; long before the advent of the printer's devil or of Mr. Mudie. There is little of the lyrical element in him. He does not dazzle by sentences. He is not quotable. He does not shine in extracts so much as in entire poems. There is a pleasant equality about his writing: he advances through a story at an even pace, glancing round him on everything with curious, humorous eyes, and having his say about everything. He is the prince of story-tellers, and however much he may move others, he is not moved himself. His mood is so kindly that he seems always to have written after dinner, or after hearing good news-that he had received from the king another grant of wine, for instance-and he discourses of love and lovers' raptures, and the disappointments of life, half sportively, half sadly, like one who has passed through all, felt the sweetness and the bitterness of it, and been able to strike a balance. SMITH, ALEXANDER, 1863, Dreamthorp, p. 211. Chaucer is the genuine specimen of an English poet-a type of the best who, |