local truth and freshness, which gives the very feeling of the air, the coolness or moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects are thus made to have a fellow-feeling in the interest of the story, and render back the sentiment of the speaker's mind. One of the finest parts of 1 Chaucer is of this mixed kind. It is the beginning of the Flower and the Leaf,' where he describes the delight of that young beauty, shrouded in her bower, and listening, in the morning of the year, to the singing of the nightingale, while her joy rises with the rising song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne along with the full tide of pleasure, and still increases, and repeats, and prolongs itself, and knows no ebb. The coolness of the arbour, its retirement, the early time of the day, the sudden starting up of the birds in the neighbouring bushes, the eager delight with which they devour and rend the opening buds and flowers, are expressed with a truth and feeling which make the whole appear like the recollection of an actual scene: 'Which as me thought was right a pleasant sight, And eke the briddes song for to here, Would haue rejoiced any earthly wight, 1 Mr. Henry Bradshaw, keeper of the public library at Cambridge, pronounces this poem not to be Chaucer's. - ED. And I that couth not yet in no manere 'And I that all this pleasaunt sight sie, There is no herte I deme in such despaire, And as I stood and cast aside mine eie, Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet 'And to the herber side was joyning This faire tree, of which I haue you told, 'The nightingale with so merry a note And ayen me thought she song euen by mine ere. 'Wherefore I waited about busily And at the last I gan full well as pie • Whereof I had so inly great pleasure, 'And more pleasaunt to me by manifold, 'And as I sat the birds harkening thus, That euer any wight I trow truly And sweet accord was in so good musike, There is here no affected rapture, no flowery sentiment; the whole is an ebullition of natural delight welling out of the heart' like water from a crystal spring. Nature is the soul of art; there is a strength as well as a simplicity in the imagination that reposes entirely on Nature, that nothing else can supply. It was the same trust in Nature, and reliance on his subject, which enabled Chaucer to describe the grief and patience of Griselda, the faith of Constance, and the heroic perseverance of the little child who, going to school through the streets of Jewry, 'Oh Alma redemptoris mater, loudly sung,' and who after his death still triumphed in his song. Chaucer has more of this deep, internal, sustained sentiment than any other writer except Boccaccio. In depth of simple pathos and intensity of conception, never swerving from his subject, I think no other writer comes near him, not even the Greek tragedians. I wish to be allowed to give one or two instances of what I mean. I will take the following from the Knight's Tale. The distress of Arcite, in consequence of his banishment from his love, is thus described : 'Whan that Arcite to Thebes comen was, And shortly to concluden all his wo, So mochel sorwe hadde never creature, That is or shall be, while the world may dure. His speche ne his vois, though men it herd.' This picture of the sinking of the heart, of the wasting away of the body and mind, of the gradual failure of all the faculties under the contagion of a rankling sorrow, cannot be surpassed. Of the same kind is his farewell to his mistress, after he has gained her hand and lost his life in the combat, 'Alas the wo! alas the peines stronge, That I for you have suffered, and so longe ! Alas the deth! alas min Emilie! Alas departing of our compagnie! Alas min hertes quene! alas my wif! Min hertes ladie, ender of my lif! What is this world? what axen men to have? Alone withouten any compagnie.' The death of Arcite is the more affecting as it comes after triumph and victory, after the . |