light of a smile is diffused over it.

In face and turn

of genius he differs in every respect from his successor, Spenser; and in truth, in Chaucer and Spenser we see the fountains of the two main streams of British song: the one flowing through the drama and the humorous narrative, the other through the epic and the didactic poem. Chaucer rooted himself firmly in fact, and looked out upon the world in a half humorous, half melancholy mood. Spenser had but little knowledge of men as men; the cardinal virtues were the personages he was acquainted with; in everything he was "high fantastical," and, as a consequence, he exhibits neither humour nor pathos. Chaucer was thoroughly national; his characters, place them where he may-in Thebes or Tartary— are natives of one or other of the English shires. Spenser's genius was country-less as Ariel; search ever so diligently, you will not find an English daisy in all his enchanted forests. Chaucer was tolerant of everything, the vices not excepted; morally speaking, an easy-going man, he took the world as it came, and did not fancy himself a whit better than his fellows. Spenser was a Platonist, and fed his grave spirit on high speculations and moralities. Severe and chivalrous, dreaming of things to come, unsuppled by luxury, unenslaved by passion, somewhat scornful and self-sustained, it needed but a tyrannous king, an electrical political atmosphere, and a deeper interest in theology, to make a Puritan of him, as these things

made a Puritan of Milton. The differences between Chaucer and Spenser are seen at a glance in their portraits. Chaucer's face is round, good-humoured, constitutionally pensive, and thoughtful. You see in it that he has often been amused, and that he may easily be amused again. Spenser's is of sharper and keener feature, disdainful, and breathing that severity which appertains to so many of the Elizabethan men. A fourteenth-century child, with delicate prescience, would have asked Chaucer to assist her in a strait, and would not have been disappointed. A sixteenthcentury child in like circumstances would have shrunk from drawing on herself the regards of the sterner-looking man. We can trace the descent of the Chaucerian face and genius in Shakspeare and Scott, of the Spenserian in Milton and Wordsworth. In our own day, Mr Browning takes after Chaucer, Mr Tennyson takes after Spenser.

Hazlitt, writing of the four great English poets, tells us, Chaucer's characteristic is intensity, Spenser's remoteness, Milton's sublimity, and Shakspeare's everything. The sentence is epigrammatic and memorable enough; but so far as Chaucer is concerned, it requires a little explanation. He is not intense, for instance, as Byron is intense, or as Wordsworth is intense. He does not see man like the one, nor nature like the other. He would not have cared much for either of these poets. And yet, so far as straightforwardness in dealing with a subject, and complete

though quiet realisation of it goes to make up intensity of poetic mood, Chaucer amply justifies his critic. There is no wastefulness or explosiveness about the old writer. He does his work silently, and with no appearance of effort. His poetry shines upon us like a May morning, but the streak over the eastern hill, the dew on the grass, the wind that bathes the brows of the wayfarer are not there by hap-hazard; they are the results of occult forces, a whole solar system has had a hand in their production. From the apparent ease with which an artist works, one does not readily give him credit for the mental force he is continuously putting forth. To many people a chaotic "Festus" is more wonderful than a rounded, melodious "Princess." The load which a strong man bears gracefully does not seem so heavy as the load which the weaker man staggers under. Incompletion is force fighting; completion is force quiescent, its work done. Nature's forces are patent enough in some scarred volcanic moon in which no creature can breathe; only the sage, in some soft green earth, can discover the same forces reft of fierceness and terror, and translated into sunshine and falling dew, and the rainbow gleaming on the shower, It is somewhat in this way that the propriety of Hazlitt's criticism is to be vindicated. Chaucer is the most simple, natural, and homely of our poets, and whatever he attempts he does thoroughly. The Wife of Bath is so distinctly limned

that she could sit for her portrait. You can count the embroidered sprigs in the jerkin of the squire. You hear the pilgrims laugh as they ride to Canterbury. The whole thing is admirably life-like and seems easy, and in the seeming easiness we are apt to forget the imaginative sympathy which bodies forth the characters, and the joy and sorrow from which that sympathy has drawn nurture. Unseen by us the ore has been dug, and smelted in secret furnaces, and when it is poured into perfect moulds, we are apt to forget by what potency the whole thing has been brought about.

And, with his noticing eyes, into what a brilliant, many-tinted world was Chaucer born. In his day life had a certain breadth, colour, and picturesqueness which it does not possess now. It wore a braver dress, and flaunted more in the sun. Five centuries effect a great change on manners. A man may nowa-days, and without the slightest suspicion of the fact, brush clothes with half the English peerage on a sunny afternoon in Pall Mall. Then it was quite different. The fourteenth century loved magnificence and show. Great lords kept princely state in the country; and when they came abroad, what a retinue, what waving of plumes, and shaking of banners, and glittering of rich dresses! Religion was picturesque, with dignitaries and cathedrals, and fuming incense, and the Host carried through the streets. The franklin kept open house, the city merchant feasted

kings, the outlaw roasted his venison beneath the

greenwood tree.

a gallant court.

There was a gallant monarch and

The eyes of the Countess of Salisbury shed influence; Maid Marian laughed in Sherwood. London is already a considerable place, numbering, perhaps, two hundred thousand inhabitants, the houses clustering close and high along the river banks; and on the beautiful April nights the nightingales are singing round the suburban villages of Strand, Holborn, and Charing. It is rich withal; for after the battle of Poitiers, Harry Picard, winemerchant and Lord Mayor, entertained in the city four kings, to wit, Edward, king of England, John, king of France, David, king of Scotland, and the king of Cyprus,—and the last-named potentate, slightly heated with Harry's wine, engaged him at dice, and being nearly ruined thereby, the honest wine-merchant returned the poor king his money, which was received with all thankfulness. There is great stir on a summer's morning in that Warwickshire castle-pawing of horses, tossing of bridles, clanking of spurs. The old lord climbs at last into his saddle, and rides off to court, his favourite falcon on his wrist, four squires in immediate attendance carrying his arms, and behind these stretches a merry cavalcade, on which the chestnuts shed their milky blossoms. In the absence of the old peer, young Hopeful spends his time as befits his rank and expectations. He grooms his steed, plays with his hawks, feeds his hounds, and