Part 10 (1/2)

extols in preface and notes The longest of the passages in which reference is made by Spenser to Chaucer, under the pseudony the veneration of the younger for the older poet, and as testifying to the growing popularity of Chaucer at the tireat poet's debt to his revered predecessor in the ”Daphnaida” has been already inal nificence upon the whole foreign to Chaucer's genius; but Spenser owed so more than his archaic forms to ”tityrus,” hose style he had erst disclaimed all ae of his great epos he declares that it is through sweet infusion of the older poet's own spirit that he, the younger, follows the footing of his feet, in order so the rather toIt was this, the roht to catch from Chaucer, but which, like all those who consciously seek after it, he transmuted into a new quality and a neer With Spenser the change was into sohtier and loftier He would, we cannot doubt, readily have echoed the judg Chaucer ”I know not,”

writes Sir Philip Sidney, ”whether to marvel more, either that he in that e, walk so stuenerosity of a true critic, who is not lost in wonder at his own cleverness in discovering defects, ”great wants, fit to be forgiven in so reverent an antiquity” And yet a third Elizabethan, Michael Drayton, pure of tone and high of purpose, joins his voice to those of Spenser and Sidney, hailing in the ”noble Chaucer”

--the first of those that ever brake Into the Muses' treasure and first spake In weighty nument not reached by his and Chaucer's immediate successors, in his proper relation of poetic rank to his younger but greater contee Puttenharave and elaborate treatise, dedicated to Lord Burghley, on ”The Art of English Poesy” In this work lish poets;” and his learning, and ”the natural of his pleasant wit,” are alike judiciously commanded One of Puttenham's best qualities as a critic is that he never speaks without his book; and he coift when noticing his excellence in ”prosopographia,” a term which to Chaucer would perhaps have seemed to require translation At the obsoleteness of Chaucer's own diction this critic, rites entirely ”for the better brought-up sort,” is obliged to shake his learned head

Enough has been said in the preceding pages to support the opinion that a the wants which fell to the lot of Chaucer as a poet, perhaps the greatest (though Sidney would never have allowed this), was the want of poetic forifts The influence of Chaucer upon the drae was probably rather indirect and general than direct and personal; but indications or illustrations of it may be traced in a considerable nu the earliest Richard Edwards as the author of a non-extant tragedy, ”Pala the latest the author--or authors--of ”The Two noble Kinsmen” Besides Fletcher and Shakspere, Greene, Nash and Middleton, and ras; so that it is perhaps rather a proof of the widespread popularity of the ”Canterbury Tales” than the reverse, that they were not largely resorted to for materials by the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists Under Charles I ”Troilus and Cressid” found a translator in Sir Francis Kynaston, who made it possible ”that we read Chaucer noithout a dictionary” A personage however, in Cartwright's best known play, the Antiquary Moth, prefers to talk on his own account ”genuine”

Chaucerian English

To pursue the further traces of the influence of Chaucer through such a literary aftergrowth as the younger Fletchers, into the early poems of Milton, would be beyond the purpose of the present essay In the treasure-house of that great poet's athered h the subliions whither the iination of none of our earlier poets had preceded them On the other hand, the days have passed for attention to be spared for the treate, to which he was a barbarian only to be tolerated if put into the court-dress of the final period of civilisation Still, even thus, he was not left altogether unread; nor was he in all cases adapted without a certain our, and the frequent felicity, of Dryden's ”Fables”

contrast advantageously with the tame evenness of the ”Temple of Fah to irossest peculiarities of Chaucer's manner, but ould have been quite ashamed to reproduce him in a serious literary performance, without the inevitable polish and cadence of his own style of verse Later modernisations--even of those which a band of poets in soularly qualified for the task put forth in a collection published in the year 1841, and which, on the part of some of them at least, was the result of conscientious endeavour--it is needless to characterise here Slight incidental use has been made of soladly have abstained frole modernised phrase or word-- The time cannot be far distant when even the least unsuccessful of such atteer be accepted, because no such attelish or very laborious apprenticeshi+p in order to become able to read, understand, and enjoy what Chaucer himself wrote But if this apprenticeshi+p be too hard, then some sort of makeshi+ft must be accepted, or antiquity reat national poet, as Spenser said it had already in his day proved to be of Chaucer

Meanwhile, since our poetic literature has long thrown off the shackles which forced it to adhere to one particular group of lish poet who should re his predecessors If Chaucer has again, in a special sense, beco poets, in a wider sense he must hold this relation to the as he continues to be known and understood As it is, there are feorthies of our literature whose na world a readier sentiland, where the earliest great poet of Old England is cherished not less war had thus lie within a park; The chamber walls depicted all around With portraiture of huntsman, hawk and hound, And the hurt deer He listeneth to the lark, Whose song colass in leaden lattice bound; He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, Then writeth in a book like any clerk

He is the poet of the darote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Made beautiful with song; and as I read I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note Of lark and linnet, and frohed field or flowery mead

GLOSSARY

Bencite = benedicite

Clepe, call

Deene, fit;--disdainful

Frere, friar

Gentle, well-born