e schools and universities, as Dante did one hundred years
before. He tells us how monks and friars lived, not how they dreamed and
speculated. Nor are his sarcasms scorching and bitter, but rather
humorous and laughable. He shows himself to be a genial and loving
companion, not an austere teacher of disagreeable truths. He is not
solemn and intense, like Dante; he does not give wings to his fancy,
like Spenser; he has not the divine insight of Shakspeare; he is not
learned, like Milton; he is not sarcastic, like Pope; he does not rouse
the passions, like Byron; he is not meditative, like Wordsworth,--but he
paints nature with great accuracy and delicacy, as also the men and
women of his age, as they appeared in their outward life. He describes
the passion of love with great tenderness and simplicity. In all his
poems, love is his greatest theme,--which he bases, not on physical
charms, but the moral beauty of the soul. In his earlier life he does
not seem to have done full justice to women, whom he ridicules, but
does not despise; in whom he indeed sees the graces of chivalry, but not
the intellectual attraction of cultivated life. But later in life, when
his experiences are broader and more profound, he makes amends for his
former mistakes. In his "Legend of Good Women," which he wrote at the
command of Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II., he eulogizes the sex
and paints the most exalted sentiments of the heart. He not only had
great vividness in the description of his characters, but doubtless
great dramatic talent, which his age did not call out. His descriptions
of nature are very fresh and beautiful, indicating a great love of
nature,--flowers, trees, birds, lawns, gardens, waterfalls, falcons,
dogs, horses, with whom he almost talked. He had a great sense of the
ridiculous; hence his humor and fun and droll descriptions, which will
ever interest because they are so fresh and vivid. And as a poet he
continually improved as he advanced in life. His last works are his
best, showing the care and labor he bestowed, as well as his fidelity to
nature. I am amazed, considering his time, that he was so great an
artist without having a knowledge of the principles of art as taught by
the great masters of composition.

But, as has been already said, his distinguishing excellence is vivid
and natural description of the life and habits, not the opinions, of the
people of the fourteenth century, described without exaggeration o