gentlest
that ever sat in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest Knight
to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.'

Beautiful again, I grant! But note you that, eloquent as he can be on the
virtues of his dead friend, when Sir Ector comes to the thought of death
itself all he can accomplish is, 'And now I dare say that, Sir Lancelot,
there thou liest.'

Let us make a leap in time and contrast this with Tyndale and the
translators of our Bible, how they are able to make St Paul speak of
death:--

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this
mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass
the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O
death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

There you have something clean beyond what Malory or Berners could
compass: there you have a different kind of high moment--a high moment of
philosophising: there you have emotion impregnated with thought. It was
necessary that our English verse even after Chaucer, our English prose
after Malory and Berners, should overcome this most difficult gap (which
stands for a real intellectual difference) if it aspired to be what
to-day it is--a language of the first class, comparable with Greek and
certainly no whit inferior to Latin or French.

* * * * *

Let us leave prose for a moment, and see how Verse threw its bridge over
the gap. If you would hear the note of Chaucer at its deepest, you will
find it in the famous exquisite lines of the Prioress' Prologue:--

O moder mayde! O mayde moder fre!
O bush unbrent, brenning in Moyses' sight!

in the complaint of Troilus, in the rapture of Griselda restored to her
children:--

O tendre, O dere, O yonge children myne,
Your woful moder wende stedfastly
That cruel houndes or some foul vermyne
Hadde eten you; but God of his mercy
And your benigne fader tendrely
Hath doon you kept...

You will find a note quite as sincere in many a carol, many a ballad, of
that time:--

He came al so still
There his mother was,
As dew in April
That falleth on the grass.

He came al so still
To his mother's bour,
As dew in April
That falleth on the flour.

He came al so still
There his mother lay,
As dew in April
That falleth on the spray.

Mother and mai