te goddesse, wel wostow that I
Desire to been a mayden al my lyf,
Ne never wol I be no love ne wyf.

I am, thou woost, yet of thy companye,
A mayde, and love hunting and venerye,
And for to walken in the wodes wilde,
And noght to been a wyf, and be with childe..."

Or of these two from the Prioresses' Prologue:

"O moder mayde! O mayde moder free!
O bush unbrent, brenninge in Moyses sighte..."

Or of these from the general Prologue--also thoroughly poetical,
though the quality differs:

"Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse,
That of hir smyling was ful simple and coy;
Hir gretteste ooth was but by seynt Loy;
And she was cleped madame Eglentyne.
Ful wel she song the service divyne,
Entuned in hir nose ful semely;
And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly,
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe..."

Now the essential quality of this and of all very great poetry is also
what we may call a _universal_ quality; it appeals to those sympathies
which, unequally distributed and often distorted or suppressed, are
yet the common possessions of our species. This quality is the real
antiseptic of poetry: this it is that keeps a line of Homer
perennially fresh and in bloom:--

+"Hos phato tous d' ede katechen physizoos aia
en Lakedaimoni authi, phile en patridi gaie."+

These lines live because they contain something which is also
permanent in man: they depend confidently on us, and will as
confidently depend on our great-grandchildren. I was glad to see this
point very courageously put the other day by Professor Hiram Corson,
of Cornell University, in an address on "The Aims of Literary
Study"--an address which Messrs. Macmillan have printed and published
here and in America. "All works of genius," says Mr. Corson, "render
the best service, in literary education, when they are first
assimilated in their absolute character. It is, of course, important
to know their relations to the several times and places in which they
were produced; but such knowledge is not for the tyro in literary
study. He must first know literature, if he is constituted so to know
it, in its absolute character. He can go into the philosophy of its
relationships later, if he like, when he has a true literary
education, and when the 'years that bring the philosophic mind' have
been reached. Every great production of g