ble
favor; of modern famous authors, they only have condemned it from whose
work, or from what is known of their personal character, we may justly
infer an equal aversion to pretty much everything in the way of pleasure
that a Christian needs not die in order to enjoy English literature--I
use the word in its noble sense, to exclude all manner of preaching,
whether clerical or lay--is full of the dance; the sound of merry makers
footing it featly to the music runs like an undertone through all the
variations of its theme and fills all its pauses.

In the "Miller's Tale," Chaucer mentions dancing among the
accomplishments of the parish clerk, along with blood letting and the
drawing of legal documents:

A merry child he was so God me save,
Wel coud he leten blood and clippe and shave,
And make a chartre of land, and a quitance,
In twenty maners could he trip and dance,
After the scole of Oxenforde tho
And with his legges casten to and fro[A]

[Footnote A: On this passage Tyrwhit makes the following judicious
comment: The school of Oxford seems to have been in much the same
estimation for its dancing as that of Stratford for its French--alluding
of course to what is, said in the Prologue of the French spoken by the
Prioress:

And French she spoke full fayre and fetisly
After the scole of Stratford atte bowe
For French of Paris was to hire unknowe]

Milton, the greatest of the Puritans--intellectual ancestry of the
modern degenerate Prudes--had a wholesome love of the dance, and nowhere
is his pen so joyous as in its description in the well known passage
from "Comus" which, should it occur to my memory while delivering a
funeral oration, I am sure I could not forbear to quote, albeit this,
our present argument, is but little furthered by its context

Meanwhile welcome joy and feast
Midnight shout and revelry
Tipsy dance and jollity
Braid your locks with rosy twine
Dropping odors dropping wine
Rigor now is gone to bed
And advice with scrupulous head
Strict age and sour severity
With their grave saws in slumber lie
We that are of purer fire
Imitate the starry quire
Who in their nightly watching spheres
Lead in swift round the months and years
The sounds and seas with all their finny drove
And on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves

If Milton was not himself a good dancer--and