greenness of foliage; but they have little
human interest. They are allegories for the most part, more or less
satisfactorily wrought out. The allegorical turn of thought, the
delight in pageantry, the "clothing upon" of abstractions with human
forms, flowered originally out of chivalry and the feudal times.
Chaucer imported it from the French, and was proud of it in his early
poems, as a young fellow of that day might be proud of his horse
furniture, his attire, his waving plume. And the poetic fashion thus
set retained its vitality for a long while,--indeed, it was only
thoroughly made an end of by the French Revolution, which made an end
of so much else. About the last trace of its influence is to be found
in Burns' sentimental correspondence with Mrs. M'Lehose, in which the
lady is addressed as Clarinda, and the poet signs himself Sylvander.
It was at best a mere beautiful gauze screen drawn between the poet and
nature; and passion put his foot through it at once. After Chaucer's
youth was over, he discarded somewhat scornfully these abstractions and
shows of things. The "Flower and the Leaf" is a beautiful-tinted
dream; the "Canterbury Tales" are as real as anything in Shakspeare or
Burns. The ladies in the earlier poems dwell in forests, and wear
coronals on their heads; the people in the "Tales" are engaged in the
actual concerns of life, and you can see the splashes of mire upon
their clothes. The separate poems which make up the "Canterbury Tales"
were probably written at different periods, after youth was gone, and
when he had fallen out of love with florid imagery and allegorical
conceits; and we can fancy him, perhaps fallen on evil days and in
retirement, anxious to gather up these loose efforts into one
consummate whole. If of his flowers he would make a bouquet for
posterity, it was of course necessary to procure a string to tie them
together. These necessities, which ruin other men, are the fortunate
chances of great poets. Then it was that the idea arose of a meeting
of pilgrims at the Tabard in Southwark, of their riding to Canterbury,
and of the different personages relating stories to beguile the tedium
of the journey. The notion was a happy one, and the execution is
superb. In those days, as we know, pilgrimages were of frequent
occurrence; and in the motley group that congregated on such occasions,
the painter of character had full scope. All conditions of people are
comprised in the n