l.
He is so fond of fun that he will drink it out of a cup that is only
indifferently clean. He writes often like Fielding, he never writes as
Smollett sometimes does. These stories, ranging from the noble romance
of Palamon and Arcite to the rude intrigues of Clerk Nicholas,--the one
fitted to draw tears down the cheeks of noble ladies and gentlemen; the
other to convulse with laughter the midriffs of illiterate
clowns,--give one an idea of the astonishing range of Chaucer's powers.
He can suit himself to every company, make himself at home in every
circumstance of life; can mingle in tournaments where beauty is leaning
from balconies, and the knights, with spear in rest, wait for the blast
of the trumpet; and he can with equal ease sit with a couple of drunken
friars in a tavern laughing over the confessions they hear, and singing
questionable catches between whiles. Chaucer's range is wide as that
of Shakspeare,--if we omit that side of Shakspeare's mind which
confronts the other world, and out of which Hamlet sprang,--and his men
and women are even more real, and more easily matched in the living and
breathing world. For in Shakspeare's characters, as in his language,
there is surplusage, superabundance; the measure is heaped and running
over. From his sheer wealth, he is often the most _un_dramatic of
writers. He is so frequently greater than his occasion, he has no
small change to suit emergencies, and we have guineas in place of
groats. Romeo is more than a mortal lover, and Mercutio more than a
mortal wit; the kings in the Shakspearian world are more kingly than
earthly sovereigns; Rosalind's laughter was never heard save in the
Forest of Arden. His madmen seem to have eaten of some "strange root."
No such boon companion as Falstaff ever heard chimes at midnight. His
very clowns are transcendental, with scraps of wisdom springing out of
their foolishest speech. Chaucer, lacking Shakspeare's excess and
prodigality of genius, could not so gloriously err, and his creations
have a harder, drier, more realistic look, are more like the people we
hear uttering ordinary English speech, and see on ordinary country
roads against an ordinary English sky. If need were, any one of them
could drive pigs to market. Chaucer's characters are individual
enough, their idiosyncrasies are sharply enough defined, but they are
to some extent literal and prosaic; they are of the "earth, earthy;"
out of his imagination no Ari