Wherfor we preyen yow, a-rowe,
That our fame swich be-knowe
In alle thing right as it is.[504]

As pressing as any, they urgently claim a bad reputation, a favour which
the goddess graciously grants them.

Elsewhere we are transported into the house of news, noisy and surging
as the public square of an Italian city on a day when "something" has
happened. People throng, and crush, and trample each other to see,
although there is nothing to see: Chaucer describes from nature. There
are assembled numbers of messengers, travellers, pilgrims, sailors, each
bearing his bag, full of news, full of lies:

"Nost not thou
That is betid, lo, late or now?"
--"No," quod the other, "tel me what."
And than he tolde him this and that,
And swoor ther-to that hit was sooth--
"Thus hath he seyd"--and "thus he dooth"--
"Thus shal hit be"--"Thus herde I seye"--
"That shal be found"--"That dar I leye."[505]

Truth and falsehood, closely united, form an inseparable body, and fly
away together. The least little nothing, whispered in secret in a
friend's ear, grows and grows, as in La Fontaine's fable:

As fyr is wont to quikke and go,
From a sparke spronge amis,
Til al a citee brent up is.[506]

III.

Heretofore Chaucer has composed poems of brightest hue, chiefly devoted
to love, "balades, roundels, virelayes," imitations of the "Roman de la
Rose," poems inspired by antiquity, as it appeared through the prism of
the Middle Ages. His writings are superior to those of his English or
French contemporaries, but they are of like kind; he has fine passages,
charming ideas, but no well-ordered work; his colours are fresh but
crude, like the colours of illuminations, blazons, or oriflammes; his
nights are of sable, and his meadows seem of sinople, his flowers are
"whyte, blewe, yelowe, and rede."[507] In "Troilus and Criseyde" we
find another Chaucer, far more complete and powerful; he surpasses now
even the Italians whom he had taken for his models, and writes the first
great poem of renewed English literature.

The fortunes of Troilus had grown little by little in the course of
centuries. Homer merely mentions his name; Virgil devotes three lines to
him; Dares, who has seen everything, draws his portrait; Benoit de
Sainte-More is the earliest to ascribe to him a love first happy, then
tragic; Gui de Colonna intermingles sententious remarks with the
narrative;