ose lips that "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came"--as by a
miracle, or as if the dumb should speak? Nor was it alone that he had
been the first to tune his native tongue (however imperfectly to
modern ears); but he was himself a noble, manly character, standing
before his age and striving to advance it; a pleasant humourist
withal, who has not only handed down to us the living manners of his
time, but had, no doubt, store of curious and quaint devices, and
would make as hearty a companion as Mine Host of Tabard. His interview
with Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would rather have seen
Chaucer in company with the author of the Decameron, and have heard
them exchange their best stories together, the Squire's Tale against
the Story of the Falcon, the Wife of Bath's Prologue against the
Adventures of Friar Albert. How fine to see the high mysterious brow
which learning then wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of
the world, and by the courtesies of genius. Surely, the thoughts and
feelings which passed through the minds of these great revivers of
learning, these Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, must have
stamped an expression on their features, as different from the moderns
as their books, and well worth the perusal. Dante," I continued, "is
as interesting a person as his own Ugolino, one whose lineaments
curiosity would as eagerly devour in order to penetrate his spirit,
and the only one of the Italian poets I should care much to see. There
is a fine portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian's; light,
Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The same artist's large
colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only likeness of the kind
that has the effect of conversing with 'the mighty dead,' and this is
truly spectral, ghastly, necromantic." B---- put it to me if I should
like to see Spenser as well as Chaucer; and I answered without
hesitation, "No; for that his beauties were ideal, visionary, not
palpable or personal, and therefore connected with less curiosity
about the man. His poetry was the essence of romance, a very halo
round the bright orb of fancy; and the bringing in the individual
might dissolve the charm. No tones of voice could come up to the
mellifluous cadence of his verse; no form but of a winged angel could
vie with the airy shapes he has described. He was (to our
apprehensions) rather 'a creature of the element, that lived in the
rainbow and played in the plight