e lacks the high seriousness of the great classics, and
therewith an important part of their virtue. Still, the main fact for us
to bear in mind about Chaucer is his sterling value according to that
real estimate which we firmly adopt for all poets. He has poetic truth
of substance, though he has not high poetic seriousness, and
corresponding to his truth of substance he has an exquisite virtue of
style and manner. With him is born our real poetry.

For my present purpose I need not dwell on our Elizabethan poetry, or on
the continuation and close of this poetry in Milton. We all of us
profess to be agreed in the estimate of this poetry; we all of us
recognize it as great poetry, our greatest, and Shakespeare and Milton
as our poetical classics. The real estimate, here, has universal
currency. With the next age of our poetry divergency and difficulty
begin. An historic estimate of that poetry has established itself; and
the question is, whether it will be found to coincide with the real
estimate.

The age of Dryden, together with our whole eighteenth century which
followed it, sincerely believed itself to have produced poetical
classics of its own, and even to have made advance, in poetry, beyond
all its predecessors. Dryden regards as not seriously disputable the
opinion "that the sweetness of English verse was never understood or
practised by our fathers."[98] Cowley could see nothing at all in
Chaucer's poetry.[99] Dryden heartily admired it, and, as we have seen,
praised its matter admirably; but of its exquisite manner and movement
all he can find to say is that "there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch
tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect."[100]
Addison, wishing to praise Chaucer's numbers, compares them with
Dryden's own. And all through the eighteenth century, and down even into
our own times, the stereotyped phrase of approbation for good verse
found in our early poetry has been, that it even approached the verse of
Dryden, Addison, Pope, and Johnson.

Are Dryden and Pope poetical classics? Is the historic estimate, which
represents them as such, and which has been so long established that it
cannot easily give way, the real estimate? Wordsworth and Coleridge, as
is well known, denied it;[101] but the authority of Wordsworth and
Coleridge does not weigh much with the young generation, and there are
many signs to show that the eighteenth century and its judgments are
coming into favor