men are both in their sons and in their fathers. Again, he had a vivid impression of a certain love affair of his youth-a distracted passion on his part for a scornful beauty-and of how curiously his ardour had moderated when she softened and began to return his preference. He saw here a guiding principle, which he resolved to try and institute accordingly. "I discover in my pupil a taste or a propensity which does not please me. Shall I lecture and preach to him eternally against it, keep him scrupulously from gratifying it, and then aver that I've done my best; and that, if the youth goes the other way after all that, it's no fault of mine? As well might I take a frozen limb to the fire, bathe it in hot water, and then say: Well, if, after all this, the circulation does not return properly, it's no fault of mine. Now, if I had had the happy thought to rub it with a little snow?" He was in a communicative mood, and would have gone on much longer, but I had heard enough, and would hear no more. I told him as politely as I possibly could that I considered him a quack and an impostor; that his system was, to the last degree, abominable and iniquitous. I took my hat, and went away furious, feeling that I had somehow been cheated out of my individuality. But the worst of it was that the laugh remained against me. The scoundrel had been so perfectly successful! that I must allow. The very seeds of the obnoxious qualities had perished, and by no effort of mine could I revive them now, whatever my desire. There was food for reflection here, however, and, having that, I must be therewith content. Quack medicines have given useful hints to the orthodox leaders of the faculty from time to time; and here the latter, wherever I looked, seemed to stand in need of the lesson, if ever men did. Materially speaking, no one up-' holds that we can't have too much of a good thing, as when, for instance, that good thing is lobster or champagne. Why is it that in education, though none can theoretically deny the law of reaction, not a parent, spiritual pastor, or master in a thousand but conducts himself towards the young as though it did not exist ?" "Be not righteous over much, neither be thou over much wise, lest thou destroy thyself" (" and those that hear thee," might safely have been added) is a text with which they are familiar. But none the less, having once made up their minds as to the intellectual and moral food they wish their pupils to relish, henceforth they appear to have but one ideanamely, to "give them excess of it" -forgetting That, surfeiting, CHAUCER'S CHARACTERS. By the Author of "Chaucer for Children," "The Art of Beauty," &c. CHAUCER is the first, and in some sense the greatest, English poet. His knowledge of life, his breadth of sympathy with all classes and all modes of thought, his inexhaustible fancy, his consummate art, place him intellectually on a level with Shakespeare; whilst the originality of his genius lies in this, that, whereas Shakespeare claims to have founded our modern drama, Chaucer laid the foundations on which the whole fabric of our poetical literature still few In I hope to show by a examples how untrue this is. deed, Chaucer, in delineating a state of society wholly unlike our own, shows such a grasp of human character, and so shrewd and goodhumoured an insight into the intricacies of the human mind, that his figures, like those of our great Dramatist, are figures for all time. Nothing gives a work lasting value but the amount of essential human interest it contains; for that appeals equally to all ages. Hence, students may, I think, be at rest about the hypothetical "lost works" of Chaucer. Lost works there may be, and as Chaucer's they could not but have deep interest for us, throwing, it may be, new light on unknown phases of his character. But it is most probable that all his chief works have been preserved. His popularity and his wide renown whilst he yet lived render it unlikely that anything of important merit should have disappeared, whilst they account for the survival of many inferior works, falsely bearing his name. As a poet-that is, as a singer— Chaucer stands far aloof from any of his contemporaries, and a great number of his successors. He is ahead of Gower, Occleve, Langland, Lydgate, Minot, and all except perhaps the author of the "Flower and the Leaf," who was doubtless a lady, well imbued with Chaucer's spirit. His literary form and easy musical rhythm are alike remarkable at a time when so rough a metre as Langland used was tolerated. There is a delicate bloom upon his verse which is lost in modern versions or in analysis-something of stately sweetness and dignity, of tender grace, greatly no doubt dependent on his grammatical construction, but also belonging in a high degree to Chaucer himself. Certain brother poets would scarcely have lavished so much eulogy upon him-Spenser would scarcely have called him the "pure well-head of poetry "—had not his style been felt to be peculiarly his own, and of peculiar charm. The force and beauty of the images called up constantly in his writings are very striking, and so many are they that it is difficult to know where to quote. One may sometimes trace in the "well of English undefiled" the spring whence Keats, Tennyson, Swinburne, and others have drawn their peculiar sweetness. The following lines recall somewhat of the graceful iteration of Tennyson's manner: If no love is, O God, what fele I so ? And if love is, what thynge and whiche is he? If love be gode,(') from whennes comth my wo? If it be wikke, (2) a wonder thynketh daily scenes that passed with a shock across quiet clerkly hours or harmless country doings- days such as saw Savonarola murdered in the market-place, when women were burnt alive and in public, and any street space might be utilised at any moment for an execution. Often a beautiful touch comes like a ray of rosier light. Love too wide yblowe Yelte() bitter fruit, though swetë sede be sowe. (1) yields. But quotations would be endless, and space is limited. As an exponent of his period, it is often objected that Chaucer did not represent fairly the state of public feeling, morals, and manners, but drew the Church and the people from the patrician point of view, his court sympathies and his court audience being a little too strong for him. Langland, author of the "Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman," is pointed out as the poor man's poet, and the delineator of a side untouched by Chaucer. It may be true that Chaucer's sympathies were with the upper classes, amongst whom his lines were early cast-it is no doubt true that he smiled at what made Langland stamp and ragebut I do not think that that invalidates Chaucer's justice, or impairs his powers of judging. may not his good humour render him a fairer judge than Langland, who saw so black all pictures, and who, though constantly calling for charity, was too bitter to be really charitable, and too angry with wrong doers to be quite impartial. Indeed, The greater light was able to contemplate all sides philosophically*; the lesser saw but one side, and saw it too intensely. The description of the poor widow with her "sooty" bower and hall (Nun's Priest's Tale) that of Griselda's native hut (Clerk's Tale), shared with the draughtox as Pat's is now shared with his pig, and the coarse herbs she shred and seethed If Chaucer drew the poor man from the rich man's point of view, it was less because he was blind to the position of the poor than because his bright spirit naturally sided with the bright and happy. Without ignoring or misrepresenting the dark side, he stood in the sun, as it were, to draw what was ugly or vile, and the sun sometimes gave it a picturesque aspect. The coarse and the base he made contemptible by satire, not awful by vituperation. What was good he loved and praised. In all vicissitudes his elastic spirit rose up and sang. It is quite untrue that this good humour, this broad philosophic acceptance of all sides of truth, blinded his eyes. But every writer is justified in choosing his subjects; and, whilst Langland found his mission in the echo of the people's discontent, Chaucer found one as good or better in the chronicle of all phases of life, all phases of feeling, throughout the nation-the echo of voices from the court and from the commons, from the Church, the fleet, the city, and the fields. Langland may however be fairly read as a supplement to Chaucer, who gives us the chequered sunshine of the middle ages, only heightened by Langland's shadows; and if, as has been surmised, Chaucer's vignette of the good Ploughman originated the 66 Vision," we may justly consider that Langland's views are all bound up in Chaucer as a flower's leaves are bound up in the bud. Langland's mind embodied principles, and men and women (for he attempts no character-drawing) come in occasionally as illustra tions of those principles. Chaucer's mind created people, and they suggested principles by the way. It is just because Chaucer's characters are so thorough and so vivid, that we can trace so much through and beneath them: the whole mental status of all classes is reflected in them; all the passions and the difficulties, all the ignorance and superstition, all the wisdom, all the oppression and the vigorous enjoyments of the time, lie written in them: so that it seems to me that, on the whole, without Langland as a necessary adjunct, we may take Chaucer as the best and clearest exponent of the 14th century. As I am in this paper concerned only with his grasp of character and power of setting forth what he knew, I shall let his characters speak for themselves. THE KNIGHT'S TALE. The characters most commonly confused together and misapprehended by cursory readers of Chaucer are the heroes of the Knight's Tale, Palamon and Arcite. I have given a careful analysis of these two characters in my book, "Chaucer for Children," p. 55. Never were two men so absolutely unlike one another —never did author conceive two natures more complex and interesting, or contrast them more beautifully. Palamon is a man of violent passions which continually master him he is reckless, irritable, and frantically jealous. Arcite is a man also of strong passions, which he controls on all occasions; wise, clever, cool-headed, and unselfish, he is by far the nobler being. Rage and misery never turn his head nor blind his common sense; for food-hint at the poverty of the lower orders; and numerous touches, such as his portrait of the Summoner and Pardoner, describe the corruption of the monastic system clearly enough to satisfy Langland himself. in Palamon either seems to run away with him. Even the loss of liberty affects his brain. ThoughThough out the story all the incidents are calculated to display in strong relief the absolute differences of character, and the superiority of the one over the other under a similar pressure of love bringing endless perils in its wake. The warm affection which once bound the two men in bonds of brotherhood is repudiated by Palamon the moment a bone of contention (in the shape of Fair Emelye) falls between them; but Arcite, outraged as he is by his friend's sudden turning against him, retains his kindly feeling as far as is possible in a rival, and never does him an ill turn when he is in his power. Palamon, however, is ready enough to ruin Arcite, though without benefiting himself, directly he gets the chance-a form of selfishness only pardonable on the hypothesis suggested by Chaucer that he is 66 wood for love." One of the most striking incidents is the two knights' first glimpse of Emelye. She is described as roaming about the enwalled garden that adjoins their prison, gathering the red and white may at sunrise. And as an aungel hevenlyche sche song. As she passes, Palamon, who sees her first, mistakes her for Venus-his excitable mind being probably disordered by the privations of medieval prison life and prays to her as such. Arcite, hastening to him, instantly perceives her to be mortal, and dedicates to her his life's service. Here we see clearly how the same incident may variously affect two opposite characters. Not that Palamon is so disorganised as to be entirely tricked by his imagination. My notion is that Emelye, with the low brilliant rays illumining her yellow hair, first catches Palamon's eye in passing a tree or some dark object between her and the sun, in which position a false aureole would surround the outline of her head, and give her for an instant the appearance of a haloed goddess, for we must recollect he was a Pagan. By the time Arcite sees her, her position may have changed, and, with no object between her and the ray, the halo would disappear and she would. seem what she was, simply a beautiful woman. Thus, Palamon labours under no optical illusion; he hastily exaggerates a fact, his mind being too worn to reason at the moment; and afterwards, on seeing his mistake, his irritation is increased by Arcite's making capital out of it. On his release from his dungeon, Arcite ventures upon the perilous stratagem of concealing his identity in Theseus's court, and serving fair Emelye, Theseus's sister-inlaw, in the capacity of page, although a price is set upon his head. The history of his long labour and self-suppression in her service is touching and exciting to the last degree, and illustrates his strength of purpose, courage, and devotion. The character of Theseus, most genial and " gentilherted" of political foes, is also drawn con amore. The mode of Palamon's escape, the mad encounter between the rivals in the grove, and the great tournament, should be read in the original, which cannot be excelled in fire and brilliancy. Palamon, however, in the end marries Emelye, though the interest of the tale subsides with Arcite's mournful death and * Mad. |