inspired sages. It is not the joys of heaven or the terrors of hell on
which he discourses, but of men and women as they lived around him, in
their daily habits and occupations. We must go to Wyclif if we would
know the theological or philosophical doctrines which interested the
learned. Chaucer only tells how monks and friars lived, not how they
speculated or preached. We see enough, however, to feel that he was
emancipated from the ideas of the Middle Ages, and had cast off their
gloom, their superstition, and their despair. The only things he liked
of those dreary times were their courts of love and their
chivalric glories.

I do not propose to analyze the poetry of Chaucer, or enter upon a
critical inquiry as to his relative merits in comparison with the other
great poets. It is sufficient for me to know that critics place him very
high as an original poet, although it is admitted that he drew much of
his material from French and Italian authors. He was, for his day, a
great linguist. He had travelled extensively, and could speak Latin,
French, and Italian with fluency. He knew Petrarch and other eminent
Italians. One is amazed that in such an age he could have written so
well, for he had no great models to help him in his own language. If
occasionally indecent, he is not corrupting. He never deliberately
disseminates moral poison; and when he speaks of love, he treats almost
solely of the simple and genuine emotions of the heart.

The best criticism that I have read of Chaucer's poetry is that of
Adolphus William Ward; although as a biography it is not so full or so
interesting as that of Godwin or even Morley. In no life that I have
read are the mental characteristics of our poet so ably drawn,--"his
practical good sense," his love of books, his still deeper love of
nature, his naïveté, the readiness of his description, the brightness of