its previous bent and purposes! For while Chaucer's intercourse with the
busy world, and collision with the actual passions and conflicting
interests of others, seemed to brace the sinews of his understanding,
and gave to his writings the air of a man who describes persons and
things that he had known and been intimately concerned in; the same
opportunities, operating on a differently constituted frame, only served
to alienate Spenser's mind the more from the "close-pent up" scenes of
ordinary life, and to make him "rive their concealing continents," to
give himself up to the unrestrained indulgence of "flowery tenderness."

It is not possible for any two writers to be more opposite in this
respect. Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoyment; Chaucer, in severe
activity of mind. As Spenser was the most romantic and visionary,
Chaucer was the most practical of all the great poets, the most a man of
business and the world. His poetry reads like history. Every thing has a
downright reality; at least in the relator's mind. A simile, or a
sentiment, is as if it were given in upon evidence. Thus he describes
Cressid's first avowal of her love.

"And as the new abashed nightingale,
That stinteth first when she beginneth sing,
When that she heareth any herde's tale,
Or in the hedges any wight stirring,
And after, sicker, doth her voice outring;
Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent,
Open'd her heart, and told him her intent."

This is so true and natural, and beautifully simple, that the two things
seem identified with each other. Again, it is said in the Knight's
Tale--