the poet's fancy, but founded on the natural impulses and habitual
prejudices of the characters he has to represent. There is an inveteracy
of purpose, a sincerity of feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid,
in whatever they do or say. There is no artificial, pompous display, but
a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of
the age in which he lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing
from the ground, rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no
"babbling gossip of the air," fluent and redundant; but, like a
stammerer, or a dumb person, that has just found the use of speech,
crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and
fond repetitions to prevent mistake. His words point as an index to the
objects, like the eye or finger. There were none of the common-places of
poetic diction in our author's time, no reflected lights of fancy, no
borrowed roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things for himself, to
look narrowly, and almost to handle the object, as in the obscurity of
morning we partly see and partly grope our way; so that his descriptions
have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce the
effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of
nature and discrimination of character; and his interest in what he saw
gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation. The
picturesque and the dramatic are in him closely blended together, and
hardly distinguishable; for he principally describes external
appearances as indicating character, as symbols of internal sentiment.
There is a meaning in what he sees; and it is this which catches his eye
by sympathy. Thus the costume and dress of the Canterbury Pilgrims--of
the Knight--the Squire--the Oxford Scholar--the Gap-toothed Wife
of Bath, and the rest, speak for themselves. To take one or two of these
at random:

"There was also a nonne, a Prioresse,