Jerrold assured Mrs. Cowden Clarke that, when her time came to enter
Heaven, Shakespeare would advance and greet her with the first kiss of
welcome, "_even_ should her husband happen to be present." One can
hardly with decorum imagine Professor Skeat being kissed; but Chaucer
assuredly will greet him with a transcendent smile.

The Professor's genuine admiration, however, for the poetical
excellence of his poet needs to be insisted upon, not only because the
nature of his task keeps him reticent, but because his extraordinary
learning seems now and then to stand between him and the natural
appreciation of a passage. It was not quite at haphazard that I chose
just now the famous description of the Prioresse as an illustration of
Chaucer's poetical quality. The Professor has a long note upon the
French of Stratford atte Bowe. Most of us have hitherto believed the
passage to be an example, and a very pretty one, of Chaucer's
playfulness. The Professor almost loses his temper over this: he
speaks of it as a view "commonly adopted by newspaper-writers who know
only this one line of Chaucer, and cannot forbear to use it in jest."
"Even Tyrwhitt and Wright," he adds more in sorrow than in anger,
"have thoughtlessly given currency to this idea." "Chaucer," the
Professor explains, "merely states a _fact_" (the italics are his
own), "viz., that the Prioress spoke the usual Anglo-French of the
English Court, of the English law-courts, and of the English
ecclesiastics of higher ranks. The poet, however, had been himself in
France, and knew precisely the difference between the two dialects;
but he had no special reason for thinking _more highly_" (the
Professor's italics again) "of the Parisian than of the
Anglo-French.... Warton's note on the line is quite sane. He shows
that Queen Philippa wrote business letters in French (doubtless
Anglo-French) with 'great propriety'" ... and so on. You see, there