He seemeth elfish by his countenance,
For unto no wight doth he dalliance.

From this passage we may gather, not only that Chaucer was, as the "Host"
of the Tabard's transparent self-irony implies, small of stature and
slender, but that he was accustomed to be twitted on account of the
abstracted or absent look which so often tempts children of the world to
offer its wearer a penny for his thoughts. For "elfish" means bewitched
by the elves, and hence vacant or absent in demeanour.

It is thus, with a few modest but manifestly truthful touches, that
Chaucer, after the manner of certain great painters, introduces his own
figure into a quiet corner of his crowded canvas. But mere outward
likeness is of little moment, and it is a more interesting enquiry whether
there are any personal characteristics of another sort, which it is
possible with safety to ascribe to him, and which must be, in a greater or
less degree, connected with the distinctive qualities of his literary
genius. For in truth it is but a sorry makeshift of literary biographers
to seek to divide a man who is an author into two separate beings, in
order to avoid the conversely fallacious procedure of accounting for
everything which an author has written by something which the MAN has done
or been inclined to do. What true poet has sought to hide, or succeeded
in hiding, his moral nature from his muse? None in the entire band, from
Petrarch to Villon, and least of all the poet whose song, like so much of
Chaucer's, seems freshly derived from Nature's own inspiration.

One very pleasing quality in Chaucer must have been his modesty. In the
course of his life this may have helped to recommend him to patrons so
many and so various, and to make him the useful and trustworthy agent that
he evidently became for confidential missions abroad. Physically, as has