For certeynly, he that me made
To comen hider seyde me:
I shoulde bothe hear et see
In this place wonder thinges.

In the _Canterbury Tales_ alone he employs more than a score of
characters, and hardly a romantic hero among them; rather does he delight
in plain men and women, who reveal their quality not so much in their
action as in their dress, manner, or tricks of speech. For Chaucer has the
glance of an Indian, which passes over all obvious matters to light upon
one significant detail; and that detail furnishes the name or the adjective
of the object. Sometimes his descriptions of men or nature are microscopic
in their accuracy, and again in a single line he awakens the reader's
imagination,--as when Pandarus (in _Troilus_), in order to make
himself unobtrusive in a room where he is not wanted, picks up a manuscript
and "makes a face," that is, he pretends to be absorbed in a story,

and fand his countenance
As for to loke upon an old romance.

A dozen striking examples might be given, but we shall note only one. In
the _Book of the Duchess_ the poet is in a forest, when a chase sweeps
by with whoop of huntsman and clamor of hounds. After the hunt, when the
woods are all still, comes a little lost dog:

Hit com and creep to me as lowe
Right as hit hadde me y-knowe,
Hild down his heed and jiyned his eres,
And leyde al smouthe doun his heres.