as Mrs. Browning's biographer says of her. [Footnote: Mrs. Anna B.
Jameson. George Stillman Milliard says of Mrs. Browning, "I have never
seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a
celestial and immortal spirit." Shelley, Keats, Clough and Swinburne
undoubtedly helped to strengthen the tradition.] The imaginary bard is
so inevitably slender that allusion to "the poet's frame" needs no
further description. Yet, once more, the poet may seem to be
deliberately blinding himself to the facts. What of the father of
English song, who, in the _Canterbury Tales_, is described by the
burly host,

He in the waast is shape as wel as I;
This were a popet in an arm tenbrace
For any woman, smal and fair of face?
[Footnote: _Prologue to Sir Thopas_.]

Even here, however, one can trace the modern aesthetic aversion to fat.
Chaucer undoubtedly took sly pleasure in stressing his difference from
the current conception of the poet, which was typified so well by the
handsome young squire, who

Coude songes make, and wel endyte.
[Footnote: _Prologue_.]

Such, at least, is the interpretation of Percy Mackaye, who in his play,
_The Canterbury Pilgrims_, derives the heartiest enjoyment from
Chaucer's woe lest his avoirdupois may affect Madame Eglantine
unfavorably. The modern English poet who is oppressed by too, too solid
flesh is inclined to follow Chaucer's precedent and take it
philosophically. James Thomson allowed the stanza about himself,