reater part of the
actual changes are made for the sake of that which beforehand you might
not think of, namely, the Verse. This it is that puts the translators to
the strangest shifts and fetches, and besets the version, in spite of
their best skill, with anti-Chaucerisms as thick as blackberries.

It might, at first sight, seem as if there could be no remorse about
dispersing the atmosphere of antiquity; and you might be disposed to
say--a thought is a thought, a feeling a feeling, a fancy a fancy. Utter
the thought, the feeling, the fancy, with what words you will, provided
that they are native to the matter, and the matter will hold its own
worth. No. There is more in poetry than the definite, separable matter
of a fancy, a feeling, a thought. There is the indefinite, inseparable
spirit, out of which they all arise, which verifies them all, harmonizes
them all, interprets them all. There is the spirit of the poet himself.
But the spirit of the time in which a poet lives, flows through the
spirit of the poet. Therefore, a poet cannot be taken out of his own
time, and rightly and wholly understood. It seems to follow that
thought, feeling, fancy, which he has expressed, cannot be taken out of
his own speech, and his own style, and rightly and wholly understood.
Let us bring this home to Chaucer, and our occasion. The air of
antiquity hangs about him, cleaves to him; therefore he is the venerable
Chaucer. One word, beyond any other, expresses to us the difference
betwixt his age and ours--Simplicity. To read him after his own spirit,
we must be made simple. That temper is called up in us by the simplicity
of his speech and style. Touched by these, and under their power, we
lose our false habituations, and return to nature. But for this singular
power exerted over us, this dominion of an irresistible sympathy, the
hint of antiquity which lies in the language seems requisite. That
summons us to put off our own, and put on another mind. In a half
modernization, there lies the danger that we shall hang suspended
between two minds--between two ages--taken out of one, and not
effectually transported into that other. Might a poet, if it were worth
while, who had imbued himself with antiquity and with Chaucer, depart
more freely from him, and yet more effectually reproduce him? Imitating,
not erasing, the colours of the old time--untying the strict chain that
binds you to the fourteenth century, but impressing on you candour,