n his epics; who can trace the fountains of those streams
which have fertilized the literary world?--and hence, how shallow the
criticism which would detract from literary genius because it is
indebted, more or less, to the men who have lived ages ago. It is the
way of putting things which constitutes the merit of men of genius. What
has Voltaire or Hume or Froude told the world, essentially, that it did
not know before? Read, for instance, half-a-dozen historians on Joan of
Arc: they all relate substantially the same facts. Genius and
originality are seen in the reflections and deductions and grand
sentiments prompted by the narrative. Let half-a-dozen distinguished and
learned theologians write sermons on Abraham or Moses or David: they
will all be different, yet the main facts will be common to all.

The "Canterbury Tales" are great creations, from the humor, the wit, the
naturalness, the vividness of description, and the beauty of the
sentiments displayed in them, although sullied by occasional vulgarities
and impurities, which, however, in all their coarseness do not corrupt
the mind. Byron complained of their coarseness, but Byron's poetry is
far more demoralizing. The age was coarse, not the mind of the author.
And after five hundred years, with all the obscurity of language and
obsolete modes of spelling, they still give pleasure to the true lovers
of poetry when they have once mastered the language, which is not, after
all, very difficult. It is true that most people prefer to read the
great masters of poetry in later times; but the "Canterbury Tales" are
interesting and instructive to those who study the history of language
and literature. They are links in the civilization of England. They
paint the age more vividly and accurately than any known history. The
men and women of the fourteenth century, of all ranks, stand out to us
in fresh and living colors. We see them in their dress, their feasts,
their dwellings, their language, their habits, and their manners. Amid
all the changes in human thought and in social institutions the
characters appeal to our common humanity, essentially the same under all
human conditions. The men and women of the fourteenth century love and
hate, eat and drink, laugh and talk, as they do in the nineteenth. They
delight, as we do, in the varieties of dress, of parade, and luxurious
feasts. Although the form of these has changed, they are alive to the
same sentiments which move us.