she."
"Alas, sir, how? what may that be?
"She is dead." "Nay?" "Yes, by my truth!"
Is that your loss? by God, it is ruth."

And with that word, the hunt breaking up, the knight and the poet
depart to a "long castle with white walls on a rich hill" (Richmond?),
where a bell tolls and awakens the poet from his slumbers, to let him
find himself lying in his bed, and the book with its legend of love and
sleep resting in his hand. One hardly knows at whom more to
wonder--whether at the distinguished French scholar who sees so many
trees that he cannot see a forest, and who, not content with declaring
the "Book of the Duchess," as a whole as well as in its details, a
servile imitation of Machault, pronounces it at the same time one of
Chaucer's feeblest productions; or at the equally eminent English
scholar who, with a flippancy which for once ceases to be amusing,
opines that Chaucer ought to "have felt ashamed of himself for this
most lame and impotent conclusion" of a poem "full of beauties," and
ought to have been "caned for it!" Not only was this "lame and
impotent conclusion" imitated by Spenser in his lovely elegy,
"Daphnaida" (I have been anticipated in pointing out this fact by the
author of the biographical essay on "Spenser" in this series--an essay
to which I cannot help taking this opportunity of offering a tribute of
sincere admiration. It may not be an undesigned coincidence that the
inconsolable widower of the "Daphnaida" is named Alcyon, while
Chaucer's poem begins with a reference to the myth of Ceyx and Alcyone.
Sir Arthur Gorges re-appears in Alcyon in "Colin Clout's come home
again."); but it is the first passage in Chaucer's writings revealing,
one would have thought unmistakeably, the dramatic power which was
among his most characteristic gifts. The charm of this poem,
notwithstanding all the artificialities with which it is overlaid, lies
in its simplicity and truth to nature. A real human being is here
brought before us instead of a vague abstraction; and the glow of life
is on the page, though it has to tell of death and mourning. Chaucer
is finding his strength by dipping into the true spring of poetic
inspiration; and in his dreams he is awaking to the real capabilities
of his genius. Though he is still uncertain of himself and dependent
on others, it seems not too much to say that already in this "Book of
the Duchess" he is in some measure an original poet.

How unconscious, at