a promise of its future, as in that which he
actually chose. Nor could any course so naturally have led him to
introduce into his poetic diction the French idioms and words already
used in the spoken language of Englishmen, more especially in those
classes for which he in the first instance wrote, and thus to confer
upon our tongue the great benefit which it owes to him. Again most
fortunately, others had already pointed the way to the selection for
literary use of that English dialect which was probably the most
suitable for the purpose; and Chaucer as a Southern man (like his
"Parson of a Town") belonged to a part of the country where the old
alliterative verse had long since been discarded for classical and
romance forms of versification. Thus the "Romaunt of the Rose" most
suitably opens his literary life--a translation in which there is
nothing original except an occasional turn of phrase, but in which the
translator finds opportunity for exercising his powers of judgment by
virtually re-editing the work before him. And already in the "Book of
the Duchess," though most unmistakeably a follower of Machault, he is
also the rival of the great French trouvere, and has advanced in
freedom of movement not less than in agreeableness of form. Then, as
his travels extended his acquaintance with foreign literatures to that
of Italy, he here found abundant fresh materials from which to feed his
productive powers, and more elaborate forms in which to clothe their
results; while at the same time comparison, the kindly nurse of
originality, more and more enabled him to recast instead of imitating,
or encouraged him freely to invent. In "Troilus and Cressid" he
produced something very different from a mere condensed translation,
and achieved a work in which he showed himself a master of poetic
expression and sustained narrative; in the "House of Fame" and the
"Assembly of Fowls" he moved with freedom in happily contrived
allegories of his own invention; and with the "Legend of Good Women" he
had already arrived at a stage when he could undertake to review, under
a pleasant pretext, but with evident consciousness of work done, the
list of his previous works. "He hath," he said of himself, "made many
a lay and many a thing." Meanwhile the labour incidentally devoted by
him to translation from the Latin, or to the composition of prose
treatises in the scholastic manner of academical exercises, could but
little affect his gene