nown to have
been among the performers of miracles in the Middle Ages. The allusion
to Pilate's voice in the "Miller's Prologue," and that in the "Tale" to

The sorrow of Noah with his fellowship
That he had ere he got his wife to ship,

seem likewise dramatic reminiscences; and the occurrence of these three
allusions in a single "Tale" and its "Prologue" would incline one to
think that Chaucer had recently amused himself at one of these
performances. But plays are not mentioned among the entertainments
enumerated at the opening of the "Pardoner's Tale"; and it would in any
case have been unlikely that Chaucer should have paid much attention to
diversions which were long chiefly "visited" by the classes with which
he could have no personal connexion, and even at a much later date were
dissociated in men's minds from poetry and literature. Had he ever
written anything remotely partaking of the nature of a dramatic piece,
it could at the most have been the words of the songs in some
congratulatory royal pageant such as Lydgate probably wrote on the
return of Henry V after Agincourt; though there is not the least reason
for supposing Chaucer to have taken so much interest in the "ridings"
through the City which occupied many a morning of the idle apprentice
of the "Cook's Tale," Perkyn Revellour. It is perhaps more surprising
to find Chaucer, who was a reader of several Latin poets, and who had
heard of more, both Latin and Greek, show no knowledge whatever of the
ancient classical drama, with which he may accordingly be fairly
concluded to have been wholly unacquainted.

To one further aspect of Chaucer's realism as a poet reference has
already been made; but a final mention of it may most appropriately
conclude this sketch of his poetical characteristics. His descriptions
of nature are as true as his sketches of human character; and
incidental touches in him reveal his love of the one as unmistakeably
as his unflagging interest in the study of the other. Even these
May-morning exordia, in which he was but following a
fashion--faithfully observed both by the French trouveres and by the
English romances translated from their productions, and not forgotten
by the author of the earlier part of the "Roman de la Rose"--always
come from his hands with the freshness of natural truth. They cannot
be called original in conception, and it would be difficult to point
out in them anything strikingly original in execution;