(however imperfectly to modern ears); but he was himself a noble,
manly character, standing before his age and striving to advance it; a
pleasant humourist withal, who has not only handed down to us the living
manners of his time, but had, no doubt, store of curious and quaint
devices, and would make as hearty a companion as Mine Host of Tabard. His
interview with Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would rather have
seen Chaucer in company with the author of the Decameron, and have heard
them exchange their best stories together,--the Squire's Tale against the
Story of the Falcon, the Wife of Bath's Prologue against the Adventures of
Friar Albert. How fine to see the high mysterious brow which learning then
wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, and by the
courtesies of genius. Surely, the thoughts and feelings which passed
through the minds of these great revivers of learning, these Cadmuses who
sowed the teeth of letters, must have stamped an expression on their
features, as different from the moderns as their books, and well worth the
perusal. Dante," I continued, "is as interesting a person as his own
Ugolino, one whose lineaments curiosity would as eagerly devour in order
to penetrate his spirit, and the only one of the Italian poets I should
care much to see. There is a fine portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand
than Titian's; light, Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The
same artist's large colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only
likeness of the kind that has the effect of conversing with 'the mighty
dead,' and this is truly spectral, ghastly, necromantic." B---- put it to
me if I should like to see Spenser as well as Chaucer; and I answered
without hesitation, "No; for that his beauties were ideal, visionary, not
palpable or personal, and therefore connected with less curiosity about
the man. His poetry was the essence of romance, a very halo round the
bright orb of fancy; and the bringing in the individual might dissolve the
charm. No tones of voice could come up to the mellifluous cadence of his
verse; no form but of a winged angel could vie with the airy shapes he has
described. He was (to our apprehensions) rather a "creature of the
element, that lived in the rainbow and played in the plighted clouds,"
than an ordinary mortal. Or if he did appear, I should wish it to be as a
mere vision, like one of his own pageants, and that he should pass by
unquestioned like a