number of fine links, closely connected together,
and rivetted by a single blow. There is an instance of the minuteness
which he introduces into his most serious descriptions in his account of
Palamon when left alone in his cell:

"Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grete tour
Resouned of his yelling and clamour:
The pure fetters on his shinnes grete
Were of his bitter salte teres wete."

The mention of this last circumstance looks like a part of the
instructions he had to follow, which he had no discretionary power to
leave out or introduce at pleasure. He is contented to find grace and
beauty in truth. He exhibits for the most part the naked object, with
little drapery thrown over it. His metaphors, which are few, are not for
ornament, but use, and as like as possible to the things themselves. He
does not affect to shew his power over the reader's mind, but the power
which his subject has over his own. The readers of Chaucer's poetry feel
more nearly what the persons he describes must have felt, than perhaps
those of any other poet. His sentiments are not voluntary effusions of
the poet's fancy, but founded on the natural impulses and habitual
prejudices of the characters he has to represent. There is an inveteracy
of purpose, a sincerity of feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid,
in whatever they do or say. There is no artificial, pompous display, but
a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of
the age in which he lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing
from the ground, rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no
"babbling gossip of the air," fluent and redundant; but, like a
stammerer, or a dumb person, that has just found the use of speech,
crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and
fond repetitions to prevent mistake. His words point as an index to the
objects, like the eye or finger. There were none of the common-places of
poetic diction in our author's time, no reflected lights of fancy, no
borrowed roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things for himself, to
look narrowly, and almost to handle the object, as in the obscurity of
morning we partly see and partly grope our way; so that his descriptions
have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce the
effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of
nature and discrimination of character; and his interest