el ever sprang, no half-human,
half-brutish Caliban ever crept. He does not effloresce in
illustrations and images, the flowers do not hide the grass; his
pictures are masterpieces, but they are portraits, and the man is
brought out by a multiplicity of short touches,--caustic, satirical,
and matter of fact. His poetry may be said to resemble an English
country road, on which passengers of different degrees of rank are
continually passing,--now knight, now boor, now abbot: Spenser's, for
instance, and all the more fanciful styles, to a tapestry on which a
whole Olympus has been wrought. The figures on the tapestry are much
the more noble-looking, it is true; but then they are dreams and
phantoms, whereas the people on the country road actually exist.

The "Knight's Tale"--which is the first told on the way to
Canterbury--is a chivalrous legend, full of hunting, battle, and
tournament. Into it, although the scene is laid in Greece, Chaucer
has, with a fine scorn of anachronism, poured all the splendour,
colour, pomp, and circumstance of the fourteenth century. It is
brilliant as a banner displayed to the sunlight. It is real cloth of
gold. Compared with it, "Ivanhoe" is a spectacle at Astley's. The
style is everywhere more adorned than is usual, although even here, and
in the richest parts, the short, homely, caustic Chaucerian line is
largely employed. The "Man of Law's Tale," again, is distinguished by
quite a different merit. It relates the sorrows and patience of
Constance, and is filled with the beauty of holiness. Constance might
have been sister to Cordelia; she is one of the white lilies of
womanhood. Her story is almost the tenderest in our literature. And
Chaucer's art comes out in this, that although she would spread her
hair, nay, put her very heart beneath the feet of those who wrong her,
we do not cease for one moment to respect her. This is a feat which
has but seldom been achieved. It has long been a matter of reproach to
Mr. Thackeray, for instance, that the only faculty with which he gifts
his good women is a supreme faculty of tears. To draw any very high
degree of female patience is one of the most difficult of tasks. If
you represent a woman bearing wrong with a continuous unmurmuring
meekness, presenting to blows, come from what quarter they may, nothing
but a bent neck, and eyelids humbly drooped, you are in nine cases out
of ten painting elaborately the portrait of a fool; and if