, and its obvious utility, it claims our approbation at the
first glance. The other is the Indian shawl; that marvellous product of
the mountain loom, fit for any climate, for any temperature, for any
complexion, and for any purpose; women may rack their inventions for ever,
but they never will invent a garment more generally useful, more
constantly becoming, than this.

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.

NO. IV.

DRYDEN ON CHAUCER.

Nothing is gained by attempting to deny or to disguise a known and plain
fact, simply because it happens to be a distasteful one--Time has
estranged us from Chaucer. Dryden and Pope we read with easy, unearned
pleasure. Their speech, their manner of mind, and their facile verse, are
of our age, almost of our own day. The two excellent, graceful, and
masterly poets belong, both of them, to THIS NEW WORLD. Go back a little,
step over an imperceptible line, to the contemporary of Dryden, Milton,
and you seem to have overleaped some great chronological boundary; you
have transported yourself into THAT OLD WORLD. Whether the historical
date, or the gigantic soul, or the learned art, make the separation, the
fact is clear, that the poet of the "Paradise Lost" stands decidedly
further off; and, more or less, you must acquire the taste and
intelligence of the poem. Why, up to this hour, probably, there are
three-fifths of the poem that you have not read; or, if you have read all,
and go along with all, you have yourself had experience of the progress,
and have felt your capacity of Milton grow and dilate. So has it been with
your capacity for Shakspeare, or you are a truant and an idler. To
comprehend with delight Milton and Shakspeare as poets, you need, from the
beginning, a soul otherwise touched, and gifted for poesy, than Pope
claims of you, or Dryden. The great elder masters, being original, require
of you springs of poesy welling in your own spirit; while the two latter,
imitative artists of luxury, exact from you nothing more, in the way of
poetical endowment, than the gusto of ease and luxurious enchantment. To
prefer, for some intellectual journey, the smooth wafture of an
air-gliding ear--to look with pleasure upon a dance of bright-hued
images--to hear more sweetness in Philomela's descant than in a Turkish
concert--to be ever so little sensible to the bliss of dreams--ever so
little sick of reality, and ever so little glad to be rid of it for an
hour--is qualificati