er,
disposing it at his discretion, and not carried away with or mastered by
it. Here he is master, too, of his English, thriftily culling the fit
word, not effusing a too exuberant stream of description. Here he has
acquired his own art and his own style of versification, which is here to
be studied accordingly. Well therefore, and wisely, did Tyrwhitt judge,
when undertaking to rescue the "mirrour of Rethoures alle" from the dust
and rust of injurious time, he laid out his long and hard, but not
uncheerful labour upon the Canterbury Tales alone.

Every soul alive knows something of them--but not very many more than
Stothard, in his celebrated Picture, has informed their eye withal. Their
plan ranks them among works which are numerous, early and late, but which
rather belong to early literature. East and West such are to be found, but
they belong rather to the Oriental genius. A slender narrative, the
container of weightier ones--a technical contrivance, which gave to a
number of slighter compositions, collectively taken, the importance of a
greater work--which prolonged to the tale-teller who had once gained the
ear of his auditory his right of audience--and which, in a world where the
tongue was more active in the diffusion of literature than the quill,
afforded to each involved tale a memorial niche that might save it from
dropping entirely away into oblivion.

To Chaucer, the scheme serves a higher purpose of art, which of itself
allies him to the higher poets. By it he is enabled to comprehend, as if
in one picture, a more diversified and complete representation of
humanity. The thought is genial and sprightly. A troop of riders, who have
been stirred severally from their firesides by the searching spirit of
spring, have casually fallen into company, and who pace along, breathing
an air which "sweet showers" have embalmed--exhilarated by the brightening
radiance of "the young sun," and made loquacious by the very power which
pours out the song of the glad birds from the newly-leaved boughs by the
long wayside.

And who are the riders? And what is the charm that has drawn together a
company of thirty to ride on the same road at the same hour of the same
day? The suddenly-spun band of a union that will be as hastily dissolved,
squares happily with the large purpose of the poet, by unforcedly bringing
together persons of both sexes, and of exceedingly diverse conditions,
high, low, learned, unlearned, military, civ