od, the whole mind of man is withdrawn
from the sea, regarding it merely as a treacherous impediment, over
which it was necessary sometimes to find conveyance, but from which the
thoughts were always turned impatiently, fixing themselves in green
fields, and pleasures that may be enjoyed by land--the very supremacy of
the horse necessitating the scorn of the sea, which would not be trodden
by hoofs.

It is very interesting to note how repugnant every oceanic idea appears
to be to the whole nature of our principal English mediaeval poet,
Chaucer. Read first the Man of Lawe's Tale, in which the Lady Constance
is continually floated up and down the Mediterranean, and the German
Ocean, in a ship by herself; carried from Syria all the way to
Northumberland, and there wrecked upon the coast; thence yet again
driven up and down among the waves for five years, she and her child;
and yet, all this while, Chaucer does not let fall a single word
descriptive of the sea, or express any emotion whatever about it, or
about the ship. He simply tells us the lady sailed here and was wrecked
there; but neither he nor his audience appear to be capable of receiving
any sensation, but one of simple aversion, from waves, ships, or sands.
Compare with his absolutely apathetic recital, the description by a
modern poet of the sailing of a vessel, charged with the fate of another
Constance:

"It curled not Tweed alone, that breeze--
For far upon Northumbrian seas
It freshly blew, and strong;
Where from high Whitby's cloistered pile,
Bound to St. Cuthbert's holy isle,
It bore a bark along.
Upon the gale she stooped her side,
And bounded o'er the swelling tide
As she were dancing home.
The merry seamen laughed to see
Their gallant ship so lustily
Furrow the green sea foam."

Now just as Scott enjoys this sea breeze, so does Chaucer the soft air
of the woods; the moment the older poet lands, he is himself again, his
poverty of language in speaking of the ship is not because he despises
description, but because he has nothing to describe. Hear him upon the
ground in Spring:

"These woodes else recoveren greene,
That drie in winter ben to sene,
And the erth waxeth proud withall,
For sweet dewes that on it fall,
And the poore estate forget,
In which that winter had it set:
And then becomes the ground so proude,
That it wol have a newe shroude,
And