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There are the ancient camps, now silent and deserted, which become at the bidding of fancy peopled with the unkempt and savage British, and later with their well-disciplined and well-equipped Roman conquerers: archers and men in armour appear; pilgrims' processions such as we read of in Chaucer; knights and ladies on their stately steeds.
"Well, my young friend, you're thrice welcome," said Andrew, who never dropped his book language. "What will you have? Will you resume your apprenticeship under Goethe, or shall we canter to Canterbury with Chaucer? Grand old Dan Chaucer! Or, shall we study magical philosophy with Roger Bacon the Friar, the Admirable Doctor? or read good Sir Thomas More?
The old English alliterative verse continued, indeed, in occasional use to the 16th century. But it was linked to a forgotten literature and an obsolete dialect, and was doomed to give way. Chaucer lent his great authority to the more modern verse system, and his own literary models and inspirers were all foreign, French or Italian.
Sparkling brown eyes, full lips rich in humor and pugnacity, 'lockës crull as they were layde in presse, the same look of 'wonderly' activity too, in spite of his short stature and dainty make, as Chaucer lends his Squire the type was so fresh ad pleasing that Robert was more and more held by it, especially when he discovered to his bewilderment that the supposed stripling must be from his talk a man quite as old as himself, an official besides, filling what was clearly some important place in the world.
Fielding likes virile men, just as they are, good and bad, but detests shams of every sort. His satire has none of Swift's bitterness, but is subtle as that of Chaucer, and good-natured as that of Steele.
The vowels had their broad Italian sounds, and the speech was full of soft gutterals and vocalic syllables, like the endings ën, ës, ë, which made feminine rhymes and kept the consonants from coming harshly together. Great poet as Chaucer was, he was not quite free from the literary weakness of his time.
But this will keep cold till another time. In the meanwhile, I take up Chaucer where I left him. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons. Baptista Porta could not have described their natures better than by the marks which the poet gives them.
Chaucer, with all his jubilee of spirit and resounding laughter, had the name of Jesus Christ and God as frequently to familiarity on his lips as a child has its father's name. You say 'our religion is not vital not week-day enough. Forgive me, but that is a confession of a wrong, not an argument.
For this purpose he carefully read over Chaucer and Spencer, and afterwards, in his writings, did not scruple to revive any words or phrases which he thought deserved it, with that modesty, and liberty which Horace allows of, either in the coining of new, or the restoring of ancient expressions. Our author, however, was not so much enamoured of poetry, as to neglect other parts of literature, but was very well acquainted with the whole compass of natural philosophy.
He took it for granted that those listening were all agreed that mankind would be advantaged in their minds or manners by a more or less familiar acquaintance with Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Burns, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and Browning; he himself did not mind adding Scott to the list, whose poetry he found much better than his prose.
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