No Hero Stands At The Door Prepared To Break Forth
Into Song Or Heroic Action, But A Homely Englishman, Who
Cultivates The Art Of Poetry.
We see the comfortable fireside,
and hear the crackling fagots in all the verse.
Notwithstanding the broad humanity of Chaucer, and the many
social and domestic comforts which we meet with in his verse, we
have to narrow our vision somewhat to consider him, as if he
occupied less space in the landscape, and did not stretch over
hill and valley as Ossian does. Yet, seen from the side of
posterity, as the father of English poetry, preceded by a long
silence or confusion in history, unenlivened by any strain of
pure melody, we easily come to reverence him. Passing over the
earlier continental poets, since we are bound to the pleasant
archipelago of English poetry, Chaucer's is the first name after
that misty weather in which Ossian lived, which can detain us
long. Indeed, though he represents so different a culture and
society, he may be regarded as in many respects the Homer of the
English poets. Perhaps he is the youthfullest of them all. We
return to him as to the purest well, the fountain farthest
removed from the highway of desultory life. He is so natural and
cheerful, compared with later poets, that we might almost regard
him as a personification of spring. To the faithful reader his
muse has even given an aspect to his times, and when he is fresh
from perusing him, they seem related to the golden age.
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