Part 23
If we try Philippe Mouskes, a mechanical rhymer, if ever there was one, and therefore the surer not to let go the leading-strings of rule, the result is the same.
But Chaucer, it is argued, was not uniform in his practice. Would this be likely? Certainly not with those terminations (like _courtesië_) which are questioned, and in diphthongs generally. Dante took precisely the same liberties.
“Fac_ea_ le stelle a n_oi_ parer più radi,” “Nè fu per fantas_ia_ giamm_ai_ compreso” “P_oi_ p_io_vve dentro all ‘alta fantas_ia_,” “Sol_ea_ valor e cortes_ia_ trovarsi,” “Che ne ’nvogliava amor e cortes_ia_.”
Here we have _fantasì’_ and _fantasiä_, _cortesì’_ and _cortesiä_. Even Pope has _promiscuous_, _obsequious_, as trisyllables, _individual_ as a quadrisyllable, and words like _tapestry_, _opera_, indifferently as trochees or dactyls according to their place in the verse. Donne even goes so far as to make Cain a monosyllable and dissyllable in the same verse:--
“Sister and wife to Cain, Caïn that first did plough.”
The cæsural pause (a purely imaginary thing in accentual metres) may be made to balance a line like this of Donne’s,
“Are they not like | singers at doors for meat,”
but we defy any one by any trick of voice to make it supply a missing syllable in what is called our heroic measure, so mainly used by Chaucer.
Enough and far more than enough on a question about which it is as hard to be patient as about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. It is easy to find all manner of bad metres among these versifiers, and plenty of inconsistencies, many or most of them the fault of careless or ignorant transcribers, but whoever has read them thoroughly, and with enough philological knowledge of cognate languages to guide him, is sure that they at least aimed at regularity, precisely as he is convinced that Raynouard’s rule about singular and plural terminations has plenty of evidence to sustain it, despite the numerous exceptions. To show what a bad versifier _could_ make out of the same language that Chaucer used, I copy one stanza from a contemporary poem.
“When Phebus fresh was in chare resplendent, In the moneth of May erly in a morning, I hard two lovers profer this argument In the yeere of our Lord a M. by rekening, CCCXL. and VIII. yeere following. O potent princesse conserve true lovers all And grant them thy region and blisse celestial.”[23]
Here is riding-rhyme, and on a very hard horse too. Can any one be insensible to the difference between such stuff as this and the measure of Chaucer? Is it possible that with him the one halting verse should be the rule, and the twenty musical ones the exception? Let us take heed to his own words:--
“And, for there is so great diversitë In English, and in writing of our tong, So pray I God[24] that none miswritë the Ne the mismetre for defaut of tong, And redde whereso thou be or ellës song That thou be understood God I beseech.”
Yet more. Boccaccio’s _ottava rima_ is almost as regular as that of Tasso. Was Chaucer unconscious of this? It will be worth while to compare a stanza of the original with one of the translation.
“Era cortese Ettore di natura Però vedendo di costei il gran pianto, Ch’era più bella ch’altra creatura, Con pio parlare confortolla alquanto, Dicendo, lascia con la ria ventura Tuo padre andar che tulti ha offeso tanto, E tu, sicura e lieta, senza noia, Mentre t’aggrada, con noi resta in Troia.”[25]
“Now was this Hector pitous of naturë, And saw that she was sorrowful begon And that she was so faire a creaturë, Of his goodnesse he gladed her anon And said [saidë] let your father’s treason gon Forth with mischance, and ye yourself in joy Dwelleth with us while [that] you list in Troy.”
If the Italian were read with the same ignorance that has wreaked itself on Chaucer, the riding-rhyme would be on its high horse in almost every line of Boccaccio’s stanza. The same might be said of many a verse in Donne’s satires. Spenser in his eclogues for February, May, and September evidently took it for granted that he had caught the measure of Chaucer, and it would be rather amusing, as well as instructive, to hear the maintainers of the hop-skip-and-jump theory of versification attempt to make the elder poet’s verses dance to the tune for which one of our greatest metrists (in his philological deafness) supposed their feet to be trained.
I will give one more example of Chaucer’s verse, again making my selection from one of his less mature works. He is speaking of Tarquin:--
“And ay the morë he was in despair The more he coveted and thought her fair; His blinde lust was all his coveting. On morrow when the bird began to sing Unto the siege he cometh full privily And by himself he walketh soberly The imáge of her recording alway new: Thus lay her hair, and thus fresh was her hue, Thus sate, thus spake, thus span, this was her cheer, Thus fair she was, and this was her manére. All this conceit his heart hath new ytake, And as the sea, with tempest all toshake, That after, when the storm is all ago, Yet will the water quap a day or two, Right so, though that her forme were absént, The pleasance of her forme was presént.”
And this passage leads me to say a few words of Chaucer as a descriptive poet; for I think it a great mistake to attribute to him any properly dramatic power, as some have done. Even Herr Hertzberg, in his remarkably intelligent essay, is led a little astray on this point by his enthusiasm. Chaucer is a great narrative poet; and, in this species of poetry, though the author’s personality should never be obtruded, it yet unconsciously pervades the whole, and communicates an individual quality,--a kind of flavor of its own. This very quality, and it is one of the highest in its way and place, would be fatal to all dramatic force. The narrative poet is occupied with his characters as picture, with their grouping, even their costume, it may be, and he feels for and with them instead of being they for the moment, as the dramatist must always be. The story-teller must possess the situation perfectly in all its details, while the imagination of the dramatist must be possessed and mastered by it. The latter puts before us the very passion or emotion itself in its utmost intensity; the former gives them, not in their primary form, but in that derivative one which they have acquired by passing through his own mind and being modified by his reflection. The deepest pathos of the drama, like the quiet “no more but so?” with which Shakespeare tells us that Ophelia’s heart is bursting, is sudden as a stab, while in narrative it is more or less suffused with pity,--a feeling capable of prolonged sustention. This presence of the author’s own sympathy is noticeable in all Chaucer’s pathetic passages, as, for instance, in the lamentation of Constance over her child in the “Man of Law’s Tale.” When he comes to the sorrow of his story, he seems to croon over his thoughts, to soothe them and dwell upon them with a kind of pleased compassion, as a child treats a wounded bird which he fears to grasp too tightly, and yet cannot make up his heart wholly to let go. It is true also of his humor that it pervades his comic tales like sunshine, and never dazzles the attention by a sudden flash. Sometimes he brings it in parenthetically, and insinuates a sarcasm so slyly as almost to slip by without our notice, as where he satirizes provincialism by the cock
“Who knew by nature each ascensiön Of the equinoctial in his native town.”
Sometimes he turns round upon himself and smiles at a trip he has made into fine writing:--
“Till that the brightë sun had lost his hue, For th’ orisont had reft the sun his light, (This is as much to sayen as ‘it was night.’)”
Nay, sometimes it twinkles roguishly through his very tears, as in the
“‘Why wouldest thou be dead,’ these women cry, ‘Thou haddest gold enough--and Emily?’”
that follows so close upon the profoundly tender despair of Arcite’s farewell:--
“What is this world? What asken men to have? Now with his love now in the coldë grave Alone withouten any company!”
The power of diffusion without being diffuse would seem to be the highest merit of narration, giving it that easy flow which is so delightful. Chaucer’s descriptive style is remarkable for its lowness of tone,--for that combination of energy with simplicity which is among the rarest gifts in literature. Perhaps all is said in saying that he has style at all, for that consists mainly in the absence of undue emphasis and exaggeration, in the clear uniform pitch which penetrates our interest and retains it, where mere loudness would only disturb and irritate.
Not that Chaucer cannot be intense, too, on occasion; but it is with a quiet intensity of his own, that comes in as it were by accident.
“Upon a thickë palfrey, paper-white, With saddle red embroidered with delight, Sits Dido: And she is fair as is the brightë morrow That healeth sickë folk of nightës sorrow. Upon a courser startling as the fire, Æneas sits.”
Pandarus, looking at Troilus,
“Took up a light and found his countenance As for to look upon an old romance.”
With Chaucer it is always the thing itself and not the description of it that is the main object. His picturesque bits are incidental to the story, glimpsed in passing; they never stop the way. His key is so low that his high lights are never obtrusive. His imitators, like Leigh Hunt, and Keats in his “Endymion,” missing the nice gradation with which the master toned everything down, become streaky. Hogarth, who reminds one of him in the variety and natural action of his figures, is like him also in the subdued brilliancy of his coloring. When Chaucer condenses, it is because his conception is vivid. He does not need to personify Revenge, for personification is but the subterfuge of unimaginative and professional poets; but he embodies the very passion itself in a verse that makes us glance over our shoulder as if we heard a stealthy tread behind us:--
“The smiler with the knife hid under the cloak.”[26]
And yet how unlike is the operation of the imaginative faculty in him and Shakespeare! When the latter describes, his epithets imply always an impression on the moral sense (so to speak) of the person who hears or sees. The sun “flatters the mountain-tops with sovereign eye”; the bending “weeds lacquey the dull stream”; the shadow of the falcon “coucheth the fowl below”; the smoke is “helpless”; when Tarquin enters the chamber of Lucrece “the threshold grates the door to have him heard.” His outward sense is merely a window through which the metaphysical eye looks forth, and his mind passes over at once from the simple sensation to the complex _meaning_ of it,--feels _with_ the object instead of merely feeling it. His imagination is forever dramatizing. Chaucer gives only the direct impression made on the eye or ear. He was the first great poet who really loved outward nature as the source of conscious pleasurable emotion. The Troubadour hailed the return of spring; but with him it was a piece of empty ritualism. Chaucer took a true delight in the new green of the leaves and the return of singing birds,--a delight as simple as that of Robin Hood:--
“In summer when the shaws be sheen, And leaves be large and long, It is full merry in fair forest To hear the small birds’ song.”
He has never so much as heard of the “burthen and the mystery of all this unintelligible world.” His flowers and trees and birds have never bothered themselves with Spinoza. He himself sings more like a bird than any other poet, because it never occurred to him, as to Goethe, that he ought to do so. He pours himself out in sincere joy and thankfulness. When we compare Spenser’s imitations of him with the original passages, we feel that the delight of the later poet was more in the expression than in the thing itself. Nature with him is only good to be transfigured by art. We walk among Chaucer’s sights and sounds; we listen to Spenser’s musical reproduction of them. In the same way, the pleasure which Chaucer takes in telling his stories has in itself the effect of consummate skill, and makes us follow all the windings of his fancy with sympathetic interest. His best tales run on like one of our inland rivers, sometimes hastening a little and turning upon themselves in eddies that dimple without retarding the current; sometimes loitering smoothly, while here and there a quiet thought, a tender feeling, a pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse, opens quietly as a water-lily, to float on the surface without breaking it into ripple. The vulgar intellectual palate hankers after the titillation of foaming phrase, and thinks nothing good for much that does not go off with a pop like a champagne cork. The mellow suavity of more precious vintages seems insipid: but the taste, in proportion as it refines, learns to appreciate the indefinable flavor, too subtile for analysis. A manner has prevailed of late in which every other word seems to be underscored as in a school-girl’s letter. The poet seems intent on showing his sinew, as if the power of the slim Apollo lay in the girth of his biceps. Force for the mere sake of force ends like Milo, caught and held mockingly fast by the recoil of the log he undertook to rive. In the race of fame, there are a score capable of brilliant _spurts_ for one who comes in winner after a steady pull with wind and muscle to spare. Chaucer never shows any signs of effort, and it is a main proof of his excellence that he can be so inadequately sampled by detached passages,--by single lines taken away from the connection in which they contribute to the general effect. He has that continuity of thought, that evenly prolonged power, and that delightful equanimity, which characterize the higher orders of mind. There is something in him of the disinterestedness that made the Greeks masters in art. His phrase is never importunate. His simplicity is that of elegance, not of poverty. The quiet unconcern with which he says his best things is peculiar to him among English poets, though Goldsmith, Addison, and Thackeray have approached it in prose. He prattles inadvertently away, and all the while, like the princess in the story, lets fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a piece of good luck to be natural! It is the good gift which the fairy godmother brings to her prime favorites in the cradle. If not genius, it is alone what makes genius amiable in the arts. If a man have it not, he will never find it, for when it is sought it is gone.
When Chaucer describes anything, it is commonly by one of those simple and obvious epithets or qualities that are so easy to miss. Is it a woman? He tells us she is _fresh_; that she has _glad_ eyes; that “every day her beauty newed”; that
“Methought all fellowship as naked Withouten her that I saw once, As a coróne without the stones.”
Sometimes he describes amply by the merest hint, as where the Friar, before setting himself softly down, drives away the cat. We know without need of more words that he has chosen the snuggest corner. In some of his early poems he sometimes, it is true, falls into the catalogue style of his contemporaries; but after he had found his genius he never particularizes too much,--a process as deadly to all effect as an explanation to a pun. The first stanza of the “Clerk’s Tale” gives us a landscape whose stately choice of objects shows a skill in composition worthy of Claude, the last artist who painted nature epically:--
“There is at the west endë of Itaile, Down at the foot of Vesulus the cold, A lusty plain abundant of vitaile, Where many a tower and town thou may’st behold That founded were in time of fathers old, And many another delítable sight; And Sàlucës this noble country hight.”
The Pre-Raphaelite style of landscape entangles the eye among the obtrusive weeds and grass-blades of the foreground which, in looking at a real bit of scenery, we overlook; but what a sweep of vision is here! and what happy generalization in the sixth verse as the poet turns away to the business of his story! The whole is full of open air.
But it is in his characters, especially, that his manner is large and free; for he is painting history, though with the fidelity of portrait. He brings out strongly the essential traits, characteristic of the genus rather than of the individual. The Merchant who keeps so steady a countenance that
“There wist no wight that he was e’er in debt,”
the Sergeant at Law, “who seemëd busier than he was,” the Doctor of Medicine, whose “study was but little on the Bible,”--in all these cases it is the type and not the personage that fixes his attention. William Blake says truly, though he expresses his meaning somewhat clumsily, “the characters of Chaucer’s Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations. Some of the names and titles are altered by time, but the characters remain forever unaltered, and consequently they are the physiognomies and lineaments of universal human life, beyond which Nature never steps. Names alter, things never alter. As Newton numbered the stars, and as Linnæus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes of men.” In his outside accessaries, it is true, he sometimes seems as minute as if he were illuminating a missal. Nothing escapes his sure eye for the picturesque,--the cut of the beard, the soil of armor on the buff jerkin, the rust on the sword, the expression of the eye. But in this he has an artistic purpose. It is here that he individualizes, and, while every touch harmonizes with and seems to complete the moral features of the character, makes us feel that we are among living men, and not the abstracted images of men. Crabbe adds particular to particular, scattering rather than deepening the impression of reality, and making us feel as if every man were a species by himself; but Chaucer, never forgetting the essential sameness of human nature, makes it possible, and even probable, that his motley characters should meet on a common footing, while he gives to each the _expression_ that belongs to him, the result of special circumstance or training. Indeed, the absence of any suggestion of _caste_ cannot fail to strike any reader familiar with the literature on which he is supposed to have formed himself. No characters are at once so broadly human and so definitely outlined as his. Belonging, some of them, to extinct types, they continue contemporary and familiar forever. So wide is the difference between knowing a great many men and that knowledge of human nature which comes of sympathetic insight and not of observation alone.
It is this power of sympathy which makes Chaucer’s satire so kindly,--more so, one is tempted to say, than the panegyric of Pope. Intellectual satire gets its force from personal or moral antipathy, and measures offences by some rigid conventional standard. Its mouth waters over a galling word, and it loves to say _Thou_, pointing out its victim to public scorn. _Indignatio facit versus_, it boasts, though they might as often be fathered on envy or hatred. But imaginative satire, warmed through and through with the genial leaven of humor, smiles half sadly and murmurs _We_. Chaucer either makes one knave betray another, through a natural jealousy of competition, or else expose himself with a _naïveté_ of good-humored cynicism which amuses rather than disgusts. In the former case the butt has a kind of claim on our sympathy; in the latter, it seems nothing strange if the sunny atmosphere which floods that road to Canterbury should tempt anybody to throw off one disguise after another without suspicion. With perfect tact, too, the Host is made the _choragus_ in this diverse company, and the coarse jollity of his temperament explains, if it does not excuse, much that would otherwise seem out of keeping. Surely nobody need have any scruples with _him_.