The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-01-13
Chaucer.-
'IIIdUC0A.
ISWinburne in FortnightlY ReYieM.

[Swinburne in Fortnightly Reviewl
OF all whose names may claim anything like
equality of rank on the roll of national poets
not even excepting Virgil-we may say that
Chaucer borrowed most from abroad, and did
most to improve whatever he borrowed. be-
lieve it would be but accurate to admit that in
all his poems of serious or tragic narrative we
hear French or Italian tongue speaking with
a Teutonic accent through English lips. 1t
has utterly unlearned the native tone and Ca
dence of its natural inhexions; it has perfectly
put on the native tone and cadence of astrang-
er's; yet is it always what it was at first-lin-
qua romano in boccd tedesca. 1t speaks not
only with more vigor but actually with more
sweetness than the tongues of its teachers; but
it speaks after its own fashion no other than
the lesson they have taught Chaucer was in
the main French or Italian poet, lined thor
oughly and warmly throughout with the sub
stance of an English humorist. And with this
great gift of specially English humor he COM
bined, naturally as it. were and inevitably, the
inseparable twin-born gift Of peculiarly Eng
lish pathos. In the figures Of Arctic and Girls
ilde he has actually outdone Boccacio's very
self for pathos as far almost as Keats was
afterward to fall short Of the same great model
in the same great quality. And but for the
instructive distaste and congenial repuguance
of his composed and comfortable genius from
its accompanying horror, he might haply. have
come nearer than he has cared or dared to
come even to the unapproachable pathos of
Dante. But it was only in the world of one
who stands far higher above Dante than even
Dante can on the whole be justly held to stand
above Chaucer that figures as heavenly as the
figures OF Beatrice and Matilda could move un-
spotted aud undegraded among figures as earth
ly as those of the Reve, the Miller and the
Wife of Bath; that wider If not keener pa
thos than Ugolinos or Francesca's could alter
nate with deeper if not richer humor than
that Of Absolom and Nicholas 1t is a notable
dispensation of chance-one which writer
who might happen to be almost theist might
designate in the deIiciously comical phrase OF
certain ambiguous petists as almost providen-
tial'-that the three great typica. poets of the
three great representative nations of Europe
during the dark. and lurid lapse of tie Middle
Ages should each afford as complete and pro.
found a type of different and alien class as of
different and alien people. Vast as are the
diversties of their national and personal char
gences between class and class which mark off
each from either of his fellows in nothing but
in fame. Dante represents, at its best and
highest, the upper class of the dark ages not
less than he represents their Italy, Chaucer
represents their middle class at its best and
wsest not less than he represents their Eng
land; Villon represents their lower class az It's
worst and its hest alike even more than he
represents their France. And of these three
the English middle class being incomparably
the nannIaSt and the wiShst. indian utohl
considering the common circumstances of their
successive times the least likely to have left
us the highest example of all poetry then pos
sible to men. And of their three legacies,
precious and wonderful as it is, the English
mans is accordingly the least wonderful and
the least precious. The poet of the sensible
and prosperous middle class in England had
less TO suffer and to sing than the theosophic
aristocrat OF Italy, or the hunted and hungry
yagabond who first found artieulate voice for
the dumb longing and the blind love as we'll as
for the reckless appegites and riotous agonies of
the miserable and terrible multitude in whose
darkness lay dormant, as in cerecloth which
was also chrySald, the debased and disfigured
godhead which was one day TO exchange the
degradation of the lowest populace for the reve-
latlon OF the highest people-for the world
wide apocalypse of France. The golden
tongued gallows-bird of Paris is distinguished
from his two more dignified compeers by a
deeper difference yet-a differences, we might
say, OF Office and of mission no less than OF
genius and of gift Dante and Chaucer are
wholly and solely poets of the past and present
singers indeed for all time, but only singers
of their own. Villon in an equiyocal and un-
conscious fashion, was singer also OF the fu-
ture; he was tlfe first modern and the last me-
diseval poet. He is of US, in sense inwhich
itscannot be said that either Chaucer or Dante
is of u.s. or even could have been; man of
changing and notwithstanding time, not ut
terly held fast, though still sorely struggling in
the jaws of hell and the ages of faith.