[Born in London, 1328. Died there, 1400. Aged 72.]
Notwithstanding the gulf of years, the poetical sire of Shakspeare. He
to whom, in an age which we call dark, the full sun of poetry shone. He
whose lineaments and gesture, transmitted by a contemporary pencil, are
here before us. He whose eye, though downcast, reads the world around
him, as it sounds the interior of Man: whose grave look of thought hides
the soul of mirth. What phase of our various life seems strange to him?
To this he is at home in experience; to that in imagination. With what
Homeric power has he not described the tournament where kings fight in
the lists at Athens! What mediæval romance in the loves of Palamon and
Arcite! What an oriental colour and grace in the Squier’s half-told tale
of the Tartar Cambuscan! You read tale after tale, and wonder which of
the diversified strains was indeed the most native to the heart of the
poet. One critic will tell you--the broad coarse mirth--Never believe
it! See with what lingering and tender fondness he brings out the
sorrowful story of the pure, innocent, and falsely accused Custance,
abandoned to the wild, drifting sea. How patiently he tells the trials
of the patient Griseldis--how sternly the self-doom of those two impious
challengers of death. To Chaucer was given an insight of which nothing
eludes the scrutiny, a sympathy of which nothing lies beyond the
embrace. And in what spring-like vigour and bloom of life that vanished
world rises again before us! What truth! and what spirit! Under his
quill the speech of England first rose into the full form and force of a
language. Look up at him! He seems to be scanning thought and word,
both. Mine host of the Tabard singling him out amongst the pilgrims, for
the teller of the next tale, says of him: “He seemeth elvish by his
countenance.”--Does he?
[For an account of this statue by Marshall, see No. 53, Handbook of
Modern Sculpture. There is an interesting contemporary portrait of
Chaucer in the British Museum, bearing date 1400, from which the idea
of this statue is borrowed.]