He doubtless had great dramatic talent, but he did not live in a dramatic age.  His especial excellence, never surpassed, was his power of observing and drawing character, united with boundless humor and cheerful fun.  And his descriptions of nature are as true and unstinted as his descriptions of men and women, so that he is as fresh as the month of May.  In his poetry is life; and hence his immortal fame.  He is not so great as Spenser or Shakspeare or Milton; but he has the same vitality as they, and is as wonderful as they considering his age and opportunities,—­a poet who constantly improved as he advanced in life, and whose greatest work was written in his old age.

Unfortunately, we know but little of Chaucer’s habits and experiences, his trials and disappointments, his friendships or his hatreds.  What we do know of him raises our esteem.  Though convivial, he was temperate; though genial, he was a silent observer, quiet in his manners, modest in his intercourse with the world, walking with downcast eye, but letting nothing escape his notice.  He believed in friendship, and kept his friends to the end, and was stained neither by envy nor by pride,—­as frank as he was affectionate, as gentle as he was witty.  Living with princes and nobles, he never descended to gross adulation, and never wrote a line of approval of the usurpation of Henry IV., although his bread depended on Henry’s favor, and he was also the son of the king’s earliest and best friend.  He was not a religious man, nor was he an immoral man, judged by the standard of his age.  He probably was worldly, as he lived in courts.  We do not see in him the stern virtues of Dante or Milton; nothing of that moral earnestness which marked the only other great man with whom he was contemporary,—­he who is called the “morning star” of the Reformation.  But then we know nothing about him which calls out severe reprobation.  He was patriotic, and had the confidence of his sovereign, else he would not have been employed on important missions.  And the sweetness of his character may be inferred from his long and tender friendship with Gower, whom some in that age considered the greater poet.  He was probably luxurious in his habits, but intemperate use of wine he detested and avoided.  He was portly in his person, but refinement marked his features.  He was a gentleman, according to the severest code of chivalric excellence; always a favorite with ladies, and equally admired by the knights and barons of a brilliant court.  No poet was ever more honored in his life or lamented in his death, as his beautiful monument in Westminster Abbey would seem to attest.  That monument is the earliest that was erected to the memory of a poet in that Pantheon of English men of rank and genius; and it will probably be as long preserved as any of those sculptured urns and animated busts which seek to keep alive the memory of the illustrious dead,—­of those who, though dead, yet speak to all future generations.