But in the fourteenth century there comes an Englishman nourished on this poetry; taught his trade by this poetry, getting words, rhyme, meter from this poetry; for even of that stanza[91] which the Italians used, and which Chaucer derived immediately from the Italians, the basis and suggestion was probably given in France.  Chaucer (I have already named him) fascinated his contemporaries, but so too did Christian of Troyes and Wolfram of Eschenbach.[92] Chaucer’s power of fascination, however, is enduring; his poetical importance does not need the assistance of the historic estimate; it is real.  He is a genuine source of joy and strength, which is flowing still for us and will flow always.  He will be read, as time goes on, far more generally than he is read now.  His language is a cause of difficulty for us; but so also, and I think in quite as great a degree, is the language of Burns.  In Chaucer’s case, as in that of Burns, it is a difficulty to be unhesitatingly accepted and overcome.

If we ask ourselves wherein consists the immense superiority of Chaucer’s poetry over the romance-poetry—­why it is that in passing from this to Chaucer we suddenly feel ourselves to be in another world, we shall find that his superiority is both in the substance of his poetry and in the style of his poetry.  His superiority in substance is given by his large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of human life,—­so unlike the total want, in the romance-poets, of all intelligent command of it.  Chaucer has not their helplessness; he has gained the power to survey the world from a central, a truly human point of view.  We have only to call to mind the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.  The right comment upon it is Dryden’s:  “It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God’s plenty."[93] And again:  “He is a perpetual fountain of good sense.”  It is by a large, free, sound representation of things, that poetry, this high criticism of life, has truth of substance; and Chaucer’s poetry has truth of substance.

Of his style and manner, if we think first of the romance-poetry and then of Chaucer’s divine liquidness of diction, his divine fluidity of movement, it is difficult to speak temperately.  They are irresistible, and justify all the rapture with which his successors speak of his “gold dew-drops of speech.”  Johnson misses the point entirely when he finds fault with Dryden for ascribing to Chaucer the first refinement of our numbers, and says that Gower[94] also can show smooth numbers and easy rhymes.  The refinement of our numbers means something far more than this.  A nation may have versifiers with smooth numbers and easy rhymes, and yet may have no real poetry at all.  Chaucer is the father of our splendid English poetry; he is our “well of English undefiled,” because by the lovely charm of his diction, the lovely charm of his movement, he makes an epoch and founds a tradition.

In Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, we can follow the tradition of the liquid diction, the fluid movement, of Chaucer; at one time it is his liquid diction of which in these poets we feel the virtue, and at another time it is his fluid movement.  And the virtue is irresistible.