The occupation of the poet during the last twelve years of his life was in writing his “Canterbury Tales,” on which his fame chiefly rests; written not for money, but because he was impelled to write it, as all true poets write and all great artists paint,—­ex animo,—­because they cannot help writing and painting, as the solace and enjoyment of life.  For his day these tales were a great work of art, evidently written with great care.  They are also stamped with the inspiration of genius, although the stories themselves were copied in the main from the French and Italian, even as the French and Italians copied from Oriental writers, whose works were translated into the languages of Europe so that the romances of the Middle Ages were originally produced in India, Persia, and Arabia.  Absolute creation is very rare.  Even Shakspeare, the most original of poets, was indebted to French and Italian writers for the plots of many of his best dramas.  Who can tell the remote sources of human invention; who knows the then popular songs which Homer probably incorporated in his epics; who can trace the fountains of those streams which have fertilized the literary world?—­and hence, how shallow the criticism which would detract from literary genius because it is indebted, more or less, to the men who have lived ages ago.  It is the way of putting things which constitutes the merit of men of genius.  What has Voltaire or Hume or Froude told the world, essentially, that it did not know before?  Read, for instance, half-a-dozen historians on Joan of Arc:  they all relate substantially the same facts.  Genius and originality are seen in the reflections and deductions and grand sentiments prompted by the narrative.  Let half-a-dozen distinguished and learned theologians write sermons on Abraham or Moses or David:  they will all be different, yet the main facts will be common to all.

The “Canterbury Tales” are great creations, from the humor, the wit, the naturalness, the vividness of description, and the beauty of the sentiments displayed in them, although sullied by occasional vulgarities and impurities, which, however, in all their coarseness do not corrupt the mind.  Byron complained of their coarseness, but Byron’s poetry is far more demoralizing.  The age was coarse, not the mind of the author.  And after five hundred years, with all the obscurity of language and obsolete modes of spelling, they still give pleasure to the true lovers of poetry when they have once mastered the language, which is not, after all, very difficult.  It is true that most people prefer to read the great masters of poetry, in later times; but the “Canterbury Tales” are interesting and instructive to those who study the history of language and literature.  They are links in the civilization of England.  They paint the age more vividly and accurately than any known history.  The men and women of the fourteenth century, of all ranks, stand out to us in fresh and