poetry resembles the root just springing from the ground, rather than the full-blown flower.  His muse is no “babbling gossip of the air,” fluent and redundant; but, like a stammerer, or a dumb person, that has just found the use of speech, crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and fond repetitions to prevent mistake.  His words point as an index to the objects, like the eye or finger.  There were none of the common-places of poetic diction in our author’s time, no reflected lights of fancy, no borrowed roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things for himself, to look narrowly, and almost to handle the object, as in the obscurity of morning we partly see and partly grope our way; so that his descriptions have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce the effect of sculpture on the mind.  Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of nature and discrimination of character; and his interest in what he saw gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation.  The picturesque and the dramatic are in him closely blended together, and hardly distinguishable; for he principally describes external appearances as indicating character, as symbols of internal sentiment.  There is a meaning in what he sees; and it is this which catches his eye by sympathy.  Thus the costume and dress of the Canterbury Pilgrims—­of the Knight—­the Squire—­the Oxford Scholar—­the Gap-toothed Wife of Bath, and the rest, speak for themselves.  To take one or two of these at random: 

      “There was also a nonne, a Prioresse,
      That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy;
      Hire gretest othe n’as but by seint Eloy: 
      And she was cleped Madame Eglentine. 
      Ful wel she sange the service divine
      Entuned in hire nose ful swetely;
      And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly,
      After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
      For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe. 
      At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle;
      She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle,
      Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe.

* * * * * *

      And sikerly she was of great disport,
      And ful plesant, and amiable of port,
      And peined hire to contrefeten chere
      Of court, and ben estatelich of manere,
      And to ben holden digne of reverence. 
        But for to speken of hire conscience,
      She was so charitable and so pitous,
      She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous
      Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde. 
      Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde
      With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel brede. 
      But sore wept she if on of hem were dede,
      Or if men smote it with a yerde smert: 
      And all was conscience and tendre herte. 
        Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was;
      Hire nose tretis; hire eyen grey as glas;
      Hire mouth ful smale; and therto soft and red;
      But sickerly she hadde a fayre forehed. 
      It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe.”