an acceptance of the world as a pleasant enough place, provided good dinners and a sufficiency of cash are to be had, and that healthy relish for fact and reality, and scorn of humbug of all kinds, especially of that particular phase of it which makes one appear better than one is, which—­for want of a better term—­we are accustomed to call English.  Chaucer was a Conservative in all his feelings; he liked to poke his fun at the clergy, but he was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made.  He loved good eating and drinking, and studious leisure and peace; and although in his ordinary moods shrewd, and observant, and satirical, his higher genius would now and then splendidly assert itself—­and behold the tournament at Athens, where kings are combatants and Emily the prize; or the little boat, containing the brain-bewildered Constance and her child, wandering hither and thither on the friendly sea.

Chaucer was born about 1328, and died about 1380; and although he had, both in Scotland and England, contemporaries and immediate successors, no one of them can be compared with him for a moment.  The “Moral Gower” was his friend, and inherited his tediousness and pedantry without a sparkle of his fancy, passion, humour, wisdom, and good spirits.  Occleve and Lydgate followed in the next generation; and although their names are retained in literary histories, no line or sentence of theirs has found a place in human memory.  The Scottish contemporary of Chaucer was Barbour, who although deficient in tenderness and imagination, deserves praise for his sinewy and occasionally picturesque verse.  “The Bruce” is really a fine poem.  The hero is noble, resolute, and wise.  Sir James Douglas is a very perfect, gentle knight.  The old Churchman had the true poetic fire in him.  He rises into eloquence in an apostrophe to Freedom, and he fights the battle of Bannockburn over again with great valour, shouting, and flapping of standards.  In England, nature seemed to have exhausted herself in Chaucer, and she lay quiescent till Lord Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt came, the immediate precursors of Spenser, Shakspeare, and their companions.

While in England the note of the nightingale suddenly ceased, to be succeeded by the mere chirping of the barn-door sparrows, the divine and melancholy voice began to be heard further north.  It was during that most barren period of English poetry—­extending from Chaucer’s death till the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign—­that Scottish poetry arose, suddenly, splendidly—­to be matched only by that other uprising nearer our own time, equally unexpected and splendid, of Burns and Scott.  And it is curious to notice in this brilliant outburst of northern genius how much is owing to Chaucer; the cast of language is identical, the literary form is the same, there is the same way of looking at nature, the same allegorical forests, the troops of ladies, the same processions of cardinal virtues.  James I., whose long captivity in England made him acquainted with Chaucer’s works was the leader of the poetic movement which culminated in Dunbar, and died away in Sir David Lindsay just before the noise and turmoil of the Reformation set in.  In the concluding stanza of the “Quair,” James records his obligation to those—­