"He is at heart surpassingly gentle and compassionate. The innocence and sufferings of women move him deeply.” -Henry S. Pancoast.

"Pity for inevitable suffering is a note of Chaucer's mind which forever distinguishes him from Boccaccio and makes him out as the true forerunner of the poet of Hamlet and Othello. . . He is overcome by 'pity and ruth' as he reads of suffering, and his eyes wax foul and sore' as he prepares to tell of its infliction."—T. H. Ward.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

"Allas, the wo! allas, the peynes stronge,
That I for yow have suffred, and so longe!
Allas, the deeth! allas, myn Emelye!
Allas, departing of our companye!

Allas, myn hertes quene! allas, my wyf!

Myn hertes lady, endere of my lyf!

What is this world? what asketh men to have?
Now with his love, now in his colde grave

Allone, with-outen any companye.”

-The Knightes Tale.

"O, which a pitous thing it was to see

Hir swowning, and hir humble voys to here!
'Grauntmercy, lord, that thanke I yow,' quod she,
'That ye han saved me my children dere!
Now rekke I never to ben deed right here;
Sith I stonde in your love and in your grace,
No fors of deeth, ne whan my spirit pace.'

-The Clerkes Tale.

"Have ye nat seyn som tyme a pale face
Among a prees, of him that hath be lad
Toward his deeth, wher-as him gat no grace
And swich a colour in his face hath had,
Men mighte knowe his face, that was bistad,
Amonges alle the faces in that route:

So stant Custance, and loketh hir aboute."

-The Man of Lawes Tale.

5. Respect for Womanhood.-" Chaucer alone, in his time, felt the whole beauty of womanhood, and felt it most in its most perfect type-in wifehood, with the modest graces of the daisy, with its soothing virtues, and its power of healing inward wounds. Physicians in his day ascribed such power to the daisy, which, by Heaven's special blessing, was made common to all, and was the outward emblem also of the true and pure wife in its heart of gold and its white crown of innocence. . . As the range of Shakespeare was from Imogen to Dame Quickly and lower, so the range of Chaucer is from the ideal patience of the wife Griselda, or the girlish innocence and grace of Emelie in the Knight's Tale' to the Wife of Bath and lower; and in each of these great poets the predominating sense is of the beauty and honor of true womanhood. If there were many Englishmen who read what we have of the Canterbury Tales' straight through, it would not be necessary to say that, even in the fragment as it stands, expression of the poet's sense of the worth and beauty of womanhood, very greatly predominates over his satire of the weaknesses of women.

. . . In a sense of

his own, he takes the daisy for his flower, and rises high above all poets of his age in honor to marriage and praise of the purity of the wife's white daisy crown."-Henry Morley.

"We have no hesitation in placing him very high in the list of those who have exalted our ideal of the womanly character. Womanliness is indeed the characteristic feature of Chaucer's women."-Alfred Ainger.

"His works show that he was not likely to fail in that respectfulness that women are said to love. He is on all occasions the champion of gentle woman, gentle creatures; ' and however much sly fun he makes of their foibles, he compensates amply by frequently expressed indignation at their wrongs and by praises of their many virtues. . . All Chaucer's works show that he was most intimately pervaded by chivalrous sentiment. . . . It is womanhood in dis

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tress that enters his heart with the keenest stroke.
His gallery of distressed heroines was as wide as the range of
legend and history that was known to him.
thought of their suffering agitates him, destroys his compos-
The
ure; he cannot proceed without stopping to express his com-
passion or to appeal to Heaven against the caprice of Fortune
or the wickedness of men."-William Minto.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

"Lo, what gentillesse these women have,
If we coude know it for our rudenesse !
How busie they be us to keepe and save,
Both in hele, and also in sikenesse!

And always right sorrie for our distresse,
In every manner; thus shew thy routhe,
That in hem is al goodnesse and trouthe."
-A Praise of Women.

"O blissful ordre, of wedlok precious,
Thou art so mery, and eek so vertuous,
And so commended and appreved eek,
That every man that halt him worth a leek,
Up-on his bare knees oghte al his lyf
Thanken his god that him hath sent a wyf;
Or elles preye to god him for to sende
A wyf, to laste un-to his lyves ende."

-The Marchante Tale.

"In hir is heigh beautee with-oute pryde,
Yowthe, with-oute grenehede or folye;
To alle hir werkes vertu is hir gyde,
Humblesse hath slayn in hir al tirannye.
She is mirour of alle curteisye;

Hir herte is verray chambre of holinesse,
Hir hand, ministre of fredom for almesse."

-The Tale of the Man of Lawe.

6. Love of Nature.-" His descriptions of nature are as true as his sketches of human character; and incidental

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touches in him reveal his love of the one as unmistakably as his unflagging interest in the study of the other. When he went forth on these April and May mornings, it was not solely with the intent of composing a roundelay or a marguerite; but we may be well assured that he allowed the songs of the little birds, the perfume of the flowers, and the fresh verdure of the English landscape to sink into his very soul."-T. H. Ward.

"He was the first who made the love of nature a distinct element in our poetry. The delightful and simple familiarity of the poet with the meadows, brooks, and birds, and his love of them, has the effect of making every common aspect of nature new; the May morning is transfigured by his enjoyment of it; the grass of the field is seen as those in Paradise beheld it; the dew lies on our heart as we go forth with the poet in the dawning, and the wind blows past our ear like the music of an old song heard in the days of childhood."-Stopford Brooke.

"Chaucer's heart fitted him very well to be the poet of tender sentiment. He seems to have dwelt with fond observation on everything that was bright and pretty, from the smale fowles that slepen all the night with open eye,' to the little herd-grooms playing on their pipes of green corn. He watched the little conies at their play, the little squirrels at their sylvan feasts. But of all things of beauty in nature, the singing-birds were his most especial favorites. He often dwells on the ravishing sweetness of their melodies.”’ -William Minto.

"The Troubadour hailed the return of spring; but with him it was a piece of empty ritualism. Chaucer took a true delight in the new green of the leaves and the return of the singing-birds. He has never so much as heard of the burthen and mystery of all this unintelligible world.' His flowers and trees and birds have never bothered themselves with Spinoza. He himself sings more like a bird than

any other poet, because it never occurred to him, as to Goethe, that he ought to do so. He pours himself out in sincere joy and thankfulness. He is the first great poet who really loved outward nature as the source of conscious pleasurable émotion. Chaucer took a true delight in the new green of the leaves and the return of singing-birds—a delight as simple as that of Robin Hood.”—Lowell.

.

"On the first of May Chaucer rises and goes out into the meadows. Love enters his heart with the balmy air; the landscape is transfigured and the birds begin to sing.". Taine.

"He is, more than all [other] English poets, the poet of the lusty spring, of Aprille' with her showres sweet' and the foules' song; of May with all her floures' and her green; of the new leaves in the wood and the meadows new -powdered with the daisy, the mystic Marguerite of his 'Legend of Good Women.' A fresh, vernal air blows through all his pages."-H. A. Beers.

"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. Nature is the soul of art: there is a strength as well as a simplicity in the imagination that reposes entirely on nature that nothing else can supply.

"Chaucer's descriptions of natural scenery

have

a local truth and freshness which gives the very feeling of the air, the coolness or moisture of the ground.” — William Hazlitt.

"No poet ever loved nature more than Chaucer did; but it was with a simple, unreflective, child-like love.

It was nature in her first intention,' her most obvious aspects, that attracted him. It is not on nature as a

great whole, much less as an abstraction, that his thought usually dwells. It is the outer world in its most concrete forms and objects with which he delights to interweave his