And like a griffon loked he about, With kemped heres on his browes stout; His limmes gret, his braunes hard and stronge, Ful highe upon a char of gold stood he, About his char ther wenten white alauns, And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound.- And that was yelwe, and glitered as the Sonne. His lippes round, his colour was sanguin, A fewe fraknes in his face yspreint, Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint, Of five and twenty yere his age I caste. About this king ther ran on every part What a deal of terrible beauty there is contained in this description! The imagination of a poet brings such objects before us, as when we look at wild beasts in a menagerie; their claws are pared, their eyes glitter like harmless lightning; but we look at them with a pleasing awe, clothed in beauty, formidable in the sense of abstract power. Chaucer's descriptions of natural scenery possess the same sort of characteristic excellence, or what might be termed gusto. They have a local truth and freshness, which gives the very feeling of the air, the coolness or moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects are thus made to have a fellowfeeling in the interests of the story; and render back the sentiment of the speaker's mind. One of the finest parts of Chaucer is of this mixed kind. It is the beginning of the Flower and the Leaf, where he describes the delight of that young beauty, shrouded in her bower, and listening, in the morning of the year, to the singing of the nightingale; while her joy rises with the rising song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne along with the full tide of pleasure, and still increases, and repeats, and prolongs itself, and knows no ebb. The coolness of the arbour, its retirement, the early time of the day, the sudden starting up of the birds in the neighbouring bushes, the eager delight with which they devour and rend the opening buds and flowers, are expressed with a truth and feeling, which make the whole appear like the recollection of an actual scene: "Which as me thought was right a pleasing sight, And I that couth not yet in no manere Heare the nightingale of all the yeare, If I her voice perceiue coud any where. And I that all this pleasaunt sight sie, So ouerlaid, but it should soone haue bote, And as I stood and cast aside mine eie, And to the herber side was joyning The nightingale with so merry a note I stood astonied, so was I with the song Wherefore I waited about busily On euery side, if I her might see, And at the last I gan full well aspie Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree, On the further side euen right by me, Whereof I had so inly great pleasure, And more pleasaunt to me by manifold, Of the world was neuer seene or than And as I sat the birds harkening thus, That euer any wight I trow truly And sweet accord was in so good musike, There is no affected rapture, no flowery sentiment: the whole is an ebullition of natural delight "welling out of the heart," like water from a crystal spring. 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. It was the same trust in nature, and reliance on his subject, which enable Chaucer to |