" In the Testament of
Love he writes, "Let then clerkes enditen in Latin, for they have
the propertie of science, and the knowinge in that facultie, and
lette Frenchmen in their Frenche also enditen their queinte
termes, for it is kyndely to their mouthes, and let us shewe our
fantasies in soche wordes as we lerneden of our dames tonge."
He will know how to appreciate Chaucer best, who has come down to
him the natural way, through the meagre pastures of Saxon and
ante-Chaucerian poetry; and yet, so human and wise he appears
after such diet, that we are liable to misjudge him still. In
the Saxon poetry extant, in the earliest English, and the
contemporary Scottish poetry, there is less to remind the reader
of the rudeness and vigor of youth, than of the feebleness of a
declining age. It is for the most part translation of imitation
merely, with only an occasional and slight tinge of poetry,
oftentimes the falsehood and exaggeration of fable, without its
imagination to redeem it, and we look in vain to find antiquity
restored, humanized, and made blithe again by some natural
sympathy between it and the present.
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