But Chaucer is fresh and
modern still, and no dust settles on his true passages. It
lightens along the line, and we are reminded that flowers have
bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts beaten in England. Before
the earnest gaze of the reader, the rust and moss of time
gradually drop off, and the original green life is revealed. He
was a homely and domestic man, and did breathe quite as modern
men do.
There is no wisdom that can take place of humanity, and we find
_that_ in Chaucer. We can expand at last in his breadth, and we
think that we could have been that man's acquaintance. He was
worthy to be a citizen of England, while Petrarch and Boccacio
lived in Italy, and Tell and Tamerlane in Switzerland and in
Asia, and Bruce in Scotland, and Wickliffe, and Gower, and Edward
the Third, and John of Gaunt, and the Black Prince, were his own
countrymen as well as contemporaries; all stout and stirring
names. The fame of Roger Bacon came down from the preceding
century, and the name of Dante still possessed the influence of a
living presence.
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