THE BATTALION.
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kindred. They certainly brought to the
language the greater part of its grace and
’’retiQ^ment, besides the unconscious boon
they gave it when the clash of speech
with speech rubbed off the inflections
-and created a simple syntax. They did
more ; they gave to the race all its more
splendid qualities. They gave to the
nation association with European his
tory, and contact with the art and culture
of the South. Nay, more ; these very
relations with the continent were in the
ond to make it possible for Norman and
Saxon to blend into Englishman. There
were other causes, it is true, that tended
to fuse into'one people the rival races on
the English soil, Kymric Kete ■ and _
Gaelic Kete; Angle, Saxon, Jute and
Frisian ; Dane and Norman. But the
^ambitious efforts of her Angevin princes
to carve a great Kingdom out of the
lands of the old Frankish conquest were
a mighty factor in the problem of unifi-.
cation. "
It was at this very time that Geoffrey
Chaucer, courtier, diplomatist, soldier
and business man, assumed the fitting
task of giving the new tongue literary,
shape and courtly recognition. Just
when all combining causes had reached
their full measure in the sympathy of
v glorious victories won side by side against
a common enemy ; just wlien Crecy and
Poitiers had shed a new splendor on the
name of Englishman ; just when the
brotherhood - of battle and the fellow-
shy) of trade were exerting alike their
powerful influences upon the separate
races and tongues, the poet, who was
John of Gaunt’s friend and Wycliffe’s
sympathizer, found time in the midst of
his stirring life to show his • countrymen
what a noble language genius could make
of the English they spoke so rudely.
Unquestionably Chaucer« wrote, the
language he spoke, however fluent he
may have been in the use of French, not,
like that of his Prioresse.
-“After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,”
and possibly other tongues. It was in
English that he conversed in London,
if not at court; and it was in English
that men habitually spoke to him. But
the poet’s written language was a judi
cious blending of the Normanesque
English, used at court, and the Sax-
onesque English, used in the country.
It was, no doubt, perfectly intelligible to
both classes, and yet an improvement
upon the familiar language of each.
His variety as an artist is truly
wonderful. With all his tendency to
realism, his delight in painting men and
manners, we find him wreathing for the
dreamer’s delight the most fanciful alle
gories, and, telling, naively, wild fictions
akin to the tales of the East. Again, he
turns from these lighter themes and the
frolic fun of his comic tales--sometimes
as full of horseplay as the coarse humor
of Smollett—to deliver moral homi
lies and string together sententious
maxims, or to touch the heart with the
chivalrous generosity of Arcite and Pala-
mqn, or the too poignant trials of Grisella.
Well fitted by nature to originate a great
literature, he seems to have held in him
self the dawnings of many great things ;
to be alliqd on the one hand to Shaks-
peare and his brother dramatists, as a
discerner and limner of character, to
Spenser on the other hand, as an imagi
native poet, with tastes fitting him for
epic forms; while, in sober and inde
pendent thought on the special evils of
his time, he certainly stood with his
contemporaries, Langlande and Wycliffe.
It was a good thing for England that
her first great poet, the fountain-head of
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