If
Chaucer followed up his subject too doggedly, perhaps Shakespeare
was too volatile and heedless. The Muse's wing too often lifted him
off his feet. He made infinite excursions to the right and the left.
--He hath done
Mad and fantastic execution,
Engaging and redeeming of himself
With such a careless force and forceless care,
As if that luck in very spite of cunning
Bade him win all.
Chaucer attended chiefly to the real and natural, that is, to the
involuntary and inevitable impressions on the mind in given
circumstances: Shakespeare exhibited also the possible and the
fantastical,--not only what things are in themselves, but whatever
they might seem to be, their different reflections, their endless
combinations. He lent his fancy, wit, invention, to others, and
borrowed their feelings in return. Chaucer excelled in the force of
habitual sentiment; Shakespeare added to it every variety of
passion, every suggestion of thought or accident. Chaucer described
external objects with the eye of a painter, or he might be said to
have embodied them with the hand of a sculptor, every part is so
thoroughly made out, and tangible: Shakespeare's imagination threw
over them a lustre
--Prouder than when blue Iris bends.
Everything in Chaucer has a downright reality. A simile or a
sentiment is as if it were given in upon evidence.
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