he was obliged to fly the country.  On his return, he was imprisoned, and made his peace with government, as it is said, by a discovery of his associates.  Fortitude does not appear, at any time, to have been the distinguishing virtue of poets.—­There is, however, an obvious similarity between the practical turn of Chaucer’s mind and restless impatience of his character, and the tone of his writings.  Yet it would be too much to attribute the one to the other as cause and effect:  for Spenser, whose poetical temperament was an effeminate as Chaucer’s was stern and masculine, was equally engaged in public affairs, and had mixed equally in the great world.  So much does native disposition predominate over accidental circumstances, moulding them to its previous bent and purposes!  For while Chaucer’s intercourse with the busy world, and collision with the actual passions and conflicting interests of others, seemed to brace the sinews of his understanding, and gave to his writings the air of a man who describes persons and things that he had known and been intimately concerned in; the same opportunities, operating on a differently constituted frame, only served to alienate Spenser’s mind the more from the “close-pent up” scenes of ordinary life, and to make him “rive their concealing continents,” to give himself up to the unrestrained indulgence of “flowery tenderness.”

It is not possible for any two writers to be more opposite in this respect.  Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoyment; Chaucer, in severe activity of mind.  As Spenser was the most romantic and visionary, Chaucer was the most practical of all the great poets, the most a man of business and the world.  His poetry reads like history.  Every thing has a downright reality; at least in the relator’s mind.  A simile, or a sentiment, is as if it were given in upon evidence.  Thus he describes Cressid’s first avowal of her love.

      “And as the new abashed nightingale,
      That stinteth first when she beginneth sing,
      When that she heareth any herde’s tale,
      Or in the hedges any wight stirring,
      And after, sicker, doth her voice outring;
      Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent,
      Open’d her heart, and told him her intent.”

This is so true and natural, and beautifully simple, that the two things seem identified with each other.  Again, it is said in the Knight’s Tale—­

      “Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day,
      Till it felle ones in a morwe of May,
      That Emelie that fayrer was to sene
      Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene;
      And fresher than the May with floures newe,
      For with the rose-colour strof hire hewe: 
      I n’ot which was the finer of hem two.”

This scrupulousness about the literal preference, as if some question of matter of fact was at issue, is remarkable.  I might mention that other, where he compares the meeting between Palamon and Arcite to a hunter waiting for a lion in a gap;—­