What, however, calls for special notice, in connexion with Chaucer's special poetic quality of gaiety and brightness, is the preference which he exhibits for treating the joyous aspects of this many-sided passion. Apart from the "Legend of Good Women," which is specially designed to give brilliant examples of the faithfulness of women under circumstances of trial, pain, and grief, and from two or three of the "Canterbury Tales," he dwells with consistent preference on the bright side of love, though remaining a stranger to its divine radiance, which shines forth so fully upon us out of the pages of Spenser. Thus, in the "Assembly of Fowls" all is gaiety and mirth, as indeed beseems the genial neighbourhood of Cupid's temple. Again, in "Troilus and Cressid," the earlier and cheerful part of the love-story is that which he developes with unmistakeable sympathy and enjoyment, and in his hands this part of the poem becomes one of the most charming poetic narratives of the birth and growth of young love, which our literature possesses--a soft and sweet counterpart to the consuming heat of Marlowe's unrivalled "Hero and Leander." With Troilus it was love at first sight--with Cressid a passion of very gradual growth. But so full of nature is the narrative of this growth, that one is irresistibly reminded at more than one point of the inimitable creations of the great modern master in the description of women's love. Is there not a touch of Gretchen in Cressid, retiring into her chamber to ponder over the first revelation to her of the love of Troilus?-- Cressid arose, no longer there she stayed, But straight into her closet went anon, And set her down, as still as any stone, And every word gan up and down to wind, That he had said, as it came to her mind. And is there not a touch of Clarchen in her--though with a difference--when from her casement she blushingly beholds her lover riding past in triumph: So like a man of armes and a knight He was to see, filled full of high prowess, For both he had a body, and a might To do that thing, as well as hardiness; And eke to see him in his gear him dress, So fresh, so young, so wieldly seemed he, It truly was a heaven him for to see. His helm was hewn about in twenty places, That by a tissue hung his back behind, His shield was dashed with strokes of swords and maces In which men mighte many an arrow find That pierced had the horn and nerve and rind; And aye the people cried: "Here comes our joy, And, next his brother, holder up of Troy." Even in the very "Book of the Duchess," the widowed lover describes the maiden charms of his lost wife with so lively a freshness as almost to make one forget that it is a LOST wife whose praises are being recorded.