It is not here, but in a poem the opposite of this in fulness and richness of drama, that Chaucer attains a place for himself above all other authors as the poet who saw what was needed to transform medieval romance out of its limitations into a new kind of narrative. Chaucer's _Troilus and Criseyde_ is the poem in which medieval romance passes out of itself into the form of the modern novel. What Cervantes and what Fielding did was done first by Chaucer; and this was the invention of a kind of story in which life might be represented no longer in a conventional or abstract manner, or with sentiment and pathos instead of drama, but with characters adapting themselves to different circumstances, no longer obviously breathed upon by the master of the show to convey his own ideas, but moving freely and talking like men and women. The romance of the Middle Ages comes to an end, in one of the branches of the family tree, by the production of a romance that has all the freedom of epic, that comprehends all good and evil, and excludes nothing as common or unclean which can be made in any way to strengthen the impression of life and variety. Chaucer was not tempted by the phantasm of the Epic Poem like Boccaccio, and like so many of the great and wise in later generations. The substance of Epic, since his time, has been appropriated by certain writers of history, as Fielding has explained in his lectures on that science in _Tom Jones_. The first in the line of these modern historians is Chaucer with his _Troilus and Criseyde_, and the wonder still is as great as it was for Sir Philip Sidney:-- Chaucer undoubtedly did excellently in his _Troylus_ and _Cresseid_; of whom, truly I know not whether to mervaile more, either that he in that mistie time could see so clearely, or that wee in this cleare age walke so stumblingly after him. His great work grew out of the French Romantic School. The episode of Troilus and Briseide in Benoit's _Roman de Troie_ is one of the best passages in the earlier French romance; light and unsubstantial like all the work of that School, but graceful, and not untrue. It is all summed up in the monologue of Briseide at the end of her story (l. 20,308):-- Dex donge bien a Troylus! Quant nel puis amer ne il mei A cestui[90] me done et otrei. Molt voldreie aveir cel talent Que n'eüsse remembrement Des ovres faites d'en arriere: Ço me fait mal à grant manière! [Footnote 90: _i.e._ Diomede.]