Affinity merely. He advanced a few steps beyond the threshold of his art, but he paused at the end of the vestibule. He half opens the great door of the temple, but does not take his seat there; at most, he sat down in it only at intervals. In "Arcite and Palamon," in "Troilus and Cressida," he sketches sentiments, but does not create characters; he easily and naturally traces the winding course of events and conversations, but does not mark the precise outline of a striking figure. If occasionally, as in the description of the temple of Mars, after the "Thebaid" of Statius, feeling at his back the glowing breeze of poetry, he draws out his feet, clogged with the mud of the Middle Ages, and at a bound stands upon the poetic plain on which Statius imitated Vergil and equalled Lucan, he, at other times, again falls back into the childish gossip of the _trouvères_, or the dull gabble of learned clerks--to "Dan Phebus or Apollo-Delphicus." Elsewhere, a commonplace remark on art intrudes in the midst of an impassioned description. He uses three thousand verses to conduct Troilus to his first interview. He is like a precocious and poetical child, who mingles in his love-dreams quotations from his grammar and recollections of his alphabet.[243] Even in the "Canterbury Tales" he repeats himself, unfolds artless developments, forgets to concentrate his passion or his idea. He begins a jest, and scarcely ends it. He dilutes a bright coloring in a monotonous stanza. His voice is like that of a boy breaking into manhood. At first a manly and firm accent is maintained, then a shrill sweet sound shows that his growth is not finished, and that his strength is subject to weakness. Chaucer sets out as if to quit the Middle Ages; but in the end he is there still. To-day he composes the "Canterbury Tales"; yesterday he was translating the "Roman de la Rose." To-day he is studying the complicated machinery of the heart, discovering the issues of primitive education or of the ruling disposition, and creating the comedy of manners; to-morrow he will have no pleasure but in curious events, smooth allegories, amorous discussions, imitated from the French, or learned moralities from the ancients. Alternately he is an observer and a _trouvère_; instead of the step he ought to have advanced, he has but made a half-step.