Mr. Lowell, in illustration, read from the “Man of Law’s Tale,” and other of the poems. What I have said of Chaucer’s pathos is equally true of his humor. It never _in_vades a story, but _per_vades it. It circulates through all his comic tales like lively blood, and never puddles on the surface any unhealthy spots of extravasation. And this I take to be the highest merit of narrative--diffusion without diffuseness. I have not spoken yet of Chaucer’s greatest work, the “Canterbury Tales.” He has been greatly commended for his skill in the painting of character, and, indeed, nothing too good can be said of him in this respect. But I think it is too much the fashion to consider Chaucer as one of those Flemish painters who are called realists because they never painted the reality, but only the _material_. It is true that Chaucer is as minute in his costume as if he were illuminating a missal. Nothing escapes him--the cut of the beard, the color of the jerkin, the rustiness of the sword. He could not help this, his eye for the picturesque is so quick and sure. But in drawing the character it is quite otherwise. Here his style is large and free, and he emphasizes, but not too strongly, those points only which are essential, and which give variety to his picture without any loss to the keeping. For he did not forget that he was painting history and not a portrait. If his character of the good parson (which still stands not only unmatched but unapproached by the many later attempts at the same thing) seem an exception, it is yet in truth a confirmation of what I have said. For, in this case, for the very sake of _keeping_, it was necessary to be more full and careful, because the _good_ parson alone must balance the friar, the pardoner, and all the other clerical personages who are almost unmixedly evil. Justice is always a leading quality in great minds, and by this single figure on one side and the group on the other Chaucer satirizes the Church, as it can only be satirized, by showing that it contrasts with that true religion with which it should be identical. And was there ever anything so happy as Chaucer’s satire! Commonly satire is unhappy, but Chaucer’s is positively more kindly than the panegyric of some poets.