There is something more pleasant than a fine narrative, and that is a collection of fine narratives, especially when the narratives are all of different colouring. This collection Chaucer gave us, and more. If over-excited, he is always graceful, polished, full of light banter, half-mockeries, somewhat gossipy. An elegant speaker, facile, every ready to smile, he makes of love not a passion but a gay feast. But if he was romantic and gay after the fashion of his age, he also had a fashion of his own. He observes characters, notes their differences, studies the coherence of their parts, brings forward living and distinct persons--a thing unheard of in his time. It is the English positive good sense and aptitude for seeing the inside of things beginning to appear. Chaucer ceases to gossip, and thinks. Each tale is suited to the teller. Instead of surrendering himself to the facility of glowing improvisation, he plans. All his tales are bound together by veritable incidents which spring from the characters of the personages, and are such as we light upon in our travels. He advanced beyond the threshold of his art, but he paused in the vestibule. He half-opens the door of the temple, but does not take his seat there; at most he sat down at intervals. His voice is like that of a boy breaking into manhood. He sets out as if to quit the middle ages; but in the end he is still there. _The Renaissance_ For seventeen centuries a deep and sad thought had weighed upon the spirit of man--the idea of his impotence and decadence. Greek corruption, Roman oppression, and the dissolution of the old world had given it birth; it, in its turn, had produced a stoical resignation, an epicurean indifference, Alexandrian mysticism, and the Christian hope in the Kingdom of God. At last invention makes another start. All was renewed, America and the Indies were added to the map. The system of the universe was propounded, the experimental sciences were set on foot, art and literature shot forth like a harvest, and religion was transformed. It seems as though men had suddenly opened their eyes and seen. They attained a new and superior kind of intelligence which produced extraordinary warmth of soul, a super-abundant and splendid imagination, reveries, visions, artists, believers, founders, creators. This was Europe's grand age, and the most notable epoch of human growth. To this day we live from its sap. To vent the feelings, to set free boldly on all the roads of existence the pack of appetites and instincts, this was the craving which the manners of the time betrayed. It was "merry England," as they called it then. It was not yet stern and constrained. It extended widely, freely, and rejoiced to find itself so expanded. A few sectarians, chiefly in the towns, clung gloomily to the Bible; but the Court, and the men of the world sought their teachers and their heroes from Pagan Greece and Rome. Nearer still was another Paganism, that of Italy,