Nothing could be simpler in the most literal sense than the wording of this passage. It is not the simplicity used by great genius to enforce some tragic or tender crisis, but the simplicity of a man who wants to make an entirely matter-of-fact statement, but to make it with dignity and authority. It is not likely that the people of Chaucer’s time talked exactly like that, but it is certain that almost any of them would understand what Chaucer was saying without the smallest difficulty. And we imagine that his clarity of statement was, in fact, the chief idiomatic characteristic of the common speech of the time, and that Chaucer was, in diction, definitely the poet of his age in realising this. To read this opening of _The Canterbury Tales_ over three or four times is to be struck more and more by the remarkable purity of the diction, and it may be said of Chaucer’s work as a whole that the chief triumph of his dealing with language was that he took the simplicity which was common around him and transfigured it into that finer essence of simplicity which is purity. When two hundred years after Chaucer’s death the great Elizabethans were in full song, much in the meantime had happened to common English. It had become instructed, more flexible in its intellectual play, richer in association, and rather more conscious of its own capacities. At the same time it was now the instrument of a people fired with ardent enthusiasm, rich in enterprise, and glowing with the vitality of a young and prospering national spirit. It was the speech of witty, passionate, and powerful youth, and triumphant youth, delighting in problems both of body and mind, immensely fertile in its resources. But it had not yet become sophisticated, and that is the great bond between it and the speech of Chaucer’s time, and the great difference between it and the speech of later ages. And, again, these characteristics which we suppose with good reason to have been those of everyday speech are to be found completely explored and enriched in the age’s poetry. And one of Shakespeare’s sonnets may stand in witness of what was within the common practice of the poets of the age. But wherefore do not you a mightier waie Make warre vppon this bloudie tirant time? And fortifie your selfe in your decay With meanes more blessed then my barren rime? Now stand you on the top of happie houres, And many maiden gardens, yet vnset, With vertuous wish would beare your liuing flowers, Much liker than your painted counterfeit: So should the lines of life that life repaire Which this (Time’s pensel or my pupill pen) Neither in inward worth nor outward faire Can make you liue your selfe in eies of men, To giue away your selfe, keeps your selfe still, And you must liue drawne by your owne sweet skill.