The age of Chaucer was widely and variously different from that of Dryden. Knowledge, taste, art, had advanced with strides between the two dates; and the bleak and stormy English political atmosphere of the fourteenth century had changed, notwithstanding the commotion of the later civil war, into a far milder and more settled element when the seventeenth drew towards close. Genius, likewise, in the two poets, was distinguished by marked differences. Strength, simplicity, earnestness, human affection, characterize Chaucer. Dryden has plenty of strength, too, but it shows itself differently. The strength of Chaucer is called out by the requisition of the subject, and is measured to the call. Dryden bounds and exults in his nervous vigour, like a strong steed broke loose. Exuberant power and rejoicing freedom mark Dryden versifying--a smooth flow, a prompt fertility, a prodigal splendour of words and images. Old Chaucer, therefore, having passed through the hands of Dryden, is no longer old Chaucer--no longer Chaucer. But the well-chosen, and well-disposed, and well-told tale, full of masculine sense, lively with humour, made present with painting--for all this Chaucer brings to Dryden--becomes, by nothing more than the disantiquating and the different hand, a new poem.
Place the two side by side, and whilst you feel that a total change has been effected, you shall not always easily assign the secret of the change wrought. There then comes into view, it must be owned, something like an unpractised awkwardness in the gait of the great elder bard, which you less willingly believe, or to which you shut your eyes, when you have him by himself to yourself. The step of Dryden is rapid, and has perfect decision. He knows, with every spring he takes, where he shall alight. Now Chaucer, you would often say, is retarded by looking where he shall next set down his foot. The old poetry details the whole series of thinking. The modern supposes more. That is the consequence of practice. Writer and reader are in better intelligence. A hint goes further--that which is known to be meant needs not be explicitly said. Style, as the art advances, gains in dispatch. There is better keeping, too, in some respects. The dignity of the style--the purpose of the Beautiful--is more considerately maintained. And perhaps one would be justified in saying, that if the earnestness of the heart, which was in the old time the virtue of virtues, is less--the glow of the fancy, the tone of inspiration, is proportionally more. And if any where the thought is made to give way to the straits of the verse, the modern art more artfully hides the commission.