GEOFFREY CHAUCER ΤΟ ALFRED TENNYSON 1340-1892 IMPRESSIONS BY WILLIAM STEBBING HON. FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD · VOL. I CHAUCER-BURNS HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON, NEW YORK AND TORONTO 1907 CB THE POETS CHAUCER-TENNYSON A.D. 1340-1892 I MAY be asked how I can have dared to sit in judgement on five centuries of English verse. My answer is that the following pages contain reports rather of my trial before the poets than of them before me. I have sat at their feet; and they have required me to say how I have understood them; what I have learnt from them. So long and intimately I have talked with them, from boyhood till the eventide of life, that somehow I felt bound to render them an account of the lessons they have taught me. I thought I should like, while I could, to tell them and myself results of our companionship. To them I owe the best of my education. Whatever intelligence I possess has been fed, refined, and illuminated by them. Hereafter it will not, I trust, be deemed that I have ill repaid my debt to my benefactors by the present attempt to trace and define their magic. Most of them, early and late, have been my old familiar friends and confidants. Pleasant, gracious, fragrant memories exhaled from scores of volumes as I successively took them from their shelves to refresh my acquaintance. If the souls enshrined therein look to the intention, I do not fear that they will resent my audacity at calling the roll. Each of the company as he passed before me has so entirely occupied my attention that I have seldom been |