... Chaucer never
shows any signs of effort, and it is a main proof of his excellence that
he can be so inadequately sampled by detached passages, by single lines
taken away from the connection in which they contribute to the general
effect. He has that continuity of thought, that evenly prolonged power,
and that delightful equanimity, which characterize the higher orders of
mind. There is something in him of the disinterestedness that made the
Greeks masters in art. His phrase is never importunate. His simplicity
is that of elegance, not of poverty. The quiet unconcern with which he
says his best things is peculiar to him among English poets, though
Goldsmith, Addison, and Thackeray, have approached it in prose. He
prattles inadvertently away, and all the while, like the princess in the
story, lets fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a piece of
good luck to be natural. It is the good gift which the fairy god-mother
brings to her prime favorites in the cradle. If not genius, it is alone
what makes genius amiable in the arts. If a man have it not he will
never find it; for when it is sought it is gone.
* * * * *
=_Edgar Allen Poe, 1811-1849._= (Manual, p. 510.)
From "The Masque of the Red Death.
Pages:
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440