Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IIL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHAUCER AND OF HIS POKTRT. Thus, then, Chaucer had passed away — whether in good; or in evil odour with the powerful interest with which John of Gaunt's son had entered into his unwritten con- cordate, after all, matters but little now. He is no dim- shadow to us, even in his outward presence; for we possess sufficient materials from which to picture to ourselves with good assurance what manner of man he was. Oc- cleve painted from memory, on the margin of one of his own works, a portrait of his " worthy master," over against a passage in which, after praying the Blessed Virgin to intercede for the eternal happiness of one who had written so much in her honour, he proceeds as follows :— " Although his life be quenched, the resemblance Of him hath in me so fresh liveliness, That to put other men in remembrance Of his person I have here his likeness Made, to this end in very soothfastness, That they that have of him lost thought and mind May by the painting here again him find." In this portrait, in which the experienced eye of Sir Harris Nicolas sees " incomparably the best portrait of Chaucer yet discovered," he appears as an elderly rather than- aged man, clad in dark gown and hood—the latter of thefashion so familiar to us from this very picture, and from the well-known one of Chaucer's last patron, King Henry IV. His attitude in this likeness is that of a quiet talker, with downcast eyes, but sufficiently erect bearing of body. One arm is extended, and seems to be gently pointing some observation which has just issued from the poet's lips. The other holds a rosary, which may be significant of the piety attributed to Chaucer by Occleve, or may be a mere ordinary accompaniment of conversation, as it is in parts of Greece to the present ...