In this sustaining hope he differs from Juvenal, the
funereal gloom of whose satires is relieved by no gleam of hope for the
future.
Contrast with this the humorous brightness, the laughter, and the light
of the surroundings associated with his great contemporary, Geoffrey
Chaucer. His very satire is kindly and quaint, like that of Horace,
rather than bitterly acidulous. He raps his age over the knuckles, it
is true, for its faults and foibles, but the censor's face wears a
genial smile. One of his chief attractions for us lies in his bright
objectivity. He never wears his heart on his sleeve like Langland. He
has touches of rare and profound pathos, but these notes of pain are
only like undertones of discord to throw the harmony into stronger
relief, only like little cloudlets momentarily flitting across the
golden sunshine of his humour.
We read Chaucer, as we read Horace, from love of his piquant
Epicureanism, and the scintillating satire wherewith he enlivens those
matchless pictures of his epoch which he has handed down to us.
Chaucer, as Professor Minto puts it, wrote largely for the court
circle. His verses were first read in tapestried chambers, and to the
gracious ear of stately lords and ladies. It was because he wrote for
such an audience that he avoids the introduction of any discordant
element in the shape of the deeper and darker social problems of the
time. The same reticence occurs in Horace, writing as he did for the
ear of Augustus and Maecenas, and of the fashionable circle thronging
the great palace of his patron on the Esquiline.
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