Yet I am anxious
to do something which may convince you of my sincerity by zeal: and, if
you think that it will be of any service to you, I will send down for
the work; I will instantly give it a perusal 'con amore'; and partly by
my reverential love of Chaucer, and partly from my affectionate esteem
for his biographer (the summer, too, bringing increase of health with
it), I doubt not that my old mind will recur to me; and I will forthwith
write a series of letters, containing a critique on Chaucer, and on the
'Life of Chaucer', by W. Godwin, and publish them, with my name, either
at once in a small volume, or in the 'Morning Post' in the first
instance, and republish them afterwards.
The great thing to be done is to present Chaucer stripped of all his
adventitious matter, his translations, etc.; to analyse his own real
productions, to deduce his province and his rank; then to compare him
with his contemporaries, or with immediate prede- and suc- cessors, first
as an Englishman, and secondly as a European; then with Spenser and with
Shakespeare, between whom he seems to stand mid-way, with, however, a
manner of his own which belongs to neither, with a manner and an
excellence; lastly, to compare Dante and Chaucer, and inclusively
Spenser and Shakespere, with the ancients, to abstract the
characteristic differences, and to develop the causes of such
differences.
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