2. _His Humor_. In nothing are Chaucer's personality and his poetry
more pleasing than in the rich humor which pervades them through and
through. Sometimes, as in his treatment of the popular medieval beast-epic
material in the Nun's Priest's Tale of the Fox and the Cock, the humor
takes the form of boisterous farce; but much more often it is of the finer
intellectual sort, the sort which a careless reader may not catch, but
which touches with perfect sureness and charming lightness on all the
incongruities of life, always, too, in kindly spirit. No foible is too
trifling for Chaucer's quiet observation; while if he does not choose to
denounce the hypocrisy of the Pardoner and the worldliness of the Monk, he
has made their weaknesses sources of amusement (and indeed object-lessons
as well) for all the coming generations.
3. _He is one of the greatest of all narrative poets_. Chaucer is an
exquisite lyric poet, but only a few of his lyrics have come down to us,
and his fame must always rest largely on his narratives. Here, first, he
possesses unfailing fluency. It was with rapidity, evidently with ease, and
with masterful certainty, that he poured out his long series of vivid and
delightful tales. It is true that in his early, imitative, work he shares
the medieval faults of wordiness, digression, and abstract symbolism; and,
like most medieval writers, he chose rather to reshape material from the
great contemporary store than to invent stories of his own.
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