immense service to have it at this time passed over the tongue
of a poet born and made. He used the privilege of genius
in bringing the innocence as of a child in time to an unexpected
mastery of the instrument, without dulling his freshness of
utterance.

What then was Chaucer's virtue, as a continuer of the tale-
writers who enlarged, too, the singing scale. We do not usually
think of him as a lyric poet at all. Yet if the sheer gratifica-
tion afforded by his Tales be examined, a very considerable
share of it may be traced to his habit of "breaking the epic"
whenever his invention suggests it. The sense of music is
present to him as it was to the verse romancers before him.
And in his first period, before he had artistically found himself,
he experimented in the French forms as in the three roundels
first printed by Percy in his Reliques and rediscovered by
Dr Skeat in Rawlinson, Poet, 163. The first may be quoted--

"Your yën two wol slee me sodenly
I may the beautë of hem nor susteyn
So woundeth hit throughout my hertë kene. . . ."

Though only conjecturally his, they have the savour of his
verse, and are not less like him, in their mixed tenderness
and coyness, than the Saint Valentine roundel in the
Parlement of Fowles, which is undoubtedly his--

"Now welcome somer, with thy sonnë softe
That hast this wintrës weders over-shake
And driven away the longë nightës blake.
Seynt Valentyn, that art full hy in lofte,
Thus singen smalë foulës for thy sake
'Now welcome somer with thy sonnë softe
That hast this winterës weders over-skake.'
Wel hav they cauasë for to gladen ofte
Sith ech of hem recoverëd hath his make:
Ful blisful may they singen whan they wake
'Now welcome somer with thy sonnë softe
That hast this wintrës weders over-skake
And driven away the longë nightës blake.'"

Chaucer, while still a prentice to his craft, liked to take
out the pipe and break into song, and so it was with him

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