One great reason of this difference certainly was, that the ablest writers of Greece ennobled the system of heroic manners, while it was fresh and flourishing; and their works, being master-pieces of composition, so fixed the credit of it in the opinion of the world, that no revolutions of time and taste could afterwards shake it.
Whereas the Gothic having been disgraced in their infancy by bad writers, and a new set of manners springing up before there were any better to do them justice, they could never be brought into vogue by the attempts of later poets; who yet, in spite of prejudice, and for the genuine charm of these highly poetical manners, did their utmost to recommend them.
But, FURTHER, the Gothic system was not only forced to wait long for real genius to do it honour; real genius was even very early employed against it.
There were two causes of this mishap. The old Romancers had even outraged the truth in their extravagant pictures of Chivalry; and Chivalry itself, such as it once had been, was greatly abated.
So that men of sense were doubly disgusted to find a representation of things unlike to what they observed in real life, and beyond what it was ever possible should have existed. However, with these disadvantages, there was still so much of the old spirit left, and the fascination of these wondrous tales was so prevalent, that a more than common degree of sagacity and good sense was required to penetrate the illusion.
It was one of this character, I suppose, that put the famous question to Ariosto, which has been so often repeated that I shall spare you the disgust of hearing it. Yet long before his time an immortal genius of our own (so superior is the sense of some men to the age they live in) saw as far into this matter, as Ariosto’s examiner.
You will, perhaps, be as much surprised, as I was (when, many years ago, the observation was, first, made to me) to understand, that this sagacious person was Dan Chaucer; who in a reign that almost realized the wonders of Romantic Chivalry, not only discerned the absurdity of the old Romances, but has even ridiculed them with incomparable spirit.
“His Rime of Sir Topaz in the Canterbury Tales (said the curious observer, on whose authority I am now building) is a manifest banter on these books, and may be considered as a sort of prelude to the adventures of Don Quixote. I call it a manifest banter: for we are to observe that this was Chaucer’s own tale; and that, when in the progress of it the good sense of the Host is made to break in upon him, and interrupt him, Chaucer approves his disgust, and, changing his note, tells the simple instructive tale of Meliboeus; a moral tale virtuous, as he terms it; to shew, what sort of fictions were most expressive of real life, and most proper to be put into the hands of the people.
It is, further, to be noted, that the tale of the Giant Olyphant and Chylde Topaz was not a fiction of his own, but a story of antique fame, and very celebrated in the days of Chivalry: so that nothing could better suit the poet’s design of discrediting the old Romances, than the choice of this venerable legend for the vehicle of his ridicule upon them.
But what puts the satyric purpose of the Rime of Sir Topaz out of all question, is, that this short poem is so managed as, with infinite humour, to expose the leading impertinencies of books of Chivalry; the very same, which Cervantes afterwards drew out, and exposed at large, in his famous history.