Its triumph was so
complete, that its decadence followed swiftly. Like the creatures that
live in the blood of man, literary forms and species commonly die of
their own excess. Romances were multiplied, and imitated; professional
poets, not content with marvels that had now become familiar, sought for
a new sensation in extravagant language and incident. The tales became
more and more sophisticated, elaborate, grotesque, and unreal, until, in
the fourteenth century, a stout townsman, who ticketed bales in a custom-
house, and was the best English poet of his time, found them ridiculous.
In _Sir Thopas_ Chaucer parodies the popular literature of his day. Sir
Thopas is a great reader of romances; he models himself on the heroes
whose deeds possess his imagination, and scours the English countryside,
seeking in vain for the fulfilment of his dreams of prowess.
So Romance declined; and by the end of the seventeenth century the
fashion is completely reversed; the pendulum has swung back; now it is
the literature inspired by the old classical models that is real, and
handles actual human interests, while Romantic literature has become
remote, fictitious, artificial. This does not mean that the men of the
later seventeenth century believed in the gods and Achilles, but not in
the saints and Arthur. It means that classical literature was found best
to imitate for its form. The greater classical writers had described the
life of man, as they saw it, in direct and simple language, carefully
ordered by art.
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