Only last night I was playing in an orchestra myself, not a hundred miles (obsolete journalistic tag!)not a hundred miles from Drury Lane.

First because of the extraordinary smoothness and melody of his verse and the richness of his languagea golden diction that he drew from every sourcenew words, old words, obsolete wordssuch a mixture that the purist Ben Jonson remarked acidly that he wrote no language at all.

The difficulties of reading Chaucer are more apparent than real, being due largely to obsolete spelling, and there is small necessity for using any modern versions of the poet's work, which seem to miss the quiet charm and dry humor of the original.