Classicly

Chaucer, though unhappily as a writer not free from moral blemishes, was, like Hogarth, the great historic painter of his age, sketching not armies in battle, or parliaments in conclave, but a people in their costume and intercourse, their business and pastime, their private habits and daily life.  In turning over the black-letter volume of his works, we see and hear our ancestors, and talk with them.  It is as if the very glance of the eye, the quivering of the lip, and the tones of the voice, had by some strange process been preserved by this wonder-working artist.