Nearly all the great writers of antiquity and of the medieval period who have mentioned dancing at all have done so in terms of unmistakable favor; of modern famous authors, they only have condemned it from whose work, or from what is known of their personal character, we may justly infer an equal aversion to pretty much everything in the way of pleasure that a Christian needs not die in order to enjoy English literature — I use the word in its noble sense, to exclude all manner of preaching, whether clerical or lay — is full of the dance; the sound of merry makers footing it featly to the music runs like an undertone through all the variations of its theme and fills all its pauses.

In the “Miller’s Tale,” Chaucer mentions dancing among the accomplishments of the parish clerk, along with blood letting and the drawing of legal documents:

A merry child he was so God me save,

Wel coud he leten blood and clippe and shave,

And make a chartre of land, and a quitance,

In twenty maners could he trip and dance,

After the scole of Oxenforde tho

And with his legges casten to and fro2

Milton, the greatest of the Puritans — intellectual ancestry of the modern degenerate Prudes — had a wholesome love of the dance, and nowhere is his pen so joyous as in its description in the well known passage from “Comus” which, should it occur to my memory while delivering a funeral oration, I am sure I could not forbear to quote, albeit this, our present argument, is but little furthered by its context

Meanwhile welcome joy and feast

Midnight shout and revelry

Tipsy dance and jollity

Braid your locks with rosy twine

Dropping odors dropping wine

Rigor now is gone to bed

And advice with scrupulous head

Strict age and sour severity

With their grave saws in slumber lie

We that are of purer fire

Imitate the starry quire

Who in their nightly watching spheres

Lead in swift round the months and years

The sounds and seas with all their finny drove

And on the tawny sands and shelves

Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves

If Milton was not himself a good dancer — and as to that point my memory is unstored with instance or authority — it will at least be conceded that he was an admirable reporter, with his heart in the business. Somewhat to lessen the force of the objection that he puts the foregoing lines into a not very respectable mouth, on a not altogether reputable occasion, I append the following passage from the same poem, supposed to be ............