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human spirit. His attitude to life — the appraisal and rejection of Society, his constant quest for something greater than himself, some object of devotion — is as poetic as Galahad's search for the Holy Grail. Indeed, Charlie is "a very parfit, gentil Knight" and the shrewd but kindly eye of Dan Chaucer would have known him.
His dancing, his dreams, his pursuit of the unattainable, are all poetic; and so is Charlie himself. He is outside Society as a child is outside, a law unto himself, unaware of any moral or ethical significance but his own, applying to his environment a child's absolute judgment. Through those clear eyes, sometimes puzzled, sometimes wistful, sometimes ironic, we see ourselves in all our human frailty, but with its emphasis shifted, so that it is all a little ridiculous, as well as moving. We look upon ourselves with Charlie's vision, with irony and compassion, as though we were entirely detached from our own activities.
Chaplin's art is philosophic as well as poetic; Charlie is more therefore than an endearing little fellow, or a lyrical dancer, or a clown. When, in The Tramp (1915) Charlie set off down that long road, dejectedly at first, then with jaunty eagerness to seek unknown adventure; when, in The Bank (1915) he suddenly looked out upon the audience with eyes holding the age-long grief of man, he began to take on the universal quality that was to lift him among the immortals. While Charlie blundered and failed, evaded cops, cuckolded husbands in imagination if not in fact, fell into ponds, tumbled downstairs, slid across skating rinks on his backside, joined the Army, unwillingly adopted an abandoned child, wistfully observed the gay happenings of Vanity Fair, survived policemen and bullies and bears and avalanches, tried to assuage his insatiable thirst for beautiful women, escaped into a world of unreality and was rudely shaken out of it; while men of all creeds and races and nations throughout the world gave themselves up to mirth, from the high pitched giggle to the great guffaws of unrestrained belly laughter; while the years brought mankind from chaos through insecurity to disaster, ±e little tramp threw a gigantic shadow before him. It was the shadow of Charlie's silhouette, multiplied a thousandfold. For that one small figure showed himself increasingly to contain within him the loneliness and the fear, the desire to evade responsibility, the hopes and the pathos of the universal soul. Charlie, with his persistent battle for the individual spirit against the dragons and monsters of modern society that would defeat it, was heroic. His gentleness, his gallantry, his compassionate heart aching to enfold and protect those even weaker than himself, placed him among the great gentlemen of all time.
He became the quintessence of the undefeated. Their unyielding