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144
John Gower
it deals with what took place in London, is the most interesting
portion of the work; but it is quite possible, nevertheless, that
this may have been an afterthought. The remainder is indepen-
dent of it, and the second book begins in a style which suggests
that, originally, it stood nearer to the beginning of the work.
Moreover, in one manuscript' the whole of the first book is
actually omitted, and no mention at all of the Peasants' rising
occurs. In any case, the main substance of Vox Clamantis is an
indictment of human society, the corruptions of which are said to
be the cause of all the evils of the world. The picture which
appears in several manuscripts of the author aiming his arrows at
the world fairly represents its scope. The doctrine of the Mirour
that Man is a microcosm, the evil and disorder of which affects
the whole constitution of the elements, while the goodness of Man
enables him to subdue the material world, is found again here;
and the orders of men are examined and condemned much in the
same way, except that the political portion is more fully and
earnestly dwelt upon. Of the gradual development of Gower's
political feelings we have already said something.
There is no need to dwell much upon the poetical style of
Gower's Latin poems. Judged by the medieval standard, Vox
Clamantis is fairly good in language and in metre, but the fact
has recently been pointed out that a very large number both of
couplets and longer passages are borrowed by the author without
acknowledgment from other writers, and that lines for which
Gower has obtained credit are, in many cases, taken either from
Ovid or from some medieval writer of Latin verse, as Alexander
Neckam, Peter de Riga, Godfrey of Viterbo, or the author
of Speculum Stultorum, passages of six or eight lines being
often appropriated in this manner with little or no change. It
is certain that Gower could write very fair Latin verse, due
allowance being made for medieval licences, but we must be cautious
in giving him credit for any particular passage. In the mean time
we may observe that his contemporary account of the Peasants'
rising has some historical importance; that the development of
his political opinions, as seen in the successive revisions of Vox
Clamantis, is of interest in connection with the general circum-
stances of the reign of Richard II; and that the description of
social customs, and, particularly, of matters connected with the
city of London, confirms the account given in the Mirour.
1 Laud 719.
? See Macaulay's Gower, Vol. IV, p. xxxii, and the notes passim


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Confessio Amantis
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As regards the motives which determined Gower to the com-
position of a book in English, we have his own statement in the first
edition of the book itself, that, on a certain occasion, when he was
in a boat upon the Thames near London, he met the royal barge,
and was invited by the king to enter it; that, in the conversation
which ensued, it was suggested to him that he should write some
new book, to be presented to the king; and that he thereupon
adopted the resolution of composing a poem in English, which
should combine pleasure and instruction, upon the subject of
love.
It is not necessary, however, to assume that this incident, which
was put forward by the author as a reason for the presentation
of his book to Richard, was actually the determining factor of
his decision to write in English. The years which followed
the composition of Vox clamantis, assuming it to have been
produced about 1382, were a period of hitherto unexampled
productiveness in English poetry. Chaucer, at this time, had
attained almost to the full measure of his powers, and the suc-
cessive production of Troilus and Criseyde, partly addressed to
Gower himself, about 1383, and of The Legend of Good Women,
about 1386, must have supplied a stimulus of the very strongest
kind, not only by way of recommending the use of the English
language, but also in suggesting some modification of the strictly
didactic tone which Gower had hitherto taken in his larger works.
The statement that to Gower's Confessio Amantis Chaucer
owed the idea of a connected series of tales is quite without
foundation, The Legend of Good Women certainly preceded
Confessio Amantis, which bears distinct marks of its influence,
and in The Legend of Good Women we have already a series of
tales set in a certain framework, though the framework is slight,
and no conversation connects the tales. Even if we suppose
Chaucer to have been unacquainted with Boccaccio's prose, a
supposition for which there is certainly some ground, he was fully
capable of evolving the scheme of The Canterbury Tales without
the assistance of Gower. On the other hand the influence of
Chaucer must certainly have been very strong in regard to Gower's
English work, which was probably composed in the years between
1386 and 1390, the latter year being the date of the completion of
the first edition of the poem.
The most noteworthy point of Confessio Amantis, as com-
pared with Gower's former works, is the partial renunciation by
the author of his didactic purpose. He does, indeed, indulge
10
B. L. II.
OH. VI.


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John Gower
himself in a prologue, in which he reviews the condition of the
human race; but, at the beginning of the first book, he announces
the discovery that his powers are not equal to the task of setting
the world to rights :
It stant noght in my suficance
So grete thinges to compasse,
Bot I mot lete it overpasse
And treten upon other thinges.
He avows, therefore, that, from this day forth, he intends to change
the style of his writings, and to deal with a subject which is of
universal interest, namely love. At the same time, he will not
wholly renounce his function of teaching, for love is a matter in
which men need very much guidance, but, at least, he will treat of
the subject in such a way as to entertain as well as instruct: the
book is to be
betwen the tweie,
Somwhat of lust, somwhat of lore.
Hence, though the form may suggest instruction, yet the mode
of treatment is to be popular, that is to say, the work is to consist
largely of stories. Accordingly, we have in Confessio Amantis
more than a hundred stories of varying length and of every kind
of origin, told in a simple and pleasing style by one who clearly
had a gift for story-telling, though without the dramatic humour
which makes Chaucer's stories unique in the literature of his time.
The framework, too, in which these stories are set, is pleasing.
The Lover, that is to say the author himself, is one who
has been long in the service of love, but without reward, and
is now of years which almost unfit him for such service.
Wandering forth into a wood in the month of May he feels
despair and wishes for death. The god and the goddess of love
appear to him; but the god passes him by with an angry look,
casting, at the same time, a fiery lance which pierces his heart.
The goddess remains, and to her be makes his complaint that he
has served long and received no wages. She frowns upon him,
and desires to know what service it is that he has done, and what
malady oppresses him. He professes readiness to reply, but she
enjoins upon him first a confession to be made to her priest Genius,
who, if he is satisfied, will give him absolution, and she will then
consider his case. Accordingly, Genius is summoned and Venus
disappears. The Lover, after some preliminary conversation, is
examined with regard to his sins against love, the examination
being arranged under the usual heading of the seven deadly sins


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Confessio Amantis
147
and their subordinate vices. The subdivision which we find in
the earlier books of Confessio Amantis is the same as that
which we have already encountered in Gower's Mirour: each sin is
regarded as having five principal offshoots ; but, in the latter
half of the work, this regularity of subdivision is, to a great
extent, abandoned. In the case of each of the subordinate vices
the confessor sets forth the nature of the fault, and, at the
request of the Lover, illustrates his meaning by a story or by a
series of stories. In each case, after explanation of the nature
,
of the vice, & special application is made to the case of love, and
the stories illustrate either the general definition or this special
application, or both, no very clear line being drawn in many cases
between the two. The Lover, meanwhile, when he has at last been
made to understand the nature of the fault generally and also its
particular application to love, makes his confession or denial as
regards his love, and is further instructed or rebuked by the
confessor. By the general plan, one book should have been
devoted to each of the seven principal sins, Pride, Envy, Anger,
Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lechery; but an additional book is
interpolated between the last two, dealing with quite irrelevant
matters, and, in general, there is much irregularity of plan in the
last four books, by which the unity of construction is seriously
marred. The ordinary conduct of the work may be illustrated
by a short summary of the second book, the subject of which is
Envy.
The first of the brood of Envy is Sorrow for another's joy. The
Lover confesses that he is often guilty of this in regard to his rivals,
and he is reproved by the tale of Acis and Galatea. He accepts
the rebuke and promises to offend no more. The second vice under
this head is Joy for another’s grief. To this, too, the Lover pleads
guilty, and the odious character of the vice is illustrated by the
story of the traveller and the angel, in which one man preferred
to lose an eye in order that his fellow might lose both. The third
is Detraction, and here, too, the Lover admits that he has been in
some measure guilty. When he sees lovers come about his mistress
with false tales, he is sometimes moved to tell her the worst that he
knows of them. The confessor reproves him. By the Lover's own
account, his lady is wise and wary, and there is no need to tell her
these tales : moreover, she will like him the less for being envious.
The vice of Detraction is then illustrated by the tale of Constance,
who long suffered from envious backbiting, but whose love at length
prevailed. Then, again, there is the story of Demetrius and Perseus,
10-2


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John Gower
in which Perseus brought his brother to death by false accusations,
but suffered punishment himself at last. The confessor passes then
to the fourth vice, named False Semblant. When Envy desires to
deceive, she employs False Semblant as her messenger. The Lover
admits here, too, that he is guilty, but only in matters which concern
his mistress. He thinks himself justified in gaining the confidence of
her other lovers by an appearance of friendship, and using the know-
ledge which he thus obtains to hinder their designs. The confessor
reproves him, and cites the case of the Lombards in the city, who
feign that which is not, and take from Englishmen the profit of
their own land. He then relates the tale of Hercules and Deianira,
and how Nessus deceived her and destroyed him at last by False
Semblant. Yet there is a fifth vice born of Envy, and that is
Supplantation. The Lover declares that here he is guiltless in act,
though guilty in his thought and desire. If he had the power, he
would supplant others in the love of his lady. The confessor warns
him that thought as well as act is sin, and convinces him of the
heinousness of this particular crime by a series of short examples,
Agamemnon and Achilles, Diomede and Troilus, Amphitryon and
Geta, and also by the longer tale of the False Bachelor. This evil
is worst when Pride and Envy are joined together, as when pope
Celestine was supplanted by Boniface; and this tale also is told at
length. The Lover, convinced of the evil of Envy, desires a remedy,
and the confessor reminds him that vices are destroyed by their
contraries, and the contrary to Envy is Charity. To illustrate this
virtue the tale is told of Constantine, who, by showing mercy,
obtained mercy. The Lover vows to eschew Envy, and asks that
penance may be inflicted for that which he has done amiss.
In the other books, the scheme is somewhat similar, and, at
length, in the eighth the confession is brought to a close, and the
Lover demands his absolution. The confessor advises him to
abandon love and to set himself under the rule of reason. He,
strongly protesting, presents a petition to Venus, who, in answer,
consents to relieve him, though perhaps not in the way that he
desires. She speaks of his age and counsels him to make a beau
retret, and he grows cold for sorrow of heart and lies swooning on
the ground. Then he sees the god of love, and, with him, a great
company of former lovers arrayed in sundry bands under the guid-
ance of Youth and Eld. Youth takes no heed of him; but those
who follow Eld entreat for him with Venus, and all the lovers
press round to see. At length Cupid comes towards him and draws
forth the fiery lance with which he had formerly pierced the Lover's


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Confessio Amantis
149
heart; and Venus anoints the wound with a cooling ointment and
gives him a mirror in which his features are reflected. Reason
returns to him, and he becomes sober and sound. Venus, laughing,
asks him what love is, and he replies with confusion that he knows
not, and prays to be excused from attendance upon her. He
obtains his absolution, and Venus bids him stay no more in her
court, but go 'wher moral vertu dwelleth,' where the books are
which men say that he has written; and so she bids him adieu and
departs. He stands for a while amazed, and then takes his way
softly homewards.
The plan of the work is not ill conceived; but, unfortunately, it
is carried out without a due regard to proportion in its parts, and
its unity is very seriously impaired by digressions which have
nothing to do with the subject of the book. After the prologue,
the first four books are conducted in a comparatively orderly
manner, though the discussion on the lawfulness of war in the
third can hardly be regarded as necessary, and the account of
the discovery of useful arts in the fourth is too slightly connected
with the subject. In the fifth book, however, a casual reference to
Greek mythology is made the peg on which to hang a dissertation of
twelve hundred lines on the religions of the world, while, in the sixth
book, the discussion of Sorcery, with the stories first of Ulysses and
Telegonus and then of Nectanabus, can hardly be regarded as
a justifiable extension of the subject of Gluttony. Worse than
this, the tale of Nectanabus is used as a pretext for bringing in as
a diversion a summary of all earthly learning, the supposed instruc-
tions of Aristotle to Alexander, which fills up the whole of the
seventh book'. The most important part of this is the treatise on
Politics, under five heads, illustrated by many interesting stories,
which occupies nearly four thousand lines. To this part of his
work, which is absolutely irrelevant to the main subject, the
author evidently attached great importance; and it is, in fact,
another lecture aimed at the king, at whose suggestion the book
was written, the author being unable to keep himself from im-
proving the occasion. This proceeding, together with the great
extension which has been given to Avarice in the fifth book, has
the effect of almost entirely anticipating the proper contents of the
eighth book. Nothing remains to be spoken of there except
Incest, with reference to which the tale of Apollonius of Tyre is
| The statement, often repeated, that Gower is largely indebted to the Secretum
Secretorum in this seventh book is quite inaccurate; very little is, in fact, drawn from
this source. The Trésor of Brunetto Latini is a much more important authority.


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John Gower
told, and this, after all, has no sufficient bearing upon the subject to
justify its inordinate length. It may justly be remarked, also, that
the representation of the priest of Venus is full of absurd incon-
gruities, which reach their climax, perhaps, when he is made to
denounce Venus herself as a false goddess. In general, the
characters of the moralist and of the high-priest of love are
very awkwardly combined in his person, and of this fact the
author shows himself conscious in several passages, as I, 237 ff.
and vi, 1421 ff. The quasi-religious treatment of the subject was,
no doubt, in accordance with the taste of the age, and there is a
certain charm of quaintness both in this and in the gravity with
which morality is applied to the case of love, though this applica-
tion is often very forced. It must be admitted, also, that the
general plan of the poem shows distinct originality, and, apart from
the digressions and irrelevancies which have been noted, it is carried
through with some success. The idea of combining a variety of
stories in a single framework, with the object of illustrating moral
truths, had become familiar in the literature of western Europe
chiefly through a series of books which were all more or less of
Oriental origin. Of these, the most important were the legend of
Barlaam and Josaphat, the romance of the Seven Sages in its
various forms and Disciplina Clericalis. With these, Gower,
as we know, was acquainted, and also, doubtless, with various
examples of the attempt to utilise such stories for definitely
religious purposes in such edifying compositions as those of William
of Wadington and Robert of Brunne. Moreover, Chaucer, in his
Legend of Good Women, had already produced a series of stories
in an allegorical framework, though the setting was rather slight
and the work was left unfinished. The influence of Chaucer's
work is apparent in the opening and concluding scenes of Con-
fessio Amantis, and some suggestions were also derived from
the Roman de la Rose, in which Genius is the priest of Nature,
who makes her confession to him. But no previous writer, either
in English or in any other modern language, had versified so large
and various a collection of stories, or had devised so ingenious and
elaborate a scheme of combination.
As regards the stories themselves, there is, of course, no pretence
of originality in substance. They are taken from very various
places, from Ovid (much the most frequent source), from the Bible,
from Valerius Maximus, Statius, Benoit de Sainte More, Guido
delle Colonne, Godfrey of Viterbo, Brunetto Latini, Nicholas
Trivet, the Roman des Sept Sages, Vita Barlaam et Josaphat,


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151
Historia Alexandri and so on'. Gower's style of narration is
simple and clear; in telling a story he is neither tedious nor
apt to digress. To find fault with him because he is lacking
in humorous appreciation of character is to judge him by
altogether too high a standard. He is not on a level with Chaucer,
but he is distinctly above the level of most of the other story-
tellers of his time, and it may even be said that he is sometimes
superior to Chaucer himself in the arrangement of his incidents
and in the steadiness with which he pursues the plot of his story.
Gower is by no means a slavish follower of his authorities, the pro-
portions and arrangement of his stories are usually his own, and
they often show good judgment. Moreover, he not seldom gives a
fresh turn to a well-known story, as in the Bible instances of
Jephthah and Saul, or makes a pretty addition to it, as in the case
of the tales from Ovid of Narcissus or of Acis and Galatea. His
gift of clear and interesting narrative was, undoubtedly, the merit
which most appealed to the popular taste of the day, and the
plainness of the style was rather an advantage than a draw-
back
The stories, however, have also poetical qualities. Force and
picturesqueness cannot be denied to the story of Medea, with its
description of the summer sun blazing down upon the glistening
sea and upon the returning hero, and flashing from the golden
fleece at his side a signal of success to Medea in her watch-tower,
as she prays for her chosen knight. Still less can we refuse to
recognise the poetical power of the later phases of the same story
-first, the midnight rovings of Medea in search of enchantments
(V, 3962 ff. ), and again later, when the charms are set in action
(4059 ff. ), a passage of extraordinary picturesqueness. The tales
of Mundus and Paulina and of Alboin and Rosemund, in the first
book, are excellently told; and, in the second, the story of the False
Bachelor and the legend of Constantine, in the latter of which the
author has greatly improved upon bis materials; while, in the third
book, the tale of Canace is most pathetically rendered, far better
than by Ovid. The fourth, which is altogether of special excel-
lence, gives us Rosiphelee, Phyllis and the very poetically told
tale of Ceix and Alceone; the fifth has Jason and Medea, a most
admirable example of sustained narrative, the oriental story of
Adrian and Bardus and the well-told romance of Tereus and
Philomela. In the seventh, we find the Biblical story of Gideon
1 Gower does not seem in any instance to have been indebted to Gesta
Romanorum,
a


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well rendered, the rape of Lucrece and the tale of Virginia. The
long story of Apollonius, in the eighth book, is not one of Gower's
happiest efforts, though it is often taken as a sample of his style
owing to the connection with Shakespeare's Pericles. His natural
taste for simplicity sometimes stands him in good stead, as in the
description of the tears of Lucrece for her husband, and the
reviving beauty of her face when he appears (VII, 4830 ff. ), a
passage in which he may safely challenge comparison with
Chaucer. The ease of his more colloquial utterances, and the
finished style of some of the more formal passages, are equally
remarkable. As examples of the second quality we may cite the
reflections of the emperor Constantine (II, 3243 ff. ), the letters of
Canace (III, 279 ff. ) and of Penelope (IV, 157 ff. ), the prayer of
Cephalus (IV, 3197 ff) and the epitaphs of Iphis (IV, 3674) and
of Thaise (VIII, 1533 ff. ).
In addition to the merits of the stories we must acknowledge a
certain attractiveness in the setting of them. The conversation
which connects the stories is distinguished by colloquial ease, and
is frequently of an interesting kind. The Lover often engages the
sympathy of the reader, and there is another character always
in the background in whom we may reasonably be interested, that
of the lady whom he serves. Gower, who was quite capable of
appreciating the delicacy and refinement which ideal love requires,
has here set before us & figure which is both attractive and
human, a charming embodiment of womanly grace and refinement.
Passing from the substance of the poem to the language and
versification, we remark, first, that the language used is, practically,
the same as that of Chaucer, and that there is every reason to
attribute this identity to the development, apart from the individual
influence of either poet, of a cultured form of English speech which,
in the higher ranks of society, took the place of the French that
had so long been used as the language of literature and of polite
society. This is not the place to discuss the development of
modern English literary speech; what we have to say in relation to
Gower is that, by the purity and simplicity of his style, he earned the
right to stand beside Chaucer as a standard authority for this
language. Sui temporis lucerna habebatur ad docte scribendum
in lingua vulgari, as Bale remarks; and it is worth noting that, in
the syntax of Ben Jonson's English Grammar, Gower is cited as an
authority more often than any other writer. It may be observed
that, by Morsbach's test of a comparison with contemporary London
documents, both Chaucer and Gower are shown to be more con-


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servative of the full forms of inflection than the popular speech,
and Gower is, in this respect, apparently less modern than Chaucer.
He adopted a system of spelling which is more careful and con-
sistent than that of most other Middle English authors, and, in
general, he seems to have been something of a purist in matters of
language.
With regard to versification, the most marked feature of Gower's
verse is its great regularity and the extent to which inflectional
endings are utilised for metrical purposes. We have here what we
might have expected from the author's French verse, very great
syllabic accuracy and a very regular beat, an almost complete
combination of the accentual with the syllabic principle. As an
indication of the extent of this regularity, it may be mentioned
that in the whole of Confessio Amantis, which contains more
than thirty-three thousand four-accent lines, there are no examples
of the omission, so frequent in Chaucer, of the first unaccented
syllable. Displacement of the natural accent of words and the
slurring over of light syllables are far less frequent with Gower than
with Chaucer, and in purity of rime, also, he is somewhat more
strict. The result of Gower's syllabic accuracy is, no doubt, a
certain monotony of rhythm in his verse; but, on the other
hand, the author is careful so to distribute his pauses as not
to emphasise the rime unduly. He runs on freely from one
couplet to another, breaking the couplet more often than not
in places where a distinct pause occurs, and especially at the end
of a paragraph, so that the couplet arrangement is subordinated
distinctly, as it is also by Chaucer, to the continuity of the narrative.
The five-accent line is written by Gower in stanzas only, as in the
Supplication of the eighth book and in the English poem addressed
to Henry IV. In these it is a marked success, showing the same
technical skill that we note elsewhere, with more variety of rhythm
and a certain stately dignity which can hardly appear in the short
couplet.
After Confessio Amantis, which seems to have assumed its
final form in 1393, 'the sextenthe yer of King Richard,' Gower
produced some minor Latin poems treating of the political evils of
the times; and then, on the eve of his own marriage, he added, as
a kind of appendix to Confessio Amantis, a series of eighteen
French ballades on the virtue of the married state. After the fall
of Richard II he produced three more poetical works, again in
three different languages. In English, he wrote the poem already
referred to, In Praise of Peace (Carmen de pacis commendacione)
<


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John Gower
in fifty-five seven-line stanzas. In French, we have the series of
ballades commonly known as Cinkante Balades, dealing with love
according to the conventions of the age, but often in a graceful
and poetical fashion. These may have been written earlier, but
they were put together in their present form, as the author says, to
furnish entertainment to the court of king Henry IV, and were
dedicated to the king in two introductory ballades. It is clear that
the feelings expressed are, for the most part, impersonal; sometimes
the lover speaks and sometimes the lady, and the poems are evidently
adapted to a diversity of circumstances. As poetry, they are much
superior to those on marriage, and if they had been written in
English, they would doubtless have been recognised as an interesting
and valuable addition to the literature of the time. In Latin, the
author sets forth his final view of contemporary history and politics
in the Cronica Tripertita, a poem in leonine hexameters, in which
the events of the last twelve years of the reign of Richard II are
narrated, and the causes of his deposition set forth, as seen from
the point of view of an earnest supporter of the Lancastrian party.
As the title implies, it is in three parts, the first dealing with the
events of the year 1387, and the proceedings of the appellants, the
second with the year 1397, when Richard at length took vengeance
on his opponents and the third with the deposition of Richard II
and the accession of Henry IV. This work has no poetical merits,
but a certain amount of historical interest attaches to it. Some
minor Latin poems, including an epistle addressed to the king,
also belong to this final period of Gower's literary life. Either
in the first or the second year of the reign of Henry IV he became
blind and ceased to write, as he himself tells us; and in the epistle
to archbishop Arundel, which is prefixed to Vox Clamantis in
the All Souls MS (Hanc epistolam subscriptam corde deuoto misit
senex et cecus Iohannes Gower), he touchingly dwells upon the
blessing of light
That Gower, through the purity of his English style and the
easy fluency of his expression, exercised a distinct influence upon
the development of the language, is undoubted, and, in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, he was, on this account, uncritically classed
with Chaucer. He is placed with Chaucer as an equal by the
author of The Kingis Quair, by Occleve, by Dunbar, by Skelton
and even by Sidney in The Defence of Poesie. But, in fact,
though he may fairly be joined with Chaucer as one of the autho-
rities for standard English, his mind was essentially formed in a
medieval mould, and, as regards subject and treatment, he looks


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backwards rather than forwards. The modern note which was
struck by Chaucer is almost entirely absent here. This medi-
evalism, however, in itself has a certain charm, and there are
qualities of this kind in Confessio Amantis which are capable
still of giving genuine pleasure to the reader, while, at the same
time, we are bound to acknowledge the technical finish of the style,
both in the French and in the English poems. The author had a
strong feeling for correctness of language and of metre, and, at
the same time, his utterance is genuinely natural and unaffected.
In his way he solved the problem of combining rhetorical artifice
with simplicity of expression, and, if his genius moves within
somewhat narrow limits, yet, within those limits, it moves securely.


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CHAPTER VII
CHAUCER
Of the date of the birth of Geoffrey Chaucer we have no
direct knowledge. But indirect evidence of various kinds fixes
it between 1328, when his father, John Chaucer, was still un-
married, and 1346, before which date his own statement, at the
Scroope-Grosvenor suit in 1386, of his age as 'forty years or more'
would place it. Within this rather wide range, selection has,
further, to be guided by certain facts to be mentioned presently;
and, for some time past, opinion has. generally adopted, in face of
some difficulties, the date about 1340. ' John Chaucer himself
was a citizen and vintner of London, the son of Robert le Chaucer,
who, in 1310, was collector of the customs on wine, and who had
property at Ipswich and elsewhere in Suffolk. In 1349, John was
certainly married to an Agnes whose maiden surname is unknown,
who survived him and, in 1367, married again : therefore, unless
she was the vintner's second wife, she must have been Chaucer's
mother. The father seems to have had some link of service
with the royal household, and the poet was connected with it
more or less all his days. Probably he was born in Thames Street,
London, where his father had a house at the time of his death
in 1366.
We first hear of Chaucer himself (or, at least, of a Geoffrey
Chaucer who is not likely to be anyone else) in 1357, when
he received a suit of livery as member of the household of
Edward III's son Lionel (afterwards duke of Clarence), or of his
wife Elizabeth de Burgh. Two years later, he served in France, was
taken prisoner at a place called 'Retters' (alternately identified
with Retiers near Rennes, and with Rethel near Reims), but was
liberated on ransom by March 1360—the king subscribing £16
(= over £200 now) towards the sum paid. Seven years later,
on 2 June 1367, Edward gave him an annuity of 20 marks for
life, as to dilectus valettus noster, and he rose to be esquire at
9
:


## p. 157 (#175) ############################################

Life
157
the end of next year. Meanwhile, at a time earlier than that of
his own pension, on 12 September 1366, another of half the amount
had been granted to Philippa Chaucer, one of the damsels of the
queen's chamber: and this Philippa, beyond reasonable doubt,
must have been the poet's wife. If she was born Philippa Roet
or Rouet, daughter of Sir Payn Roet, a Hainault knight, and sister
of Katharine Rouet or Swynford, third wife of John of Gaunt,
Chaucer's undisputed patronage by 'time-honoured Lancaster'
would have been a matter of course. But we do not know Philippa's
parentage for certain. There is also much doubt about the family
that Geoffrey and Philippa may have had. The poet directly
dedicates, in 1391, his Astrolabe to 'little Lewis my son, who
was then ten years old; but of this son we hear nothing more.
On the other hand, chancellor Gascoigne, in the generation after
Chaucer's death, speaks of Thomas Chaucer, a known man of
position and wealth in the early fifteenth century, as Chaucer's
son : and this Thomas took the arms of Rouet late in life, while,
in 1381, John of Gaunt himself established an Elizabeth Chaucer
as a nun at Barking. Beyond these facts and names nothing
is known.
Of Chaucer himself-or, at least, of a Geoffrey Chaucer who, as
it is very important to remember, and as has not always been
remembered, may not be the same in all cases—a good many
facts are preserved, though these facts are in very few cases, if
any, directly connected with his literary position. By far the
larger part of the information concerns grants of money, sometimes
connected with the public service in war, diplomacy and civil
duties. He joined the army in France again in 1369; and, next
year, was abroad on public duty of some kind. In 1372, he was
sent to Genoa to arrange for the selection of some English port as
a headquarters for Genoese trade, and must have been absent
for a great part of the twelvemonth between the November of that
year and of the next. On St George's day 1374, he began to receive
from the king a daily pitcher of wine, commuted later for money.
In the following month, he leased the gatehouse of Aldgate from the
corporation, and, a month later again, was made controller of customs
for wool, etc. , in the port of London, receiving, in this same June,
an additional pension of £10 a year from John of Gaunt to himself
and his wife. Wardships, forfeitures and other casualties fell to
him, and, in 1377, he went on diplomatic duties to Flanders and to
France. In 1378, after the death of Edward III and the accession
of Richard II, it is thought that he was again in France and,


## p. 158 (#176) ############################################

158
Chaucer
later in that year, he certainly went once more to Italy, in the
mission to Bernabo Visconti of Milan. These duties did not
interfere with the controllership; to which another, that of the
petty customs, was added in 1382, and we have record of various
payments and gifts to him up to the autumn of 1386, when he sat
in parliament as knight of the shire for Kent, and gave evidence
in the Scroope-Grosvenor case.
Then the tide turned against him. In the triumph of the duke
of Gloucester and the eclipse of Gaunt during his absence in
Spain, Chaucer lost his controllership; and it would appear that,
in 1387, his wife died. In May, 1388, he assigned his pensions and
allowances to another person, which looks like (though it cannot
be said certainly to be) a sign of financial straits in the case of a
man whose party was out of favour. But the fall of Gloucester
and the return of John of Gaunt brought him out of the shadow
again. In July 1389, he was made clerk of the works to the king
at various places; and, in the next year (when, as part of his now
duty, he had to do with St George's chapel, Windsor), commissioner
of roads between Greenwich and Woolwich. This latter post he
seems to have retained; the clerkship he only held for two years.
On 6 September 1390, he fell twice in one day among the same
thieves, and was robbed of some public money, which, however, he
was excused from making good. During parts of this year and
the next, he held an additional post, that of the forestership of
North Petherton Park in Somerset. In 1394 he received from
Richard a fresh pension of £20 (say £300) a year. But, judging
by the evidence of records of advances and protections from
suits for debt, he seems to have been needy. In 1398, however,
he obtained an additional tun of wine a year from Richard; while
that luckless prince's ouster and successor, John of Gaunt's son,
added, in October 1399, forty marks to the twenty pounds, making
the poet's yearly income, besides the tun of wine, equal, at least, to
between £600 and £700 of our money. On the strength of this,
possibly, Chaucer (who had given up the Aldgate house thirteen
years before, and whose residence in the interval is unknown) took
a lease of a house in the garden of St Mary's, Westminster. But
he did not enjoy it for a full year, and dying (according to his
tomb, which is, however, of the sixteenth century) on 25 October
1400, was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the chapel of St
Benedict, thus founding Poet's Corner. That he was actually
dead by the end of that year is proved by the cessation of entries
as to his pensions. Almost every known incident in his life has


## p. 159 (#177) ############################################

Life
159
been mentioned in this summary, for the traditions of his residence
at Woodstock and of his beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet street
have been given up—the latter perhaps hastily. One enigmatical
incident remains-to wit, that in May 1380, one Cecilia de Chaum-
paigne gave Chaucer a release de raptu meo. There is, however,
no probability that there was anything in this case more romantic
or more shocking than one of the attempts to kidnap a ward of
property and marry him or her to somebody in whom the kidnapper
was interested-attempts of which, curiously enough, Chaucer's own
father is known to have been nearly the victim. Otherwise, 'there
is namore to seyn,' so far as true history goes. And it does not
seem necessary to waste space in elaborate confutation of un-
historical traditions and assertions, which, though in some cases
of very early origin, never had any basis of evidence, and, in most
cases, can be positively disproved. They have, for some decades, ,
passed out of all books of the slightest authority, except as matter
for refutation; and it is questionable whether this last process
itself does not lend them an injudicious survival. It will be
observed, however, that, in the authentic account, as above given,
while it is possible that some of its details may apply to a Geoffrey
Chaucer other than the poet whom we honour, there is not one
single one of them which concerns him as a poet at all. There are,
however, one or two references in his lifetime, and a chain, un-
broken for a long time, of almost extravagantly laudatory comments
upon his work, starting with actual contemporaries. Though there
can be little doubt that the pair met more than once, Froissart's
mention of him is only in reference to diplomatic and not literary
business. But Eustache Deschamps, perhaps, on the whole, the
foremost poet of France in Chaucer's time, has left a ballade of
the most complimentary character, though, already anticipating
the French habit of looking always at French literature first, it
addresses him as grant translateur, which, beyond doubt, he was.
In a certainly contemporary work of English prose, The Testament
of Love, which, for sheer want of careful examination, was long
attributed to Chaucer and which is now decided to be the work of
one Usk, who was executed in 1386 by the Gloucester faction,
Chaucer is spoken of with equal admiration, and his work is largely
drawn upon. Scogan, another contemporary and a correspondent
of his, celebrates him; and a far more important person than
these, the poet Gower, his personal friend, has left a well-known
tribute. The two principal poets of the next generation, in
England, Occleve and Lydgate, were, the former certainly,
,
,


## p. 160 (#178) ############################################

160
Chaucer
1
6
the latter probably, personal friends likewise : and, while both
are copious in laudation, Occleve has left us a portrait of Chaucer
illuminated on the margin of one of his own MSS. Through-
out the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, the chorus of praise
from poets, Scottish as well as English, continues unabated
and uninterrupted. Caxton, though never executing a complete
edition, repeatedly prints part of the works and is followed by
others; and, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, in a
passage which writers on Chaucer have generally missed, Lilius
Giraldus, one of the foremost humanists of Italy, in a survey
of European letters, recognises the eminence of Chaucer in
English.
We must, however, now make a further advance, and turn from
the 'Chaucer' who figures in records, and the 'Chaucer' who is
eulogised as a poet, to that other sense of 'Chaucer' which
indicates the work, not the man—the work which gained for the
man the reputation and the eulogy. Uncritically accepted, and
recklessly amplified during more than three centuries, it has, since
the masterly investigations of Tyrwhitt in the latter part of the
eighteenth century, been subjected to a process of severe thinning,
on principles which will be referred to again. Of external, or
rather positive, evidence of early date, we have some, but not a
very great deal—and that not of the most unexceptionable kind.
The help of the MSS is only partial; for no one of them is ac-
cepted by anyone as an autograph, and no one of them contains
all the pieces which the severest methods of separation have left to
Chaucer. But, in two of these pieces, which themselves as wholes
are undoubted, there are lists, ostensibly by the poet, of his own
works, and cross-references in other places. The fullest of these
the list contained in the palinode or retraction at the end of The
Parson's Tale and The Canterbury Tales generally-has, indeed,
been suspected by some, apparently without any reason, except that
they would rather Chaucer had not repented of things of which, as
it seems to them, he had no reason to repent. But, even in case of
forgery, the forger would, probably, have taken care to be correct
in his attribution. This list contains Troilus; The book [House]
of Fame; The book of the XXV Ladies [Legend of Good
Women]; The book of the Duchess ; The book of St Valentine's
day of the Parliament of Birds (Fowls] ; The Canterbury Tales
themselves, where the repentance extends only to those that
'gounen into sinne'; The book of the Lion; and many others
which he cannot remember, while Boece is specified as requiring


## p. 161 (#179) ############################################

Canon of Works
161
6
no repentance. All these exist except The book of the Lion.
Further, in the body of the Tales, in the introduction to The
Man of Law's Prologue, Chaucer is mentioned by name with an
unmistakably autobiographical humility, whether serious or humor-
ous; and the Legend is again acknowledged under the general
title of the Seintes Legende of Cupyde. ' Now, in the Legend
itself, there is another list of works claimed by the author in which
Troilus, The House of Fame, The book of the Duchess (Death of
Blanche], The Parliament of Fowls and Boece reappear, and The
Rose, Palamon and Arcite and divers smaller works named and
unnamed are added. This, however, does not exhaust the list of
contemporary testimony, though it may exhaust that of Chaucer's
own definite claim to the works specified. Lydgate, besides referring
to a mysterious 'Dant in English,' which some have identified
with The House of Fame, specifies the A B C, Anelida and Arcite,
The Complaint of Mars and the Treatise on the Astrolabe. But
there is another witness, a certain John Shirley, who seems to
have passed his first youth when Chaucer died, and not to have
died himself till the fifteenth century was more than half over.
He has left us copies, ascribed by himself to Chaucer, of the three
poems last mentioned as ascribed also by Lydgate, and of the
minor pieces entitled The Complaint unto Pity, The Complaint of
Venus, Fortune, Truth, Gentilesse, Lack of Steadfastness and the
Empty Purse. The epistles (or 'envoys') to Scogan and Bukton,
the Rosemounde ballade, The Former Age and one or two scraps
are also definitely attributed to the poet in early MSS.
This concludes the list of what we may, without too much
presumption, call authenticated works, or at least titles, which
is rather different. Not all even of these were printed by
Caxton or by his immediate successors; but Caxton gave two
editions of The Canterbury Tales, and added others of Troilus
and Criseyde, of The Parliament of Fowls, of The House of
Fame, etc. , confining himself to, though not reaching, the limit
of the authenticated pieces. Pynson, in 1526, outstripped this by
including La Belle Dame sans Merci. It was not till 1532 that
the first collected edition appeared, under the care of Francis
Thynne, clerk of the kitchen to Henry VIII, who was assisted
by Sir Brian Tuke, and who, apparently, took great trouble to
consult all the MSS that he could lay hold of. This volume
occupies an important position and has recently been reprinted
in facsimile. It contains thirty-five several poems enumerated in
its table of contents, with a few short pieces which seem to have
11
6
a
B. L. II.
CH. VII.


## p. 162 (#180) ############################################

162
Chaucer
been afterthoughts, and are of no mark or likelihood. One of
these is actually assigned to Gower and one to Scogan, though it
contains work of Chaucer. But the rest seem to have been con-
sidered Chaucer's by Thynne, though he excuses himself by a
saving phrase. They are The Canterbury Tales, The Romaunt of
the Rose, Troilus and Criseyde, The Testament and Complaint
of Cresseid, The Legend of Good Women, A Goodly Ballade of
Chaucer, Boethius, The Dream of Chaucer, (The book of the
Duchess), The Envoy to Bukton, The Assembly [Parliament] of
Fowls, The Flower of Courtesy, The Death of Pity, La Belle Dame
sans Merci, Anelida and Arcite, The Assembly of Ladies, the
Astrolabe, The Complaint of the Black Knight, A Praise of Women,
The House of Fame, The Testament of Love, The Lamentation
of Mary Magdalen, The Remedy of Love, The Complaints of
Mars and Venus, The Letter of Cupid, A Ballade in Commenda-
tion of our Lady, The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, Steadfastness,
Good Counsel of Chaucer, Fortune, The Envoy to Scogan, Sapience,
the Empty Purse and a poem on Circumstance.
In 1542, a new edition of Thynne's collection appeared with one
piece added, The Plowman's Tale (a piece of Lollardy not in
the least like Chaucer), and a third followed, with alterations of
order, in 1550. It was not long after this that [Sir] Thomas Wilson
in his Rhetoric (1553) declared that 'the fine courtier will speak
nothing but Chaucer. ' In 1561, a fresh admission of new matter
was made under the guidance of John Stow, the antiquary. The
new pieces were chiefly short ballades, and the like, but one very
important poem of length, The Court of Love, appeared for the
first time; and, nearly forty years later, in 1597—8, Thomas
Speght, in a fresh edition thought also to represent Stow, pub-
lished another notable piece, The Flower and the Leaf, together
with a new Chaucer's Dream, indicating also two other things, Jacke
Upland and Chaucer's A B C. There were editions in 1602 and
1687; but nothing further of importance was added till the edition
begun by Urry and published after his death in 1721. Here
appeared The Tale of Gamelyn, The Pardoner and Tapster, an
account of what happened after the pilgrims had reached Canter-
bury, and The Second Merchant's Tale or Tale of Beryn. 'The
whole dissembly' of Chaucer's works, genuine and spurious, had
now appeared except a very few short pieces, probably genuine,
which have recently been unearthed. The process of wholesale
agglomeration was ended; but it was some time before the inevit-
able reaction of meticulous scrutiny and separation was to begin.


## p. 163 (#181) ############################################

Early Editions
163
In fact, though Dryden, at the very juncture of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, had, on all but metrical points, done the
fullest justice to Chaucer, his own imitations had rather obscured
the original; and even Spenser fared better than his predecessor.
Except Dryden himself, the last intelligent enthusiasts for Chaucer,
who, up to Spenser's own death, had united the suffrages of all the
competent, were Sir Francis Kynaston (an eccentric and minor
but true poet, whose worship took the odd form of translating
Troilus into Latin, keeping the rime royal) and the earl of
Leicester, Algernon Sidney's elder brother (the 'lord Lisle'
of the Commonwealth, but no regicide), who, as Dryden himself
tells us, dissuaded him from modernising out of reverence for
the original. By most writers, for the greater part of a century- ,
Addison himself being their spokesman-Chaucer was regarded as
an antiquated buffoon, sometimes coarsely amusing, and a con-
venient pattern for coarseness worse than his own. The true
restorer of Chaucer, and the founder of all intelligent study of his
work, was Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730—86), fellow of Merton College,
Oxford, who, in 1775, published an edition of The Canterbury Tales
with prefatory matter, and a glossary dealing with the whole
subjecte Tyrwhitt had no theory to serve and no arbitrary
standard to apply; but he had a combined knowledge of classical
and medieval literature then probably unequalled in Europe,
a correct ear, a sense of poetry and a singularly sane judgment
strengthened and directed by legal training. He did not proceed
by electing certain of the works to a position of canon and deter-
mining the reprobation of others by reference to this-a proceeding
itself reprobated by the best principles of law, logic and literature.
He knew, doubtless, that, although The Canterbury Tales themselves
are Chaucer's beyond all reasonable doubt, no testimony that we
have, from Lydgate's onward, authenticates any particular form
of them like an autograph MS, or a modern printed book issued
by the author. He knew also, doubtless, that it cannot be safe
to assume that an author, especially in such days as Chaucer's,
must have rigidly observed the same standards of grammar, diction
and prosody at all times of his life-that, for instance, if we did so,
we should, on the evidence of one edition of The Essay of Dramatic
Poesy, assume that Dryden preferred to put the preposition at the
end of the clause, and on that of another decide that he avoided
this. He, therefore, proceeded on the only sound plan—that of
sifting out, first, things certainly, and then, things probably, false-
of gathering first the tares according to the advice of the parable
11-2


## p. 164 (#182) ############################################

164
Chaucer
---
- and so, by successive degrees, winnowing a surer and purer wheat
for garnering after it had been itself threshed and cleansed from
offal and impurity.
The beginning of the process was easy enough: for some
things had been expressly included by Thynne in the original
collection as not Chaucer's, and these or others were, in some cases,
known, practically beyond doubt, to be the work of actual and
identified persons. Such was the case with Gower's and Scogan's
verses above referred to, with Lydgate's Tale of Thebes, etc. and
with the very remarkable and beautiful Testament of Cresseid, which,
on the clearest internal showing, could not be Chaucer's, and which
had been printed earlier as the work of the Scottish poet Henryson.
The Letter of Cupid is not only acknowledged by Occleve, but
actually dated after Chaucer's death ; and La Belle Dame sans
Merci is not only attributed in MS to Sir Richard Ros, but is
adapted from Alain Chartier, who belonged to the next century.
Other pieces Tyrwhitt rejected for different reasons, all valid-
Gamelyn, The Plowman's Tale, that of Beryn, The Pardoner and
the Tapster, The Lamentation of Mary Magdalen, The Assembly
of Ladies, etc. —while he brushed away contemptuously at a sweep
the heap of rubbish' added by Stow. He left the following
verse, besides The Canterbury Tales, the two undoubtedly genuine
prose works and The Testament of Love (which he had evidently
not had time to examine carefully):—The Romaunt of the
Rose, Troilus and Criseyde, The Court of Love, The Complaint
unto Pity, Anelida and Arcite, The Assembly [Parliament] of
Fowls, The Complaint of the Black Knight (which had not then
been identified as Lydgate's), the A B C, Chaucer's Dream,
The Flower and the Leaf, The Legend of Good Women, The
Complaints of Mars and Venus and The Cuckoo and the Night-
ingale, with nine shorter poems. It is, however, very important
to observe that, though Tyrwhitt had read all these pieces for his
glossary, he did not edit their text; and, therefore, cannot be
taken as vouching fully for their authenticity. It is, for instance,
pretty certain that if he had so edited The Testament of Love he
would have discovered that it was not Chaucer's, whether he did
or did not discover whose it actually was.
But great as was the service which Tyrwhitt did in sweeping
out of the Chaucerian treasury much, if not all, of what had no
business to be there, it was still greater in respect of the principal
genuine treasure, which alone he subjected to thorough critical
editing. It is quite astonishing, a century and a quarter after his


## p. 165 (#183) ############################################

Tyrwhitt's Recension 165
work, to find how far he was in advance not merely of all his
predecessors in the study of Chaucer but-in one of the most
important points—of many who have followed. Whether it was
in consequence of Chaucer's uniquely clear understanding of
English versification as shown in his predecessors, or of his
setting a standard too high for his contemporaries, or merely
of a tyrannous change in the language, it is certain that even
his immediate successors (in some cases actually contemporary
with him) failed to reproduce the harmony of his verse in the
very act of imitating it, and that following generations misunder-
stood it altogether. Some have thought that this misunderstanding
extended even to Spenser; but, while disagreeing with them as to
this, one may doubt whether Spenser's understanding of it was not
more instinctive than analytic. Dryden frankly scouted the notion of
Chaucer's metre being regular: though it is nearly as much so, even
on Dryden's own principles, as his own. Tyrwhitt at once laid his
finger on the cause of the strange delusion of nearly three centuries
by pointing out what he calls 'the pronunciation of the feminine -e';
and, though in following up the hint which he thus gave, he may
have failed to notice some of the abnormalities of the metre (such
as the presence of lines of nine syllables only) and so have patched
unnecessarily here and there, these cases are very exceptional.
He may not have elaborated for Chaucer a system of grammar
so complete and so complex as that which has been elaborated for
him by subsequent ingenuity, to amend the errors of contemporary
script. But his text was based upon a considerable collation of
MSS in the first place; in the second, on an actual reading-
astonishing for the time when we remember that this also had
to be mostly in MS of Chaucer's English, as well as foreign, prede-
cessors and contemporaries; and, in the third, on careful examina-
tion of the poems themselves with, for guide, an ear originally
sensitive and subsequently well-trained. Of the result, it is enough
to borrow the-in the original-rather absurd hyperbole applied
earlier to Kynaston's Troilus in the words 'None sees Chaucer
but in Kynaston. ' It was hardly possible for the ordinary reader
to see Chaucer' till he saw him in Tyrwhitt; and in Tyrwhitt he
saw him, as far as The Canterbury Tales were concerned, in some-
thing very like a sufficient presentment.
But, just as Chaucer himself had gone so far beyond his
contemporaries in the practice of poesy, that they were unable
fully to avail themselves of what he did, so Tyrwhitt was too far in
advance of the English scholarship of his age for very much use to


## p. 166 (#184) ############################################

166
Chaucer
be immediately made of his labours. For some half-century, or
even longer, after his first edition, little was done in regard to
the text or study of Chaucer, though the researches of Sir Harris
Nicolas threw much light on the facts of his life. But the in-
creasing study of Middle English language and literature could
not fail to concentrate itself on the greatest of Middle English
writers; and a succession of scholars, of whom Wright and Morris
a
were the most remarkable among the earlier generation, and
Skeat and Furnivall among the later, have devoted themselves
to the subject, while, of the societies founded by the last
named, the Early English Text Society is accumulating, for the
first time in an accessible form, the literature which has to be
compared with Chaucer, and the Chaucer Society has performed
the even greater service of giving a large proportion of the MSS
themselves, with apparatus criticus for their understanding and
appreciation. Complete agreement, indeed, has not been—and,
perhaps, can never be expected to be-reached on the question
how far grammatical and other variables are to be left open or
subjected to a norm, arrived at according to the adjuster's con-
struing of the documents of the period; but the differences
resulting are rarely, if ever, of strictly literary importance.
Meanwhile, the process of winnowing which Tyrwhitt began
has been carried out still farther: partly by the discovery of
authors to whom pieces must or may be assigned rather than
to Chaucer, partly by the application of grammatical or other
tests of the internal kind. Thus, The Complaint of the Black
Knight was found to be ascribed to Lydgate by Shirley, a great
admirer and student, as has been said, of Chaucer himself, and,
apparently, contemporary with Lydgate daring all their lives.
The Cuckoo and the Nightingale-a very agreeable early poem
-was discovered by Skeat to be assigned in MS to 'Clanvowe,
who has been sufficiently identified with a Sir Thomas Clan-
vowe of the time. The Testament of Love, one of the most
evidently un-Chaucerian of these things when examined with care,
has, in the same way, turned out to be certainly (or with strong
probability) the work of Thomas Usk, as has been mentioned.
Two other very important and beautiful, though very late, attribu-
tions allowed by Tyrwhitt, though in the conditions specified, have
also been black-marked, not for any such reason, but for alleged
‘un-Chaucerism'in grammar, rime, etc. , and also for such reasons
as that The Flower and the Leaf is apparently put in the
mouth of a woman and The Court of Love in that of a person who
6


## p. 167 (#185) ############################################

Later Rearrangements
167
calls himself 'Philogenet, of Cambridge, clerk,' to which we have
not any parallel elsewhere in Chaucer. These last arguments are
weak; but there is no doubt that The Flower and the Leaf
(of which no MS is now accessible) to some extent, and The Court
of Love (of which we have a single late MS) still more, are, in
linguistic character, younger than Chaucer's time, and could only
be his if they had been very much rewritten. These, and the other
poems excluded, will be dealt with in a later chapter.
In these exclusions, and, still more, in another to which we are
coming, very great weight has been attached to some peculiari-
ties of rime pointed out first by Henry Bradshaw, the most
important of which is that Chaucer never (except in Sir Thopas,
where it is alleged that he is now parodying the Romances) rimes
a word in -y to a word in -ye throughout the pieces taken as
granted for his. The value of this argument must, of course, be
left to the decision of everyone of full age and average wits ; for
it requires no linguistic or even literary knowledge to guide the
decision. To some it seems conclusive; to others not so.
It has, however, been used largely in the discussion of the last
important poem assigned to Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose,
and is, perhaps, here of most importance. It is not denied by
.
anybody that Chaucer did translate this, the most famous and
popular poem in all European literature for nearly three centuries.
The question is whether the translation that we have or part of
it, if not the whole-is his. No general agreement has yet been
reached on this point even among those who admit the validity of
the rime test and other tests referred to; but most of them allow
that the piece stands on a different footing from others, and most
modern editions admit it to a sort of 'court of the gentiles. '
The two prose works, The Tales, The Legend, Troilus, The House
of Fame, the A B C, The Duchess, the three Complaints (unto
Pity, of Mars and to his Lady), Anelida and Arcite, The Par-
liament of Fowls, and some dozen or sixteen (the number varies
slightly) of minor poems ranging from a few lines to a page or so,
are admitted by all. Of these, some critical account must now be
given. But something must first be said on a preliminary point of
importance which has occupied scholars not a little, and on which
fairly satisfactory agreement has been reached : and that is the
probable order of the works in composition.
It has been observed that the facts of Chaucer's life, as known,
furnish us with no direct information concerning his literary work,
of any kind whatsoever. But, indirectly, they, as collected, furnish
6


## p. 168 (#186) ############################################

168
Chaucer
us with some not unimportant information—to wit, that in his
youth and early manhood he was much in France, that in early
middle life he was not a little in Italy and that he apparently
spent the whole of his later days in England. Now, if we take the
more or less authenticated works, we shall find that they sort
themselves up into three bundles more or less definitely consti-
tuted. The first consists of work either directly or pretty closely
translated or imitated from the French, and couched in forms
more or less French in origin—The Romaunt of the Rose, The
Complaints, The book of the Duchess, the minor ballades, etc.
The second consists of two important pieces directly traceable
to the Italian originals of Boccaccio, Troilus and Criseyde and
The Knight's Tale, with another scarcely less suggested by the
same Italian author, The Legend of Good Women, and, perhaps,
others still, including some of The Canterbury Tales besides The
Knights. The third includes the major and most characteristic
part of The Tales themselves from The Prologue onward, which
are purely and intensely English. Further, when these bundles
(not too tightly tied up nor too sharply separated from each other)
are surveyed, we find hardly disputable internal evidence that
they succeeded each other in the order of the events of his life.
The French division is not only very largely second-hand, but is
full of obvious tentative experiments; the author is trying his
hand, which, as yet, is an uncertain one, on metre, on language, on
subject; and, though he often does well, he seldom shows the
supremacy and self-confidence of mature genius. In the Italian
bundle he has gained very much in these respects: we hear a
voice we have not heard before and shall not hear again—the
voice of an individual, if not yet a consummate, poet. But his
themes are borrowed; he embroiders rather than weaves. In the
third or English period all this is over. 'Here is God's plenty,'
as Dryden admirably said; and the poet is the steward of the
god of poets, and not the mere interpreter of some other poet.
He has his own choice of subject, his own grasp of character and
his own diction and plot. He is at home. And it is a significant
fact that we have references to other works in The Tales, but none
to The Tales in other works. We may, therefore, conclude, without
pushing the classification to a perilous particularity, that it is
generally sound
We now come, without further difficulty or doubt, to those
parts of the works about which there is little or no contention;
only prefixing a notice of the English Romaunt of the Rose with


## p. 169 (#187) ############################################

Romaunt of the Rose 169
full reference to the cautions given previously. For this we have
but one MS (in the Hunterian collection at Glasgow) and the
early printed version of Thynne. The translation is very far from
complete, representing only a small part of the great original work
of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, and it is not continuous
even as it is. The usual practice of modern commentators has been
to break it up into three parts-A, B and C; but, by applying
to this division the rime and other tests before referred to, very
different results have been reached. The solution most in favour
is that Chaucer may not improbably have written A, may more or
less possibly have written C, but can hardly have written B, which
abounds in northern forms. It is, however, certain that he actually
translated this very part, inasmuch as he refers to it in The Legend.
Whatever may be the facts in these respects, there is a general
agreement of the competent that, from the literary point of view,
the whole is worthy of Chaucer and of the original. Of this
original, the earlier or Lorris part is one of the most beautiful
works of the Middle Ages, while the second or longer part by
Jean de Meun is one of the shrewdest and most characteristic,
The two authors were singularly different, but their English
translator, whoever he was, has shown himself equal to either
requirement, after a fashion which only a consummate man of letters
could display-such a man for instance as he to whom we owe
both the Prioress and the Wife of Bath. The soft love allegory of
the earlier part, with its lavish description and ornament, is not
rendered more adequately than the sharp satire and somewhat
pedantic learning of the second. The metre is that of the original
-the octosyllabic couplet—which was, on the whole, the most
popular literary measure of the Middle Ages in English, French
and German alike, and which had been practised in England for
nearly 200 years. To escape monotony and insignificance in this
is difficult, especially if the couplets are kept more or less distinct,
and if the full eight syllables and no more are invariably retained.
The English poet has not discovered all his possibilities of varia-
tion, but he has gone far in this direction. He has also been
curiously successful in sticking very closely to the matter of his
original without awkwardness, and, where he amplifies, amplifying
with taste. English literature up to, and even after, the time is
full of translation; is, indeed, very largely made up of it. But
there is no verse translation which approaches this in the com-
bined merits of fidelity, poetry and wit. The date is very un-
certain, but it must be early; some, who think the poem may all


## p. 170 (#188) ############################################

170
Chaucer
be Chaucer's, connect it with an early possible sojourn of his in
the north with the household of Lionel or his wife.
There are few data for settling the respective periods of com-
position of the early minor poems. If The book of the Duchess
(Blanche of Lancaster, who died in 1369) be really of the earliest
and The Complaint unto Pity is not usually assigned to an earlier
date-Chaucer was a singularly late-writing poet. But we may,
of course, suppose that his earlier work is lost, or that he devoted
the whole of his leisure (it must be remembered that he was in
the service' in various ways) to the Rose. On the other hand,
the putting of The Complaint of Mars as late as 1379 depends
solely upon a note by Shirley, connecting it with a court scandal
between Isabel of Castille, duchess of York, and John Holland,
duke of Exeter—for which there is no intrinsic evidence whatso-
ever. From a literary point of view one would put it much
earlier. With the exception of The Parliament of Fowls, which
has been not unreasonably connected with the marriage of
Richard II to Anne of Bohemia in 1382, internal evidence of style,
metrical experiment, absence of strongly original passages and
the like, would place all these poems before Troilus, and some
of them at a very early period of the poet's career, whensoever it
may have begun. Of the three which usually dispute the position
of actual primacy of date, The book of the Duchess or The Death
of Blanche is a poem of more than 1300 lines in octosyllables,
not quite so smooth as those of The Romaunt, but rather more
adventurously split up. The matter is much patched together out
of medieval commonplaces, but has touches both of pathos and
picturesqueness. The much shorter Complaint unto Pity has, for
its special interest, the first appearance in English, beyond all
reasonable doubt, of the great stanza called rime royal--that is
to say, the seven-lined decasyllabic stanza rimed ababbcc, which
held the premier position for serious verse in English poetry till
the Spenserian dethroned it. The third piece, Chaucer's A B C,
is in the chief rival of rime royal, the octave ababbcbc. The
other he probably took from the French : it is noticeable that
the A B C (a series of stanzas to our Lady, each beginning with
a different letter of the alphabet in regular order), though actually
adapted from the French of Deguileville, is in a quite different
metre, which may have been taken from Italian or French. And
one would feel inclined to put very close to these The Complaint
of Mars and A Complaint to his Lady, in which metrical ex-
ploration is pushed even further to nine-line stanzas aabaabbcc


## p. 171 (#189) ############################################

Early Poems
171
in the first, and ten-line as well as terza rima in the second. These
evidences of tentative work are most interesting and nearly de-
cisive in point of earliness ; but it is impossible to say that the
poetical value of any of these pieces is great.
In Anelida and Arcite and The Parliament of Fowls this
value rises very considerably. Both are written in the rime
royal-a slight anachronism of phrase as regards Chaucer, since
it is said to be derived from the use of the measure by James I
of Scotland in The Kingis Quair, but the only distinguishing
name for it and much the best. To this metre, as is shown from
these two poems and, still more, by Troilus, Chaucer had taken a
strong fancy; and he had not merely improved, if not yet quite
perfected, his mastery of it purely as metre, but had gone far to
provide himself with a poetic diction, and a power of writing
phrase, suitable to its purely metrical powers. The first named
piece is still a 'complaint'-queen Anelida bewailing the falseness
of her lover Arcite. But it escapes the cut-and-dried character
of some of the earlier work; and, in such a stanza as the following:
Whan sbe shal ete, on him is so hir thoght,
That wel unnethe of mete took she keep;
And whan that she was to hir reste broght,
On him she thoghte alwey till that she sleep;
Whan he was absent, provely she weep;
Thus liveth fair Anelida the quene
For fals Arcite, that did hir al this tene-
the poem acquires that full-blooded pulse of verse, the absence of
which is the fault of so much medieval poetry. That it is not,
however, very late is clear from the curious included, or concluding,
Complaint in very elaborate and varied choric form. The poem
is connected with The Knight's Tale in more than the name of
Arcite.
It is, thus, the inferior of The Parliament of Fowls. This
opens with the finest piece of pure poetry which, if the order
adopted be correct, Chaucer had yet written,
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,
Th’ assay so hard, so sharp the conquering,
The dredful joye, that alwey slit so yerne,
Al this mene I by love, that my feling
Astonyeth with his wonderful worching
So soro y-wis, that whan I on him thinke,
Nat wot I wel wher that I wake or winke;
and it includes not a few others, concluding, like Anelida, with a
lyric, shorter and more of the song kind, ‘Now welcom somer,' in
roundel form. This piece is also the first in which we meet most
.


## p. 172 (#190) ############################################

172
Chaucer
of the Chaucerian qualities—the equally felicitous and felicitously
blended humour and pathos, the adoption and yet transcendence
of medieval commonplaces (the dream, the catalogues of trees and
birds, the classical digressions and stuffings), and, above all, the
faculty of composition and handling, so as to make the poem,
whatever its subject, a poem, and not a mere copy of verses.
As yet, however, Chaucer had attempted nothing that much
exceeded, if it exceeded at all, the limits of occasional poetry;
while the experimental character, in metre especially, had dis-
tinguished his work very strongly, and some of it (probably most)
had been mere translation. In the work which, in all probability,
came next, part of which may have anticipated The Parliament
of Fowls, he was still to take a ready-prepared canvas of subject,
but to cover it with his own embroidery to such an extent as to
make the work practically original, and he was to confine it to
the metre that he had by this time thoroughly proved—the rime
royal itself.
In Troilus and Criseyde, to which we now come, Chaucer had
entirely passed his apprentice stage ; indeed, it may be said that,
in certain lines, he never went further, though he found new lines
and carried on others which here are only seen in their beginning.
The story of the Trojan prince Troilus and his love for a damsel
&
(who, from a confused remembrance of the Homeric heroines, was
successively called Briseida and Griseida or Criseida) is one of
those developments of the tale of Troy which, unknown to classical
tradition, grew up and were eagerly fostered in the Middle Ages.
Probably first sketched in the curious and still uncertainly dated
works of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, it had been worked
up into a long legend in the Roman de Troie of Benoit de
Sainte More, a French trouvère of the late twelfth century; these,
according to medieval habit, though with an absence of acknow-
ledgment by no means universal or even usual, had been adapted
bodily a hundred years later in the prose Latin Hystoria Troiana
of Guido delle Colonne. On this, in turn, Boccaccio, somewhat
before the middle of the fourteenth century, based his poem of n
Filostrato in ottava rima; and, from the Filostrato, Chaucer took
the story. Not more, however, than one-third of the actual Troilus
and Criseyde is, in any sense, translated from Boccaccio, who is
never named by the English poet, though he has references to
a mysterious 'Lollius. ' But such points as this last cannot be
dealt with here.