in France in 1359, probably as an esquire, was taken prisoner and ransomed. Attached to the court, he was sent on diplomatic missions to various foreign countries. In 1372, he went to Genoa to arrange a commercial treaty, and remained in Italy about a year. He was there brought directly under the influence of that New Learning which was to re-create the mind of Europe. Here, too, he probably met Petrarch, its greatest living representative. Two years later he was given a position in the Custom House at London. In 1386 he was returned to Parliament as Knight of the Shire of Kent, but in the same year lost his place as Controller of the Customs, in the absence of his patron John of Gaunt-the "timehonored Lancaster" of Shakespeare's Richard II. For awhile he knew poverty, bearing it with characteristic good humor. On the accession (1399) of Henry IV., the son of his former patron, his fortunes again improved; he was granted an annuity of forty marks, but died on the 25th of the October following, closing the eyes, which had seen so much, in his quiet home at Westminster, while the dawn grows over Europe and the new century is born. Man of the Little as we know of Chaucer, we can see at how many points he touched the varied and brilliant life of his time, knowing it not merely as an onlooker, but as a practical man of affairs, himself an actor in its restless activities. He was a man of world. the world, but one who added to the quick eye and retentive mind the poet's tenderness and sympathy with suffering, the philosopher's large-minded toleration of human follies and mistakes. And Chaucer, like Shakespeare, learned not only from life but from books. He would return from his work at the Custom House to read until his eyes were "dazed and dull." We may agree with Lowell that in Chaucer's Student. description of the Oxford Clerk, the poet writes out of the fullness of a personal sympathy. "For he hadde geten him yit no benefice, Ne was so worldly for to have office. For him was levere have at his beddes heede Then robes riche, or fithele or gay sawtrie." Chaucer the poet had so absorbed the tales of trouvère and Italian, as to make them live anew, in his verse, on English soil. Chaucer the student translated Boëthius's Consolations of Philosophy and wrote a scientific treatise on the astrolabe.* Lover of men and lover of books, Chaucer Lover of nature. is no less the lover of nature, for her alone delighting to leave his studies. "And as for me, though that I kon but lyte, On bökes for to rede I me delyte, And to hem yive I feyth and ful credence And in myn herte have hem in reverence Save, certeynly, when that the moneth of May To approach in reverent imagination the reserve of tenderness, the sacred depths in the rare nature of this old poet, who takes what life sends "in buxomnesse,"‡ who makes no display of what he is and feels, we must think of him as he shows himself in one of his poems, * "The oldest work in England now known to exist on any branch of science."-Craik's "English Literature," vol. i. p. 367. going out alone into the meadows in the stillness of early morning and falling on his knees to greet the daisy. In Chaucer's poems we see the expression of this full life, that knew and loved men, books, and nature; but above all, there shines through them the element of that highest achievement-personal greatness of character. He is truthful, putting down honestly and naturally what he sees; he can enjoy life, almost with the frank delight of a child, capable of laughter without malice; and, boisterous or coarse as he may sometimes seem, he is at heart surpassingly gentle and compassionate. The innocence and sufferings of women move him deeply. He has shown us woman's faith and purity in Constance, her love and patience in Griselda.* In both of these beautiful stories the quiet acceptance of adversity is associated with children, and the ideal woman is shown, not only in her wifehood, but in her motherhood. Finally, in his grasp of human life and in his handling of a story, Chaucer shows a dramatic power, which, had he lived in a play-writing age, would have placed him among the greatest dramatists of all time. Court. But with all this breadth, there are certain elements in Chaucer's England that find no utterance in his works. Men and women of many conditions are indeed found there, from the knight to the miller and Poet of the the plowman, and all are pictured with the same vividnesss and truth; but breadth of observation is not of necessity breadth of sympathy. Nowhere does he show us the England of Langland, with its plague, pestilence, and famine, its fierce indignation flaming up into wild outbursts of socialism.† We may suppose * "Man of Lawes Tale," and "Clerks Tale." See "The Pilgrim and the Ploughman," in Palgrave's Visions of England." Chaucer's ideal plowman to have been after the pattern of the one he describes in Canterbury Tales: "A trewe swinker and a good was he Lyvynge in pees and perfight charitie." * Chaucer was the poet of the court, the poet of those who dwelt in fine houses clad in rich stuffs, not of those who hungered in rain and cold in the fields. He was the outcome and voice of the spirit of chivalry, in its class distinctions and exclusiveness as well as its splendor. His easy-going nature has no touch in it of the reformer, the martyr, or the fanatic. He dwelt at ease in his sunshiny world of green fields and merry jests, and if the heights and the depths in Dante and Shakespeare were beyond him, we should be thankful for all we gain in his genial and manly company. CHAUCER'S WORKS. had no English "The father of English poetry" had masters in his art to whom he could turn for help. The poems most in favor at court when he began to write were French, and it is to the Norman-French literature that he first turned for his models. One of his earliest works was the translation of a French love poem, the Romaunt of the Rose, and in other early poems he is "an English trouvère." By his Italian journey, he was brought into contact with another great literature, and, after this time, we find many evidences of his close study of Dante, Petrarch, and other great writers of the new Italy. As his genius developed, he gained in power and originality, but from first to last, whether he borrowed. from France or Italy, he made a story his own, re-creating it and breathing into it the breath of his own spirit.† * Prologue to " Canterbury Tales." See Table on p. 36. Before Chaucer, there had been an Anglo-Norman literature, and the beginning of a popular English literature; but no great poet had yet combined the spirit of the two. It is one of the glories of Chaucer that in his work so much is combined and harmonized for the first time. He has the Celtic lightness and humor with the English solidity and common sense; he has the literary traditions of the Norman trouvère with the new thought of the Italian; he expresses in his very language the end of a period of amalgamation, and all these elements are made one by the power and personality of his genius. No illustration of this could be better than that given by Lowell. "Chaucer, to whom French must have been almost as truly a mother-tongue as English, was familiar with all that has been done by Troubadour or Trouvère. In him we see the first result of the Norman yeast upon the home-baked Saxon loaf. The flour had been honest, the paste well kneaded, but the inspiring leaven was wanting till the Norman brought it over. Chaucer works still in the solid material of his race, but with what airy lightness has he not infused it? Without ceasing to be English, he has escaped from being insular."* Thus Chaucer in more than one way stands for the end of the period of preparation. Like his century, he is partly of the Middle Ages, and partly of the coming Renaissance; partly Norman and partly English. His literary style, as well as his mixed language, remind us that he expresses the union of what had been separate elements, and that he is at once the end of an old order and the beginning of a new. * Essay on Chaucer in "My Study Windows," by J. R.Lowell. |