ought to be attached to the fact that the south of France and the east coast of Spain received a large infusion of Greek blood from the Phocæan colonists of Massilia (now Marseilles) and their offshoots. These Greek colonists were something more than a handful of adventurous settlers, such as might be absorbed in a community without appreciably affecting its character. Their chief city, Massilia, soon after its foundation, became one of the most prosperous and powerful communities on the coasts of the Mediterranean, the successful rival of Carthage, the independent ally of Rome, and, under the early emperors, the chief dispenser of liberal education to the young rulers of the world. It may well have been that, in these representatives of her race, taken from the home of lyric poetry-the region of Alcæus and Sappho-ancient Greece left to Western Europe a more precious bequest, a bequest that gave a more vital impulse to modern literature than all the fragments of her art. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the various provinces speaking the Langue d'Oc, and especially Provence, were in a high state of commercial prosperity and political freedom. We may therefore, in the absence of certain knowledge, venture to speculate that, when the Provençals, having achieved the material basis for a great literary outburst, came in contact with Arabian poetry through the Moors, the artistic tendency of the Greek quickened with irrepressible life, and throwing itself into the metrical forms that had given it the awakening stimulus, blossomed and bore fruit with voluptuous luxuriance. But whatever may have been the origin of Provençal poetry-however the Troubadours caught their happy art, found it, or came by it-they certainly are the poetic fathers of the Trouvères and the early Italian poets; and through them the grandfathers of our own Chaucer.

Although the Trouvères of the north of France received their impulse from the Troubadours of the south, they were not simply imitators and translators, rendering the productions of the Langue d'Oc into the Langue d'Oil. The bent of their genius was no less decidedly epic than the bent of the Troubadours was lyric. They poured out of fertile imaginations hundreds of chivalrous, amorous, and humorous tales. The history of this great creative movement, within its limits of two centuries, is a subject in itself. Englishmen took part in it, as a result of the close political connection between England and the north of France, but no writer of mark used any dialect of English. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote in Latin; Walter Map in French. These are great names in the literature of England and of the Middle Ages, but they do not belong to English literature.

Chaucer was the first writer for all time that used the English language. But viewed as a figure in European literature, he must

be regarded as the last of the Trouvères. His works float on the surface of the same literary wave; a deep gulf lies between them and the next, on the crest of which are the works of our great Elizabethans. Some patriotic Englishmen have strongly resented the endeavour of M. Sandras 1 to consider Chaucer as an imitator of the Trouvères. They are justified in taking offence at the word "imitator." It is too much to say that Chaucer produced nothing but imitations of G. de Lorris or other Trouvères, till he conceived the plan of the 'Canterbury Tales'; and that the 'Canterbury Tales,' though so far original in form, are animated throughout by the spirit of Jean de Meun. To say this is to produce a totally false impression as regards the decided individuality and pronounced English characteristics of Chaucer. He undoubtedly belongs to the line of the Trouvères. He was a disciple of theirs; he studied in the school of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, by the side of Guillaume de Machault and Eustache Deschamps. He adopted the same poetical machinery of vision and allegory. He made the same elaborate studies of colour and form. From French predecessors he received the stimulus to his minute observation of character. It was emulation of them that kindled his happy genius for story-telling. The relation between Chaucer and the Trouvères is much closer than the relation between Shakespeare and the foreign originals that supplied him with plots, or than the relation between Mr Tennyson and the Arthurian legends. Making allowance for differences of national character, Chaucer owed as much to Guillaume de Lorris as Shakespeare to Marlowe, or Tennyson to Wordsworth; and in spite of national character, there was probably more affinity between pupil and master in the one case than in the others. At the same time, we should keep clear of such a word as imitation, which would imply that Chaucer had no character of his own. He received his impulse from the French: he made liberal use of their forms and their materials; yet his works bear the impress and breathe the spirit of a strong individuality; and this individuality, though most obvious in the Canterbury Tales,' is throughout all his works distinctively English. Finally, to add one word on the comparative extent of Chaucer's obligations to Italian sources : while he translated largely from Boccaccio, and while it may be possible to trace an expansion of his poetic ideals coincident with the time when he may be supposed to have made his first acquaintance with Italian poetry, it is not to be questioned that he was most deeply indebted for general form, imagery, and characterisation to the Trouvères, whose language and works he must have been familiar with from boyhood.

1 Étude sur G. Chaucer considéré comme imitateur des Trouvères, 1859. See, in particular, Mr Furnivall's 'Trial-Forewords,' Chaucer Society.

Various circumstances helped to bring the son of a London vintner under the influence of French poetry. Many details of Chaucer's life have been gradually recovered by successive generations of antiquaries, from Thynne and Speght to Nicolas and Furnivall, but none of them is more significant as regards the influences that shaped the growing poet than the recently discovered fact that in 1357 he was a page in the household of Prince Lionel. His age was then probably fifteen, or at the utmost seventeen, and whether or not he had been at Cambridge before the University age being then much younger than it is now-this position ensured him the best education of the time. And while the youth was in this much-coveted service, a great public event happened. The French king, captured at Poictiers by the Black Prince, was brought to London in triumph. In accordance with the chivalrous usage then dominant at the English Court, the royal prisoner, so far from being treated with indignity, was received with as much show of respect and georgeous ceremony as if he had been a distinguished potentate on a friendly visit. He brought a large retinue with him, and he was lodged in what was then considered the finest house in England, John of Gaunt's Savoy Palace. During his four years' captivity, tournaments were frequently held in his honour, hunting and hawking parties were arranged for his diversion, and everything possible was done to make life pleasant for him. Chaucer, as a member of Prince Lionel's household, must have made the acquaintance of some of King John's numerous retinue. He would naturally be thrown into company with youths in a similar position to himself, and as one of a page's duties was to amuse his master or mistress with reading, and the French king was a lover of poetry, Chaucer must thus have had his attention vividly turned, if it had not been turned before, to the French poetry then fashionable. Soon afterwards he had another opportunity. The page was advanced to the dignity of "squire" in 1359, and in Edward III.'s unfortunate expedition of that year into France, was taken prisoner and detained till the following year. Of his treatment during this captivity we know nothing specific, but we may assume from the custom of the time that it was not harsh, and that the young squire, if he had a passion for poetry, would have access to congenial company. The king paid £16 for his ransom after the Peace of Bretigny.

It may almost be said to have been an accident that Chaucer did not write in French, as his contemporary Gower began by doing. But he had the sense to discern a capable literary instrument in the nascent English, which the king at this time was

1 Of late years Mr Furnivall and the Chaucer Society have left hardly a paper unturned in extant official records.

doing his utmost to encourage. A poet is not begotten by circumstances, but circumstances may do much to make or mar him, and a man of genius, able to make the new language move in verse, was sure of a warm welcome at the Court of Edward III. The atmosphere was most favourable to the development of a poet of genial pleasure-loving disposition. Edward's reign was the flowering period of chivalry in England. It was the midsummer, the July, of chivalry; the institution was then in full blossom. All that it is customary to say about the gladness of life in the England of Chaucer's time was true of the Court; if a whole nation could be gladdened by the beautiful life of a favoured few, then all England must have been happy and merry. Pageantry was never more gorgeous or more frequent, courtesy of manner never more refined. The Court was like the Garden of Mirth in the 'Romance of the Rose'; there were hideous figures on the outside of the walls, but inside all was sunshine and merry-making, and now and then the doors were thrown open and gaily attired parties issued forth to hunt or tournament. These amusements

were arranged on a scale of unparalleled splendour.

It was a most gladsome and picturesque life at the Court of Edward III., and in that life Chaucer's poetry was an incident. This is the key to its joyous character. Animated playing on the surface of passion without breaking the crust, humorous pretence of incapacity when dull or difficult subjects come in the way, an eye for the picturesque, abundant supply of incident, never-failing fertility of witty suggestion-these are some of the qualities that made Chaucer's poetry acceptable to the audience for which he wrote. He never ventured on dangerous ground. He kept as far as possible from disagreeable realities. We search in vain for the most covert allusion to the painful events of the time. Devastating pestilences, disaster abroad, discontent and insurrection at home-he took for granted that his audience did not care to hear about such things, and he passed such things by. They wished to be entertained, and he entertained them charmingly, with lively adventures in high and humble life, pictures of the life chivalric with its hunts and tournaments, pictures of the life vulgar with its intervals of riotous mirth, sweet love-tales, comical intrigues, graphic and humorous sketches of character.

It would seem that Chaucer, like Shakespeare after him, was brought professionally face to face with the people whose sympathies he wished to command, and thus, like Mr Gladstone's orator, drew from his audience in a vapour what he gave back to them in a shower. Seven years after his return from imprisonment in France, he received a life pension of twenty marks for good service done the king as a "valettus," and in the year following he appears in the Exchequer Rolls as an Esquire of the

Household. Unfortunately the Household Book of Edward III. has not been recovered, so that we cannot know directly what Chaucer's official duties were. But Mr Furnivall has examined the book in which Edward IV.'s domestic system is set forth, with a word of compliment to Edward III. as "the first setter of certainties among his domestical meyne," and it appears there that the Esquires of Household "were accustomed, winter and summer, in afternoons and evenings, to draw to Lords' chambers within Court, there to keep honest company after their cunning, in talking of chronicles of kings and of others policies, or harping, singing, or other acts martials, to help to occupy the Court and accompany strangers till the time of their departing." This, then, was probably the practice when Chaucer served the king, and it was one of his official duties to make the time pass pleasantly for the king's visitors. He could, if he liked, instead of harping or singing, or talking history or politics, try the effect of his own verses on an audience not likely to submit to boredom. At the time when Chaucer passed into manhood, in the seventh decade of his century, there was a remarkable concurrence of circumstances favourable to the development of an English poet. Given a man of poetic genius within the circle of the Court, the time had come if the man was there: he could hardly escape such a conspiracy of influences to stimulate and foster his gift. Poetry was recognised as one of the graces of a courtly life; the queen was interested in the art, and had French metricians about her, Froissart among the number; the king also was an emulous patron, and besides was anxious, along with all his Court, for a poet who should do honour to the language which had at last established itself as the language of the whole nation. The opportunity was there; the call was urgent. Chaucer was able to respond. The hour had come, and the man as well.

Chaucer continued to rise steadily in royal favour, and in the prime of his life was frequently employed in important diplomatic missions-a sufficient testimony to his powers of making himself agreeable. Up to 1386, fortune would seem to have been uniformly kind to him. Among other places, he had an opportunity of visiting Italy while Petrarch was still alive and Boccaccio was in the height of his fame. In 1372 he was appointed one of the commissioners for arranging a commercial treaty with the Genoese, and visited Florence and Genoa in the following year. Unless royal favourites were then intrusted with very unsuitable posts, our poet must have had a decidedly commercial turn. In 1374 he was appointed Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidy of Wools, Skins, and Tanned Hides in the Port of London; and he had to perform his duties in person, without the option of a deputy. In his "House of Fame," perhaps with a reference to