GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

(From a Manuscript Copy, in vellum, of the "Canterbury Tales," adorned with Marginal Paintings, in the possession of the Marquis of Stafford.)

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

1328-1400.

Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,

On Fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to be fyled.-SPENSER.

A perpetual fountain of good sense.-DRYDEN.

-That noble Chaucer, in those former times

Who first enriched our English with his rhymes,

And was the first of ours that ever broke

Into the Muses' treasures, and first spoke

In mighty numbers, delving in the mine

Of perfect knowledge.-WORDSWORTH.

-The morning star of song, who made
His music heard below ;

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill

The spacious times of great Elizabeth

With sounds that echo still.-TENNYSON.

One of those rare authors, whom, if we had met him under a porch in a shower, we should have preferred to the rain!--LOWELL.

In the dim twilight of five hundred years ago, the "morning star of song" began to shine. Born about the year 1328, as we infer from an inscription on his tomb, Goeffrey Chaucer, the "father of English poetry," received a thorough education, at either Oxford or Cambridge, or both. It is pretty clear that he understood well the French and Latin tongues. Whether he was versed in Italian, may be doubted, though he spent some time in Italy, and was all his life a student.

In the autumn of 1359 Chaucer served in the army of Edward III. invading France, where he was captured at the siege of Retters. In the year 1367 we find him one of the king's valets de chambre, and receiving a yearly pension of twenty marks. About this time he married Philippa Roet, sister of the lady who afterwards became the wife of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. In 1370 he was abroad in the king's service. In November, 1372, he was sent on a mission to Genoa, to treat of the choice of a port in England where the Genoese might form a commercial establishment. Having remained about a year in Genoa and Florence, we find him again in England in the latter part of 1373. The great Dante had died fifty years before, but Petrarch and Boccaccio, already famous, were still alive. He puts into the mouth of his "Clerk " or student, who is supposed to represent Chaucer himself, the following words in regard to the origin of the story of Patient Griselda:

"I will you tell a tale which that I
Learned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,
As proved by his wordes and his work;
He is now dead and nailed in his chest,

I pray to God to give his soule rest;
Francis Petrarch, the laureate poete,
Highte this clerk, whose rhetoric sweet

Enlumined all Itaille of poetry."

He repeatedly quotes Dante, but it is uncertain whether he was familiar with the writings of Boccaccio.

We find a curious record on the 23d of April, 1374, of a grant of a pitcher of wine daily by the king, soon afterwards commuted for another pension of twenty marks. On the 8th of the following June he was appointed controller of the customs and subsidies of wools, skins, and tanned hides, in London. Other tokens of the royal favor followed, and in the last year of Edward's long reign (1327–1377) we find him an ambassador, first to Flanders, and afterwards to France.

Soon after the accession of Richard II. Chaucer was sent to France to negotiate a treaty for a marriage between the boy king and a daughter of the French monarch. Returning soon to England, he was sent in May, 1378, to Lombardy, to treat of military matters. It was on this occasion that he nominated his brother poet, John Gower, whom he afterwards calls "Moral Gower," his attorney and legal representative during his absence. Gower, in his poem entitled Confessio Amantis, makes Venus say,

"And greet well Chaucer when ye meet,

As my disciple and my poete.

In 1386 he was elected knight of the shire, or county representative in parliament, for Kent. The session was very brief, and its proceedings were largely directed against Chaucer's particular friend and patron, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Strongly enlisted on the side of the duke, Chaucer appears to have shared his fortunes, and to have lost the office of controller. Many years before, one Geoffrey Chaucer, probably our poet, had been fined two shillings for whipping a Franciscan friar in Fleet street; and now he became implicated in a London riot, and was obliged to flee to the Continent with his wife and children. After eighteen months he returned to England, to look after his property, but was seized and flung into the Tower. Yet he seems to have continued to receive, or at least to have been entitled to receive, his two pensions, until he sold them in 1388, being in great destitution. In May, 1389, he was again in favor at court, and in July of that year he was appointed "Clerk of the King's Works," with a pension of £36, and afterwards an annual pipe of wine.

Cloud and sunshine alternately filled his sky. In September, 1391, he was dismissed from office, but soon afterward was restored to public favor. Sixty-three years old, weary of public life, but not soured nor despondent, he retired to his house, given him at Woodstock by the noble duke, and sat down to write. There, and at Donington Castle, where an old tree long bore the name of Chaucer's oak, he composed his greatest work, The Canterbury Tales. One of the vellum manuscripts of these tales, in the possession of the Marquis of Stafford, has a striking picture of the poet; a portly figure, in a thoughtful attitude, his head inclining forward, his chin almost resting on his breast; a buttoned bonnet on his head, its folds hanging gracefully behind his shoulders; a loose frock of camlet reaching below the knee, its wide sleeves gathered and fastened at the waist; his shoes horned, and his hose supposed to be red. Silver locks peep out from beneath his bonnet. His beard is of moderate length and neatly trimmed. The expression of his face singularly unites cheerfulness and thoughtfulness. You can fancy a mirthful twinkle in the eye, and almost expect the grave face to relax into an arch smile as some funny thought flashes through his brain. This man has evidently a just sense of the vanity of all things earthly; but he has also a kind heart and a merry wit.

The accession of his patron's son, Henry IV., brought more sunshine; for within four days the new king granted him (Oct. 3, 1399) a yearly pension of forty marks. On

the following Christmas he took the lease of a house at Westminster, near the spot where the magnificent chapel of Henry VII. now stands. Here he died, October 25, 1400, leaving two sons, one of whom became Speaker of the House of Commons.

On his death-bed Chaucer is said to have been filled with remorse at the thought that some of his writings had an immoral tendency. "Wo is me, that I cannot recall and annul these things! But, alas, they are continued from man to man, and I cannot do what I desire!" His last composition is said to have closed with the following stanza, in which the wisdom of threescore and ten years speaks with the voice of the dying man:

That thee is sent, receive in buxomness; *
The wrestling of this world asketh a fall.
Here is no home! Here is but wilderness!
Forth, pilgrim, forth! O beast, out of thy stall!
Look up on high and thank thy God of all!
Weyve thy lusts, and let thy ghost thee lead,
And Truth shall thee deliver; it is no drede!

The chief characteristics of his writings are common sense, a keen observation, a sportive and even comic fancy, a genial and overflowing humor, deep tenderness, and an exquisite sensibility to the beauties of nature; in a word, all the wisdom, shrewdness, naïveté, mirthfulness, pathos, and delicacy, that could well be combined in a polished old gentleman.

Besides Troilus and Creseide (8,246 lines), The Assembly of Fowls (686 lines), House of Fame (2,190 lines), Legend of Good Women (2,722 lines), The Book of the Duchess (1,334 lines), and several minor pieces, he wrote the

CANTERBURY TALES (17,368 lines).

On the 29th of December, 1170, the famous archbishop Thomas à Becket was murdered before the altar in the Cathedral at Canterbury (58 miles E. S. E. of London). Canonized within three years after his death and placed high on the roll of saints, it became an act of exceedingly meritorious piety to make a pilgrimage to his shrine. We will let Chaucer speak for himself on this subject:

* Buxomness, meekness.-Weyve, waive, put away.—It is no drede, there is no reason to fear.-Aprille. Trisyl.-†Swoote, sweet. Dissyl.-Swich, such.-Licour, liquor. Acc. 2d syl. -Eke, also. Dissyl.-Swete, sweet. Dissyl.--Croppes, crops. Dissyl.-Younge. Dissyl.— Ram. The constellation Aries, into which the sun enters about March 21.-Halfe. Dissyl.— Yrun, run.-Smalle. Dissyl.-Fowles. Dissyl.-Courages, heart, spirit. Acc. 2d syl.

Befell that, in that season on a day,

In Southwark at the Tabard* as I lay,
Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury, with full devout courage,
At night was come into that hostelry
Well nine and twenty in a company

Of sundry folk, by aventure yfall

In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all,
That toward Canterbury woulden ride.
The chambers and the stables weren wide,

And well we weren eased at the best.

These pilgrims agree to journey together; and, to beguile the way, each is to tell a tale both in going and in returning. Whoever shall relate the best is to have a supper at the others' expense, the fat, jolly landlord of the Tabard Inn, Harry Bailey, to be the judge. This plan would have required sixty stories, but only twenty-four are recorded.

The description of the different pilgrims, who represent almost all ranks in life, except the highest and the lowest, forms a matchless picture-gallery. Most of the tales are deeply interesting.

One of the best is The Clerk's (or Student's) Tale, which we have given entire. The substance of it existed before the time of Chaucer, in Latin and in Italian. It was dramatized and acted on the stage in France and Germany. It is found also, substantially, in Roberts' edition of Old English and Scotch Ballads. It was played on the English stage in the reign of Henry VIII. (1509-1547), and another dramatized version of it was made and acted in the London theatres in the time of Shakespeare.

Except in the last six stanzas, I have taken the liberty to modernize the spelling wherever it would not change the pronunciation of the word, outlandish orthography being no more essential to old English poetry than to modern wit.

It will materially assist, in reading Chaucer's verses, to observe the following general rules:

1. Pronounce, as a separate syllable, final e before a consonant; the final es in the plural; final es in the possessive singular; and ed in the past tense and participle.

2. Accent as in the original French the words that come from the Latin through that language.

The verse is called English Heroic, consisting of ten syllables, making five feet, every second syllable being accented. It had been used before in Italian and in French poetry, but perhaps not in English.

Each foot is regularly an iambus; that is, it consists of a short or unaccented syllable followed by a long or accented one. But two short syllables are often used instead of one, making the foot an anapest.

For some account of the life and works of Chaucer, the reader is referred to Thomas Wright's edition of the Canterbury Tales; Godwin's Life of Chaucer; Charles Cowden Clarke's Life of Chaucer; Tyrwhitt's Chaucer's Works; Taine's History of English Literature; Craik's English Literature and Language; Corson's edition of the Legend of Good Women; March's Study of the English Language; and Lowell's admirable essay on

* Tabard, the Tabard Inn. It is said to have been opposite the spot where Spurgeon's Tabernacle now stands.--Wenden, wend.--Aventure, adventure, chance.-Yfall, fallen, happening.-Eased, made at ease, accommodated. Dissyl.-At the best, or, as some manuscripts read, atte best, i. e., in the best manner.