wards added a supplement known as the Tripartite Chronicle, treats the insurrection of Wat Tyler (1381) allegorically, and then deviates into a didactic argument on the condition of society in Gower's time, prompted by the significant outbreak described in the first book.'* The Confessio Amantis is a dialogue of more than 30,000 lines between Genius, a priest or clerk of Venus, and the poet himself (he was then over sixty years of age), in the character of an unhappy lover. Genius subjects him to a minute and searching interrogatory as to the nature of his offences against Love, taking the sins in turn, and exemplifying each by apposite stories from different sources. Thus Chiding, a sub-sin of Anger, is illustrated by accounts of the patience of Socrates, the blinding of Tiresias, the White Crow turned black (cf. the Maunciple's Tale in Chaucer, Appendix B), and so forth. The patient prolixity and power of barren detail which are expended upon this leisurely performance would make it intolerable to a modern reader, and have indeed extorted from students and editors such epithets as 'petrifying' and 'tedious.' Nevertheless, Gower, says Mr. Hallam, indulgently, though not like Chaucer, a poet of nature's growth, had some effect in rendering the language less rude, and exciting a taste for verse; if he never rises, he never sinks low; he is always sensible, polished, perspicuous, and not prosaic in the worst sense of the word.' †

The remaining great poet of Chaucer's time, John Barbour (1316?-1395), Archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1357, is the author of an ‘animated and picturesque' metrical chronicle, or romaunt as he terms it, entitled The Brus, compiled about 1375, and relating the history of Scotland from 1286 to 1329, i.e., from the death of Alexander the Third to that of Robert Bruce, of whose life and adventures it principally treats. The author, in his introductory lines, prays God that he may say nought but suthfast thing;' and his work has always been regarded as reliable from an historical point of view. Barbour has also been doubtfully credited with two frag. ments on the Trojan War found in two MSS. of Lydgate's work (see p. 41, s. 19), and with fifty metrical Legends of Saints.‡

6

17. Chaucer.-The researches of later scholars, and the valuable Six-text and other issues of the Society founded by Dr. F. J. Furnivall in 1868 § (a good work, to which all lovers of Chaucer

Morley, Eng. Writers, iv. 182, 1889. † Lit. History, Pt. I. ch. i. § 51. See Skeat's ed. of The Brus (E. E. Text Soc. 1870-1889), xlv.-lii.

The results of the noble work of this Society-its issues of parallel texts, analogues and originals of tales, &c.-are embodied in Prof. W.W. Skeat's edition of Chaucer (Clarendon Press, 1894, 6 vols.), the text of which has been issued in a cheap one-volume edition (1895). Mr. A. W. Pollard's excellent Primer

are deeply indebted), have thrown much additional light upon the life and works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 ?-1400), and many once unsuspected biographical particulars respecting him have not survived the test of rigid cross-questioning. Relying on the poet's own deposition made at Westminster in October 1386, to the effect that he was at that date forty years of age and upwards (del age de xl. ans et plus), it is now held that he must have been born about 1340, instead of in 1328, as had been formerly supposed. No authority, indeed, still inclines to the old date, but the exact year cannot be regarded as finally settled. Neither is there any satisfactory evidence that he studied at either university, as some of his earlier biographers, basing their belief upon a passage in The Court of Love (of which the authenticity is now rejected), have inferred. It is, however, perfectly clear that, in 1357, he was employed in the household of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III., 'probably as a page; '*that he served in France with Edward III. in 1359, was made prisoner, and released (it is likely) before the treaty of Bretigni (1360); that he received a pension of 20 marks from the King, in 1367, as Valettus noster; that he was married about the same time to a maid of honour to Edward's Queen; that he was frequently employed from 1370 to 1380, in diplomatic missions to Italy, France, and the Netherlands; that he was successively Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidy of Wools, Skins and tanned Hides for the Port of London (1374-86), Knight of tho Shire for Kent (1386), and Clerk of the King's Works (1389-91); that he received small pensions from Richard II. and Henry IV.; that he finally died, probably at his house in the garden of the Chapel of St. Mary, Westminster, on the 25th October, 1400, and was buried in the Abbey. Brief as they are, these particulars suffice to show that the life of the great poet of the fourteenth century was -to use the words of M. Taine, 'from end to end that of a man of the world, and a man of action.'t Add to these that he was 'learned and versed in all branches of scholastic knowledge,' familiar with Norman and Provençal literature, a diligent student of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio especially, and some of the Latin poets, and it will be seen with what qualifications and advantages he was endowed.

For his personal appearance, we have the well-known coloured half-length portrait, painted from memory after his death by his (Macmillan's Series), 1894, briefly summarises the results of recent research. Prof. Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer, 3 vols. 1892, is full of helpful work; e.g. cf. the chapter on the Chaucer legend' in connection with what is referred to in our text. See also Prof. Ten Brink's Chaucer Studien, 1870.

* Ascertained by Mr. E. A. Boud, v. Fortnightly Review, Aug. 15, 1866. Hist. of English Literature, Van Laun's translation, Bk. I. ch. iii. Div. 1.

D

disciple Occleve, which is preserved in the margin of a MS. of the De Regimine Principum of that writer (Harleian MS. 4,866). It was drawn when the poet was no longer young, for the beard (which is bi-forked) and the hair are gray; but it accords generally, by the downcast eyes and other characteristics, with the Host's account of the reserved and portly stranger, who looked upon the ground as though he would 'find a hare,' and who seemed

-Elvisch (weird) by his countenaunce,

For unto no wight doth he daliaunce.' *

To the Host's picture, some of the poet's critics would add (and apparently without any great straining of probability), as applicable to Chaucer himself, the following lines from his description of the Clerk of Oxenford in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales;—

'For him was lever have at his beddes heede
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reede,

Of Aristotle and his philosophie,

Then robes riche, or fithel, or gay sawtrie.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre; ...
Of studie took he most cure and most heede.
Not oo word spak he more than was neede,
And that was seid in forme and reverence

And schort and quyk, and ful of high sentence.
Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche,

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.'

Besides the Canterbury Tales, there are twenty-three poems vary. ing in length and importance from the four lines of the Proverbs to the 8,000 of Troilus and Criseyde; several poems are lost, while numerous others-forty-three in all, comprising about 17,000 lines -have been uncritically attributed to him.† Like Dryden and Cowper, Chaucer illustrates the remark that 'great poets are not sudden prodigies, but slow results,'‡ for he produced little of value before he was forty. Grand translateur, noble Geoffrey Chaucer,' a contemporary poet termed him, and his work, like that of Shakespeare, is indeed marked by a very free use of the labours of others. Up to 1372 he wrote largely under French influence, to which the

Prologue to Rime of Sir Thopas; Canterbury Tales.

† See Lounsbury's Studies, i.; also Skeat's Chaucer, i. 20-48. Only five need mention. The Complaint of the Black Knight is now known to be by Lydgate. The Flower and the Leaf was written, probably by a lady, as it states, c. 1450; The Court of Love must be dated c. 1500; Chaucer's Dream is even later. Only oneThe Cuckoo and the Nightingale (?xiv. cent.)-can be considered 'doubtful;' and Prof. Lounsbury rejects it on internal evidence. Mr. Skeat will issue these poems in a seventh volume. He and some others attribute seven lately discovered little poems to Chaucer.

Mr. Lowell, My Study Windows: Chaucer.

employment of his familiar seven-line stanza and the decasyllabic couplet have both been attributed. • Chaucer Chronology' is distinctly uncertain, but his first poem (? 1366) is usually considered to be a free rendering in 184 lines of the Pèlerinage de la Vie humaine of Guillaume de Deguilleville, called The A.B.C. because each verse begins with a new letter of the alphabet. The Compleynte unto Pite, in which the seven-line stanza first appears, is often held to be his first original poem. The most important, however, of these early works was a translation of the famous Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, although scholars are still divided as to how much, if any, of the existing version is by Chaucer.* The Book of the Duchesse, a rather conventional lament over the death of Duchess Blanche of Lancaster (d. Sept. 12, 1369), is the first poem-and one of few— of certain date. The Compleynt of Mars (298 lines) may also be an early work.

Chaucer's eleven months' visit to Italy (1372-3), while Petrarch (d. 1374) and Boccaccio (d. 1375) were still living, ushers in the second period of his work. Henceforth it is the influence of these and of Dante that is predominant, though Chaucer's work becomes increasingly individual. Troilus and Criseyde, his longest poem (1380–3), is based upon the Filostrato of Boccaccio, but nearly three lines out of four are his own,† while the atmosphere is purified, the characters are conceived in his own way, and treated with a psychological skill which makes this early novel in verse, in spite of blemishes, one of our finest poems. The unfinished Hous of Fame (1383-4) affords the most striking illustration-sometimes unduly magnified-of the influence of Dante. The allegorical Parlement of Foules (1382) and the incomplete Legend of Good Women (1385) again show Italian influence. This last poem is the earliest in which Chaucer is known to have used the heroic couplet, and we may thus connect with it two fragmentary metrical experiments, Anelida and Arcite and the Compleint to his Lady (both c. 1380), in the latter of which the difficult terza rima of Dante is attempted. The seven lines to Adam Scrivener (see p. 39) and a balade to Rosemounde also belong to this period.

To Chaucer's third period, from 1386 onward, belong most of the Canterbury Tales, and a few short poems, such as the Compleynt of

* Ten Brink says none; Lounsbury (ii. 166) says the whole; Skeat, after rejecting it, now claims 11. 1-1705 for Chaucer, and sees two other hands in 11, 1706-7698. See Pollard's Primer, § 86.

† 5663 out of 8246, according to Mr. W. M. Rossetti's careful estimate. Bocsaccio has only 5704 lines, and of these Chaucer rejects one half.

Venus (1393 ?), the Envoy to Scogan (1393), and that to Bukton (1396), and the oft-quoted Lines to his Purse (1399). With these we may associate an earlier group of five little poems-including the noble lines on Truth, partly suggested by the poet's translation of Boethius (1380-3), which is one of his four prose works: the others being the Treatise on the Astrolabe (1391), for 'liteli Lowys my sone,' a boy of ten, and two Canterbury Tales, that of Melibeus and the Parson's Tale.

The Canterbury Tales, which open a new era in,—or rather inaugurate,-modern English Literature, were chiefly written after 1386. They may be broadly dated at 1390. The main idea of connecting a variety of tales by a common thread was probably suggested by Boccaccio's Decameron. In Boccaccio's work the tales are told by ten fashionable fugitives from Florence, who, during the 'Black Death' of 1348, have sought an asylum in a country villa. The plan of Chaucer is much more pleasing and natural, besides allowing far larger scope. His tale-tellers are a number of pilgrims, selected from all classes of society, but united by a common object-a pilgrimage to the shrine of the holy blisful martir,' St. Thomas à Becket, at Canterbury. To this end they have assembled, in the month of April, at the Old Tabard Inn,' Southwark, which, previous to its destruction by fire in 1676, stood on the site of the more modern building (The Talbot) in the Borough High Street, which was pulled down twenty-two years ago, in 1874.* The pilgrims are Chaucer himself (1), a Knight (2), a Squire, his son (3), a Miller (4), a Reeve or Steward (5), and a Cook (6); a Sergeant of Law (7), a Shipman † or Mariner (8), a Prioress (9), a Nun's Priest (10), a Monk (11), a Doctor of Physic (12), a Pardoner or Seller of Indulgences (13), a Wife of Bath (14), a Friar (15), a Summoner to the Ecclesiastical Courts (16), a Clerk of Oxford (17), a Merchant (18), a Nun (19), a Franklin or Freeholder (20), a Manciple or Victualler (21), a Poor Parson (22), and a Canon's Yeoman (23), who joins the cavalcade at Broughton-under-Blean, seven miles from Canterbury. Tales by all these are preserved. But besides these there are the Knight's Yeoman (24), other Priests (25, 26), a Haberdasher (27), a Carpenter (28), a Weaver (29), a Dyer (30), a Tapestry Maker (31), a Ploughman (32), and Harry Bailly, the Host of the 'Tabard' (33), whose tales, if written, do not remain to us.

The present building (No. 85 Borough High Street) is called 'The Old Tabard,' while the adjoining Talbot Yard retains the corrupted form of the

name.

† See Appendix A, Extract XV.