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CHAUCER.

CHAPTER I.

Chaucer's birth and parentage.-His residence at Woodstock.-Fills various offices.-Probable visit to Petrarch.-House of Fame.-Embassage to France. His difficulties, return of prosperity, and retirement.-Death. -Gleanings of his character, habits and appearance, from his writings. -Nature of his Satires.-His "Retractation."

WHEN We reflect that Chaucer was the prolific parent of that generous brood, who reared the grand and beautiful superstructure of English Poetry, our admiration of the Genius which shone so brightly in times rude and uncultivated, will be merged in our gratitude to the Author of so great good to man. It is to be presumed, therefore, that a concise narrative of the principal events of his life will be as acceptable an offering to the taste of his admirers, as it most assuredly has been a labor of love to its compiler.

Geoffry Chaucer, "the most illustrious ornament of the reign of Edward the Third, and his successor, Richard the Second," was born, as all agree, A.D., 1328. Of his parentage nothing is known, beyond the fact that his family were citizens of London, and were able to afford him a classical education. We may also say, upon the authority of the antiquarian Warton, that "he was educated at Oxford, where he made a rapid progress in the scholastic sciences as they were then taught: but the liveliness

of his parts, and the native gaiety of his disposition, soon recommended him to the patronage of a magnificent mona."ch, and rendered him a very popular and acceptable character to his brilliant court." Tyrwhitt, however, conjectures that Chaucer was not educated at Oxford, and asserts that to Cambridge belongs that honor. He rests his opinion upon the insufficient testimony that may be wrung from a portion of one of Chaucer's earliest productions, "The Court of Love," where a lady is fancied to propound the following question to her admirer

"What is your name? rehearse it here I pray,

Of whence and where, of what condition

That ye ben of:"

To which the enamored swain thus replies

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My name, alas my herte, why makes thou strange?
Philogenet I call'd am far and near

Of Cambridge clerk."

In order to evade the difficulty thus conjured up, most of his biographers insist that Chaucer was first educated at Cambridge, and from thence removed to Oxford, in order to complete his studies. But this conjecture of Tyrwhitt's is purely apocryphal, and owing to his fidelity and good judgment, which were proverbial, has been dignified into an importance which it scarcely deserves; for Philogenet is confessedly an assumed name, and all the circumstances which are ushered in with him are assumed. The truth is, we believe, Chaucer was narrating a fiction, whose details it were absurd to elevate into facts.

We may suppose that Edward and his noble Queen Philippa,1 who were munificent patrons of Literature and Chivalry in the persons of Froissart and Walter De Manny, would not suffer a

1

Queen Philippa was also the founder of Queen's College, Oxford.

!

genius as brilliant as Chaucer's proved itself at an early day— to die for lack of encouragement. We consequently find that through the greater part of his early life, he resided at or near the court; and a square stone house near the park gate, at Woodstock, is still called "Chaucer's house," from his having occu pied it while in attendance upon the King. This mansion "commanded a prospect of the ancient magnificent royal palace, and of many beautiful scenes in the adjacent park; its last remains, chiefly consisting of what was called Chaucer's bed-chamber, with an old oaken roof, evidently original, were demolished about fifteen years ago (1763). Among the ruins they found an ancient gold coin of the city of Florence. Before the grand rebellion, there was, in the windows of the church at Woodstock, an escutcheon in painted glass, of the arms of Sir Payne Ruet, a knight of Hainault, whose daughter Chaucer married." Some farther particulars in relation to "Chaucer's house" may be gathered from the following lines, probably written in it; in which the Poet describes his awakening from a dream, and encountering the positive realities by which he was surrounded:

"From my bed I forth did lepe
Wening to be at the feast,

But when I woke, all was ceast,

For there n'as lady nor creature,

Save on the walls old portraiture
Of horsemen, haukes and houndes,
And hurt deer full of woundes."

It was to this retreat that he subsequently retired from the persecutions of his enemies, in 1391, to write his famous treatise on the Astrolabe; and here, also, at the age of twenty, he is supposed to have written his "Court of Love," and to have translated "Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiæ."

Warton's Hist. Eng. Poetry, vol. ii., p. 44.

About ten years after this (A.D., 1359), he accompanied the army of Edward the Third in his expedition to France, and was made prisoner by the French, near the town of Retters; but was released after a short imprisonment.

The first facts of a public nature which we possess, to prove that our poet had attracted the regard of his sovereign, are the grants to him by the King, of two several annuities, in the thirtyninth and forty-fourth years of his age; with the successive titles, "Our Yeoman" and "Our Squier." To the latter title was added, the honor of Envoy to Genoa, whither he went to negotiate for a supply of ships for the King's navy, and to treat with the Genoese authorities in reference to the opening of a port in England for their commerce.' While he fulfilled the duties of this station, it is said that he visited and conversed with Petrarch, and it is highly probable that he had the same gratification four years previously; at which time he is said to have accompanied the Duke of Clarence, to his nuptials with Violante, daughter of Galeazzo, Duke of Milan. That he had at some time seen and conversed familiarly with Petrarch, seems to be clear, for in addition to the presumption that he would never have visited Genoa-where he remained nearly a year-without traversing the short distance between it or Florence and Padua, in order to see that great Poet; and to the tradition that they were both present at the marriage of the Duke of Clarence, we have the testimony of Chaucer himself, who, in his prologue to the Clerk's tale, says

"I wol you tell a tale, which that I
Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,
As preved by his wordes and his work :
He is now ded, and nailed in his chest,
I pray to God to give his soule rest.

1 Floyd's Biographia and Nicolas's Chaucer.

"Rev. T. Warton.

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