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The Canterbury Tales
THE CANTERBURY TALES And other Poems of GEOFFREY CHAUCER
Edited for Popular Perusal by D. Laing Purves
CONTENTS
PREFACE LIFE OF CHAUCER THE CANTERBURY TALES The General Prologue The
Knight's Tale The Miller's tale The Reeve's Tale The Cook's Tale The
Man of Law's Tale The Wife of Bath's Tale The Friar's Tale The
Sompnour's Tale The Clerk's Tale The Merchant's Tale The Squire's Tale
The Franklin's Tale The Doctor's Tale The Pardoner's Tale The
Shipman's Tale The Prioress's Tale Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas
Chaucer's Tale of Meliboeus The Monk's Tale The Nun's Priest's Tale
The Second Nun's Tale The Canon's Yeoman's Tale The Manciple's Tale
The Parson's Tale Preces de Chauceres THE COURT OF LOVE THE CUCKOO AND
THE NIGHTINGALE THE ASSEMBLY OF FOWLS THE FLOWER AND THE LEAF THE
HOUSE OF FAME TROILUS AND CRESSIDA CHAUCER'S DREAM THE PROLOGUE TO THE
LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN CHAUCER'S A.B.C. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
Transcriber's Note.
1. Modern scholars believe that Chaucer was not the author of these
poems.
PREFACE.
THE object of this volume is to place before the general reader our
two early poetic masterpieces -- The Canterbury Tales and The Faerie
Queen; to do so in a way that will render their "popular perusal" easy
in a time of little leisure and unbounded temptations to intellectual
languor; and, on the same conditions, to present a liberal and fairly
representative selection from the less important and familiar poems of
Chaucer and Spenser. There is, it may be said at the outset, peculiar
advantage and propriety in placing the two poets side by side in the
manner now attempted for the first time. Although two centuries
divide them, yet Spenser is the direct and really the immediate
successor to the poetical inheritance of Chaucer. Those two hundred
years, eventful as they were, produced no poet at all worthy to take
up the mantle that fell from Chaucer's shoulders; and Spenser does not
need his affected archaisms, nor his frequent and reverent appeals to
"Dan Geffrey," to vindicate for himself a place very close to his
great predecessor in the literary history of England. If Chaucer is
the "Well of English undefiled," Spenser is the broad and stately
river that yet holds the tenure of its very life from the fountain far
away in other and ruder scenes.
The Canterbury Tales, so far as they are in verse, have been printed
without any abridgement or designed change in the sense. But the two
Tales in prose -- Chaucer's Tale of Meliboeus, and the Parson's long
Sermon on Penitence -- have been contracted, so as to exclude thirty
pages of unattractive prose, and to admit the same amount of
interesting and characteristic poetry. The gaps thus made in the
prose Tales, however, are supplied by careful outlines of the omitted
matter, so that the reader need be at no loss to comprehend the whole
scope and sequence of the original. With The Faerie Queen a bolder
course has been pursued. The great obstacle to the popularity of
Spencer's splendid work has lain less in its language than in its
length. If we add together the three great poems of antiquity -- the
twenty-four books of the Iliad, the twenty-four books of the Odyssey,
and the twelve books of the Aeneid -- we get at the dimensions of only
one-half of The Faerie Queen. The six books, and the fragment of a
seventh, which alone exist of the author's contemplated twelve, number
about 35,000 verses; the sixty books of Homer and Virgil number no
more than 37,000. The mere bulk of the poem, then, has opposed a
formidable barrier to its popularity; to say nothing of the
distracting effect produced by the numberless episodes, the tedious
narrations, and the constant repetitions, which have largely swelled
that bulk. In this volume the poem is compressed into two-thirds of
its original space, through the expedient of representing the less
interesting and more mechanical passages by a condensed prose outline,
in which it has been sought as far as possible to preserve the very
words of the poet. While deprecating a too critical judgement on the
bare and constrained precis standing in such trying juxtaposition, it
is hoped that the labour bestowed in saving the reader the trouble of
wading through much that is not essential for the enjoyment of
Spencer's marvellous allegory, will not be unappreciated.
As regards the manner in which the text of the two great works,
especially of The Canterbury Tales, is presented, the Editor is aware
that some whose judgement is weighty will differ from him. This
volume has been prepared "for popular perusal;" and its very raison
d'etre would have failed, if the ancient orthography had been
retained. It has often been affirmed by editors of Chaucer in the old
forms of the language, that a little trouble at first would render the
antiquated spelling and obsolete inflections a continual source, not
of difficulty, but of actual delight, for the reader coming to the
study of Chaucer without any preliminary acquaintance with the English
of his day -- or of his copyists' days. Despite this complacent
assurance, the obvious fact is, that Chaucer in the old forms has not
become popular, in the true sense of the word; he is not "understanded
of the vulgar." In this volume, therefore, the text of Chaucer has
been presented in nineteenth-century garb. But there has been not the
slightest attempt to "modernise" Chaucer, in the wider meaning of the
phrase; to replace his words by words which he did not use; or,
following the example of some operators, to translate him into English
of the modern spirit as well as the modern forms. So far from that,
in every case where the old spelling or form seemed essential to
metre, to rhyme, or meaning, no change has been attempted. But,
wherever its preservation was not essential, the spelling of the
monkish transcribers -- for the most ardent purist must now despair of
getting at the spelling of Chaucer himself -- has been discarded for
that of the reader's own day. It is a poor compliment to the Father
of English Poetry, to say that by such treatment the bouquet and
individuality of his works must be lost. If his masterpiece is
valuable for one thing more than any other, it is the vivid
distinctness with which English men and women of the fourteenth
century are there painted, for the study of all the centuries to
follow. But we wantonly balk the artist's own purpose, and discredit
his labour, when we keep before his picture the screen of dust and
cobwebs which, for the English people in these days, the crude forms
of the infant language have practically become. Shakespeare has not
suffered by similar changes; Spencer has not suffered; it would be
surprising if Chaucer should suffer, when the loss of popular
comprehension and favour in his case are necessarily all the greater
for his remoteness from our day. In a much smaller degree -- since
previous labours in the same direction had left far less to do -- the
same work has been performed for the spelling of Spenser; and the
whole endeavour in this department of the Editor's task has been, to
present a text plain and easily intelligible to the modern reader,
without any injustice to the old poet. It would be presumptuous to
believe that in every case both ends have been achieved together; but
the laudatores temporis acti - the students who may differ most from
the plan pursued in this volume -- will best appreciate the difficulty
of the enterprise, and most leniently regard any failure in the
details of its accomplishment.
With all the works of Chaucer, outside The Canterbury Tales, it would
have been absolutely impossible to deal within the scope of this
volume. But nearly one hundred pages, have been devoted to his minor
poems; and, by dint of careful selection and judicious abridgement --
a connecting outline of the story in all such cases being given -- the
Editor ventures to hope that he has presented fair and acceptable
specimens of Chaucer's workmanship in all styles. The preparation of
this part of the volume has been a laborious task; no similar attempt
on the same scale has been made; and, while here also the truth of the
text in matters essential has been in nowise sacrificed to mere ease
of perusal, the general reader will find opened up for him a new view
of Chaucer and his works. Before a perusal of these hundred pages,
will melt away for ever the lingering tradition or prejudice that
Chaucer was only, or characteristically, a coarse buffoon, who
pandered to a base and licentious appetite by painting and
exaggerating the lowest vices of his time. In these selections --
made without a thought of taking only what is to the poet's credit
from a wide range of poems in which hardly a word is to his discredit
-- we behold Chaucer as he was; a courtier, a gallant, pure-hearted
gentleman, a scholar, a philosopher, a poet of gay and vivid fancy,
playing around themes of chivalric convention, of deep human interest,
or broad-sighted satire. In The Canterbury Tales, we see, not
Chaucer, but Chaucer's times and neighbours; the artist has lost
himself in his work. To show him honestly and without disguise, as he
lived his own life and sung his own songs at the brilliant Court of
Edward III, is to do his memory a moral justice far more material than
any wrong that can ever come out of spelling. As to the minor poems
of Spenser, which follow The Faerie Queen, the choice has been
governed by the desire to give at once the most interesting, and the
most characteristic of the poet's several styles; and, save in the
case of the Sonnets, the poems so selected are given entire. It is
manifest that the endeavours to adapt this volume for popular use,
have been already noticed, would imperfectly succeed without the aid
of notes and glossary, to explain allusions that have become obsolete,
or antiquated words which it was necessary to retain. An endeavour has
been made to render each page self- explanatory, by placing on it all
the glossarial and illustrative notes required for its elucidation, or
-- to avoid repetitions that would have occupied space -- the
references to the spot where information may be found. The great
advantage of such a plan to the reader, is the measure of its
difficulty for the editor. It permits much more flexibility in the
choice of glossarial explanations or equivalents; it saves the
distracting and time- consuming reference to the end or the beginning
of the book; but, at the same time, it largely enhances the liability
to error. The Editor is conscious that in the 12,000 or 13,000 notes,
as well as in the innumerable minute points of spelling, accentuation,
and rhythm, he must now and again be found tripping; he can only ask
any reader who may detect all that he could himself point out as being
amiss, to set off against inevitable mistakes and misjudgements, the
conscientious labour bestowed on the book, and the broad consideration
of its fitness for the object contemplated.
From books the Editor has derived valuable help; as from Mr Cowden
Clarke's revised modern text of The Canterbury Tales, published in Mr
Nimmo's Library Edition of the English Poets; from Mr Wright's
scholarly edition of the same work; from the indispensable Tyrwhitt;
from Mr Bell's edition of Chaucer's Poem; from Professor Craik's
"Spenser and his Poetry," published twenty-five years ago by Charles
Knight; and from many others. In the abridgement of the Faerie Queen,
the plan may at first sight seem to be modelled on the lines of Mr
Craik's painstaking condensation; but the coincidences are either
inevitable or involuntary. Many of the notes, especially of those
explaining classical references and those attached to the minor poems
of Chaucer, have been prepared specially for this edition. The Editor
leaves his task with the hope that his attempt to remove artificial
obstacles to the popularity of England's earliest poets, will not
altogether miscarry.
D. LAING PURVES.
LIFE OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
NOT in point of genius only, but even in point of time, Chaucer may
claim the proud designation of "first" English poet. He wrote "The
Court of Love" in 1345, and "The Romaunt of the Rose," if not also
"Troilus and Cressida," probably within the next decade: the dates
usually assigned to the poems of Laurence Minot extend from 1335 to
1355, while "The Vision of Piers Plowman" mentions events that
occurred in 1360 and 1362 -- before which date Chaucer had certainly
written "The Assembly of Fowls" and his "Dream." But, though they were
his contemporaries, neither Minot nor Langland (if Langland was the
author of the Vision) at all approached Chaucer in the finish, the
force, or the universal interest of their works and the poems of
earlier writer; as Layamon and the author of the "Ormulum," are less
English than Anglo-Saxon or Anglo- Norman. Those poems reflected the
perplexed struggle for supremacy between the two grand elements of our
language, which marked the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; a
struggle intimately associated with the political relations between
the conquering Normans and the subjugated Anglo-Saxons. Chaucer found
two branches of the language; that spoken by the people, Teutonic in
its genius and its forms; that spoken by the learned and the noble,
based on the French Yet each branch had begun to borrow of the other
-- just as nobles and people had been taught to recognise that each
needed the other in the wars and the social tasks of the time; and
Chaucer, a scholar, a courtier, a man conversant with all orders of
society, but accustomed to speak, think, and write in the words of the
highest, by his comprehensive genius cast into the simmering mould a
magical amalgamant which made the two half-hostile elements unite and
interpenetrate each other. Before Chaucer wrote, there were two
tongues in England, keeping alive the feuds and resentments of cruel
centuries; when he laid down his pen, there was practically but one
speech -- there was, and ever since has been, but one people.
Geoffrey Chaucer, according to the most trustworthy traditions- for
authentic testimonies on the subject are wanting -- was born in 1328;
and London is generally believed to have been his birth-place. It is
true that Leland, the biographer of England's first great poet who
lived nearest to his time, not merely speaks of Chaucer as having been
born many years later than the date now assigned, but mentions
Berkshire or Oxfordshire as the scene of his birth. So great
uncertainty have some felt on the latter score, that elaborate
parallels have been drawn between Chaucer, and Homer -- for whose
birthplace several cities contended, and whose descent was traced to
the demigods. Leland may seem to have had fair opportunities of
getting at the truth about Chaucer's birth -- for Henry VIII had him,
at the suppression of the monasteries throughout England, to search
for records of public interest the archives of the religious houses.
But it may be questioned whether he was likely to find many authentic
particulars regarding the personal history of the poet in the quarters
which he explored; and Leland's testimony seems to be set aside by
Chaucer's own evidence as to his birthplace, and by the contemporary
references which make him out an aged man for years preceding the
accepted date of his death. In one of his prose works, "The Testament
of Love," the poet speaks of himself in terms that strongly confirm
the claim of London to the honour of giving him birth; for he there
mentions "the city of London, that is to me so dear and sweet, in
which I was forth growen; and more kindly love," says he, "have I to
that place than to any other in earth; as every kindly creature hath
full appetite to that place of his kindly engendrure, and to will rest
and peace in that place to abide." This tolerably direct evidence is
supported -- so far as it can be at such an interval of time -- by the
learned Camden; in his Annals of Queen Elizabeth, he describes
Spencer, who was certainly born in London, as being a fellow-citizen
of Chaucer's -- "Edmundus Spenserus, patria Londinensis, Musis adeo
arridentibus natus, ut omnes Anglicos superioris aevi poetas, ne
Chaucero quidem concive excepto, superaret." The records of the time
notice more than one person of the name of Chaucer, who held
honourable positions about the Court; and though we cannot distinctly
trace the poet's relationship with any of these namesakes or
antecessors, we find excellent ground for belief that his family or
friends stood well at Court, in the ease with which Chaucer made his
way there, and in his subsequent career.
Like his great successor, Spencer, it was the fortune of Chaucer to
live under a splendid, chivalrous, and high-spirited reign. 1328 was
the second year of Edward III; and, what with Scotch wars, French
expeditions, and the strenuous and costly struggle to hold England in
a worthy place among the States of Europe, there was sufficient
bustle, bold achievement, and high ambition in the period to inspire a
poet who was prepared to catch the spirit of the day. It was an age of
elaborate courtesy, of high- paced gallantry, of courageous venture,
of noble disdain for mean tranquillity; and Chaucer, on the whole a
man of peaceful avocations, was penetrated to the depth of his
consciousness with the lofty and lovely civil side of that brilliant
and restless military period. No record of his youthful years,
however, remains to us; if we believe that at the age of eighteen he
was a student of Cambridge, it is only on the strength of a reference
in his "Court of Love", where the narrator is made to say that his
name is Philogenet, "of Cambridge clerk;" while he had already told
us that when he was stirred to seek the Court of Cupid he was "at
eighteen year of age." According to Leland, however, he was educated
at Oxford, proceeding thence to France and the Netherlands, to finish
his studies; but there remains no certain evidence of his having
belonged to either University. At the same time, it is not doubted
that his family was of good condition; and, whether or not we accept
the assertion that his father held the rank of knighthood -- rejecting
the hypotheses that make him a merchant, or a vintner "at the corner
of Kirton Lane" -- it is plain, from Chaucer's whole career, that he
had introductions to public life, and recommendations to courtly
favour, wholly independent of his genius. We have the clearest
testimony that his mental training was of wide range and thorough
excellence, altogether rare for a mere courtier in those days: his
poems attest his intimate acquaintance with the divinity, the
philosophy, and the scholarship of his time, and show him to have had
the sciences, as then developed and taught, "at his fingers' ends."
Another proof of Chaucer's good birth and fortune would he found in
the statement that, after his University career was completed, he
entered the Inner Temple - - the expenses of which could be borne only
by men of noble and opulent families; but although there is a story
that he was once fined two shillings for thrashing a Franciscan friar
in Fleet Street, we have no direct authority for believing that the
poet devoted himself to the uncongenial study of the law. No special
display of knowledge on that subject appears in his works; yet in the
sketch of the Manciple, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, may
be found indications of his familiarity with the internal economy of
the Inns of Court; while numerous legal phrases and references hint
that his comprehensive information was not at fault on legal matters.
Leland says that he quitted the University "a ready logician, a smooth
rhetorician, a pleasant poet, a grave philosopher, an ingenious
mathematician, and a holy divine;" and by all accounts, when Geoffrey
Chaucer comes before us authentically for the first time, at the age
of thirty-one, he was possessed of knowledge and accomplishments far
beyond the common standard of his day.
Chaucer at this period possessed also other qualities fitted to
recommend him to favour in a Court like that of Edward III. Urry
describes him, on the authority of a portrait, as being then "of a
fair beautiful complexion, his lips red and full, his size of a just
medium, and his port and air graceful and majestic. So," continues the
ardent biographer, -- "so that every ornament that could claim the
approbation of the great and fair, his abilities to record the valour
of the one, and celebrate the beauty of the other, and his wit and
gentle behaviour to converse with both, conspired to make him a
complete courtier." If we believe that his "Court of Love" had
received such publicity as the literary media of the time allowed in
the somewhat narrow and select literary world -- not to speak of
"Troilus and Cressida," which, as Lydgate mentions it first among
Chaucer's works, some have supposed to be a youthful production -- we
find a third and not less powerful recommendation to the favour of the
great co- operating with his learning and his gallant bearing.
Elsewhere reasons have been shown for doubt whether "Troilus and
Cressida" should not be assigned to a later period of Chaucer's life;
but very little is positively known about the dates and sequence of
his various works. In the year 1386, being called as witness with
regard to a contest on a point of heraldry between Lord Scrope and Sir
Robert Grosvenor, Chaucer deposed that he entered on his military
career in 1359. In that year Edward III invaded France, for the third
time, in pursuit of his claim to the French crown; and we may fancy
that, in describing the embarkation of the knights in "Chaucer's
Dream", the poet gained some of the vividness and stir of his picture
from his recollections of the embarkation of the splendid and well-
appointed royal host at Sandwich, on board the eleven hundred
transports provided for the enterprise. In this expedition the laurels
of Poitiers were flung on the ground; after vainly attempting Rheims
and Paris, Edward was constrained, by cruel weather and lack of
provisions, to retreat toward his ships; the fury of the elements made
the retreat more disastrous than an overthrow in pitched battle;
horses and men perished by thousands, or fell into the hands of the
pursuing French. Chaucer, who had been made prisoner at the siege of
Retters, was among the captives in the possession of France when the
treaty of Bretigny -- the "great peace" -- was concluded, in May,
1360. Returning to England, as we may suppose, at the peace, the poet,
ere long, fell into another and a pleasanter captivity; for his
marriage is generally believed to have taken place shortly after his
release from foreign durance. He had already gained the personal
friendship and favour of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the King's
son; the Duke, while Earl of Richmond, had courted, and won to wife
after a certain delay, Blanche, daughter and co-heiress of Henry Duke
of Lancaster; and Chaucer is by some believed to have written "The
Assembly of Fowls" to celebrate the wooing, as he wrote "Chaucer's
Dream" to celebrate the wedding, of his patron. The marriage took
place in 1359, the year of Chaucer's expedition to France; and as, in
"The Assembly of Fowls," the formel or female eagle, who is supposed
to represent the Lady Blanche, begs that her choice of a mate may be
deferred for a year, 1358 and 1359 have been assigned as the
respective dates of the two poems already mentioned. In the "Dream,"
Chaucer prominently introduces his own lady-love, to whom, after the
happy union of his patron with the Lady Blanche, he is wedded amid
great rejoicing; and various expressions in the same poem show that
not only was the poet high in favour with the illustrious pair, but
that his future wife had also peculiar claims on their regard. She
was the younger daughter of Sir Payne Roet, a native of Hainault, who
had, like many of his countrymen, been attracted to England by the
example and patronage of Queen Philippa. The favourite attendant on
the Lady Blanche was her elder sister Katherine: subsequently married
to Sir Hugh Swynford, a gentleman of Lincolnshire; and destined, after
the death of Blanche, to be in succession governess of her children,
mistress of John of Gaunt, and lawfully-wedded Duchess of Lancaster.
It is quite sufficient proof that Chaucer's position at Court was of
no mean consequence, to find that his wife, the sister of the future
Duchess of Lancaster, was one of the royal maids of honour, and even,
as Sir Harris Nicolas conjectures, a god-daughter of the Queen -- for
her name also was Philippa.
Between 1359, when the poet himself testifies that he was made
prisoner while bearing arms in France, and September 1366, when Queen
Philippa granted to her former maid of honour, by the name of Philippa
Chaucer, a yearly pension of ten marks, or L6, 13s. 4d., we have no
authentic mention of Chaucer, express or indirect. It is plain from
this grant that the poet's marriage with Sir Payne Roet's daughter was
not celebrated later than 1366; the probability is, that it closely
followed his return from the wars. In 1367, Edward III. settled upon
Chaucer a life- pension of twenty marks, "for the good service which
our beloved Valet -- 'dilectus Valettus noster' -- Geoffrey Chaucer
has rendered, and will render in time to come." Camden explains
'Valettus hospitii' to signify a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber;
Selden says that the designation was bestowed "upon young heirs
designed to he knighted, or young gentlemen of great descent and
quality." Whatever the strict meaning of the word, it is plain that
the poet's position was honourable and near to the King's person, and
also that his worldly circumstances were easy, if not affluent -- for
it need not be said that twenty marks in those days represented twelve
or twenty times the sum in these. It is believed that he found
powerful patronage, not merely from the Duke of Lancaster and his
wife, but from Margaret Countess of Pembroke, the King's daughter. To
her Chaucer is supposed to have addressed the "Goodly Ballad", in
which the lady is celebrated under the image of the daisy; her he is
by some understood to have represented under the title of Queen
Alcestis, in the "Court of Love" and the Prologue to "The Legend of
Good Women;" and in her praise we may read his charming descriptions
and eulogies of the daisy -- French, "Marguerite," the name of his
Royal patroness. To this period of Chaucer's career we may probably
attribute the elegant and courtly, if somewhat conventional, poems of
"The Flower and the Leaf," "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," &c. "The
Lady Margaret," says Urry, ". . . would frequently compliment him upon
his poems. But this is not to be meant of his Canterbury Tales, they
being written in the latter part of his life, when the courtier and
the fine gentleman gave way to solid sense and plain descriptions. In
his love-pieces he was obliged to have the strictest regard to modesty
and decency; the ladies at that time insisting so much upon the nicest
punctilios of honour, that it was highly criminal to depreciate their
sex, or do anything that might offend virtue." Chaucer, in their
estimation, had sinned against the dignity and honour of womankind by
his translation of the French "Roman de la Rose," and by his "Troilus
and Cressida" -- assuming it to have been among his less mature works;
and to atone for those offences the Lady Margaret (though other and
older accounts say that it was the first Queen of Richard II., Anne of
Bohemia), prescribed to him the task of writing "The Legend of Good
Women" (see introductory note to that poem). About this period, too,
we may place the composition of Chaucer's A. B. C., or The Prayer of
Our Lady, made at the request of the Duchess Blanche, a lady of great
devoutness in her private life. She died in 1369; and Chaucer, as he
had allegorised her wooing, celebrated her marriage, and aided her
devotions, now lamented her death, in a poem entitled "The Book of the
Duchess; or, the Death of Blanche.
In 1370, Chaucer was employed on the King's service abroad; and in
November 1372, by the title of "Scutifer noster" -- our Esquire or
Shield-bearer -- he was associated with "Jacobus Pronan," and
"Johannes de Mari civis Januensis," in a royal commission, bestowing
full powers to treat with the Duke of Genoa, his Council, and State.
The object of the embassy was to negotiate upon the choice of an
English port at which the Genoese might form a commercial
establishment; and Chaucer, having quitted England in December,
visited Genoa and Florence, and returned to England before the end of
November 1373 -- for on that day he drew his pension from the
Exchequer in person. The most interesting point connected with this
Italian mission is the question, whether Chaucer visited Petrarch at
Padua. That he did, is unhesitatingly affirmed by the old biographers;
but the authentic notices of Chaucer during the years 1372-1373, as
shown by the researches of Sir Harris Nicolas, are confined to the
facts already stated; and we are left to answer the question by the
probabilities of the case, and by the aid of what faint light the poet
himself affords. We can scarcely fancy that Chaucer, visiting Italy
for the first time, in a capacity which opened for him easy access to
the great and the famous, did not embrace the chance of meeting a poet
whose works he evidently knew in their native tongue, and highly
esteemed. With Mr Wright, we are strongly disinclined to believe
"that Chaucer did not profit by the opportunity . . . of improving his
acquaintance with the poetry, if not the poets, of the country he thus
visited, whose influence was now being felt on the literature of most
countries of Western Europe." That Chaucer was familiar with the
Italian language appears not merely from his repeated selection as
Envoy to Italian States, but by many passages in his poetry, from "The
Assembly of Fowls" to "The Canterbury Tales." In the opening of the
first poem there is a striking parallel to Dante's inscription on the
gate of Hell. The first Song of Troilus, in "Troilus and Cressida",
is a nearly literal translation of Petrarch's 88th Sonnet. In the
Prologue to "The Legend of Good Women", there is a reference to Dante
which can hardly have reached the poet at second- hand. And in
Chaucer's great work -- as in The Wife of Bath's Tale, and The Monk's
Tale -- direct reference by name is made to Dante, "the wise poet of
Florence," "the great poet of Italy," as the source whence the author
has quoted. When we consider the poet's high place in literature and
at Court, which could not fail to make him free of the hospitalities
of the brilliant little Lombard States; his familiarity with the
tongue and the works of Italy's greatest bards, dead and living; the
reverential regard which he paid to the memory of great poets, of
which we have examples in "The House of Fame," and at the close of
"Troilus and Cressida" ; along with his own testimony in the Prologue
to The Clerk's Tale, we cannot fail to construe that testimony as a
declaration that the Tale was actually told to Chaucer by the lips of
Petrarch, in 1373, the very year in which Petrarch translated it into
Latin, from Boccaccio's "Decameron." Mr Bell notes the objection to
this interpretation, that the words are put into the mouth, not of the
poet, but of the Clerk; and meets it by the counter- objection, that
the Clerk, being a purely imaginary personage, could not have learned
the story at Padua from Petrarch -- and therefore that Chaucer must
have departed from the dramatic assumption maintained in the rest of
the dialogue. Instances could be adduced from Chaucer's writings to
show that such a sudden "departure from the dramatic assumption" would
not be unexampled: witness the "aside" in The Wife of Bath's Prologue,
where, after the jolly Dame has asserted that "half so boldly there
can no man swear and lie as a woman can", the poet hastens to
interpose, in his own person, these two lines:
"I say not this by wives that be wise, But if it be when they them
misadvise."
And again, in the Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women," from a
description of the daisy --
"She is the clearness and the very light, That in this darke world me
guides and leads,"
the poet, in the very next lines, slides into an address to his lady:
"The heart within my sorrowful heart you dreads And loves so sore,
that ye be, verily, The mistress of my wit, and nothing I," &c.
When, therefore, the Clerk of Oxford is made to say that he will tell
a tale --
"The which that I Learn'd at Padova of a worthy clerk, As proved by
his wordes and his werk. He is now dead, and nailed in his chest, I
pray to God to give his soul good rest. Francis Petrarc', the laureate
poete, Highte this clerk, whose rhetoric so sweet Illumin'd all Itaile
of poetry. . . . But forth to tellen of this worthy man, That taughte
me this tale, as I began." . . .
we may without violent effort believe that Chaucer speaks in his own
person, though dramatically the words are on the Clerk's lips. And
the belief is not impaired by the sorrowful way in which the Clerk
lingers on Petrarch's death -- which would be less intelligible if the
fictitious narrator had only read the story in the Latin translation,
than if we suppose the news of Petrarch's death at Arqua in July 1374
to have closely followed Chaucer to England, and to have cruelly and
irresistibly mingled itself with our poet's personal recollections of
his great Italian contemporary. Nor must we regard as without
significance the manner in which the Clerk is made to distinguish
between the "body" of Petrarch's tale, and the fashion in which it was
set forth in writing, with a proem that seemed "a thing impertinent",
save that the poet had chosen in that way to "convey his matter" --
told, or "taught," so much more directly and simply by word of mouth.
It is impossible to pronounce positively on the subject; the question
whether Chaucer saw Petrarch in 1373 must remain a moot-point, so long
as we have only our present information; but fancy loves to dwell on
the thought of the two poets conversing under the vines at Arqua; and
we find in the history and the writings of Chaucer nothing to
contradict, a good deal to countenance, the belief that such a meeting
occurred.
Though we have no express record, we have indirect testimony, that
Chaucer's Genoese mission was discharged satisfactorily; for on the
23d of April 1374, Edward III grants at Windsor to the poet, by the
title of "our beloved squire" -- dilecto Armigero nostro -- unum
pycher. vini, "one pitcher of wine" daily, to be "perceived" in the
port of London; a grant which, on the analogy of more modern usage,
might he held equivalent to Chaucer's appointment as Poet Laureate.
When we find that soon afterwards the grant was commuted for a money
payment of twenty marks per annum, we need not conclude that Chaucer's
circumstances were poor; for it may be easily supposed that the daily
"perception" of such an article of income was attended with
considerable prosaic inconvenience. A permanent provision for Chaucer
was made on the 8th of June 1374, when he was appointed Controller of
the Customs in the Port of London, for the lucrative imports of wools,
skins or "wool-fells," and tanned hides -- on condition that he should
fulfil the duties of that office in person and not by deputy, and
should write out the accounts with his own hand. We have what seems
evidence of Chaucer's compliance with these terms in "The House of
Fame", where, in the mouth of the eagle, the poet describes himself,
when he has finished his labour and made his reckonings, as not
seeking rest and news in social intercourse, but going home to his own
house, and there, "all so dumb as any stone," sitting "at another
book," until his look is dazed; and again, in the record that in 1376
he received a grant of L731, 4s. 6d., the amount of a fine levied on
one John Kent, whom Chaucer's vigilance had frustrated in the attempt
to ship a quantity of wool for Dordrecht without paying the duty. The
seemingly derogatory condition, that the Controller should write out
the accounts or rolls ("rotulos") of his office with his own hand,
appears to have been designed, or treated, as merely formal; no
records in Chaucer's handwriting are known to exist -- which could
hardly be the case if, for the twelve years of his Controllership
(1374-1386), he had duly complied with the condition; and during that
period he was more than once employed abroad, so that the condition
was evidently regarded as a formality even by those who had imposed
it. Also in 1374, the Duke of Lancaster, whose ambitious views may
well have made him anxious to retain the adhesion of a man so capable
and accomplished as Chaucer, changed into a joint life-annuity
remaining to the survivor, and charged on the revenues of the Savoy, a
pension of L10 which two years before he settled on the poet's wife --
whose sister was then the governess of the Duke's two daughters,
Philippa and Elizabeth, and the Duke's own mistress. Another proof of
Chaucer's personal reputation and high Court favour at this time, is
his selection (1375) as ward to the son of Sir Edmond Staplegate of
Bilsynton, in Kent; a charge on the surrender of which the guardian
received no less a sum than L104.
We find Chaucer in 1376 again employed on a foreign mission. In 1377,
the last year of Edward III., he was sent to Flanders with Sir Thomas
Percy, afterwards Earl of Worcester, for the purpose of obtaining a
prolongation of the truce; and in January 13738, he was associated
with Sir Guichard d'Angle and other Commissioners, to pursue certain
negotiations for a marriage between Princess Mary of France and the
young King Richard II., which had been set on foot before the death of
Edward III. The negotiation, however, proved fruitless; and in May
1378, Chaucer was selected to accompany Sir John Berkeley on a mission
to the Court of Bernardo Visconti, Duke of Milan, with the view, it is
supposed, of concerting military plans against the outbreak of war
with France. The new King, meantime, had shown that he was not
insensible to Chaucer's merit -- or to the influence of his tutor and
the poet's patron, the Duke of Lancaster; for Richard II. confirmed to
Chaucer his pension of twenty marks, along with an equal annual sum,
for which the daily pitcher of wine granted in 1374 had been commuted.
Before his departure for Lombardy, Chaucer -- still holding his post
in the Customs -- selected two representatives or trustees, to protect
his estate against legal proceedings in his absence, or to sue in his
name defaulters and offenders against the imposts which he was charged
to enforce. One of these trustees was called Richard Forrester; the
other was John Gower, the poet, the most famous English contemporary
of Chaucer, with whom he had for many years been on terms of admiring
friendship -- although, from the strictures passed on certain
productions of Gower's in the Prologue to The Man of Law's Tale, it
has been supposed that in the later years of Chaucer's life the
friendship suffered some diminution. To the "moral Gower" and "the
philosophical Strode," Chaucer "directed" or dedicated his "Troilus
and Cressida;" while, in the "Confessio Amantis," Gower introduces a
handsome compliment to his greater contemporary, as the "disciple and
the poet" of Venus, with whose glad songs and ditties, made in her
praise during the flowers of his youth, the land was filled
everywhere. Gower, however -- a monk and a Conservative -- held to
the party of the Duke of Gloucester, the rival of the Wycliffite and
innovating Duke of Lancaster, who was Chaucer's patron, and whose
cause was not a little aided by Chaucer's strictures on the clergy;
and thus it is not impossible that political differences may have
weakened the old bonds of personal friendship and poetic esteem.
Returning from Lombardy early in 1379, Chaucer seems to have been
again sent abroad; for the records exhibit no trace of him between May
and December of that year. Whether by proxy or in person, however, he
received his pensions regularly until 1382, when his income was
increased by his appointment to the post of Controller of Petty
Customs in the port of London. In November 1384, he obtained a
month's leave of absence on account of his private affairs, and a
deputy was appointed to fill his place; and in February of the next
year he was permitted to appoint a permanent deputy -- thus at length
gaining relief from that close attention to business which probably
curtailed the poetic fruits of the poet's most powerful years.
Chaucer is next found occupying a post which has not often been held
by men gifted with his peculiar genius -- that of a county member. The
contest between the Dukes of Gloucester and Lancaster, and their
adherents, for the control of the Government, was coming to a crisis;
and when the recluse and studious Chaucer was induced to offer himself
to the electors of Kent as one of the knights of their shire -- where
presumably he held property -- we may suppose that it was with the
view of supporting his patron's cause in the impending conflict. The
Parliament in which the poet sat assembled at Westminster on the 1st
of October, and was dissolved on the 1st of November, 1386. Lancaster
was fighting and intriguing abroad, absorbed in the affairs of his
Castilian succession; Gloucester and his friends at home had
everything their own way; the Earl of Suffolk was dismissed from the
woolsack, and impeached by the Commons; and although Richard at first
stood out courageously for the friends of his uncle Lancaster, he was
constrained, by the refusal of supplies, to consent to the proceedings
of Gloucester. A commission was wrung from him, under protest,
appointing Gloucester, Arundel, and twelve other Peers and prelates, a
permanent council to inquire into the condition of all the public
departments, the courts of law, and the royal household, with absolute
powers of redress and dismissal. We need not ascribe to Chaucer's
Parliamentary exertions in his patron's behalf, nor to any
malpractices in his official conduct, the fact that he was among the
earliest victims of the commission. In December 1386, he was
dismissed from both his offices in the port of London; but he retained
his pensions, and drew them regularly twice a year at the Exchequer
until 1388. In 1387, Chaucer's political reverses were aggravated by a
severe domestic calamity: his wife died, and with her died the pension
which had been settled on her by Queen Philippa in 1366, and confirmed
to her at Richard's accession in 1377. The change made in Chaucer's
pecuniary position, by the loss of his offices and his wife's pension,
must have been very great. It would appear that during his prosperous
times he had lived in a style quite equal to his income, and had no
ample resources against a season of reverse; for, on the 1st of May
1388, less than a year and a half after being dismissed from the
Customs, he was constrained to assign his pensions, by surrender in
Chancery, to one John Scalby. In May 1389, Richard II., now of age,
abruptly resumed the reins of government, which, for more than two
years, had been ably but cruelly managed by Gloucester. The friends of
Lancaster were once more supreme in the royal councils, and Chaucer
speedily profited by the change. On the 12th of July he was appointed
Clerk of the King's Works at the Palace of Westminster, the Tower, the
royal manors of Kennington, Eltham, Clarendon, Sheen, Byfleet,
Childern Langley, and Feckenham, the castle of Berkhamstead, the royal
lodge of Hathenburgh in the New Forest, the lodges in the parks of
Clarendon, Childern Langley, and Feckenham, and the mews for the
King's falcons at Charing Cross; he received a salary of two shillings
per day, and was allowed to perform the duties by deputy. For some
reason unknown, Chaucer held this lucrative office little more than
two years, quitting it before the 16th of September 1391, at which
date it had passed into the hands of one John Gedney. The next two
years and a half are a blank, so far as authentic records are
concerned; Chaucer is supposed to have passed them in retirement,
probably devoting them principally to the composition of The
Canterbury Tales. In February 1394, the King conferred upon him a
grant of L20 a year for life; but he seems to have had no other source
of income, and to have become embarrassed by debt, for frequent
memoranda of small advances on his pension show that his circumstances
were, in comparison, greatly reduced. Things appear to have grown
worse and worse with the poet; for in May 1398 he was compelled to
obtain from the King letters of protection against arrest, extending
over a term of two years. Not for the first time, it is true -- for
similar documents had been issued at the beginning of Richard's reign;
but at that time Chaucer's missions abroad, and his responsible duties
in the port of London, may have furnished reasons for securing him
against annoyance or frivolous prosecution, which were wholly wanting
at the later date. In 1398, fortune began again to smile upon him; he
received a royal grant of a tun of wine annually, the value being
about L4. Next year, Richard II having been deposed by the son of John
of Gaunt -- Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster -- the new
King, four days after hits accession, bestowed on Chaucer a grant of
forty marks (L26, 13s. 4d.) per annum, in addition to the pension of
L20 conferred by Richard II. in 1394. But the poet, now seventy-one
years of age, and probably broken down by the reverses of the past few
years, was not destined long to enjoy his renewed prosperity. On
Christmas Eve of 1399, he entered on the possession of a house in the
garden of the Chapel of the Blessed Mary of Westminster -- near to the
present site of Henry VII.'s Chapel -- having obtained a lease from
Robert Hermodesworth, a monk of the adjacent convent, for fifty-three
years, at the annual rent of four marks (L2, 13s. 4d.) Until the 1st
of March 1400, Chaucer drew his pensions in person; then they were
received for him by another hand; and on the 25th of October, in the
same year, he died, at the age of seventy-two. The only lights thrown
by his poems on his closing days are furnished in the little ballad
called "Good Counsel of Chaucer," -- which, though said to have been
written when "upon his death-bed lying in his great anguish, "breathes
the very spirit of courage, resignation, and philosophic calm; and by
the "Retractation" at the end of The Canterbury Tales, which, if it
was not foisted in by monkish transcribers, may be supposed the effect
of Chaucer's regrets and self-reproaches on that solemn review of his
life-work which the close approach of death compelled. The poet was
buried in Westminster Abbey; and not many years after his death a slab
was placed on a pillar near his grave, bearing the lines, taken from
an epitaph or eulogy made by Stephanus Surigonus of Milan, at the
request of Caxton:
"Galfridus Chaucer, vates, et fama poesis Maternae, hoc sacra sum
tumulatus humo."
About 1555, Mr Nicholas Brigham, a gentleman of Oxford who greatly
admired the genius of Chaucer, erected the present tomb, as near to
the spot where the poet lay, "before the chapel of St Benet," as was
then possible by reason of the "cancelli," which the Duke of
Buckingham subsequently obtained leave to remove, that room might be
made for the tomb of Dryden. On the structure of Mr Brigham, besides
a full-length representation of Chaucer, taken from a portrait drawn
by his "scholar" Thomas Occleve, was -- or is, though now almost
illegible -- the following inscription:--
M. S. QUI FUIT ANGLORUM VATES TER MAXIMUS OLIM, GALFRIDUS CHAUCER
CONDITUR HOC TUMULO; ANNUM SI QUAERAS DOMINI, SI TEMPORA VITAE, ECCE
NOTAE SUBSUNT, QUE TIBI CUNCTA NOTANT. 25 OCTOBRIS 1400. AERUMNARUM
REQUIES MORS. N. BRIGHAM HOS FECIT MUSARUM NOMINE SUMPTUS 1556.
Concerning his personal appearance and habits, Chaucer has not been
reticent in his poetry. Urry sums up the traits of his aspect and
character fairly thus: "He was of a middle stature, the latter part of
his life inclinable to be fat and corpulent, as appears by the Host's
bantering him in the journey to Canterbury, and comparing shapes with
him. His face was fleshy, his features just and regular, his
complexion fair, and somewhat pale, his hair of a dusky yellow, short
and thin; the hair of his beard in two forked tufts, of a wheat
colour; his forehead broad and smooth; his eyes inclining usually to
the ground, which is intimated by the Host's words; his whole face
full of liveliness, a calm, easy sweetness, and a studious Venerable
aspect. . . . As to his temper, he had a mixture of the gay, the
modest, and the grave. The sprightliness of his humour was more
distinguished by his writings than by his appearance; which gave
occasion to Margaret Countess of Pembroke often to rally him upon his
silent modesty in company, telling him, that his absence was more
agreeable to her than his conversation, since the first was productive
of agreeable pieces of wit in his writings, but the latter was
filled with a modest deference, and a too distant respect. We see
nothing merry or jocose in his behaviour with his pilgrims, but a
silent attention to their mirth, rather than any mixture of his own. .
. When disengaged from public affairs, his time was entirely spent in
study and reading; so agreeable to him was this exercise, that he says
he preferred it to all other sports and diversions. He lived within
himself, neither desirous to hear nor busy to concern himself with the
affairs of his neighbours. His course of living was temperate and
regular; he went to rest with the sun, and rose before it; and by that
means enjoyed the pleasures of the better part of the day, his morning
walk and fresh contemplations. This gave him the advantage of
describing the morning in so lively a manner as he does everywhere in
his works. The springing sun glows warm in his lines, and the fragrant
air blows cool in his descriptions; we smell the sweets of the bloomy
haws, and hear the music of the feathered choir, whenever we take a
forest walk with him. The hour of the day is not easier to be
discovered from the reflection of the sun in Titian's paintings, than
in Chaucer's morning landscapes. . . . His reading was deep and
extensive, his judgement sound and discerning. . . In one word, he was
a great scholar, a pleasant wit, a candid critic, a sociable
companion, a steadfast friend, a grave philosopher, a temperate
economist, and a pious Christian."
Chaucer's most important poems are "Troilus and Cressida," "The
Romaunt of the Rose," and "The Canterbury Tales." Of the first,
containing 8246 lines, an abridgement, with a prose connecting outline
of the story, is given in this volume. With the second, consisting of
7699 octosyllabic verses, like those in which "The House of Fame" is
written, it was found impossible to deal in the present edition. The
poem is a curtailed translation from the French "Roman de la Rose" --
commenced by Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, after contributing
4070 verses, and completed, in the last quarter of the thirteenth
century, by Jean de Meun, who added some 18,000 verses. It is a
satirical allegory, in which the vices of courts, the corruptions of
the clergy, the disorders and inequalities of society in general, are
unsparingly attacked, and the most revolutionary doctrines are
advanced; and though, in making his translation, Chaucer softened or
eliminated much of the satire of the poem, still it remained, in his
verse, a caustic exposure of the abuses of the time, especially those
which discredited the Church.
The Canterbury Tales are presented in this edition with as near an
approach to completeness as regard for the popular character of the
volume permitted. The 17,385 verses, of which the poetical Tales
consist, have been given without abridgement or purgation -- save in a
single couplet; but, the main purpose of the volume being to make the
general reader acquainted with the "poems" of Chaucer and Spenser, the
Editor has ventured to contract the two prose Tales -- Chaucer's Tale
of Meliboeus, and the Parson's Sermon or Treatise on Penitence -- so
as to save about thirty pages for the introduction of Chaucer's minor
pieces. At the same time, by giving prose outlines of the omitted
parts, it has been sought to guard the reader against the fear that he
was losing anything essential, or even valuable. It is almost needless
to describe the plot, or point out the literary place, of the
Canterbury Tales. Perhaps in the entire range of ancient and modern
literature there is no work that so clearly and freshly paints for
future times the picture of the past; certainly no Englishman has ever
approached Chaucer in the power of fixing for ever the fleeting traits
of his own time. The plan of the poem had been adopted before Chaucer
chose it; notably in the "Decameron" of Boccaccio -- although, there,
the circumstances under which the tales were told, with the terror of
the plague hanging over the merry company, lend a grim grotesqueness
to the narrative, unless we can look at it abstracted from its
setting. Chaucer, on the other hand, strikes a perpetual key-note of
gaiety whenever he mentions the word "pilgrimage;" and at every stage
of the connecting story we bless the happy thought which gives us
incessant incident, movement, variety, and unclouded but never
monotonous joyousness.
The poet, the evening before he starts on a pilgrimage to the shrine
of St Thomas at Canterbury, lies at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark,
curious to know in what companionship he is destined to fare forward
on the morrow. Chance sends him "nine and twenty in a company,"
representing all orders of English society, lay and clerical, from the
Knight and the Abbot down to the Ploughman and the Sompnour. The jolly
Host of the Tabard, after supper, when tongues are loosened and hearts
are opened, declares that "not this year" has he seen such a company
at once under his roof-tree, and proposes that, when they set out next
morning, he should ride with them and make them sport. All agree, and
Harry Bailly unfolds his scheme: each pilgrim, including the poet,
shall tell two tales on the road to Canterbury, and two on the way
back to London; and he whom the general voice pronounces to have told
the best tale, shall be treated to a supper at the common cost -- and,
of course, to mine Host's profit -- when the cavalcade returns from
the saint's shrine to the Southwark hostelry. All joyously assent; and
early on the morrow, in the gay spring sunshine, they ride forth,
listening to the heroic tale of the brave and gentle Knight, who has
been gracefully chosen by the Host to lead the spirited competition of
story-telling.
To describe thus the nature of the plan, and to say that when Chaucer
conceived, or at least began to execute it, he was between sixty and
seventy years of age, is to proclaim that The Canterbury Tales could
never be more than a fragment. Thirty pilgrims, each telling two tales
on the way out, and two more on the way back -- that makes 120 tales;
to say nothing of the prologue, the description of the journey, the
occurrences at Canterbury, "and all the remnant of their pilgrimage,"
which Chaucer also undertook. No more than twenty-three of the 120
stories are told in the work as it comes down to us; that is, only
twenty-three of the thirty pilgrims tell the first of the two stories
on the road to Canterbury; while of the stories on the return journey
we have not one, and nothing is said about the doings of the pilgrims
at Canterbury -- which would, if treated like the scene at the Tabard,
have given us a still livelier "picture of the period." But the plan
was too large; and although the poet had some reserves, in stories
which he had already composed in an independent form, death cut short
his labour ere he could even complete the arrangement and connection
of more than a very few of the Tales. Incomplete as it is, however,
the magnum opus of Chaucer was in his own time received with immense
favour; manuscript copies are numerous even now -- no slight proof of
its popularity; and when the invention of printing was introduced into
England by William Caxton, The Canterbury Tales issued from his press
in the year after the first English- printed book, "The Game of the
Chesse," had been struck off. Innumerable editions have since been
published; and it may fairly be affirmed, that few books have been so
much in favour with the reading public of every generation as this
book, which the lapse of every generation has been rendering more
unreadable.
Apart from "The Romaunt of the Rose," no really important poetical
work of Chaucer's is omitted from or unrepresented in the present
edition. Of "The Legend of Good Women," the Prologue only is given --
but it is the most genuinely Chaucerian part of the poem. Of "The
Court of Love," three-fourths are here presented; of "The Assembly of
Fowls," "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," "The Flower and the Leaf,"
all; of "Chaucer's Dream," one-fourth; of "The House of Fame,"
two-thirds; and of the minor poems such a selection as may give an
idea of Chaucer's power in the "occasional" department of verse.
Necessarily, no space whatever could be given to Chaucer's prose works
-- his translation of Boethius' Treatise on the Consolation of
Philosophy; his Treatise on the Astrolabe, written for the use of his
son Lewis; and his "Testament of Love," composed in his later years,
and reflecting the troubles that then beset the poet. If, after
studying in a simplified form the salient works of England's first
great bard, the reader is tempted to regret that he was not introduced
to a wider acquaintance with the author, the purpose of the Editor
will have been more than attained.
The plan of the volume does not demand an elaborate examination into
the state of our language when Chaucer wrote, or the nice questions of
grammatical and metrical structure which conspire with the obsolete
orthography to make his poems a sealed book for the masses. The most
important element in the proper reading of Chaucer's verses -- whether
written in the decasyllabic or heroic metre, which he introduced into
our literature, or in the octosyllabic measure used with such animated
effect in "The House of Fame," "Chaucer's Dream," &c. -- is the
sounding of the terminal "e" where it is now silent. That letter is
still valid in French poetry; and Chaucer's lines can be scanned only
by reading them as we would read Racine's or Moliere's. The terminal
"e" played an important part in grammar; in many cases it was the sign
of the infinitive -- the "n" being dropped from the end; at other
times it pointed the distinction between singular and plural, between
adjective and adverb. The pages that follow, however, being prepared
from the modern English point of view, necessarily no account is taken
of those distinctions; and the now silent "e" has been retained in the
text of Chaucer only when required by the modern spelling, or by the
exigencies of metre.
Before a word beginning with a vowel, or with the letter "h," the
final "e" was almost without exception mute; and in such cases, in the
plural forms and infinitives of verbs, the terminal "n" is generally
retained for the sake of euphony. No reader who is acquainted with the
French language will find it hard to fall into Chaucer's accentuation;
while, for such as are not, a simple perusal of the text according to
the rules of modern verse, should remove every difficulty.
Notes to Life of Geoffrey Chaucer
1. "Edmund Spenser, a native of London, was born with a Muse of such
power, that he was superior to all English poets of preceding ages,
not excepting his fellow-citizen Chaucer."
2. See introduction to "The Legend of Good Women".
3. Called in the editions before 1597 "The Dream of Chaucer". The
poem, which is not included in the present edition, does indeed, like
many of Chaucer's smaller works, tell the story of a dream, in which a
knight, representing John of Gaunt, is found by the poet mourning the
loss of his lady; but the true "Dream of Chaucer," in which he
celebrates the marriage of his patron, was published for the first
time by Speght in 1597. John of Gaunt, in the end of 1371, married his
second wife, Constance, daughter to Pedro the Cruel of Spain; so that
"The Book of the Duchess" must have been written between 1369 and
1371.
4. Where he bids his "little book" "Subject be unto all poesy, And
kiss the steps, where as thou seest space, Of Virgil, Ovid, Homer,
Lucan, Stace."
5. See note 1 to The Tale in The Clerk's Tale.
6. See note 1 to The Man of Law's Tale.
7. "Written," says Mr Wright, "in the sixteenth year of the reign of
Richard II. (1392-1393);" a powerful confirmation of the opinion that
this poem was really produced in Chaucer's mature age. See the
introductory notes to it and to the Legend of Good Women.
8. The old biographers of Chaucer, founding on what they took to be
autobiographic allusions in "The Testament of Love," assign to him
between 1354 and 1389 a very different history from that here given on
the strength of authentic records explored and quoted by Sir H.
Nicolas. Chaucer is made to espouse the cause of John of Northampton,
the Wycliffite Lord Mayor of London, whose re-election in 1384 was so
vehemently opposed by the clergy, and who was imprisoned in the sequel
of the grave disorders that arose. The poet, it is said, fled to the
Continent, taking with him a large sum of money, which he spent in
supporting companions in exile; then, returning by stealth to England
in quest of funds, he was detected and sent to the Tower, where he
languished for three years, being released only on the humiliating
condition of informing against his associates in the plot. The public
records show, however, that, all the time of his alleged exile and
captivity, he was quietly living in London, regularly drawing his
pensions in person, sitting in Parliament, and discharging his duties
in the Customs until his dismissal in 1386. It need not be said,
further, that although Chaucer freely handled the errors, the
ignorance, and vices of the clergy, he did so rather as a man of sense
and of conscience, than as a Wycliffite -- and there is no evidence
that he espoused the opinions of the zealous Reformer, far less played
the part of an extreme and self- regardless partisan of his old friend
and college-companion.
9. "The Commissioners appear to have commenced their labours with
examining the accounts of the officers employed in the collection of
the revenue; and the sequel affords a strong presumption that the
royal administration [under Lancaster and his friends] had been foully
calumniated. We hear not of any frauds discovered, or of defaulters
punished, or of grievances redressed." Such is the testimony of
Lingard (chap. iv., 1386), all the more valuable for his aversion from
the Wycliffite leanings of John of Gaunt. Chaucer's department in the
London Customs was in those days one of the most important and
lucrative in the kingdom; and if mercenary abuse of his post could
have been proved, we may be sure that his and his patron's enemies
would not have been content with simple dismissal, but would have
heavily amerced or imprisoned him.
10. The salary was L36, 10s. per annum; the salary of the Chief Judges
was L40, of the Puisne Judges about L27. Probably the Judges --
certainly the Clerk of the Works -- had fees or perquisites besides
the stated payment.
11. Chaucer's patron had died earlier in 1399, during the exile of his
son (then Duke of Hereford) in France. The Duchess Constance had died
in 1394; and the Duke had made reparation to Katherine Swynford -- who
had already borne him four children -- by marrying her in 1396, with
the approval of Richard II., who legitimated the children, and made
the eldest son of the poet's sister-in-law Earl of Somerset. From this
long- illicit union sprang the house of Beaufort -- that being the
surname of the Duke's children by Katherine, after the name of the
castle in Anjou (Belfort, or Beaufort) where they were born.
12. Of Chaucer's two sons by Philippa Roet, his only wife, the
younger, Lewis, for whom he wrote the Treatise on the Astrolabe, died
young. The elder, Thomas, married Maud, the second daughter and
co-heiress of Sir John Burghersh, brother of the Bishop of Lincoln,
the Chancellor and Treasurer of England. By this marriage Thomas
Chaucer acquired great estates in Oxfordshire and elsewhere; and he
figured prominently in the second rank of courtiers for many years. He
was Chief Butler to Richard II.; under Henry IV. he was Constable of
Wallingford Castle, Steward of the Honours of Wallingford and St
Valery, and of the Chiltern Hundreds; and the queen of Henry IV.
granted him the farm of several of her manors, a grant subsequently
confirmed to him for life by the King, after the Queen's death. He sat
in Parliament repeatedly for Oxfordshire, was Speaker in 1414, and in
the same year went to France as commissioner to negotiate the marriage
of Henry V. with the Princess Katherine. He held, before he died in
1434, various other posts of trust and distinction; but he left no
heirs-male. His only child, Alice Chaucer, married twice; first Sir
John Philip; and afterwards the Duke of Suffolk -- attainted and
beheaded in 1450. She had three children by the Duke; and her eldest
son married the Princess Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV. The eldest
son of this marriage, created Earl of Lincoln, was declared by Richard
III heir-apparent to the throne, in case the Prince of Wales should
die without issue; but the death of Lincoln himself, at the battle of
Stoke in 1487, destroyed all prospect that the poet's descendants
might succeed to the crown of England; and his family is now believed
to be extinct.
13. "Geoffrey Chaucer, bard, and famous mother of poetry, is buried in
this sacred ground."
14. Railings.
15 Translation of the epitaph: This tomb was built for Geoffrey
Chaucer, who in his time was the greatest poet of the English. If you
ask the year of his death, behold the words beneath, which tell you
all. Death gave him rest from his toil, 25th of October 1400. N
Brigham bore the cost of these words in the name of the Muses. 1556.
16. See the Prologue to Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas.
17. See the "Goodly Ballad of Chaucer," seventh stanza.
18. See the opening of the Prologue to "The Legend of Good Women," and
the poet's account of his habits in "The House of Fame".
THE CANTERBURY TALES.