^ ^ ^ H . ja R A T U R 
 
 HAUCER 
 
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 BY 
 
 -FRED WILLIAM POLLARD 
 
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 X RILADELPHIA 
 B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
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 English Literature 
 
 CHAUCER 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED WILLIAM POLLARD 
 
 o » » e » B > J o » 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 1901 
 
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 Copyright, 1901 
 By J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
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CHAUCER 
 
 Chaucer, to whom we must now turn, used to 
 be called the 'Father of English Poetry,' and 
 although such epithets are rightly going out of 
 fashion, if we call him the father of our modern 
 poetry we shall be speaking the literal truth. 
 While the works of his predecessors have only 
 been brought back into notice during the nine- 
 teenth century, and still are read by few except 
 professed students, Chaucer's poetry has been 
 read and enjoyed continuously from his own day 
 to this, and the greatest of his successors, from 
 Spenser and Milton to Tennyson and William 
 Morris, have joined in praising it. Moreover, he 
 himself deliberately made a fresh beginning in 
 our literature. He disregarded altogether the old 
 English tradition, and even the work written at an 
 earlier period under French influence. For miracle- 
 plays and romances he had a sovereign contempt, 
 and, for any influence which they exerted on him, 
 the writings of his fellow-countrymen, from Casd- 
 mon to Langland, might never have existed. His 
 masters in his art were the Frenchmen, Guillaume 
 Lorris, Jean de Meung, Deguilleville, Machault ; 
 the Latins, Ovid, Virgil, and Statius ; above all, the 
 Italians, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The 
 break between Layamon and the Old English 
 writers before the Conquest is not greater than the 
 break between Chaucer and his predecessors, and 
 the break proceeded in each case from the same 
 cause, the enlargement of the literary horizon and 
 the adoption of new forms and subjects and ideas 
 under foreign influence. We can see that there 
 were special circumstances in Chaucer's life which 
 
 3 
 
helped him to make this new departure. He was, 
 as far as we know, the first notable English poet 
 who was born in London, the first who was a lay- 
 man, the first who was connected with the Court. 
 The writers of some of the romances may have 
 possessed all these qualifications, but their work 
 was impersonal and never rose to poetic self- 
 consciousness ; nor need we trouble to inquire if 
 Minot also was a layman and a courtier. But to a 
 real poet the three points were all of importance. 
 With the English language still divided into widely 
 different dialects the penalty of provincialism was 
 crushing. To be born in London carried with it 
 the use of the dialect which, in the ^now rapidly 
 declining vogue of French, was fast assuming the 
 position of standard English, and allowed the 
 writer to appeal to the widest and best educated 
 class of readers. To be a layman, and a layman 
 in the king's service, was no less important. It 
 meant a new standpoint, freedom from cramping 
 influences, and a wider knowledge of life. For 
 three centuries English poets had lived in the 
 shade — a shade at first so gloomy that it crushed 
 them out, and which even when it lightened must 
 have numbed and depressed them. Now at last 
 the gift of poetry came to an Englishman who was 
 in the centre of English life, who had an audience 
 ready to listen, quick to appreciate whatever he 
 wrote. There is melancholy in Chaucer's early 
 work, the melancholy from which hardly any true 
 poet seems able to escape ; but it is no deeper than 
 the clouds in April, and the sense of the warmth 
 and beauty of life pervades all he wrote. His 
 ^ May mornings ' are, no doubt, conventional, but 
 the love of the spring was in his blood, and he 
 himself represents the spring-tide of our modern 
 poetry. 
 
 An interesting theory has lately been propounded 
 that the name Chaucer, which is found in many 
 different spellings, stands for ' Chauffecire,' or 
 Chaff-wax, a chaff-wax being the officer who had 
 
to prepare the large wax seals then in use for 
 official documents. The older explanation makes 
 it equivalent to 'chaussier,' or shoemaker, and 
 this is perhaps still the more probable. Whatever 
 its origin, the name was not very uncommon in the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, being found 
 more especially in London and in the eastern 
 counties. Chaucer's grandfather and father were 
 connected with both these parts, living in London 
 and holding some small estate at Ipswich. The 
 grandfather, Robert Chaucer, was a collector of 
 customs on wine ; the father, John Chaucer, a 
 vintner, who had a house in Thames Street, went 
 abroad on the king's service in 1338, and ten 
 years later acted as deputy to the king's butler in 
 the port of Southampton. Geoffrey Chaucer was 
 probably born in 1340, or a little earlier, but we first 
 hear of him in April 1357, when, as fragments of 
 her houshold accounts show, a pair of red and 
 black breeches, a short cloak, and shoes were 
 provided for him as one of the servants of the 
 Lady Elizabeth, wife of Lionel, Duke of Clarence. 
 An entry of another payment to him shows that 
 Chaucer passed the winter of 1357-58 at her seat 
 at Hatfield in Yorkshire, where his future patron, 
 John of Gaunt, was a visitor. In 1359 he bore 
 arms for the first time, taking part in the unlucky 
 campaign of that year in France, till he was made 
 prisoner at ' Retters,' probably Rethel, not far from 
 Rheims. In March 1360 the king contributed £16 
 towards the amount required for his ransom, and 
 either about this time or a little earlier Chaucer 
 must have passed into his service, for we next 
 hear of him in 1367, as Edward III.'s * dilectus 
 valettus ' (' well-beloved yeoman '), to whom, in 
 consideration of his past and future services, an 
 annuity of twenty marks was granted for life. By 
 this time Chaucer was married, for in 1366 (when 
 she received a pension of ten marks) the name 
 Philippa Chaucer appears among those of the 
 ladies of the queen's bedchamber. In 1372 John 
 
of Gaunt granted her a pension of ^lo, and in 
 1374 this same pension was regranted to Geoffrey 
 and PhiHppa Chaucer for good services rendered 
 by them 4o the said Duke, his consort, and his 
 mother the Queen.' It is practically certain that 
 this Philippa Chaucer was a daughter of Sir Payne 
 Roet of Hainault, and sister of the Katherine 
 Swynford who ultimately became John of Gaunt's 
 third wife.^ 
 
 Not long, probably, after 1367 Chaucer was pro- 
 moted to be one of the king's esquires ; in 1369 he 
 saw another campaign in France, and between 1370 
 and 1379 was abroad no fewer than seven times 
 in the king's service. Two of these missions 
 (those of 1370 and 1376) were secret, and we 
 know nothing of them except that in the second 
 Chaucer was in the suite of Sir John Burley. 
 In 1377 he went to Flanders with Sir Thomas 
 Percy, and in this and the following year was 
 twice in France in connection with negotiations 
 for a peace and Richard II.'s marriage. The two 
 missions still to be mentioned were the most im- 
 portant of all, for both took him to Italy. In 
 December 1372 Chaucer was sent to Genoa to 
 arrange with its citizens as to the choice of an 
 English port where they should have privileges 
 as traders ; and in May or June 1378 he followed 
 Sir Edward Berkeley to Lombardy, there to treat 
 (' touching the King's expedition of war ') with Ber- 
 nabo Visconti, Lord of Milan, and with the famous 
 free-lance Sir John Hawkwood. The earlier ot 
 these two Italian journeys probably only lasted a 
 few months, but during it Chaucer was fortunate 
 enough to meet at Padua the famous Petrarch, 
 
 1 We hear of two sons born of this marriage — (i) Thomas Chavicer, 
 who occupied the house in which his father died till his own death, 
 was King's Butler, several times Speaker of the House of Commons, 
 and in other ways an important person ; and (2) a much younger 
 Lewis, for whom Chaucer translated a treatise on the Astrolabe. 
 Elizabeth Chaucer, for whose noviciate at the Abbey of Barking 
 John of Gaunt paid a large sum in 1381, was probably the poet's 
 daughter. 
 
and to learn from him the story of Griselda which 
 Petrarch had recently turned into Latin from the 
 Italian of Boccaccio. Of his second mission, on 
 which he was away eight months, we know no such 
 pleasing incident ; but from the energy with which 
 he devoted himself to poetry immediately after his 
 return, and from the intimate acquaintance with 
 the Itahan of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio 
 which his own poems now first show, it must 
 rank as one of the most important events in his 
 life. 
 
 On St George's Day 1374 Chaucer received 
 from the king a grant of a pitcher of wine daily, 
 which he subsequently commuted for an additional 
 pension of twenty marks. In June of the same 
 year he was appointed Comptroller of the Customs 
 and Subsidy of Wools, Skins, &c. in the Port of 
 London, with the obligation to keep the rolls of 
 his office with his own hand. In 1375 he was 
 made the guardian of a certain Edmund Staple- 
 gate of Kent, from whom he received, for wardship 
 and marriage-fee, a sum of ^104, or over ^1200 
 modern value. The profits of another wardship 
 granted at the same time are not known to us ; 
 but in 1376 we hear of a grant by the king of 
 £j\^ 4s. 6d., the price of some wool forfeited at the 
 customs for not paying duty. In 1382 the con- 
 trollership of the petty customs was given him in 
 addition to the post he already held, and in this 
 new appointment he was allowed to employ a 
 deputy. It is clear that Chaucer's income during 
 these years must have been very considerable ; but 
 it is clear also that between his controllership at 
 home and his missions abroad he was kept busily 
 employed, and that until the missions ceased he 
 could have had but little time for poetry. 
 
 Of the works which Chaucer, in his references 
 to his own writings, ascribes to his earliest period 
 several have not come down to us. The hymns 
 for Love's holy days 4hat highten Balades, 
 Roundels, Virelayes ' have nearly all perished ; 
 
8 
 
 the translation of Innocent III.'s treatise, De 
 Miser ia Conditionis Humance (^ Of the wrecched 
 engendring of mankynde,' as Chaucer calls it), 
 has left its mark on a few stanzas of the ' Man 
 of Law's Tale ;' the story of * Ceyx and Alcioun,' 
 from Ovid, survives, in part or whole, not as a 
 separate piece, but in the prologue to the Dethe 
 of the Duchesse. ' Origenes upon the Maude- 
 leyne' — that is, a translation of the homily on St 
 Mary Magdalene wrongly attributed to Origen — 
 has perished utterly ; and a ' Book of the Lion,' 
 assigned to Chaucer by Lydgate, probabl'^^ a trans- 
 lation of Guillaume Machault's Le Dit du Lioit^ 
 has shared the same fate. Of what has become 
 of Chaucer's translation of the Roman de la Rose^ 
 the poem of over twenty-two thousand French 
 octosyllables, begun in the previous century by 
 Guillaume de Lorris, and completed by Jean de 
 Meung, it 'is difficult to write with brevity. A 
 translation of about one-third of the French 
 original has come down to us ; but this translation 
 has been shown to consist of two fragments, 
 with a long gap between them, while the first 
 of these fragments is again divided by linguistic 
 tests into two sections, which yet read on without 
 any obviously abrupt transition. The one manu- 
 script which preserves these fragments does not 
 give any suggestion as to who translated them ; 
 the attribution to Chaucer in the earliest printed 
 edition — that of 1532 — is of no value. The frag- 
 mentary translation is throughout quite good 
 enough to be Chaucer's ; but on the evidence 
 of the linguistic tests, philologists now declare 
 that, while lines 581 1-7696 are not likely to be 
 by Chaucer, lines 1706-58 10 cannot possibly be 
 by him, and lines 1-1705 not only may be, but 
 certainly are, his work.^ 
 
 1 The linguistic characteristics which exclude the possibility of 
 Chaucerian authorship (except on some hypothesis too violent to 
 be admitted) are the occurrence of northern forms in the rhymes, 
 assonances instead of rhymes, and rhymes (especially of infinitives 
 
All that can here be said is, that by general 
 consent the greater part of the extant Romatmt of 
 the Rose is pronounced un-Chaucerian, and that the 
 lines which have a good claim to be his come 
 under some suspicion from the company in which 
 they are found. 
 
 Of the early poems by Chaucer which have come 
 down to us, all exhibit a vague melancholy and 
 tender grace, and several are more or less dis- 
 tinctly religious. The Dethe of Blatmche the 
 Duchesse^ which he wrote in 1369-70 to com- 
 memorate Blanche of Castile, John of Gaunt's 
 first wife, shows him strongly under the influence 
 of his French -models. The central feature of 
 the poem (which runs to over thirteen hundred 
 lines) is the description b)^ the knight who repre- 
 sents John of Gaunt of the beauty and virtue of 
 the 'goode faire white' whom he had won and 
 lost. This is led up to by the conventional devices 
 of a dream in which the poet finds himself in a 
 fair park, joins in a hunt, and then strays from 
 it, and finds, seated in sorrow beneath an oak, 
 the knight, whom he persuades to tell him the 
 cause of his grief. Perhaps a little before, perhaps 
 a little after, the Dethe of Blatmche the Diichesse^ 
 Chaucer translated from the French of Guillaume 
 de Deguilleville a hymn to the Blessed Virgin, in 
 which the stanzas began with the different letters 
 of the alphabet in their order, whence its name 
 The A. B. C. Most of the stanzas open well, but 
 Chaucer had not yet learnt to translate with 
 freedom and ease, and few of them end as well 
 as they begin. A much finer poem, the Exclama- 
 cion of the Dethe of Pite^ is mostly connected with 
 
 and French substantives in -ye — for example, * crye,' ' maladye ' — 
 with adverbs in -y — for example, * trewely,' * tendrely ') of words 
 and forms to which the ^-final is essential with other words or 
 forms which have no claim to it. The first and second charac- 
 teristics give negative evidence that poems which show them cannot 
 be Chaucer's ; the third, it is claimed, goes beyond this, because no 
 one save Chaucer cared for these niceties, and therefore any poem 
 in which they are strictly observed must be by him. 
 
lO 
 
 the Dethe of Blaiinche the Duchesse^ because its 
 complaint against the cruelty of Love is thought 
 to fit in well with a passage in the latter poem 
 which speaks of the poet's sleeplessness and of a 
 mysterious eight-year sickness, which is explained 
 as referring to a hapless love-affair. It is by no 
 means certain that either poem has any real 
 biographical import, and the Dethe of Pite is so 
 finely written that it seems rash to claim for it a 
 very early date on the score of the meaning we 
 read into it. With the dubious exception of an 
 ingenious poem, the Coinpleynt of Mars (full of 
 astronomical learning and with a possible reference 
 to a Court intrigue between the Lady Isabella of 
 York and Lord Huntingdon), claimed, on no very 
 strong evidence, for the year 1379, we know of no 
 other separate poems which Chaucer wrote during 
 the 'seventies and which are now extant. It seems 
 certain, however, that three or four of the Canter- 
 bury Tales were written during this period, long 
 before that great scheme had entered the poet's 
 head, and were subsequently inserted in their place 
 with more or less revision. The first of these is 
 the 'Second Nun's Tale,' the ' Lyf of Saint Cecyle,' 
 a weak translation from the Legenda Aurea of Jaco- 
 bus de Voragine. As it stands among the Canter- 
 bury Tales the narrator is still made to speak of 
 herself as a so7t of Eve ; there is a reference to 
 readers instead of listeners, and the feebleness 
 with which the story is handled proves still more 
 surely than it was written long before the earliest 
 possible date at which the Tales, as a whole, can 
 have been planned. With this we may reckon 
 the ' Clerk's Tale ' of the Patience of Griselda, the 
 story, as he tells us himself, which Chaucer heard 
 from Petrarch, from whose Latin version of Boc- 
 caccio's Italian it is translated ; also the ' Man of 
 Law's Tale ' of the Fortitude of Constance (the Em- 
 peror of Rome's daughter, so cruelly persecuted by 
 her heathen mothers-in-law), translated from the 
 Anglo-French chronicle of Nicholas Trivet, a Do- 
 
II 
 
 minican friar who had died soon after Chaucer was 
 born. Both these are well told, with passages of 
 pathetic beauty, and we can trace in them the in- 
 creasing freedom with which Chaucer used his poetic 
 material. The last Ca7tterbury Tale for which an 
 early date is claimed, the story of the tragedies of 
 great men told by the sporting Monk, seems at first 
 sight obviously late, for one of the stories refers to 
 the death of Bernabo Visconti of Milan in 1385. 
 But it is possible, without hair-splitting, to divide 
 the seventeen tragedies into five written when the 
 Canterbury Tales were in view, and twelve earlier 
 ones ; and even when these are thrown into the scale, 
 Chaucer's extant work which can be assigned to an 
 earlier date than 1380 remains strikingly small in 
 comparison with his splendid productiveness during 
 the next ten or twelve years. 
 
 The great quickening of Chaucer's poetic gifts 
 which we can trace about 1380 must be directly 
 connected with the second of his two Italian mis- 
 sions, that of 1378-79. Six years before, when he 
 had made his first journey to Italy, he had probably 
 known very little Italian, and had very little money 
 to buy books. His second mission enabled him to 
 perfect himself in the language, and we cannot doubt 
 that he brought home with him at least three Italian 
 masterpieces, the Divina Commedia of Dante, and 
 the Teseide and Filostrato of Boccaccio. At first 
 he made experiments. A fragment of metrical 
 essays, now called for convenience A Compleynt to 
 his Lady^ is partly written in Dante's terza-rima : 
 and another fragment, Anelida and Arcyte^ shows 
 him beginning an ambitious rehandling of the 
 Teseide^ from which seventy of its three hundred 
 and fifty-seven lines are translated. His third 
 manuscript proved more immediately productive, 
 for (probably between 1380 and 1383) he carried 
 to completion his magnificent version of the 
 Filostrato^ the Troilus a7td Creseyde^ which still 
 remains the finest narrative poem of its kind 
 in the English language. Here for the first time 
 
12 
 
 his absolute poetic mastery is apparent. He 
 translates, when he chooses to translate, with ease 
 and grace, and he raises the whole poem to 
 a higher level, investing the faithless Creseyde 
 with a piteousness which pleads for her forgiveness, 
 and turning her go-between uncle. Sir Pandarus, 
 whose original character has made his name a 
 hateful word, into a good-natured humorous 
 friend, whose easy code of morals is quite distinct 
 from baseness. While at work on the Troilus^ 
 Chaucer seems to have found time to translate 
 a treatise of a very different kind, the De Con- 
 solatione PhilosophicE of the Roman statesman 
 Boethius, who wrote it in prison while awaiting 
 his murder by the Emperor Theodoric in A.D. 525. 
 The De Consolatione is written in alternate prose 
 and verse. Chaucer rendered it all into rather 
 obscure and laboured prose, but some of the 
 passages which most attracted him appear after 
 this date embedded in his poetry, the easy flow 
 of the verse presenting a striking contrast to the 
 artificiality of his prose. He was called off again 
 from the Troilus in 1381 or 1382 to celebrate the 
 betrothal of Richard H. to Anne of Bohemia, and 
 in the Parleme7it of Foules^ with its tale of the 
 mustering of the birds on St Valentine's Day, 
 and their debate as to which of her suitors is 
 worthiest of the beautiful ' formel-eagle,' who re- 
 presented the queen, produced the brightest and 
 daintiest of courtly allegories. 
 
 When the Troilus was finished Chaucer turned 
 to his Divi7ta Commedia^ and in the Hous of Fa7ite 
 endeavoured to describe a journey with a heaven- 
 sent guide, in which, despite its lighter vein, the 
 influence of Dante is clearly discernible. When 
 contrasted with the Dethe of Blau7iche the Diichesse^ 
 written in the same octosyllabic couplet, the 
 growth of metrical power in the Hous of Fa7)ie 
 is very marked. It contains also fine passages, 
 notably the description of the temple of Fame 
 and of the suitors to the wayward goddess, but 
 
13 
 
 Chaucer's lack of constructive genius left it a 
 failure and a fragment. The golden eagle of 
 Jupiter had soared with him to Fame's abode, and 
 he had been shown all that there was to see ; 
 but there was no possible climax to be reached, 
 and for lack of a climax Chaucer left the poem 
 unfinished. 
 
 His next venture, as to which we can speak 
 with certainty,^ the Legende of Good Wojnen^ 
 shared the same fate. Elsewhere he refers to 
 this poem as the ' Seintes Legende of Cupide,' the 
 Legend of Cupid's Saints, of the fair women who 
 had loved too well, and had died as Love's martyrs. 
 In a prologue, of which two versions exist, both 
 admirably written, he feigns that Love had threat- 
 ened him with punishment for the treasons he had 
 written against him in his translation of the Roman 
 de la Rose^ and in Troilus and Creseydej that 
 he had been saved by ^he intercession of Love's 
 queen, the fair Alcestis — the heroine of Greek legend 
 who died for her unworthy husband, Admetus — 
 and had been bidden to write these stories of 
 women's faithfulness as a palinode. There were 
 to be nineteen such stories, with that of Alcestis 
 herself to crown them, and the book when finished 
 was to be presented to the queen (not Cupid's, 
 but Richard IL's), who was no doubt intended to 
 identify herself with Alcestis. Not nineteen but 
 nine stories were written, the earlier ones, especi- 
 ally those of Cleopatra and Dido, together with 
 the prologue, being admirably told. But, as the 
 Greek philosophers had long since discovered, 
 while wickedness is multiform, virtue admits of 
 less variation ; and as Chaucer wrote story after 
 story of faithful women — Thisbe, Medea, Lucretia, 
 Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis, Hypermnestra — he 
 began to tire of so uniform a theme, and even 
 
 1 It is not improbable that the rehandling of the story of Palamon 
 and Arcite, from the Teseide^ which has come down to us as the 
 * Knight's Tale,' was written contemporaneously with, or before, 
 the Legende, 
 
14 
 
 falls from tragedy into comedy by throwing out 
 a hint that he was the only man to whom women 
 could safely trust. In 1385 he was permitted to 
 exercise his ControUership of the Customs of 
 Wool by deputy, a privilege accorded from the 
 first in the case of the petty customs ; and perhaps 
 in this or the next year a holiday pilgrimage to 
 Canterbury, made in his own person, set his 
 brain throbbing with a new scheme which, in its 
 variety and boundless possibilities, was in strik- 
 ing contrast with that on which he was engaged. 
 In any case, the Legende of Good Women was 
 abandoned, and the Canterbury Tales^ the crown- 
 ing work of his life, took its place. 
 
 At this date of 1385-86, when we think of 
 Chaucer as beginning to plan his Canterbury Tales^ 
 he was eminently prosperous. The Tales can have 
 been only just begun when misfortune befell him. 
 In October 1386 he sat in Parliament as one of 
 the knights of the shire for Kent, an accession of 
 dignity which, by bringing him into active political 
 life, probably cost him his offices. His patron, John 
 of Gaunt, was out of England, and his place in 
 the government was filled by the hostile Duke of 
 Gloucester. A commission was appointed to in- 
 quire into the state of the subsidies and customs, 
 and by December new appointments show us that 
 Chaucer had been superseded in both his controller- 
 ships. His deputies may have played him false, 
 or he himself may have been in fault, but it seems 
 at least as likely that the supersession was political, 
 and would not have been enforced had he not sat 
 in Parliament a month before. In the second half 
 of 1387 he lost his wife's pension (granted her in 
 1366), either by her death or by its being com- 
 muted. In May 1388 he assigned away his own 
 pensions from the king, obviously in order to raise 
 money, and was thus, as far as we know, left with 
 nothing but the pension of £\o originally granted 
 by John of Gaunt to Philippa Chaucer, but subse- 
 quently regranted to both husband and wife. It 
 
15 
 
 seems reasonable to believe that it was during 
 these distressful times that Chaucer wrote some 
 or all of the series of balades, The Former Age^ 
 Fortune^ Truth^ Gentilesse^ Lak of Stedfastnesse^ 
 which all owe something to the De Consolatione 
 PhilosophicB of Boethius. In the Truths with its 
 fine opening, ^ Flee from the press, and dwell with 
 soothfastness,' we must imagine that Chaucer is 
 consoling himself ; in the Fortune (the balade de 
 visage sans peinture^ the 'unpainted face' of a 
 faithful friend) he makes the fickle goddess herself 
 plead on his behalf : 
 
 Prynces, I prey you of your gentilesse 
 
 Let nat this man on me thus crye and pleyne, 
 
 And I shal quyte you your bysynesse. 
 
 In the Lak of Stedfastnesse^ which has been 
 strangely misinterpreted, and therefore misdated, 
 he seems to applaud the measures which Richard II. 
 took against the * merciless Parliament' when he 
 declared himself of age in May 1389. According 
 to a copyist (Shirley), who records several such 
 traditions, this poem was sent by Chaucer ' to his 
 soverain lorde kynge Rycharde the secounde, than 
 being in his Castell of Windesore,' and nothing 
 that we know of Chaucer makes it likely that he 
 would have offered advice unless he was sure it 
 would be acceptable. In any case, he speedily 
 profited by the change of Ministry, being appointed 
 Clerk of the King's Works in July 1389, and a 
 Commissioner of the Roadway between Greenwich 
 and Woolwich in 1390. But a year later he had 
 lost his clerkship again, and even if he is to be 
 identified with the Geoffrey Chaucer who about this 
 time was made Forester of North Petherton Park 
 in Somersetshire (an appointment in the gift of the 
 family of his first patroness), his income must have 
 seemed to him sadly small. 
 
 It was probably during these five years (1386-91) 
 of financial vicissitudes that the bulk of the 
 
i6 
 
 Canterbury Tales were written. If Chaucer had 
 less income he had more leisure, and he used it 
 to good purpose. The idea of the Canterbury 
 Pilgrimage as a framework for a series of stories 
 seems to have been entirely his own. Pilgrimages 
 were still immensely popular in England, and that 
 to the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury the most 
 popular of all. It offered a pleasant holiday in 
 varied company, and with religious opportunities 
 which the pilgrims could use as they pleased. The 
 men and women whom Chaucer pictures as meeting 
 at the Tabard Inn at South wark, the usual starting 
 point for pilgrims from London and the neighbour- 
 hood, were distinctly holiday folk, but they were 
 religious enough to be willing to listen to a very 
 long sermon as they drew near their destination. 
 In his immortal Prologue Chaucer tells us all about 
 them — about the brave courteous Knight, his son 
 the Squire, and their sturdy Yeomen ; about the 
 Lawyer and the Doctor who rode on pilgrimage, 
 though the one was so busy and the other's study 
 was * but little on the Bible ; ' about the dinner- 
 loving Franklin, the Merchant with his thoughts 
 always on his business, the pirate Shipman, the 
 rascally Miller, the drunken Cook, the crafty Man- 
 ciple, the crabbed Reeve, the five London burgesses, 
 and the honest, kind-hearted Ploughman ; most of 
 all about the ' religious ' people — the tender-hearted 
 Prioress, with her lady-chaplain and priests, the 
 hunting Monk, the Friar, *the best beggar in his 
 house,' the Summoner and Pardoner, types of the 
 very worst hangers-on of the Church ; and, to 
 balance these, the good Parson and the studious 
 Clerk of Oxford, with not an ounce of worldliness 
 between them. All these Chaucer paints for us in 
 lively colours, and then starts them on their four 
 days' ride through Deptford, Greenwich, Rochester, 
 and Sittingbourne, fitting them with tales of 
 chivalry and romance, of noble endurance and 
 low adventure, of medieval miracle and old-world 
 legend and myth, a range of narrative as great as 
 
17 
 
 the diversity of the tellers, and the narrative, with 
 few exceptions, almost perfectly told. It was a 
 great scheme worthily carried out, though not to 
 completion, for instead of the hundred and twenty 
 tales originally planned only twenty -four were 
 written, and of these one was only just begun, 
 another left incomplete, and two others more 
 dramatically broken off before they were finished. 
 
 The scheme which Harry Bailey, the host of the 
 ' Tabard,' proposed to his guests was that each of 
 them should tell two tales on the way to Canter- 
 bury and two on the return journey, and that the 
 teller of the best tale should be rewarded by a 
 supper at the cost of the rest. In the morning, 
 when they reach the halting-place known as the 
 Watering of St Thomas, lots are cast as to who 
 shall tell the first tale, and the Knight, to whom 
 the lot falls, responds with the story of Palamon 
 and Arcyte, a splendid rendering of Boccaccio's 
 Teseide. Then follow tales by two of the Churls, 
 the Miller and Reeve, each seeking to discredit 
 the other's craft by a knavish story, into the telling 
 of which, more especially the Reeve's, Chaucer put 
 all his skill. A similar tale by the Cook is placed 
 next in order, but is a mere fragment ; and these 
 are all Chaucer wrote for the first day's ride from 
 Southwark to Deptford. 
 
 The next day's tale-telling, after a late start (ten 
 o'clock) from Deptford, begins with the old story 
 of Constance (see page lo), which Chaucer, rather 
 unsuitably, assigns to the Man of Law. Then the 
 Shipman tells a story of a trusting husband, 
 faithless wife, and roguish monk ; to which an effec- 
 tive contrast is offered by the Prioress's legend, 
 told with devout simplicity, of a little Christian 
 chorister murdered by the Jews. The poet him- 
 self is then called upon, and the * merry words' 
 of Harry Bailey, the host of the ^Tabard,' who 
 acted as leader of the party, may serve as a good 
 example of the talks on the road with which the 
 Tales are linked together : — 
 
 2 
 
i8 
 
 Whan seyd was al this miracle, every man 
 
 As sobre was that wonder was to se, 
 
 Til that oure Hoste japen tho bigan jest then 
 
 And than at erst he looked upon me, then at first 
 
 And seyde thus : ' What man artow ?' quod he ; art thou 
 
 * Thou lookest as thou woldest fynde an hare ; 
 For ever upon the ground I se thee stare. 
 
 Approche neer, and looke up murily. 
 
 Now war yow, sires, and lat this man have place ; beware 
 
 He in the waast is shape as wel as I ; 
 
 This were a popet in an arm t' embrace 
 
 For any womman, smal and fair of face. 
 
 He semeth elvyssh by his contenaunce, 
 
 P'or unto no wight doth he daliaunce. 
 
 Sey now somwhat, syn other folk have sayd ; 
 Telle us a tale of myrthe, and that anon.' 
 
 * Hoste,' quod I, 'ne beth nat yvele apayd, i 
 For other tale certes kan I noon, know 
 But of a rym I lerned longe agoon.' rhyme 
 'Ye, that is good,' quod he, 'now shul we heere 
 
 Som deyntee thyng, me thynketh by his cheere. ' 
 
 (Canterbury TaleSy B. 1881-1901, Globe Ed.) 
 
 1 Do not be ill-pleased. 
 
 But Chaucer was far too wise really to put one of 
 his dainty things into his own mouth. The rhyme 
 *he lerned longe agoon' proves to be a parody 
 of the old romances, the delightful 'Tale of Sir 
 Thopas,' which, of course, Harry Bailey takes quite 
 seriously and indignantly interrupts. Then Chaucer 
 gives up poetry and tells an interminable tale of 
 ' Melibeus and his wife Prudence ' (translated from 
 a French version of the Liber Co7tsolatio7iis of 
 Albertano of Brescia, written c. 1238), which is 
 heard to the bitter end. As if this were not enough, 
 the Monk, instead of a hunting story, pours out the 
 string of 'tragedies' which Chaucer had written 
 some years before, with five new ones, and the 
 Knight and Harry Bailey interrupt him most 
 righteously. Unlike Chaucer, he will not make 
 a second attempt, but the Nun's Priest comes to 
 
19 
 
 the rescue with a bright rendering of the old folk- 
 tale of the 'Fox and the Hen,' filled out in the 
 poet's happiest vein. 
 
 To the morning of the third day have been 
 assigned, with no great certainty, the Doctor of 
 Physic's very poor retelling of the story of 
 Appius and Virginia (from the Romaii de la Rose\ 
 the Pardoner's unblushing Prologue, with its reve- 
 lations of the tricks of his wretched trade, and 
 his story (ultimately of Indian origin) of the three 
 ruffians who went out in search of Death, and found 
 him by murdering each other in their eagerness 
 to have possession, each for himself alone, of a 
 treasure-trove of gold. It is as likely as not that 
 these tales belong to the fourth day ; but to the 
 third, while the pilgrims were on their way to dine 
 at Sittingbourne, and thence, according to the accus- 
 tomed route, to sleep at Ospringe, we can certainly 
 assign five stories. Of these, the first, preceded 
 by a prologue as shameless and as amusing as 
 the Pardoner's, is the Wife of Bath's tale of the 
 knight Avho, when he took courage to marry the 
 hag who had saved his life, found her a fair 
 maid. This is followed by the tales in which, 
 like the Miller and Reeve, the Friar and Sum- 
 moner cast stones at each other's calling ; the Sum- 
 moner's Tale, though its humor is of the lowest, 
 being another example of Chaucer's supreme 
 skill. After a break the Clerk is furnished with a 
 story by Chaucer's hunting up his old version of 
 Patient Griselda, with some added stanzas ; and 
 then the Merchant redresses the balance by his 
 tale showing how Jove himself could not prevent a 
 young wife from fooling her old husband. 
 
 The fourth day's story-telling opens on a higher 
 level with the Squire's 'half-told' romance of 
 Cambuscan and the horse of brass, followed by 
 the Franklin's version of a lost French story in 
 which a wife is ready to sacrifice even her honour 
 rather than break her word. In reading this, as 
 in the stories of Constance and Griselda, we have 
 
20 
 
 to remember that medieval moralists were apt to 
 think of only one virtue at a time, and when this 
 is understood it takes a high place among the Tales, 
 Again there is a gap. Then the legend of St 
 Cecilia, left in all its weakness of early work, is 
 assigned to the Prioress's attendant Nun, to be 
 followed by an unexpected incident, the overtaking 
 of the Pilgrims by a Canon and his Yeoman, who 
 have ridden hard to catch them up. The Canon 
 is an alchemist, who wastes his own substance and 
 that of his dupes in trying to turn silver into gold ; 
 and his Yeoman, after putting his master to flight 
 by his frank confessions, tells a tale of another 
 rogue of the same sort. After this the Manciple 
 explains (from Ovid) how a white crow's indiscreet 
 revelations caused Apollo to turn all crows black ; 
 and then, as Canterbury comes in sight, the 
 Pilgrims bethink them of their religious duties, 
 and listen to a long sermon on repentance, de- 
 livered by the good Parson, who at an earlier 
 stage of the journey had been very peremptorily 
 given to understand that no preaching was wanted. 
 Altogether the Canterbury Tales contain some 
 eighteen thousand lines of verse besides the two 
 prose treatises — i.e. the tale of Melibee and the 
 Parson's sermon. We have no record and no sure 
 grounds for conjecture as to over how many years 
 their composition was spread, but except it be in 
 the Doctor's tale or the Manciple's they show no 
 sign of failing power ; and it is probable that they 
 were written in quick succession, until loss of 
 favour at Court or some other cause discouraged 
 the poet, and he laid his bulky manuscript aside, 
 unfinished. As we have seen, he lost his Clerkship 
 of the Works in 1391 ; and if, as seems probable 
 from the occurrence of the date '12 March 1391 ' 
 [O.S.] in one of its calculations, he was writing the 
 treatise on the Astrolabe soon after this, we may 
 fairly take it as a sign that his interest in the Tales 
 was already waning. In his humorous Envoy a 
 Bukton^ which was written about 1396, he prays 
 
21 
 
 his friend to read the 'Wife of Bath' upon the 
 marriage question ; and we are left to wonder 
 whether he allowed copies of the Tales in their 
 incomplete form to be multiplied during his life, 
 or whether it was only after his death that they 
 reached a wider public than his immediate friends. 
 Of other work he did but little during the last 
 decade of his life. His treatise on the Astrolabe 
 (an instrument for taking astronomical observa- 
 tions), addressed to his little ten -year -old son 
 Lewis, was left incomplete, like so much else, 
 though in this case he had the treatises of the old 
 Arabian astronomer Messahala, and of the York- 
 shire mathematician John Holywood (Johannes 
 de Sacro Bosco), on which to draw. Of poems 
 of this period we have only four remaining, all 
 of them short, and all apparently written with 
 something less than his wonted ease. The sportive 
 Envoy a Scogan^ on the vengeance he might 
 expect from Venus for having 'given up' his 
 lady, may belong to the year 1393, and ends with 
 a pitiful request from the poor road-commissioner 
 that the favoured dweller ' at the stream's head ' — 
 i.e. the Court at Windsor — would ' mind his friend 
 there it may fructifye.' The so-called Compleynt 
 of Venus, a triple balade from the French of 
 Graunson, a Savoyard knight, pensioned by Richard 
 II. in 1393, may belong to the same year. The 
 Envoy a Biikton, giving him his 'counseil touch- 
 ing mariage,' is dated by its reference to the 
 English expedition to Friesland in 1396. The 
 Compleynt to his Purs, sent to the ' Conquerour 
 of Brutes Albioun,' from whom it elicited a fresh 
 pension, belongs, of course, to 1399. None of 
 these poems are unworthy of Chaucer, and it is 
 true that he never wrote his balades and short 
 poems with the ease of his narrative in the couplet 
 stanza, but they seem to belong to a later and less 
 happy period than any of the Canterbury Tales, 
 and we may reasonably conclude that the Tales, 
 though the crowning work of his life, were not 
 being written right up to the last. 
 
22 
 
 In truth, it is to be feared that the last nine 
 years of Chaucer's li/e were not very prosperous 
 or happy. His friends did not desert him, for in 
 1394 Richard II. granted him a new pension of 
 twenty pounds a year ; but we find him frequently 
 anticipating it by small loans from the Exchequer, 
 and in May 1398 he obtained from the king letters 
 of protection to prevent his creditors suing him. 
 In October Richard granted him a tun of wine 
 yearly, apparently in answer to a petition which 
 begged for it as a ' work of charity ; ' and a year 
 later, when Richard had been deposed, Henry IV., 
 the son of Chaucer's old patron, John of Gaunt, by 
 an additional pension of forty marks (^^26, 13s. 4d.), 
 granted in answer to the Compleynt to his Purs, 
 placed the old poet once more in comfortable 
 circumstances. On the following Christmas Eve 
 Chaucer took a long lease, for fifty-three years, 
 of a house in the garden of St Mary's Chapel, 
 Westminster, which his son, Thomas Chaucer, 
 the King's Butler, continued to occupy after his 
 death ; and there are records of his drawing in- 
 
 • stalments of his pensions in February and June of 
 1400. The June payment was received on his 
 behalf by a friend, which may or may not, point 
 to his already being ill. All that we know is that, 
 according to an inscription on a tomb erected to 
 him by a lover of his works in 1556, he died on 
 25th October 1400, and that he was buried in St 
 Benet's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, the first of 
 the many poets who have found their last resting- 
 place in what we now know as Poet's Corner. 
 
 / In estimating Chaucer's position among EngHsh 
 poets we have to consider his work in relation 
 to that of his predecessors and contemporaries, 
 and, secondly, the extent of his actual achieve- 
 ment. On the first point something has already 
 been said ; but the most important difference which 
 separates Chaucer from the poets whose work we 
 have already reviewed is that he first of English 
 writers whose names we know (the limitation is in- 
 
23 
 
 troduced to exclude the author of Pearly a possible 
 exception) conceived of poetry as an art. Our 
 earlier poets, whose subjects would often have been 
 as fitly treated in prose, wrote * straight on,' with 
 very little ornament, and very little care for find- 
 ing the right word or varying their verse. Their 
 modesty saved them from many mistakes, and 
 though their work is always on a level, it is by no 
 means on a dead level. But any one who will read, 
 say, the Cursor Mundi from end to end and not 
 find it tedious must have a special taste for old- 
 world things. Even Langland, who was continu- 
 ally recasting his Vision^ recast it not so much that 
 he might improve what he had already said, but 
 that he might say something different ; and, as we 
 have noted, he as often changed a good line for a 
 worse as a poor line for a better. In Chaucer's 
 poetry, on the other hand, we find a continuous 
 development, and evidence of the hard work and 
 enterprise by which that development was attained. 
 He begins as a mere translator, and becomes, in 
 his own way, one of the most individual of poets ; 
 he begins with monotonous verse, full of padding, 
 and attains a metrical freedom as complete as 
 Shakespeare's ; he begins in the prevalent fashion, 
 and soon enriches English literature with two new 
 metres of capital importance (the seven-hne stanza 
 and decasyllabic couplet), and with a new range 
 of subjects. Though he had to work harder for 
 his living than most of his predecessors, he took 
 his art far more seriously, and starting at a happier 
 moment and with greater natural gifts, he attained 
 results which differ from theirs not merely in degree 
 but in kind. 
 
 As regards his positive achievement some large 
 admissions must be made. The pretty little songs 
 in the Dethe of the Duchesse and the Parlement 
 of Foules do not entitle us to claim for him any 
 serious lyrical gift, and his shorter poems generally 
 are known rather by fine single lines than as 
 successful wholes. With the absence of the lyrical 
 
24 
 
 faculty goes the absence of passion and depth of 
 thought. The true tragic note is not sounded once 
 in all his poems, and his portrayal of love is 
 languishing and sensuous, never strong. Three of 
 his women are perfectly drawn : the fashionable 
 Prioress, the triumphantly vulgar Wife of Bath, as 
 sketches ; the small-souled, piteous Cressida as a 
 finished portrait. The rest are personifications or 
 conventional types, quickened now and again by 
 some happy touch, but not possessed of flesh and 
 blood. As for his asserted deep religious feelings, 
 there has certainly been much exaggeration. He 
 was interested in the problems of free-will and 
 predestination ; he had the man of the world's 
 admiration for practical piety wherever he saw it ; 
 he had his religious moments, and towards the end 
 of his life may have been devout ; but the humor- 
 ous lines in ' The Knightes Tale ' — 
 
 His spirit chaunged hous and wente ther, 
 As I cam never, I kan nat tellen wher : 
 Therfore I stynte, I nam no divinistre 
 Of soules fynde I nat in this registre, 
 
 are typical of his spirit in the heyday of his 
 powers ; and though he laid bare the worldliness 
 and knavery of the hangers-on of religion, they fill 
 him with no deep repugnance. 
 
 Lastly, it must be owned that Chaucer had little 
 or no constructive power. He could fill in other 
 men's outlines and improve other men's work as 
 triumphantly as Shakespeare himself, but the in- 
 conclusiveness of the Dethe of the Duchesse and 
 the Parlement of Foules, and the unfinished con- 
 dition of every other poem in which he tried to 
 work on his own lines as regards plot, prove that 
 he had no aptitude for inventing a story and de- 
 veloping it from prelude to climax. 
 
 When all these admissions have been made, 
 Chaucer yet remains one of the greatest English 
 poets, because in his own art of narrative verse 
 he attained a mastery which has never been ap- 
 
25 
 
 preached. Where he should be ranked, as com- 
 pared with Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Shelley, or 
 Tennyson, depends entirely on the value the critic 
 attaches to different kinds of excellence. In his 
 own Chaucer stands first. While his predecessors 
 lack readers because they had too little art, later 
 writers have- often failed, because they have tried 
 to introduce too much. In Chaucer alone we find 
 narrative in perfection — simple, direct, fluent, vary- 
 ing easily with the subject, full of his own individu- 
 ality, everywhere controlled and enlivened by his 
 abounding humour, and written in verse of never- 
 failing music and metrical power. He is a great 
 artist, with an artist's self-consciousness ; at the 
 same time he is a'bsolutely natural and at his ease. 
 There are few English poets to whom we should 
 attribute the combination of these qualities ; there 
 is no other who has combined them to the same 
 extent. 
 
 A narrative poet can never receive justice from 
 quotations, but the extracts which follow are chosen 
 to illustrate as far as is possible in a few pages the 
 -variety of Chaucer's verse and his happiness in 
 dealing with different subjects. We take him first 
 in his early days as the pensive, rather sentimen- 
 tal young poet, weaving his own sorrows, real or 
 imagined, into his lament for the wife of his patron, 
 John of Gaunt,^ of which our quotation forms the 
 opening lines : 
 
 1 This and the following quotations are taken from the ' Globe' 
 Chaucer, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer^ edited by A. W. 
 Pollard, H. F. Heath, Mark H. Liddell, W. S. McCormick 
 (Macmillans, 1898). The Canterbury Tales were printed by 
 Caxton in 1478 and 1483, and reprinted b}'^ Pynson (c. 1492) and 
 Wynkyn de Worde (1498). Caxton also printed the Parlement 0/ 
 Foules and some of the minor poems about 1478, and the Troilus 
 about 1483, this being printed again by Wynkyn de Worde in 1517. 
 In 1526 Pynson printed most of Chaucer's works in a volume in three 
 parts, but the first collected edition was that printed by Godfray in 
 1532, and edited by Thynne. This was reprinted in 1542 and 1550, 
 and again (with additions supplied by the antiquary John Stowe)!in 
 561. In 1598 and 1602 editions appeared edited by Thomas Speght, 
 and others were issued in 1687 and 1721, the latter edited by Urr>'. 
 
26 
 
 I have gret wonder, by this lyghte, 
 How that I lyve, for day ne nyghte 
 I may slepe wel neigh noght ; 
 I have so many an ydel thoght, 
 Purely for defaute of slepe, 
 
 That, by my trouthe, I take no kepe heed 
 
 Of no thyng how hit cometh or gooth, it— goes 
 
 Ne me nis no thyng leef nor looth. is not— dear nor hateful 
 Al is y-liche good to me, — alike 
 
 Joye or sorwe, wherso hit be, — 
 For I have felyng in no thyng, 
 
 But as it were, a mased thyng dazed 
 
 Alway in poynt to falle a-doun ; 
 For sorwful ymagynacioun 
 
 Is alway hoolly in my mynde. wholly 
 
 And wel ye woot agaynes kynde against nature 
 
 Hit were to liven in this wyse. 
 For Nature wolde nat suffyse 
 To noon erthly creature 
 Not long tyme to endure 
 Withoute slepe, and been in sorwe ; 
 And I ne may, no nyght ne morwe, 
 Slepe ; and this melancolye 
 And drede I have for to dye, 
 Defaute of slepe and hevynesse. 
 
 These collected editions contained many works not by Chaucer, 
 and their text was disfigured by every possible blunder, so that 
 the music of Chaucer's verse was entirely lost and his meaning 
 obscured. A beginning of better things was made by Thomas 
 Tyrwhitt's edition of the Canterbury Tales (1775-78), a really fine 
 piece of editing for its date. Thomas Wright's edition for the Percy 
 Society (1842), and that of Richard Morris in Bell's Aldine Classics 
 (1866), both of them founded on Harleian MS. 7334, were further 
 improvements. But no accurate text was possible until Dr Furnivall 
 founded the Chaucer Society in 1866, and printed parallel texts 
 from all the best manuscripts that could be found, including the Elles- 
 mere, which is now generally considered the best. From these texts 
 Professor Skeat in 1894 edited for the Clarendon Press The Co>n- 
 plete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer^ in six volumes, with a wealth of 
 illustrative notes ; and the ' Globe' edition of 1898 was based on the 
 same materials. In addition to its work on Chaucer's text, the 
 Chaucer Society has cleared up the sources of many of his poems, 
 and has settled the true order of the Canterbury Tales, the letters 
 A-I which appear in references to line-numbers denoting the 
 different groups under which, in their incomplete condition, it is 
 necessary to arrange them. 
 
27 
 
 Hath sleyn my spirit of quyknesse 
 That I have lost al lustihede. 
 Suche fantasyes been in myn hede 
 To I noot what is best to do. know not 
 
 But men myghte axe me why so ask 
 
 I may not slepe, and what me is ? what is wrong with me 
 But natheless, who aske this nevertheless 
 
 Leseth his asking trewely. Loses 
 
 My selven can not telle why 
 The sothe ; but trewely, as I gesse, 
 I holde hit ben a siknesse to be 
 
 That I have suffred this eight yere, 
 And yet my boote is never the nere ; cure— nearer 
 
 For ther is phisicien but oon 
 That may me hele ; but that is doon. 
 Passe we over until eft; after 
 
 That wil not be, moot nede be left. must needs 
 
 {Dethe of Blaunche the Duchesse, 11. 1-42.) 
 
 The gentle melancholy of this prelude finds a 
 inore sonorous echo in the Compleynt of the Dethe 
 of Pitee^ from which also we may quote the opening 
 lines : 
 
 Pite that I have sought so yore ago 
 With herte sore and ful of besy peyne, 
 That in this worlde was never wight so wo 
 With-oute dethe ; and if I shal not feyne, ^. 
 My purpos was to Pite to compleyne 
 Upon the crueltee and tirannye 
 Of Love, that for my trouthe doth me dye. 
 
 And when that I, by lengthe of certeyn yeres, 
 Had evere in oon a tyme sought to speke, alike 
 
 To Pite ran I, al bespreynt with teres, sprinkled 
 
 To preyen hir on Crueltee me a-wreke ; avenge 
 
 But er I myght with any worde out-breke, 
 Or tellen any of my peynes smerte, 
 I fond hir deed and buried in an herte. found her dead 
 
 Adoun fel I when that I saugh the herse, 
 Deed as a stoon, whyl that the swogh me laste ; swoon 
 But up I roos with colour ful dyverse. 
 And pitously on hir myn eyen I caste, 
 And ner the corps I gan to presen faste, i. 2 
 
 And for the soule I shoop me for to preye ; 3 
 
 I nas but lorne, ther was no more to sey. was utterly lost 
 
28 
 
 Thus am I slayn sith that Pite is deed ; 
 Alias the day ! that ever hit shulde falle ! 
 What maner man dar now holde up his heed ? 
 To whom shal any sorwful herte calle ? 
 Now Crueltee hath cast to sleen us alle, 
 In ydel hope, folk redelees of peyne, — 4 
 
 Sith she is deed, to whom shul we compleyne ? 
 
 {Compleynt of the Dethe of PiteCy 11. 1-28.) 
 1 Nearer. 2 Began to press. ^ Addressed myself. * Bewildered 
 from suffering. 
 
 To illustrate Chaucer's earlier narrative work, we 
 must be content with three stanzas from the ^ Tale 
 of Constance.' They strike that note of pathos and 
 pity which with Chaucer takes the place of deeper 
 tragedy. King Alia had married Constance after 
 the miracle which proved her innocent of a murder 
 of which sjie had been falsely accused ; but now, 
 in his absence from home, he has been beguiled, 
 and sends an order that both she and his little 
 child are to be thrust out to sea in a rudderless 
 boat in three days' time : 
 
 Wepen bothe yonge and olde in al that place 
 Whan that the kyng this cursed lettre sente, 
 And Custance, with a deedly pale face. 
 The ferthe day toward the ship she wente ; fourth 
 
 But nathelees she taketh in good entente 
 The wyl of Crist, and knelynge on the stronde, 
 She seyde, * Lord, ay welcome be thy sonde ; sending 
 He that me kepte fro the false blame. 
 While I was on the lond amonges yow. 
 He kan me kepe from harm, and eek fro shame, 
 In salte see, al-thogh I se noght how. 
 As strong as ever he was he is yet now. 
 In hym triste I, and in his mooder deere, — 
 That is to me my seyl, and eek my steere.' sail— rudder 
 Hir litel child lay wepyng in hir arm, 
 And knelynge, pitously to hym she seyde, 
 * Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee noon harm ! ' 
 With that hir coverchief of hir heed she breyde, i 
 And over his litel eyen she it leyde. 
 And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste, 
 And into hevene hir eyen up she caste. 
 
 (• Man of Lawes Tale,' Canterbury Tales, B. 820-840.) 
 1 She tore the kerchief from her head. 
 
29 
 
 From all this tenderness we must pass rapidly 
 to the tales of chivalry and romance, full of vivid 
 colour, the brightness of youth, and joy of love, 
 which are the most prominent feature in Chaucer's 
 second period. Among these Troilus and Cressida 
 stands supreme ; and we may take from it first this 
 picture of Criseyde when Troilus first sees her, and 
 is suddenly struck down, amid his mockery of love, 
 by the beauty he despised : 
 
 Among thise othre folk was Criseyda 
 
 In widwes habit blak ; but natheles, widows 
 
 Right as our firste lettre is now an A, 
 
 In beaute first so stood she makeles : matchless 
 
 Her goodly loking gladed al the prees ; crowd 
 
 N'as nevere seyn thing to ben praysed derre, 
 
 X, 2 
 
 Nor under cloude blak so bright a sterre, star 
 
 As was Criseyde, as folk seyde everychone 
 That her behelden in her blake wede. 
 And yit she stood ful lowe and stille alone 
 Behinden othre folk in litel brede breadth 
 
 And nigh the dore, ay under shames drede, 3 
 
 Simple of atir and debonaire of chere, , attire 
 
 With ful assured loking and manere. 
 
 This Troilus, as he was wont to gide 
 
 His yonge knightes, ladde hem up and doun 
 
 In th'ilke large temple on every side, that same 
 
 Biholding ay the ladies of the toun, 
 
 Now here, now there ; for no devocioun 
 
 Hadde he to non, to reven him his reste, deprive 
 
 But gan to preyse and lakken whom him leste. disparage 
 
 And in his walk ful faste he gan to wayten watch 
 
 If knight or squier of his companye 
 
 Gan for to sike or lete his yen bayten sigh— feed 
 
 On any woman that he coude espye : 
 
 He wolde smile and holden it folye, 
 
 And seye him thus, * God wot, she slepeth softe 
 
 For love of thee, whan thou tornest ful ofte ! 
 
 / 1 have herd told, pardieux, of your livfnge, 
 
 Ye lovers, and your lewed observaunces, 4 
 
 And which a labour folk han in winninge 
 
30 
 
 Of love, and in the keping which doutaunces ; 
 And whan your preye is lost, wo and penaunces ! 
 
 verray fooles, nyce and blynd ben ye ! foolish 
 Ther n'is nat oon can war by other be ! ' beware 
 
 And with that word he gan caste up the browe 
 
 Ascaunces, * Lo ! is this nat v/isly spoken ? ' 
 
 At which the God of Love gan loken rowe roughly 
 
 Right for despit, and shop for to ben wroken : 5 
 
 He kidde anon his bowe n'as nat broken ! showed 
 
 For sodeinly he hitte him at the fuUe ; 
 
 And yit as proud a pecok can he puUe ! pluck 
 
 {Troilus and Cressida^ Bk. i. 11. 169-210.) 
 
 1 There was not. 2 More dearly. ^\n dread of being shamed 
 (she was daughter of the Greek Calchas). ^ Common, foolish. 
 ^ Prepared himself to be avenged. 
 
 Cupid made Troilus pay heavily for his gibes, 
 and cheated him at the last ; yet he allowed him a 
 little spell of happiness ; and here is Chaucer's de- 
 scription of the supreme moment of love's reward : 
 
 O, soth is seid, that heled for to be 
 As of a fevere, or other gret siknesse. 
 Men moste drinke, as men may alday see, 
 Ful bittre drinke ; and for to han gladnesse. 
 Men drinken ofte peyne and gret distresse : 
 
 1 mene it here, as for this aventure 
 
 That thorugh a peyne hath founden al his cure. 
 
 And now swetnesse semeth more swete 
 
 That bitternesse assayed was biforn ; 
 
 For out of wo in blisse now they flete ; float 
 
 Non swich they felten sin they were born. since 
 
 Now is this bet than bothe two be lorn ! better 
 
 For love of God, take every womman hede 
 
 To werken thus, whan it com'th to the nede ! 
 
 Criseyde, al quit from every drede and tene, sorrow 
 
 As she that juste cause had him to triste, trust 
 
 Made him swich feste, it joye was to sene. 
 
 Whan she his trouthe and clene entente wiste ; 
 
 And as aboute a tree with many a twiste 
 
 Bitrent and wryth the swote wodebinde, i 
 
 Gan ech of hem in armes other winde. 
 
31 
 
 And as the newe abaysed nightingale abashed 
 
 That stinteth first whan she biginneth singe, stops 
 Whan that she hereth any herde tale, herdsman talk 
 Or in the hegges any wight steringe, hedges— stirring 
 And after siker doth her vois out-ringe ; in sure tones 
 Right so Criseyda, whan her drede stente, ceased 
 
 Opned her herte, and tolde al her entente. 
 
 And right as he that saw his deth y-shapen, 
 
 And deyen moste, in aught that he may gesse, must 
 
 And sodeinly rescous doth him escapen, 2 
 
 And from his deth is brought in sikernesse ; safety 
 
 For al this world, in swich present gladnesse 
 
 Is Troilus, and hath his lady swete. — 
 
 With worse hap God lat us nevere mete ! 
 
 {Troilus and Cressida, Bk. iii. 11. 1212-1246.) 
 1 Betwines and wreathes the sweet honeysuckle. 2 ^\ rescue 
 causes him to escape. 
 
 In the end, as we all know, Criseyde failed to 
 fight against the stress of circumstance and was 
 faithless ; and Chaucer, as he tells of the death of 
 Troilus, takes, for the moment, a higher strain : 
 
 Swich fyn hath tho this Troilus for love ! Such end 
 
 Swich fyn hath al his grete wor thin esse ! 
 
 Swich fyn hath his estat real above ! royal 
 
 Swich fyn his lust, swich fyn hath his noblesse ! 
 
 Swich f}Ti, this false worldes brotelnesse ! — brittleness 
 
 And thus bigan his loving of Criseyde 
 
 As I have told, and in this wise he deyde. 
 
 — O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she, 
 
 In whiche ay love up-groweth with your age, 
 
 Repeireth hom fro worldly vanite ! 
 
 And of your herte up-casteth the visage 
 
 To th'ilke God that after his image 
 
 You made ; and thinketh al n'is but a faire 
 
 This world, that passeth sone as floures faire ! 
 
 And loveth Him, the whiche that right for love 
 
 Upon a cros, our soules for to beye, buy, redeem 
 
 First starf, and roos, and sit in hevene above ; i, 2 
 
 For He n'il falsen no wight, dar I seye, 
 
 That wol his herte al hoolly on him leye ! 
 
 And sin He best to love is, and most meke, since 
 
 What nedeth feyned loves for to seke ? 
 
 {Troilus and Cressida, Bk. v. 11. 1828-1848.) 
 iDied. 2Sitteth. 
 
32 
 
 The Troilus^ which has this solemn end, is a 
 * tragedy,' but it is a tragedy as full of light as 
 of shade ; in it we first find Chaucer's humour in 
 its perfection, and to suit this humour he attunes 
 his verse to another key with masterly ease. Here 
 is a passage from an earlier part of the poem 
 describing a call paid (in the interest of Troilus) 
 by Sir Pandarus on his niece, then in the stage 
 of widowhood in which thoughts of consolation 
 may be trifled with : 
 
 Whan he was come unto his neces place, 
 
 * Wher is my lady ?' to her folk quod he ; 
 
 And they him tolde, and he forth in gan pace, passed 
 And fond two othre ladies sete and she seated 
 
 Withinne a paved parlour ; and they three 
 Herden a mayden red en hem the geste story 
 
 Of al the sege of Thebes, whil hem leste. 
 
 Quod Pandarus, * Madame, God you see. 
 With al your book and al the companye ! ' — 
 
 * Ey, uncle, now welcome y-wis ! ' quod she ; surely 
 And up she ros, and by the hond in hye hastily 
 She took him faste, and seyde, ' This night thrye — thrice 
 To goode mote it torne ! — of you I mette.' dreamt 
 And with that word she doun on bench him sette. 
 
 * Ye, nece, ye shal fare wel the bet, better 
 If God wile, al this yer ! ' quod Pandarus ; will 
 
 * But I am sory that I have you let hindered 
 To herken of your book ye preisen thus. 
 
 For Goddes love, what seith it ? Tel it us ! 
 
 Is it of love ? O, som good ye me lere ! ' teach 
 
 * Uncle ! ' quod she, * your maistresse is not here ! ' 
 
 With that they gonnen laughe ; and tho she seyde, 
 
 * This romaunce is of Thebes, that we rede ; 
 And we han herd how that King Laius deyde 
 Thorugh Edippus his sone, and all that dede ; 
 
 And here we stinten at thise lettres rede, i, 2 
 
 How that the bisshop, as the book can telle, 
 Amphiorax, fil thorugh the grounde to helle.' 
 
 Quod Pandarus, * Al this knowe I my-selve. 
 And al th' assege of Thebes, and the care ; 
 For herof ben ther maked bookes twelve. 
 But lat be this, and tel me how ye fare. 
 
33 
 
 Do wey your barbe, and shewe your face bare. 3 
 
 Do wey your book : ris up, and lat us daunce, 
 And lat us don to May som observaunce ! ' 
 
 * Ey, God forbede ! ' quod she, * Be ye mad ? 
 
 Is that a widwes lif, so God you save ? 
 
 By God, ye maken me right sore adrad ! afraid 
 
 Ye ben so wilde, it semeth as ye rave ! 
 
 It sate me wel bet, ay in a cave would be fit 
 
 To bidde and rede on holy seintes lives ! pray 
 
 Lat maydens gon to daunce, and yonge wives !' 
 
 {Troilus and Cressida^ Bk. ii. 11. 78-119.) 
 
 1 Stop. 2 The chapter-heading written in red letters in a manu- 
 script. 3 A collar partly hiding the face. 
 
 The absolute ease of this passage is in striking 
 contrast to Chaucer's early use of the stanza in the 
 story of St Cecyle, and has perhaps never been 
 equalled in the same form save by Byron. To 
 accompany these quotations from the Troiliis^ we 
 may take the ' Knightes Tale ' out of its place in the 
 Ca7tterbury series, in order to show how Chaucer 
 treats chivalry under arms, as in the Troilus he 
 treats of chivalry in love. The cousins Palamon 
 and Arcite both love the fair Emily, sister to their 
 enemy, Theseus, ' Duke ' of Athens. Arcite over- 
 hears Palamon speaking of his love when in hiding 
 from Theseus, and, as his cousin is weaponless, 
 rides off to fetch him armour and weapons that 
 they may fight out their quarrel. The quotation 
 describes how they arm each other and then fight 
 furiously till Theseus interrupts them. It is the 
 more noteworthy because, while Chaucer is trans- 
 lating the Teseide of Boccaccio, all the vivid and 
 dramatic touches are his own : 
 
 Arcite is riden anon unto the toun, 
 And on the morwe, er it were dayes light, 
 Ful prively two harneys hath he dight, t, 2 
 
 Bothe suffisaunt and mete to darreyne fight out 
 
 The bataille in the feeld betwix hem tweyne ; 
 And on his hors, allone as he was born, 
 He carieth al the harneys hym biforn : 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 And in the grove, at tyme and place y-set, appointed 
 
 This Arcite and this Palamon ben met. 
 
 To chaungen gan the colour in hir face, 
 
 Right as the hunters, in the regne of Trace, 3 
 
 That stondeth at the gappe with a spere. 
 
 Whan hunted is the leoun or the here. 
 
 And hereth hym come russhyng in the greves, groves 
 
 And breketh both bowes and the leves. 
 
 And thynketh, ' Heere cometh my mortal enemy, 
 
 With-oute faile he moot be deed or I ; must be dead 
 
 For outher I moot sleen hym at the gappe, either 
 
 Or he moot sleen me, if that me myshappe ' : 
 
 So ferden they in chaungyng of hir hewe, 4, 5 
 
 As fer as everich of hem oother knewe, 
 
 Ther nas no * Good day,' ne no saluyng, 
 But streight, withouten word or rehersyng, 
 Everich of hem heelpe for to armen oother. 
 As frendly as he were his owene brother ; 
 And after that, with sharpe speres stronge. 
 They foynen ech at other wonder longe. fence 
 
 Thou myghtest wene that this Palamoun, 
 In his fightyng were a wood leoun, mad 
 
 And as a cruel tigre was Arcite : 
 As wilde bores gonne they to smyte. 
 That frothen whit as foom for ire wood, — . mad anger 
 Up to the ancle foghte they in hir blood. their 
 
 And in this wise I lete hem fightyng dwelle. 
 And forth I wole of Theseus yow telle. 
 
 Cleer was the day, as I have toold er this, 
 And Theseus, with alle joye and blis. 
 With his Ypolita, the faire queene. 
 And Emelye, clothed al in grene, 
 On huntyng be they riden roially ; 
 And to the grove, that stood ful faste by. 
 In which ther was an hert, as men hym tolde. 
 Due Theseus the streighte way hath holde ; 
 And to the launde he rideth hym ful right, — open space 
 For thider was the hert wont have his flight, — 
 And over a brook, and so forth in his weye. 
 The Due wol han a cours at hym, or tweye. 
 With houndes, swiche as that hym list commaunde. 
 
 And whan the Due was come unto the launde 
 Under the sonne he looketh, and anon 
 
35 
 
 He was war of Arcite and Palamon 
 
 That foughten breme, as it were bores two. furiously 
 
 The brighte swerdes wenten to and fro 
 
 So hidously, that with the leeste strook 
 
 It semed as it wolde fille an ook ; fell 
 
 But what they were no thyng he ne woot. 
 
 This due his courser with his spores smoot, 
 
 And at a stert he was bitwix hem two, 
 
 And pulled out a swerd, and cride, ' Hoo ! 
 
 Namoore, up peyne of lesynge of youre heed ! upon 
 
 By myghty Mars, he shal anon be deed 
 
 That smyteth any strook, that I may seen. 
 
 But telleth me what mystiers men ye been, what kind of 
 
 That been so hardy for to fighten heere 
 
 Withouten juge, or oother officere, 
 
 As it were in a lystes roially ?' 
 
 (' Knightes Tale,' Canterbury Tales ^ A. 11. 1 628-1662, 
 1683-1713.) 
 
 1 Suits of armour. 2 Qot ready. ^ Kingdom of Thrace. ^ Be- 
 haved. ^ Their colour. 
 
 After the Troilus came the Hous of Fame^ and 
 from this, did space permit, we should quote 
 Chaucer's autobiographical colloquy with the 
 Golden Eagle, and some of the prayers of Fame's 
 suitors and their answers. But we must hasten to 
 the Legende of Good Woinen^ and choose from this 
 a characteristic passage on Chaucer's favourite 
 season, Spring, not unlike that at the end of 
 the Parletnent of Foules^ but written with more 
 freedom : 
 
 Forgeten had the erthe his pore estate 
 
 Of wyntir, that him naked made and mate, forlorn 
 
 And with his swerd of colde so sore greved ; 
 
 Now hath the atempre sonne al that releved temperate 
 
 That naked was, and clad it new agayne. 
 
 The smale foules, of the sesoun fayne. 
 
 That of the panter and the nette ben scaped, a bag-net 
 
 Upon the foweler, that hem made a-whaped scared 
 
 In wynter, and distroyed hadde hire broode. 
 
 In his dispite hem thoghte it did hem goode 
 
 To synge of hym, and in hir songe dispise 
 
 The foule cherle, that, for his coveytise. 
 
36 
 
 Had hem betrayed with his sophistrye. 
 
 This was hir songe, * The foweler we deffye, 
 And al his crafte.' And some songen clere 
 Layes of love, that joye it was to here, 
 In worshipynge and in preysing of hir make ; mate 
 
 And, for the newe bUsful somers sake, 
 Upon the braunches ful of blosmes softe. 
 In hire delyt, they turned hem ful ofte. 
 And songen, ' Blessed be Seynt Valentyne ! 
 For on his day I chees you to be myne, 
 Withouten repentyng myne herte swete ! ' 
 And therewithal hire bekes gonnen meete, 
 Yeldyng honour and humble obeysaunces 
 To love, and diden hire othere observaunces 
 That longeth onto love, and to nature ; 
 Construeth that as yow lyst, I do no cure. 
 
 And tho that hadde don unkyndenesse, — 
 As doth the tydif, for newfangelnesse, — 
 Besoghte mercy of hir trespassynge. 
 And humblely songen hir repentynge, 
 And sworen on the blosmes to be trewe, 
 So that hire makes wolde upon hem rewe, 
 And at the laste maden hir acorde. 
 
 i_Legende of Good Women, 11. 125-159.) 
 
 All the Prologue to the Legende^ whence this 
 is taken, is in Chaucer's happiest vein, both in its 
 earlier and in this later form ; and as in the last 
 quotation it was hard to have to stop before 
 Theseus' speech in which he first condemns and 
 then chaffs the lovers, so here it would be pleasant 
 to quote all the talk with Cupid and Alcestis which 
 follows on our extract. From the legends them- 
 selves we can only take these few lines as an 
 example of how vigorously Chaucer could describe 
 a sea-fight of the ancient kind : 
 
 Antonius was war, and wol nat fayle aware 
 To meten with thise Romaynes, if he may. 
 
 Took eke his rede, and both upon a day, counsel 
 
 His wyf and he, and al his ost, forthe wente host 
 
 To shippe anon, no lenger they ne stente, stayed 
 
 And in the see hit happed hem to mete. i 
 Up goth the trumpe, and for to shoute and shete, shoot 
 
37 
 
 And paynen hem to sette on with the sonne ; 2 
 
 With grisly soune out goth the grete gonne, 
 
 And heterly they hurtelen al at ones, furiously 
 
 And fro the top doun cometh the grete stones. 
 
 In gooth the grapenel so ful of crokes, 
 
 Amonge the ropes, and the sheryng hokes ; 
 
 In with the polax preseth he and he ; this one and that 
 
 Byhynde the maste begyneth he to fle, 
 
 And out agayn, and dryveth hem over horde ; 
 
 He stynteth hem upon his speres orde ; 3 
 
 He rent the sayle with hokes lyke a sithe ; rendeth 
 
 He bryngeth the cuppe, and biddeth hem be blithe ; 
 
 He poureth pesen upon the hacches slidre ; 4 
 
 With pottes ful of lyme, they goon togidre ; 
 
 And thus the longe day in fight they spende, 
 
 Til at the last, as' every thing hath ende, 
 
 Antony is shent, and put hym to the flyghte ; discomfited 
 
 And al his folke to-go, that best go myghte. 
 
 {Leg-ende of Good Wovien, 11. 629-653.) 
 
 1 That is, Antony and Octavian. 2 That is, so that the sun might 
 be in the enemy's face. ^ Stops them on his spear's-end. ■* Dried 
 peas, to prevent the enemy getting a firm footing. 
 
 We come now to the Canterbury Tales^ and as 
 from the portrait-gallery of the Prologue we can 
 only take two examples, two have been chosen 
 which show in effective contrast the good and bad 
 sides of religion in Chaucer's day. Here is the 
 good Parson : 
 
 A good man was ther of religioun, 
 And was a PoURE Persoun of a Toun ; 
 But riche he was of hooly thoght and werk ; 
 He was also a lerned man, a clerk, 
 That Cristes Gospel trewely wolde preche : 
 His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche. 
 Benygne he was, and wonder diligent, 
 And in adversitee ful pacient ; 
 
 And swich he was y-preved ofte sithes. times 
 
 Ful looth were hym to cursen for his tithes, 
 But rather wolde he yeven, out of doute, give 
 
 Unto his poure parisshens aboute, 
 Of his offrying and eek of his substaunce : 
 He koude in litel thyng have suffisaunce. 
 Wyd was his parisshe, and houses fer asonder, 
 
38 
 
 But he ne lafte nat, for reyn ne thonder. 
 
 In siknesse nor in meschief to visite 
 
 The ferreste in his parisshe, much and lite, rich and poor 
 
 Upon his feet, and in his hand a staf. 
 
 This noble ensample to his sheepe he yaf gave 
 
 That firste he wroghte and afterward he taughte. 
 
 Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte, those 
 
 And this figure he added eek therto. 
 
 That if gold ruste what shal iren doo ? 
 
 For if a preest be foul, on whom we truste, 
 
 No wonder is a lewed man to ruste ; 
 
 And shame it is, if a prest take keepe, heed 
 
 A shiten shepherde and a clene sheepe. 
 
 Wei oghte a preest ensample for to yive 
 
 By his clennesse how that his sheepe sholde lyve. 
 
 He sette nat his benefice to hyre 
 
 And leet his sheepe encombred in the myre, left 
 
 And ran to Londoun, unto Seint Poules, 
 
 To seken hym a chaunterie for soules ; 
 
 Or with a bretherhed to been withholde, i 
 
 But dwelte at hoom and kepte wel his folde. 
 
 So that the wolf ne made it nat myscarie, — 
 
 He was a shepherde, and noght a mercenarie : 
 
 And though he holy were and vertuous. 
 
 He was to synful man nat despitous, 
 
 Ne of his speche daungerous ne digne, difficult nor haughty 
 
 But in his techyng discreet and benygne. 
 
 To drawen folk to hevene by fairnesse, 
 
 By good ensample, this was his bisynesse : 
 
 But it were any persone obstinat. 
 
 What so he were, of heigh or lough estat, 
 
 Hym wolde he snybben sharply for the nonys. reprove 
 
 A bettre preest I trowe that nowher noon ys ; 
 
 He waited after no pompe and reverence, 
 
 Ne maked him a spiced conscience. 
 
 But Cristes loore, and his Apostles twelve, 
 
 He taughte, but first he folwed it hym selve. 
 
 {Canterbury Tales^ Prologue, 11. 477-528.) 
 
 1 To lodge in a monastery. 
 
 And here the rogue of a Pardoner : 
 
 With hym ther rood a gentil Pardoner i 
 
 Of Rouncivale, his freend and his compeer, 
 That streight was comen fro the court of Rome. 
 
39 
 
 Ful loude he soong Com hider, love, to me I 
 This Somonour bar to hym a stif burdoun, accompaniment 
 Was never trompe of half so greet a soun. 
 This Pardoner hadde heer as yelow as wex hair 
 
 But smothe it heng as doth a strike of flex ; hank of flax 
 By ounces henge his lokkes that he hadde, In small pieces 
 And therwith he his shuldres overspradde. 
 But thynne it lay by colpons oon and oon ; 2 
 
 But hood, for jolitee, ne wered he noon. 
 For it was trussed up in his walet. 
 Hym thoughte he rood al of the newe jet ; fashion 
 
 Dischevelee, save his cappe, he rood al bare. 3 
 
 Swiche glarynge eyen hadde he as an hare, 
 A vernycle hadde he sowed upon his cappe ; 4 
 
 His walet lay biforn hym in his lappe 
 Bret-ful of pardon, come from Rome al hoot. Brimful 
 A voys he hadde as smal as hath a goot. 
 But of his craft, fro Berwyk unto Ware 
 Ne was ther swich another pardoner. 
 For in his male he hadde a pilwe-beer, bag— pillow-case 
 Which that, he seyde, was oure lady veyl ; lady's 
 
 He seyde he hadde a gobet of the seyl piece 
 
 That Sei'nt Peter hadde, whan that he wente 
 Upon the see, til Jhesu Crist hym hente. 
 He hadde a croys of latoun, ful of stones, cross of brass 
 And in a glas he hadde pigges bones. 
 But with thise relikes, whan that he fond found 
 
 A poure person dwellynge upon lond. 
 Upon a day he gat hym moore moneye 
 Than that the person gat in monthes tweye ; 
 And thus with feyned flaterye and japes 
 He made the person and the peple his apes. 
 But, trewely to tellen atte laste. 
 He was in chirche a noble ecclesiaste ; 
 Wei koude he rede a lessoun or a storie, 
 But alderbest he song an Offertorie ; best of all 
 
 For wel he wiste, whan that song was songe. 
 He moste preche, and wel affile his tonge polish 
 
 To Wynne silver, as he ful wel koude ; 
 Therefore he song the murierly and loude. more merrily 
 {Cunterbury Tales, Prologue, 11. 669-714-) 
 
 1 That is, with the Summoner. 2 i^ shreds, lock by lock 
 3 Dishevelled, with his hair loose. ^ Copy of the supposed imprint 
 of Christ's face on the handkerchief of St Veronica, which the 
 Pardoner might have seen at Rome. 
 
40 
 
 From the Tales themselves we have already 
 quoted an example of Chaucer's chivalrous style ; 
 our second extract exhibits him where he is per- 
 haps at his strongest of all — as the teller of tales of 
 low life, tales of which he can only have received 
 from others the mere outline, while his expansions 
 of them are full of humour and individuality. As 
 to the stories of this class, Chaucer himself ad- 
 vised some of his readers to ' choose another page,' 
 and the folk- story of the * Fox and Hen 'assigned to 
 the Nonnes Prest is the only one of them which 
 can be recommended virginibiis puerisquej but 
 this incident from the * Reeves Tale,' of how a 
 knavish miller frustrated the device of the two 
 Cambridge clerks to prevent him from stealing 
 their corn, stands by itself, and is altogether 
 delightful. The clerks, it should be said, are 
 northerners, and speak in the northern dialect. 
 Symond is the miller : 
 
 * Symond,' quod John, * by God, nede has na peer, 
 Hym boes serve hymself that has na swayn, i, 2 
 
 Or elles he is a fool, as clerkes sayn. 
 Our manciple I hope he will be deed expect 
 
 Swa werkes ay the wanges in his heed ; 3, 4, 5, 6 
 
 And forthy is I come and eek Alayn. therefore 
 
 To grynde oure corn and carie it ham agayn. home 
 
 I pray yow spede us heythen that ye may. ' hence 
 
 ' It shal be doon,' quod Symkyn, * by my fay ! 
 What wol ye doon, whil that it is in hande ?' 
 
 * By God, right by the hopur wil I stande,' hopper 
 Quod John, * and se how that the corn gas in. goes 
 
 Yet saugh I never, by my fader kyn. 
 How that the hopur wagges til and fra.' to and fro 
 
 Aleyn answerde, 'John, and wiltow swa? 
 Thanne wil I be bynethe, by my croun ! 
 And se how that the mele falles doun 
 Into the trough, — that sal be my disport ; 
 For, John, y-faith, I may been of youre sort, 
 I is as ille a millere as are ye.' 
 
 This millere smyled of hir nycetee, foolishness 
 
 And thoghte, ' Al this nys doon but for a wyle ; 7 
 
 They wene that no man may hem bigile ; 
 
41 
 
 But by my thrift yet shal I blere hir eye, cheat them 
 
 For al the sleighte in hir philosophye. 
 
 The more queynte crekes that they make, cunning devices 
 
 The more wol I stele whan I take. 
 
 In stide of flour yet wol I yeve hem bren ; bran 
 
 The gretteste clerkes been noght wisest men, 
 
 As whilom to the wolf thus spak the mare ; 8 
 
 Of al hir art ne couhte I noght a tare.' 
 
 Out at the dore he gooth ful pryvely, 
 Whan that he saugh his tyme softely. 
 He looketh up and doun til he hath founde 
 The clerkes hors, ther as it stood y-bounde. 
 Bihynde the mille, under a levesel, bower 
 
 And to the hors he goth hym faire and wel ; 
 He strepeth of the brydel right anon, strips off 
 
 And whan the hors' was laus, he gynneth gon 9, 10 
 
 Toward the fen, ther wilde mares renne, — run 
 
 Forth with ' Wehee ! ' thurgh thikke and thurgh thenne. 
 
 This millere goth agayn, no word he seyde, 
 But doth his note and with the clerkes pleyde, business 
 Til that hir corn was faire and wel y-grounde ; 
 And whan the.mele is sakked and y-bounde, 
 This John goth out, and fynt his hors away, findeth 
 
 And gan to crie, ' Harrow !' and, * Weyl-away ! 
 Oure hors is lorn ; Alayn, for Goddes banes bones 
 
 Stepe on thy feet ; com out, man, al atanes ! at once 
 Alias, our wardeyn has his palfrey lorn !' 
 This Aleyn al forgat bothe mele and corn ; 
 Al was out of his mynde his housbondrie. 
 ' What, whilk way is he geen ? ' he gan to crie. 
 
 The wyf cam lepynge inward with a ren ; 
 She seyde, ' Alias, youre hors goth to the fen 
 With wilde mares, as faste as he may go ; 
 Unthank come on his hand that boond hym so, 
 And he that bettre sholde han knyt the reyne ! ' 
 
 ' Alias,' quod John, ' Aleyn, for Cristes peyne. 
 Lay doun thy swerd, and I wil myn alswa. also 
 
 I is ful wight, God waat, as is a raa ; u 
 
 By Goddes herte ! he sal nat scape us bathe. both 
 
 Why nadstow pit the capul in the lathe ? 12 
 
 Il-hayl, by God, Aleyn, thou is a fonne.' Ill-luck— fool 
 
 Thise sely clerkes han ful faste y-ronne innocent 
 
 Toward the fen, bothe Aleyn and eek John ; 
 And whan the millere saugh that they were gon. 
 
42 
 
 He half a busshel of hir flour hath take, 
 
 And bad his wyf go knede it in a cake. 
 
 He seyde, * I trowe the clerkes were aferd r 
 
 Yet kan a millere make a clerkes herd, befool 
 
 For al his art ; now lat hem goon hir weye ! 
 
 Lo wher they goon ; ye, lat the children pleye ; 
 
 They gete hym nat so lightly, by my croun ! ' 
 
 (* Reeves Tale,' Canterbury Tales, A. 4026-4099.) 
 
 1 Behoves. 2 No servant. ^ go. 4 (Northern plural) work. 
 5 Cheek-teeth. ^ Head. ^ is only done for a trick. ^ gee ' Rey- 
 nard the Fox.' 9 Loose, i*^ Begins to go. 11 I am full swift, God 
 knows, as is a roe. 12 Why didn't you put the palfrey in the stable? 
 
 Lastly, as a contrast to these broad humours, 
 here from the * Prioresses Tale ' is a return to 
 Chaucer's earlier manner of tenderness and devo- 
 tion, no less graceful and pleasing than of yore, and 
 written with far greater mastery. The legend is one 
 of many which good men — Heaven forgive them ! — 
 all over Europe sincerely believed, of a little Chris- 
 tian boy wantonly murdered by the Jews : 
 
 A litel scole of cristen folk ther stood 
 Doun at the ferther ende, in which ther were 
 Children an heepe, y-comen of Cristen blood, 
 That lerned in that scole yeer by yere 
 Swich manere doctrine as men used there, — 
 This is to seyn, to syngen, and to rede. 
 As smale children doon in hire childhede. 
 
 Among thise children was a wydwes sone, 
 
 A litel clergeoun, seven yeer of age, chorister 
 
 That day by day to scole was his wone ; wont 
 
 And eek also, where as he saugh thymage saw the image 
 
 Of Cristes mooder, he hadde in usage. 
 
 As hym was taught, to knele adoun and seye 
 
 His Ave Marie, as he goth by the weye. 
 
 Thus hath this wydwe hir litel sone y-taught 
 
 Oure blisful lady, Cristes mooder deere, 
 
 To worshipe ay, and he forgate it naught. 
 
 For sely child wol alday soone leere, — i, 2, 3 
 
 But ay whan I remembre on this mateere, 
 
43 
 
 Seint Nicholas stant ever in my presenv. 
 For he so yong to Crist dide reverence. 
 
 This litel child his litel book lernynge, 
 As he sat in the scole at his prymer. 
 He Alma redemptoris herde synge, 
 As children lerned hire antiphoner ; 
 And, as he dorste, he drough hym ner and ner, 5 
 
 And herkned ay the wordes and the note, 
 Til he the firste vers koude al by rote. 
 
 Noght wiste he what this Latyn was to seye, 
 
 For he so yong and tendre was of age ; 
 
 But on a day his felawe gan he preye 
 
 Texpounden hym this song in his langage, 
 
 Or telle him why, this song was in usage ; 
 
 This preyde he hym to construe and declare 
 
 Ful often time upon his knowes bare. knee 
 
 His felawe, which that elder was than he, 
 Answerde hym thus : * This song I have herd seye 
 Was maked of oure blisfiil lady free, noble 
 
 Hire to salue, and eek hire for to preye salute 
 
 To been oure help and socour whan we deye : 
 I kan na moore expounde in this mateere, 
 I lerne song, I kan but smal grammeere.' know but little 
 
 * And is this song maked in reverence 
 Of Cristes mooder ? ' seyde this innocent. 
 * Now certes, I wol do my diligence 
 To konne it al, er Cristemasse is went, 
 Though that I for my prymer shal be shent, scolded 
 
 And shal be beten thries in an houre, thrice 
 
 I wol it konne oure lady for to honoure ! ' 
 
 His felawe taughte hym homward prively 
 Fro day to day, til he koude it by rote. 
 And thanne he song it wel and boldely 
 Fro word to word, acordynge with the note. 
 Twies a day it passed thurgh his throte, Twice 
 
 To scoleward and homward whan he wente ; 
 On Cristes mooder set was his entente. 
 
 ('Prioresses Tale,' Canterbury Tales^ B. 1685-1740.) 
 
 ^ Innocent. 2 Always. ^ Learn. * While at his mother's breast. 
 ^ Drew hinm nearer and nearer. 
 
44 
 
 3 prose it is sufficient to say that, 
 
 could write with ease and simplicity 
 
 nis guard, in his attempts at more ornate 
 
 xie never attained to the artistic mastery 
 
 n everywhere marks his verse. 
 
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