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 observations), 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 Yorkshire 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 Bukton, giving him his 'counseil touching 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.

In truth, it is to be feared that the last nine years of Chaucer's life 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 instalments 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 restingplace in what we now know as Poets' Corner.

In estimating Chaucer's position among English poets we have to consider his work in relation to that of his predecessors and contemporaries, and, secondly, the extent of his actual achievement. 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 introduced to exclude the author of Pearl, 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 finding 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 oldworld things. Even Langland, who was continually 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-line 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 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 humorous lines in The Knightes Tale'—

His spirit chaunged hous and wenté ther,
As I cam never, I kan nat tellen wher:
Therfore I stynte, I nam no divinistre
Of soulés 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 inconclusiveness of the Dethe of the Duchesse and the Parlement of Foules, and the (unfinished condition 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 developing 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 approached. Where he should be ranked, as compared 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, varying easily with the subject, full of his own individuality, everywhere controlled and enlivened by his abounding humour, and written in verse of neverfailing music and metrical power. He is a great artist, with an artist's self-consciousness; at the same time he is absolutely 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 sentimental young poet, weaving his own sorrows, real or

But as it were, a maséd thyng
Alway in poynt to falle a-doun;
For sorwful ymagynacioun
Is alway hoolly in my mynde.

And wel ye woot agaynės kynde
Hit were to liven in this wyse,
For Nature wolde nat suffyse
To noon erthly creature
Not long tyme to endure
Withouté 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,
Hath sleyn my spirit of quyknesse
That I have lost al lustihede.
Suche fantasyes been in myn hede
So I noot what is best to do.

But men myghte axé me why so

alike

dazed

wholly against nature

know not ask

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 by Pynson (c. 1492) and Wynkyn de Worde (1498). Caxton also printed the Parlement of 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 1561. In 1598 and 1602 editions appeared edited by Thomas Speght, and others were issued in 1687 and 1721, the latter edited by Urry. 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 Ellesmere, which is now generally considered the best. From these texts Professor Skeat in 1894 edited for the Clarendon Press The Complete 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.

(Dethe of Blaunche the Duchesse, II. 1-42.)

The gentle melancholy of this prelude finds a more 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-outé dethe; and if I shal not feyne,
My purpos was to Pitė to compleyne
Upon the crueltee and tirannye

Of Love, that for my trouthé doth me dye.

And when that I, by lengthe of certeyn yeres,

Had evere in oon a tymẻ sought to speke,
To Pité ran I, al bespreynt with teres,
To preyen hir on Crueltee me a-wreke;
But er I myght with any worde out-breke,
Or tellen any of my peynės smerte,
I fond hir deed and buried in an herte.

alike

sprinkled

avenge

found her dead

Thus am I slayn sith that Pitė is deed;
Allas the day! that ever hit shulde falle!
What maner man dar now holde up his heed?
To whom shal any sorwful herté calle?
Now Crueltee hath cast to sleen us alle,
In ydel hope, folk redélees of peyne,—

Sith she is deed, to whom shul we compleyne? (Compleynt of the Dethe of Pitee, II. 1-28.) 1 Nearer. 2 Began to press. 3 Addressed myself. 4 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 Alla had married Constance after the miracle which proved her innocent of a murder of which she 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 Ichild are to be thrust out to sea in a rudderless boat in three days' time:

He that me kepté fro the false blame,

While I was on the lond amongės yow,

He kan me kepe from harm, and eek fro shame,
In saltė 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-rudde

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,
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.

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 othrẻ folk was Criseydá
In widwes habit blak; but nathéles,
Right as our firstė lettre is now an A,
In beauté first so stood she makėlės:
Her goodly loking gladed al the prees;
N'as neverė seyn thing to ben praysed derre,
Nor under cloudé blak so bright a sterre,

As was Criseyde, as folk seyde everychone
That her behelden in her blake wede.
And yit she stood ful lowe and stille alone
Behinden othrè folk in litel brede

And nigh the dore, ay under shamės drede,
Simple of atir and debonaire of chere,
With ful assured loking and manére.

widows

matchless

crowd

1, 2

star

breadth

3 attire

that same

deprive

This Troilus, as he was wont to gide
His yonge knightės, ladde hem up and doun
In th'ilké large temple on every side,
Biholding ay the ladies of the toun,
Now here, now there; for no devocioun
Hadde he to non, to reven him his reste,
But gan to preyse and lakken whom him leste. disparage
And in his walk ful faste he gan to wayten
If knight or squier of his companye
Gan for to sike or lete his ýen bayten
On any woman that he coude espýe :
He wolde smile and holden it folýe,
And seye him thus, 'God wot, she slepeth softe
For love of thee, whan thou tornest ful ofte!

watch

sigh-feed

1 There was not. 2 More dearly. 3 In dread of being shamed (she was daughter of the Greek Calchas). 4 Common, foolish. 5 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 description of the supreme moment of love's reward:

O, soth is seid, that heled for to be
As of a fevere, or other gret siknésse,
Men mostė drinke, as men may alday see,
Ful bittré drinke; and for to han gladnésse,
Men drinken ofté peyne and gret distresse :
I mene it here, as for this áventure

That thorugh a peyne hath founden al his cure.

And now swetnéssé semeth more swete
That bitternesse assayed was biforn;
For out of wo in blisse now they flete;
Non swich they felten sin they were born.
Now is this bet than bothè two be lorn!
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,
As she that justé cause had him to triste,
Made him swich feste, it joyé 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 wodébinde,
Gan ech of hem in armés other winde.

float

since better

sorrow trust

I

abashed stops herdsman talk

hedges-stirring

And as the newe abayséd nightingale
That stinteth first whan she biginneth singe,
Whan that she hereth any herdé tale,
Or in the hegges any wight steringe,
And after siker doth her vois out-ringe; in sure tones
Right so Criseydá, whan her dredė stente,
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,
And sodeinly rescous doth him escapen,
And from his deth is brought in sikernesse ;
For al this world, in swich presént gladnésse
Is Troilus, and hath his lady swete.--
With worsé hap God lat us neverė mete!

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,
And fond two othré ladies sete and she
Withinne a paved parlour; and they three
Herden a mayden reden hem the geste
Of al the sege of Thebes, whil hem leste.
Quod Pandarus, 'Madámė, God you see,
With al your book and al the companýe!'—
'Ey, uncle, now welcome y-wis!' quod she;
And up she ros, and by the hond in hye

passed

seated

story

surely

ceased

She took him faste, and seydė, 'This night thrye-
To goodé mote it torne !-of you I mette.'
And with that word she doun on bench him sette.

hastily thrice

dreamt

must

If God wile, al this yer!' quod Pandarus;

2

'But I am sory that I have you let

will hindered

To herken of your book ye preisen thus.
For Goddės love, what seith it? Tel it us!
Is it of love? O, som good ye me lere!'
'Uncle!' quod she, 'your maistresse is not here!'

With that they gonnen laughe; and tho she seyde,
"This rómaunce is of Thebes, that we rede;
And we han herd how that King Laius deyde
Thorugh Edippus his sone, and al that dede;
And here we stinten at thise lettres rede,
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 Thebės, and the care;
For herof ben ther maked bookės twelve.
But lat be this, and tel me how ye fare.

teach

1, 2

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 Troilus, we may take the Knightes Tale' out of its place in the Canterbury 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 overhears 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 translating the Teseide of Boccaccio, all the vivid and dramatic touches are his own :

I, 2

fight out

appointed

Arcite is riden anon unto the toun, And on the morwe, er it were dayės light, Ful prively two harneys hath he dight, Bothe suffisaunt and meté to darreyne The bataille in the feeld betwix hem tweyne; And on his hors, allone as he was born, He carieth al the harneys hym biforn : And in the grove, at tyme and place y-set, This Arcite and this Palamon ben met. To chaungen gan the colour in hir face, Right as the hunters, in the regne of Trace, That stondeth at the gappe with a spere, Whan hunted is the leoun or the bere, And hereth hym come russhyng in the greves, And breketh both bowės and the leves, And thynketh, Heere cometh my mortal enemy, With-outé faile he moot be deed or I; For outher I moot sleen hym at the gappe, Or he moot sleen me, if that me myshappe': So ferden they in chaungyng of hir hewe, 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 sharpė sperės stronge, They foynen ech at other wonder longe. Thou myghtest wene that this Palamoun, In his fightyng were a wood leoun,

3

groves

must be dead either

4, 5

fence

mad

furiously

fel:

He was war of Arcite and Palamon
That foughten breme, as it were bores two.
The brightė swerdes wenten to and fro
So hidously, that with the leestė strook
It semed as it wolde fille an ook ;
But what they were no thyng he ne woot.
This duc his courser with his sporès smoot,
And at a stert he was bitwix hem two,
And pulled out a swerd, and cridė, ‘Hoo!
Namoore, up peyne of lesynge of youre heed!
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 lystės roially?'.

upon

('Knightes Tale,' Canterbury Tales, A. 11. 1628-1662.

1683-1713.)

1 Suits of armour. 2 Got ready. 3 Kingdom of Thrace. 4 Be haved. 5 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 Women, and choose from this a characteristic passage on Chaucer's favourite season, Spring, not unlike that at the end of the Parlement of Foules, but written with more freedom:

Forgeten had the erthe his pore estate
Of wyntir, that him naked made and mate,
And with his swerd of colde so sore greved;
Now hath the atempré sonne al that releved
That naked was, and clad it new agayne.
The smale foulés, of the sesoun fayne,
That of the panter and the nette ben scaped,
Upon the foweler, that hem made a-whaped
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 foulé cherle, that, for his coveytise,

forlorn

temperate

a bag-net

scared