V discoveries, and when they were declared to be false, CHAP. that he had offered to prove them by arms to be true; and that when the king and his princes "by huge LIFE AND wordes and great, looked after variaunce" in his speech, he had prepared his body for "Mars's doing, if any contraried his sawes." "34 He mentions also his exile, and that those whom he had served, never refreshed him with the value of the least coined plate; that when he was imprisoned they fast hied; that some owed him money for their commons; that he had paid some of their expenses till they were turned out of Zealand; that none even gave him any thing for the journies he had made; that some of them took money for his chamber, and put the profit in their purse; that he had fled, as long as he could, to conceal their privity; and those who owed him money would pay nothing, because they thought his return impossible.35 He asserts strongly his integrity while in office. To what part of Chaucer's life, to which of the public events of Richard's reign, these personal evils are to be referred, is mere matter of conjecture, and must remain matter of doubt. There are other periods besides the one usually selected, to which they are applicable." 34 Chauc. Test. 278. 284. 35 Ib. p. 278. 36 While I administered the office of common doing as in ruling of the stablishments emongs the people, I defouled never my conscience for no manner deede, but ever by wit and by counsaile of the wisest, the matters weren drawen to their right endes.' p. 279. These expressions may allude to the royal buildings and establishments of which he was appointed the comptroller. Mr. Godwin refers them to his being concerned in the city troubles of John of Northampton. I would myself rather apply them to a later period. The stablishments' mentioned in the preceding note suit better his situation of clerk of the royal buildings, than the mere receipt of custom. The continued favors from Richard make it unlikely that he had joined any party against the court. The leave of absence for a month, in 1384, and the permission to appoint a deputy in 1385, are against the supposition of his having been concerned with John of Northampton. The POEMS OF CHAUCER. BOOK VIII. ENGLISH POETRY. A few more particulars of his life are intimated in some of his poems. We find him complaining in his HISTORYOF Dream, a poem written in his youth, that he was then in a state of nervous melancholy and mental indifference, from a habit of sleeplessness;38 and that he was suffering a heaviness, and dread of death. He refers to a sickness, which had lasted eight years, as the probable cause of it.4o In his Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, he describes himself as pre The protection given him in 1398, implies that he was intermeddling in dangerous business for the king. It was in Sept. 1397 that Gloucester was murdered, and the next year Richard began those tyrannical and illegal measures, in which, from this singular protection, I am tempted to infer that Chaucer was assisting; for that actually states, that he was then transacting for the king, in various parts of England, ardua et urgentia negocia, for which he might be inquieted and prosecuted (impla citari.) On this supposition, it may have been Henry who threw him into prison. That Henry, after his coronation, was kind to Richard's friends, we learn from his having been censured for it; and if he could forgive Salisbury, we may believe that Chaucer's genius and popularity would induce him not to leave the pleasing poet unpardoned or neglected. 38 I have great wonder by this light, How I live, for day, ne night I may not sleepe wel nigh nought, Chaucer's Dream, 320. 39 I ne may ne night ne morrow 40 I hold it to be a sickenesse That I have suffred this eight yore.—Ib. 41 44 V. LIFE AND POEMS OF ferring reading to every other amusement. In his CHA P. House of Fame, he alludes to his writing in his study, of a night, till his head became painfully affected.42 He intimates, that when his labor and reckoning were CHAUCER. done, he went home to be absorbed in reading instead of rest and novelties, and there lived like a hermit, except in abstinence.43 He closes this poem with a determination to read and study every day." He writes of alchymy in his Chanones Yemaune's Tale, as if he had understood and pursued it ;45 he builds this story upon it. His quotations from Seneca and Juvenal, and his translation of Boethius," announce his attention to the classics. Of Dante and Petrarch, he speaks repeatedly in terms of high commendation, as if their works had been his favorites.48 46 45 Cant. Tales, p. 138. İb. p. 361. 46 Ib. p. 53. 47 Chalmers' ed. 48 He calls Dante The wise poet of Florence,' Cant. Tales, p. 52, and often mentions him, as pp. 55. 127.—Of Petrarch, he says, The laureat poete whos rhetorike swete Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie.-p. 61. BOOK ENGLISH POETRY. On the usual detail of Chaucer's life, beyond these authentic circumstances; and on the reasonings, often HISTORYOF more ingenious than satisfactory, with which the additional surmises are supported; the former works of his able biographers and critics may be profitably consulted." They place his death in 1400. Tho I am not inclined to extend, with Leland, his life to the reign of Henry V.50 who acceded in 1413, yet I am not convinced that it ought not to be a few years later. But if his death be placed in 1400, still the year taken for his birth, will allow him to have been sixty years of age when he died; a term old enough for all the intimations that relate to his age. The chronology of Chaucer's works is as hypothetical as that of his life. That he wrote the Court of Love at eighteen, has been inferred from one of its lines, which yet seems to imply the contrary. 51 It would appear more natural that his first work should be his translation, "The Romaunt of the Rose;" a translation remarkable for rendering his author commonly line by line, and yet with the spirit and freedom of an original poem." 49 The principal of these are Leland's hasty sketch, Script. Brit. p. 419; Thomas Speght's Life, prefixed to his works in 1597; Francis Thynne's Animadversions, 1599, lately printed by Mr. Todd; Tyrwhitt's Life, prefixed to the Canterbury Tales; Mr. Alexander Chalmers' neat summary of his biography, in the first volume of his Poets; and Mr. Godwin's larger work. 50 Lel. Scrip. Brit. p. 424. Yet that Chaucer was dead in 1410, when John the Chaplain wrote, may be inferred from his expressions, noticed before. 51 He says, Love commanded him to see the Court of Love, 'Whan I was young, at eighteen yeare of age.' p. 367. This is not that he wrote the poem at eighteen. The imperfect tense was rather indicates, that tho he makes that age the time of the action of his poem, he had passed beyond it when he wrote it. 52 Of this poem, the first 5370 French lines are translated in about 5700 of Chaucer's. This is the part written by the author who planned and began the work. Chaucer then misses about 6000 lines of his original; 56 V. POEMS OF He refers, himself, to his Dream, as having been CHAP. made in his youth.53 This purports to be on Blanche, the duchess of Lancaster; 54 and as she died in 1369, LIFE AND this fact settles both the chronology of the poem, and CHAUCER. also of the time of Chaucer's youth.55 His Troilus and Creseide had been referred to his youth by Lydgate. His Legend of Good Women he wrote for the queen ;57 and in this he mentions, besides the poems already noticed, his House of Fame, the Parliament of Fowles, and Palamon and Arcite, his poem on the Magdalen, with some ballads and hymns.5. In his House of Fame, he says that he was old.50 His Canterbury Tales were and renders from verse 11,253 to 13,105 of the French second part, or 1852 lines, in about 1900 English, mostly exact, but sometimes paraphrased. 53 In his Man of Lawe's Prologue, he says of himself, ' in youthe he made of Ceyx and Alcyon,' p. 36, which is the first part of his Dream. 54 He says, And faire white she hite, That was my ladies name right, She was thereto faire and bright. She had not her name wrong.-p. 326. He mentions her in his Prologue to the Legend of Good Women- 55 He could not therefore have been born in 1328, as that would make him forty-one when he composed this poem. Taking the date of his birth as 1340, he would have been twenty-nine when this lady died, which is full late enough for his youth. In this poem he mentions the Romaunt of the Rose, p. 323. I would infer that he had then translated, or was translating it. 56 Chaucer himself, in his Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, mentions his Romaunt of the Rose and Creseide three times; but twice out of these he puts the Romaunt first: Thou hast translated the Romaunt of the Rose, And of Creside Or in the Rose, or else in Creseide. 57 And 'Whan this boke is made, yeve it the quene.'-p. 302. 58 Legend, p. 302. 59 His 'reckenings,' mentioned in note 43, have been thought by Mr.Tyrrwhit to warrant the placing this poem before he left the Customs, or before 1386. But it will full as well suit his situation as comptroller of the king's works from 1389, in which his patent orders him to provide all the materials, to pay for them, and to reckon the money for them ad computandum de denariis.' See before, note 17.-In 1389 he was, on our supposition, about fifty. In any year between that and 1399, he may have written his House of Fame. |