Epoch Men.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.-THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. "Chaucer, the Homer of our poetry, and the true father of English literature." -G. L. Craik.

FROM the era of the Conquest (1066) till the days of Chaucer the literature of England consisted almost entirely of translations or imitations of Norman chronicles and romances. It was French in style, idiom, and material.

Though an Anglo-Saxon literature, of considerable power, talent, and value, had previously been current, it shortly thereafter declined in favour and influence, and sunk, though it did not perish, under the rivalry of the imported and enforced civilization and culture of the Normano-Franks. The haughty aristocracy of conquest could not employ the language of the servile throng, and insisted on the general use of the Norman tongue by the vanquished. The steady undercurrents of common daily life, however, gave the Anglo-Saxons sufficient opportunity for keeping in living usage the speech of their forefathers. Ceasing, by the gradual force of circumstances, to be embodied in writing, or employed in popular public converse, the strict grammatical forms of inflection and syntax were neglected, or forgotten: language became simpler and looser in texture by becoming wholly oral. In this stage of transition it is now called semi-Saxon. For a time, the exotic tongue appeared likely to get acclimatized; and great care was taken to aid its dissemination and growth. Children were taught in French, that they might know French, and that, by this early training, their vernacular might be supplanted, not only in favour, but in use. Though this was done, we have it on the authority of Robert of Gloucester (about 1272)—

"Ac lowe men holdeth to Englyss and to their kin speech;" yet Robert of Bourne (about 1330) writes his chronicle

"For tho[se] that in this land wonn (dwell)

That neither] Latin no[r] Frankys conn (know)."

This persistent and almost revoltful adherence to the vernacular was carried further by "John Cornwaile, a Maister of Gramer," who, about three years after the publication of Chaucer's "Court of Love," began to teach children to construe their Latin into English, instead of (as had been the wont), into French. His example was quickly followed by others, and became all but universal.

As a general summary of the facts of history, it may be affirmed that [1st] from the Conquest till the demise of Stephen (1154), the French language was forcefully maintained as that of the court, the law, and the ordinary intercourse of the conquerors with their vassals; [2nd] from the accession of Henry II., till the close of the long reign of Henry III. (1272), the native Anglo-Saxon existed in revolt against, and in spite of, the Norman influence used for its suppression; and [3rd] during the reigns of the three Edwards (1272-1377), the "Dame's tongue" of England regained its olden power. The French became thereafter only a graff into, not the root-stock of the speech of Englishmen.

Various political events conduced to this end, and acted as auxiliaries to the sturdy persistence of Saxondom, in the employment and retention of the national language. The wars of the kings made the people's attachment to their persons and plans necessary; and hence leniency was extended to the silent and boastless infringement of such laws as did not essentially inhere in the feudal system. The growth of trade increased the power of the Commons, and the need of their wealth led to many concessions of the (so-called) prerogatives of sovereignty. The contests which arose between England and France occasioned a feeling of enmity for everything French, which materially influenced both nobles and people, and quickened where it did not originate the sentiment of nationality in all classes. In these and other ways, the Normano-Frankish language lost dominion, and a free field was left for the careful culture of the native language of England.

Chaucer was a far-seeing, forethoughtful man, who kept his eye well fixed upon causes, and was quick and sure at tracing their effects. His contemporary, Gower, in the uncertainties of the time, gave hostages to fame, and made appeal to posterity in the three prevalent languages of the period, viz.-of the church and learning, Latin; of the court and fashion, French; of the people and progress, English;-but Chaucer had no such hesitancy. Though skilled in the learned tongues, he placed himself unreservedly at the head of the minstrels of his native land, with his earliest poem, and he continued to aim at and to seek popularity and influence throughout the years of a long life by the production of distinctively English

by giving the colloquial forms of his own land's language permanency, consistency, and literary existence; by applying the conserving magic of genius to the speech of the people, and by saturating and colouring the words of the common vocabulary of his time with the imperishable hues of thought, sympathy, life. Thus he became the ancestor of that long line of descendants who have planted "the seeds and pregnant forms" of thought “that make the life of souls" in the fields of English literature, and cause them to be fertile with " a life beyond life.”

Not long after that defeat which Edward III. endured in France, the hostility of England took the form of an Act of Parliament (1362), for the discontinuance of the use of the French language in the pleadings and impleadings of the courts of law. There can be little doubt that Chaucer-if not as a courtier, at least as a poet, who had proven the scope, sufficiency, and capability of English for the utterance of the whole spirit of life-had considerable influence in effecting this enactment of that recently-instituted but essentially English body-the House of Commons.

English was no more to be the patois of serfs, but the speech of freemen. Conquerors and conquered had now grown into one people. The indomitably sturdy Saxon had risen from the crush and pressure of foreign domination, and took with him, into the spheres of his activity everywhere, that rude mother-tongue, inflexile, and rudely welded together as it was, in his ascent. The fine, quickening impulses of patriotism, the flushing animation of martial enthusiasm, the prophetic, far-forecast shadows of a Reformation, the pomp of chivalry, the grandeur of a mighty court, the intense activities of commerce, the thronging might of a fresh and active lifehood, played in and upon the poet's heart with their mystic influences, and stirred its depths of affectionate thoughtfulness to effort and success.

Chaucer, in an era of unshapen and formless speech, rung out the great thoughts of his intellect in brave, bold, homely, hearty, vivid, vigorous words,—

"And as much as then

The English language could express for men,

He made it do,"

by following his own common-sense maxim, "Let us show our fantasyes in such wordes as we learneden of our dames tongue."

Chaucer's practice "jumped" at once with the policy of the king, and the wishes of the people. He did not sculpture into statesqueness from a single material-Parian or Pentelic marble, like the Greek of Homer-but fused into one composite mass the courtier's French, the scholar's Latin, and the people's Saxon, and cast them into grace, beauty, vraisemblance, form, and life-like reality, in the moulds of his ingeniously conceptive mind. If the result is not pellucid and unstainedly white and flawless, the gray lines and the spotty graining of the amalgam only serve to heighten our ideas of the power and genius which wrought together into such proportionate harmoniousness elements so seemingly diverse and inaffinite. In his hands English ceased to be a dialect, and became a speech. It was fitting and right, then, that a mandate should go forth from Britain's highest legislative councils that the laws of England should cease to be appealed to or enforced in an alien tongue, which had "become much unknown in the realm." We can almost fancy the great delight with which he,

"Who first enriched our English with his rhymes,"

would listen to the compliments of Petrarch upon this point of comparison between Dante, "the great poet of Itaille," and himself, viz.,-his being the creator of the literary language of his country.

It is only fair to believe that the talent and genius displayed by the client of the Duke of Lancaster were somewhat recognized and valued both by Sovereign and people, and that they operated as prevailing circumstances, in addition to his excellent business habits and ability, in his court appointments; and indeed we shall soon show reason for receiving this supposition as highly probable, if not actually proven. But we must, at present, continue our narrative.

Chaucer's Genoese mission must have been managed to the king's satisfaction, for almost immediately after his return, he received a grant-23rd April, 1374 from his regal employer, of a pitcher of wine (about a gallon) daily; and in June of the same year he was appointed, by royal patent, comptroller of the customs on wool, hides, &c., in the port of London. And that it might be expressly seen that this was not a "job" invented to provide a sinecure office for a needy, greedy hanger-on of courts, but a bonû fide transaction, acknowledging and requiring business integrity, punctuality, and capacities, it is ordained "That the said Geoffrey Chaucer write with his own hand his rolls touching the said office, and continually reside there, and do and execute all things pertaining to the said office, in his own proper person, and not by his substitute." Here we find it implied that there was some known quality in Chaucer which rendered this injunction needful, not for his discouragement, but for the maintenance of honest conduct in the public service. This very prohibition is an attestation of the Court's knowledge of Chaucer's literary labours, and the popularity of his writings. In 1375, Edward III. conferred on him the wardenship of the heir of Sir Edmond Staplegate, with a salary (£104) equivalent to £1,872 per annum. The Duke of Lancaster endowed him with an annuity of (£10) £180; and in 1376, he got a grant of forfeited wool to the amount of £1,262 of the present currency (£71 4s. 6d.). Of his "manner of life" at this period we get the following autobiographic glimpse from the Book of Fame" (which dates about this time), Book II., in which the living golden eagle says:

66

Instead of rest and of new things,

Thou goest home to thine house anon,
And all so dumb as any stone,
Thou sittest at another book,

Till fully dazed is thy look."*

Chaucer and Froissart were fellow yeomen of the court prior to 1368, when the latter quitted England. From the French poet and chroniclist, the author of "The Flower and the Leaf" may have received the ground-thought of that poem in a description of the floral games instituted in 1324 by Clementina Isaure, Countess of Toulouse. Chaucer, at any rate, alludes to a song of that quaint, garrulous old fellow's, in that poem, which was probably written about this time of learned and leisurely competence, when daily duty only gave zest to creative fancy. It is possible, however, that Chaucer, in his continental embassages, may have been not merely a spectator of, but a sharer in, these affected and at that time fashionable sports.

The diplomatic services of Chaucer were twice called into requisition in the early part of 1377, on secret affairs for his Majesty. We have it, on the authority of Froissart, that one of these missions-for which letters of protection were granted-was the negotiation of a treaty of marriage between Richard, Prince of Wales, and Mary, daughter of Charles V., King of France (1364-1380). The persons employed in this important embassy were Sir Guichard D'Angle, afterwards Earl of Huntingdon, Sir Richard Sturry, and Geoffrey Chaucer. The former were evidently the show ambassadors, and the untitled gentleman was as plainly the worker-the managing partner of the firm. During these absences, he appointed his fellow-poet, Gower, and one Richard Forrester, his legal represen. tatives in matters of business.

In this same year (1377), Edward III. died at Richmond, June 21st, and Richard II., his grandchild, son of the Black Prince, who had died in the preceding year, "reigned in his stead," though only in his eleventh year. A council of nine was appointed to manage the affairs of the nation, but his uncles, the Dukes of Lancaster, York, and Gloucester, had the real direction of affairs in their hands. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that Chaucer's annuities and offices were confirmed to him by the new sovereign, and *To this extract may be added the following, from the prologue to "The Legende of Gode Women," viz. :

"On bookes for to read I me delight,

And to them give I faith and full credence;
And in mine heart have them in reverence

So heartily, that there is game none,
That from my bookes maketh me to gone."

In the "Dutchesse," he says that reading is—

"Better play

Than either at chess or tubbes."