Why liked thee my yellow hair to seeMore than the boundes of mine honesty?Why liked me thy youth and thy fairnessAnd of thy tongue the infinite graciousness?O, had'st thou in thy conquest dead y-bee(n),Full myckle untruth had there died with thee.
Qualities and powers such as the above, have belonged to poets of very various times and countries before and after Chaucer. But in addition to these he most assuredly possessed others, which are not usual among the poets of our nation, and which, whencesoever they had come to him personally, had not, before they made their appearance in him, seemed indigenous to the English soil. It would indeed be easy to misrepresent the history of English poetry, during the period which Chaucer's advent may be said to have closed, by ascribing to it a uniformly solemn and serious, or even dark and gloomy, character. Such a description would not apply to the poetry of the period before the Norman Conquest, though, in truth, little room could be left for the play of fancy or wit in the hammered-out war-song, or in the long-drawn scriptural paraphrase. Nor was it likely that a contagious gaiety should find an opportunity of manifesting itself in the course of the versification of grave historical chronicles, or in the tranquil objective reproduction of the endless traditions of British legend. Of the popular songs belonging to the period after the Norman Conquest, the remains which furnish us with direct or indirect evidence concerning them hardly enable us to form an opinion. But we know that (the cavilling spirit of Chaucer's burlesque "Rhyme of Sir Thopas" notwithstanding) the efforts of English metrical romance in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were neither few nor feeble, although these romances were chiefly translations, sometimes abridgments to boot—even the Arthurian cycle having been only imported across the Channel, though it may have thus come back to its original home. There is some animation in at least one famous chronicle in verse, dating from about the close of the thirteenth century; there is real spirit in the war-songs of Minot in the middle of the fourteenth; and from about its beginnings dates a satire full of broad fun concerning the jolly life led by the monks. But none of these works or of those contemporary with them show that innate lightness and buoyancy of tone, which seems to add wings to the art of poetry. Nowhere had the English mind found so real an opportunity of poetic utterance in the days of Chaucer's own youth as in Langland's unique work, national in its allegorical form and in its alliterative metre; and nowhere had this utterance been more stern and severe.
No sooner, however, has Chaucer made his appearance as a poet, than he seems to show what mistress's badge he wears, which party of the two that have at most times divided among them a national literature and its representatives he intends to follow. The burden of his song is "Si douce est la marguerite:" he has learnt the ways of French gallantry as if to the manner born, and thus becomes, as it were without hesitation or effort, the first English love-poet. Nor—though in the course of his career his range of themes, his command of materials, and his choice of forms are widely enlarged—is the gay banner under which he has ranged himself ever deserted by him. With the exception of the "House of Fame," there is not one of his longer poems of which the passion of love, under one or another of its aspects, does not either constitute the main subject or (as in the "Canterbury Tales") furnish the greater part of the contents. It is as a love-poet that Gower thinks of Chaucer when paying a tribute to him in his own verse; it is to the attacks made upon him in his character as a love-poet, and to his consciousness of what he has achieved as such, that he gives expression in the "Prologue" to the "Legend of Good Women," where his fair advocate tells the God of Love:—
The man hath served you of his cunning,And furthered well your law in his writing,All be it that he cannot well indite,Yet hath he made unlearned folk delightTo serve you in praising of your name.
And so he resumes his favourite theme once more, to tell, as the "Man of Law" says, "of lovers up and down, more than Ovid makes mention of in his old 'Epistles.'" This fact alone—that our first great English poet was also our first English love-poet, properly so called—would have sufficed to transform our poetic literature through his agency.
What, however, calls for special notice, in connexion with Chaucer's special poetic quality of gaiety and brightness, is the preference which he exhibits for treating the joyous aspects of this many-sided passion. Apart from the "Legend of Good Women," which is specially designed to give brilliant examples of the faithfulness of women under circumstances of trial, pain, and grief, and from two or three of the "Canterbury Tales," he dwells with consistent preference on the bright side of love, though remaining a stranger to its divine radiance, which shines forth so fully upon us out of the pages of Spenser. Thus, in the "Assembly of Fowls" all is gaiety and mirth, as indeed beseems the genial neighbourhood of Cupid's temple. Again, in "Troilus and Cressid," the earlier and cheerful part of the love-story is that which he developes with unmistakeable sympathy and enjoyment, and in his hands this part of the poem becomes one of the most charming poetic narratives of the birth and growth of young love, which our literature possesses—a soft and sweet counterpart to the consuming heat of Marlowe's unrivalled "Hero and Leander." With Troilus it was love at first sight—with Cressid a passion of very gradual growth. But so full of nature is the narrative of this growth, that one is irresistibly reminded at more than one point of the inimitable creations of the great modern master in the description of women's love. Is there not a touch of Gretchen in Cressid, retiring into her chamber to ponder over the first revelation to her of the love of Troilus?—
Cressid arose, no longer there she stayed,But straight into her closet went anon,And set her down, as still as any stone,And every word gan up and down to wind,That he had said, as it came to her mind.
And is there not a touch of Clarchen in her—though with a difference—when from her casement she blushingly beholds her lover riding past in triumph:
So like a man of armes and a knightHe was to see, filled full of high prowess,For both he had a body, and a mightTo do that thing, as well as hardiness;And eke to see him in his gear him dress,So fresh, so young, so wieldly seemed he,It truly was a heaven him for to see.
His helm was hewn about in twenty places,That by a tissue hung his back behind,His shield was dashed with strokes of swords and macesIn which men mighte many an arrow findThat pierced had the horn and nerve and rind;And aye the people cried: "Here comes our joy,And, next his brother, holder up of Troy."
Even in the very "Book of the Duchess," the widowed lover describes the maiden charms of his lost wife with so lively a freshness as almost to make one forget that it is a LOST wife whose praises are being recorded.
The vivacity and joyousness of Chaucer's poetic temperament, however, show themselves in various other ways besides his favourite manner of treating a favourite theme. They enhance the spirit of his passages of dialogue, and add force and freshness to his passages of description. They make him amusingly impatient of epical lengths, abrupt in his transitions, and anxious, with an anxiety usually manifested by readers rather than by writers, to come to the point, "to the great effect," as he is wont to call it. "Men," he says, "may overlade a ship or barge, and therefore I will skip at once to the effect, and let all the rest slip." And he unconsciously suggests a striking difference between himself and the great Elizabethan epic poet who owes so much to him, when he declines to make as long a tale of the chaff or of the straw as of the corn, and to describe all the details of a marriage-feast seriatim:
The fruit of every tale is for to say:They eat and drink, and dance and sing and play.
This may be the fruit; but epic poets, from Homer downwards, have been generally in the habit of not neglecting the foliage. Spenser in particular has that impartial copiousness which we think it our duty to admire in the Ionic epos, but which, if the truth were told, has prevented generations of Englishmen from acquiring an intimate personal acquaintance with the "Fairy Queen." With Chaucer the danger certainly rather lay in an opposite direction. Most assuredly he can tell a story with admirable point and precision, when he wishes to do so. Perhaps no better example of his skill in this respect could be cited than the "Manciple's Tale," with its rapid narrative, its major and minor catastrophe, and its concise moral ending thus:—
My son, beware, and be no author newOf tidings, whether they be false or true;Whereso thou comest, among high or low,Keep well thy tongue, and think upon the crow.
At the same time, his frequently recurring announcements of his desire to be brief have the effect of making his narrative appear to halt, and thus unfortunately defeat their own purpose. An example of this may be found in the "Knight's Tale," a narrative poem of which, in contrast with its beauties, a want of evenness is one of the chief defects. It is not that the desire to suppress redundancies is a tendency deserving anything but commendation in any writer, whether great or small; but rather, that the art of concealing art had not yet dawned upon Chaucer. And yet, few writers of any time have taken a more evident pleasure in the process of literary production, and have more visibly overflowed with sympathy for, or antipathy against, the characters of their own creation. Great novelists of our own age have often told their readers, in prefaces to their fictions or in quasi-confidential comments upon them, of the intimacy in which they have lived with the offspring of their own brain, to them far from shadowy beings. But only the naivete of Chaucer's literary age, together with the vivacity of his manner of thought and writing, could place him in so close a personal relation towards the personages and the incidents of his poems. He is overcome by "pity and ruth" as he reads of suffering, and his eyes "wax foul and sore" as he prepares to tell of its infliction. He compassionates "love's servants" as if he were their own "brother dear;" and into his adaptation of the eventful story of Constance (the "Man of Law's Tale") he introduces apostrophe upon apostrophe, to the defenceless condition of his heroine—to her relentless enemy the Sultana, and to Satan, who ever makes his instrument of women "when he will beguile"—to the drunken messenger who allowed the letter carried by him to be stolen from him,—and to the treacherous Queen-mother who caused them to be stolen. Indeed, in addressing the last-named personage, the poet seems to lose all control over himself.
O Domegild, I have no English digneUnto thy malice and thy tyranny:And therefore to the fiend I thee resign,Let him at length tell of thy treachery.Fye, mannish, fye!—Oh nay, by God, I lie;Fye fiendish spirit, for I dare well tell,Though thou here walk, thy spirit is in hell.
At the opening of the "Legend of Ariadne" he bids Minos redden with shame; and towards its close, when narrating how Theseus sailed away, leaving his true-love behind, he expresses a hope that the wind may drive the traitor "a twenty devil way." Nor does this vivacity find a less amusing expression in so trifling a touch as that in the "Clerk's Tale," where the domestic sent to deprive Griseldis of her boy becomes, eo ipso as it were, "this ugly sergeant."
Closely allied to Chaucer's liveliness and gaiety of disposition, and in part springing from them, are his keen sense of the ridiculous and the power of satire which he has at his command. His humour has many varieties, ranging from the refined and half-melancholy irony of the "House of Fame" to the ready wit of the sagacious uncle of Cressid, the burlesque fun of the inimitable "Nun's Priest's Tale," and the very gross salt of the "Reeve," the "Miller," and one or two others. The springs of humour often capriciously refuse to allow themselves to be discovered; nor is the satire of which the direct intention is transparent invariably the most effective species of satire. Concerning, however, Chaucer's use of the power which he in so large a measure possessed, viz. that of covering with ridicule the palpable vices or weaknesses of the classes or kinds of men represented by some of his character-types, one assertion may be made with tolerable safety. Whatever may have been the first stimulus and the ultimate scope of the wit and humour which he here expended, they are NOT to be explained as moral indignation in disguise. And in truth Chaucer's merriment flows spontaneously from a source very near the surface; he is so extremely diverting, because he is so extremely diverted himself.
Herein, too, lies the harmlessness of Chaucer's fun. Its harmlessness, to wit, for those who are able to read him in something like the spirit in which he wrote—never a very easy achievement with regard to any author, and one which the beginner and the young had better be advised to abstain from attempting with Chaucer in the overflow of his more or less unrestrained moods. At all events, the excuse of gaiety of heart—the plea of that vieil esprit Gaulois which is so often, and very rarely without need, invoked in an exculpatory capacity by modern French criticism—is the best defence ever made for Chaucer's laughable irregularities, either by his apologists or by himself. "Men should not," he says, and says very truly, "make earnest of game." But when he audaciously defends himself against the charge of impropriety by declaring that he must tell stories IN CHARACTER, and coolly requests any person who may find anything in one of his tales objectionable to turn to another:—
For he shall find enough, both great and smallOf storial thing that toucheth gentleness,Likewise morality and holiness;Blame ye not me, if ye should choose amiss—
we are constrained to shake our heads at the transparent sophistry of the plea, which requires no exposure. For Chaucer knew very well how to give life and colour to his page without recklessly disregarding bounds the neglect of which was even in his day offensive to many besides the "PRECIOUS folk" of whom he half derisively pretends to stand in awe. In one instance he defeated his own purpose; for the so-called "Cook's Tale of Gamelyn" was substituted by some earlier editor for the original "Cook's Tale," which has thus in its completed form become a rarity removed beyond the reach of even the most ardent of curiosity hunters. Fortunately, however, Chaucer spoke the truth when he said that from this point of view he had written very differently at different times; no whiter pages remain than many of his.
But the realism of Chaucer is something more than exuberant love of fun and light-hearted gaiety. He is the first great painter of character, because he is the first great observer of it among modern European writers. His power of comic observation need not be dwelt upon again, after the illustrations of it which have been incidentally furnished in these pages. More especially with regard to the manners and ways of women, which often, while seeming so natural to women themselves, appear so odd to male observers, Chaucer's eye was ever on the alert. But his works likewise contain passages displaying a penetrating insight into the minds of men, as well as a keen eye for their manners, together with a power of generalising, which, when kept within due bonds, lies at the root of the wise knowledge of humankind so admirable to us in our great essayists, from Bacon to Addison and his modern successors. How truly, for instance, in "Troilus and Cressid," Chaucer observes on the enthusiastic belief of converts, the "strongest-faithed" of men, as he understands! And how fine is the saying as to the suspiciousness characteristic of lewd, (i.e. ignorant,) people, that to things which are made more subtly
Than they can in their lewdness comprehend,
they gladly give the worst interpretation which suggests itself! How appositely the "Canon's Yeoman" describes the arrogance of those who are too clever by half; "when a man has an over-great wit," he says, "it very often chances to him to misuse it"! And with how ripe a wisdom, combined with ethics of true gentleness, the honest "Franklin," at the opening of his "Tale," discourses on the uses and the beauty of long-suffering:—
For one thing, sires, safely dare I say,That friends the one the other must obey,If they will longe holde company.Love will not be constrained by mastery.When mastery comes, the god of love anonBeateth his wings—and, farewell! he is gone.Love is a thing as any spirit free.Women desire, by nature, liberty,And not to be constrained as a thrall,And so do men, if I the truth say shall.Look, who that is most patient in love,He is at his advantage all above.A virtue high is patience, certain,Because it vanquisheth, as clerks explain,Things to which rigour never could attain.For every word men should not chide and plain;Learn ye to suffer, or else, so may I go,Ye shall it learn, whether ye will or no.For in this world certain no wight there isWho neither doth nor saith some time amiss.Sickness or ire, or constellation,Wine, woe, or changing of complexion,Causeth full oft to do amiss or speak.For every wrong men may not vengeance wreak:After a time there must be temperanceWith every wight that knows self-governance.
It was by virtue of his power of observing and drawing character, above all, that Chaucer became the true predecessor of two several growths in our literature, in both of which characterisation forms a most important element,—it might perhaps be truly said, the element which surpasses all others in importance. From this point of view the dramatic poets of the Elizabethan age remain unequalled by any other school or group of dramatists, and the English novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the representatives of any other development of prose-fiction. In the art of construction, in the invention and the arrangement of incident, these dramatists and novelists may have been left behind by others; in the creation of character they are on the whole without rivals in their respective branches of literature. To the earlier at least of these growths Chaucer may be said to have pointed the way. His personages, more especially of course, as has been seen, those who are assembled together in the "Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales," are not mere phantasms of the brain, or even mere actual possibilities, but real human beings, and types true to the likeness of whole classes of men and women, or to the mould in which all human nature is cast. This is upon the whole the most wonderful, as it is perhaps the most generally recognised of Chaucer's gifts. It would not of itself have sufficed to make him a great dramatist, had the drama stood ready for him as a literary form into which to pour the inspirations of his genius, as it afterwards stood ready for our great Elizabethans. But to it were added in him that perception of a strong dramatic situation, and that power of finding the right words for it, which have determined the success of many plays, and the absence of which materially detracts from the completeness of the effect of others, high as their merits may be in other respects. How thrilling, for instance, is that rapid passage across the stage, as one might almost call it, of the unhappy Dorigen in the "Franklin's Tale!" The antecedents of the situation, to be sure, are, as has been elsewhere suggested, absurd enough; but who can fail to feel that spasm of anxious sympathy with which a powerful dramatic situation in itself affects us, when the wife, whom for truth's sake her husband has bidden be untrue to him, goes forth on her unholy errand of duty? "Whither so fast?" asks the lover:
And she made answer, half as she were mad:"Unto the garden, as my husband bade,My promise for to keep, alas! alas!"
Nor, as the abbreviated prose version of the "Pardoner's Tale" given above will suffice to show, was Chaucer deficient in the art of dramatically arranging a story; while he is not excelled by any of our non-dramatic poets in the spirit and movement of his dialogue. The "Book of the Duchess" and the "House of Fame," but more especially "Troilus and Cressid" and the connecting passages between some of the "Canterbury Tales," may be referred to in various illustration of this.
The vividness of his imagination, which conjures up, so to speak, the very personality of his characters before him, and the contagious force of his pathos, which is as true and as spontaneous as his humour, complete in him the born dramatist. We can see Constance as with our own eyes, in the agony of her peril:—
Have ye not seen some time a pallid faceAmong a press, of him that hath been ledTowards his death, where him awaits no grace,And such a colour in his face hath had,Men mighte know his face was so bested'Mong all the other faces in that rout?So stands Constance, and looketh her about.
And perhaps there is no better way of studying the general character of Chaucer's pathos, than a comparison of the "Monk's Tale" from which this passage is taken, and the "Clerk's Tale," with their originals. In the former, for instance, the prayer of Constance, when condemned through Domegild's guilt to be cast adrift once more on the waters, her piteous words and tenderness to her little child, as it lies weeping in her arm, and her touching leave-taking from the land of the husband who has condemned her,—all these are Chaucer's own. So also are parts of one of the most affecting passages in the "Clerk's Tale"—Griseldis' farewell to her daughter. But it is as unnecessary to lay a finger upon lines and passages illustrating Chaucer's pathos, as upon others illustrating his humour.
Thus, then, Chaucer was a born dramatist; but fate willed it, that the branch of our literature which might probably have of all been the best suited to his genius was not to spring into life till he and several generations after him had passed away. To be sure, during the fourteenth century, the so-called miracle-plays flourished abundantly in England, and were, as there is every reason to believe, already largely performed by the trading-companies of London and the towns. The allusions in Chaucer to these beginnings of our English drama are, however, remarkably scanty. The "Wife of Bath" mentions plays of miracles among the other occasions of religious sensation haunted by her, clad in her gay scarlet gown,—including vigils, processions, preaching, pilgrimages, and marriages. And the jolly parish-clerk of the "Miller's Tale," we are informed, at times, in order to show his lightness and his skill, played "Herod on a scaffold high"—thus, by the bye, emulating the parish clerks of London, who are known to have been among the performers of miracles in the Middle Ages. The allusion to Pilate's voice in the "Miller's Prologue," and that in the "Tale" to
The sorrow of Noah with his fellowshipThat he had ere he got his wife to ship,
seem likewise dramatic reminiscences; and the occurrence of these three allusions in a single "Tale" and its "Prologue" would incline one to think that Chaucer had recently amused himself at one of these performances. But plays are not mentioned among the entertainments enumerated at the opening of the "Pardoner's Tale"; and it would in any case have been unlikely that Chaucer should have paid much attention to diversions which were long chiefly "visited" by the classes with which he could have no personal connexion, and even at a much later date were dissociated in men's minds from poetry and literature. Had he ever written anything remotely partaking of the nature of a dramatic piece, it could at the most have been the words of the songs in some congratulatory royal pageant such as Lydgate probably wrote on the return of Henry V after Agincourt; though there is not the least reason for supposing Chaucer to have taken so much interest in the "ridings" through the City which occupied many a morning of the idle apprentice of the "Cook's Tale," Perkyn Revellour. It is perhaps more surprising to find Chaucer, who was a reader of several Latin poets, and who had heard of more, both Latin and Greek, show no knowledge whatever of the ancient classical drama, with which he may accordingly be fairly concluded to have been wholly unacquainted.
To one further aspect of Chaucer's realism as a poet reference has already been made; but a final mention of it may most appropriately conclude this sketch of his poetical characteristics. His descriptions of nature are as true as his sketches of human character; and incidental touches in him reveal his love of the one as unmistakeably as his unflagging interest in the study of the other. Even these May-morning exordia, in which he was but following a fashion—faithfully observed both by the French trouveres and by the English romances translated from their productions, and not forgotten by the author of the earlier part of the "Roman de la Rose"—always come from his hands with the freshness of natural truth. They cannot be called original in conception, and it would be difficult to point out in them anything strikingly original in execution; yet they cannot be included among those matter-of-course notices of morning and evening, sunrise and sunset, to which so many poets have accustomed us since (be it said with reverence) Homer himself. In Chaucer these passages make his page "as fresh as is the month of May." When he went forth on these April and May mornings, it was not solely with the intent of composing a roundelay or a marguerite; but we may be well assured, he allowed the song of the little birds, the perfume of the flowers, and the fresh verdure of the English landscape, to sink into his very soul. For nowhere does he seem, and nowhere could he have been, more open to the influence which he received into himself, and which in his turn he exercised, and exercises, upon others, than when he was in fresh contact with nature. In this influence lies the secret of his genius; in his poetry there is LIFE.
The legacy which Chaucer left to our literature was to fructify in the hands of a long succession of heirs; and it may be said, with little fear of contradiction, that at no time has his fame been fresher and his influence upon our poets—and upon our painters as well as our poets—more perceptible than at the present day. When Gower first put forth his "Confessio Amantis," we may assume that Chaucer's poetical labours, of the fame of which his brother-poet declared the land to be full, had not yet been crowned by his last and greatest work. As a poet, therefore, Gower in one sense owes less to Chaucer than did many of their successors; though, on the other hand it may be said with truth that to Chaucer is due the fact, that Gower (whose earlier productions were in French and in Latin) ever became a poet at all. The "Confessio Amantis" is no book for all times like the "Canterbury Tales"; but the conjoined names of Chaucer and Gower added strength to one another in the eyes of the generations ensuing, little anxious as these generations were to distinguish which of the pair was really the first to it "garnish our English rude" with the flowers of a new poetic diction and art of verse.
The Lancaster period of our history had its days of national glory as well as of national humiliation, and indisputably, as a whole, advanced the growth of the nation towards political manhood. But it brought with it no golden summer to fulfil the promises of the spring-tide of our modern poetical literature. The two poets whose names stand forth from the barren after-season of the earlier half of the fifteenth century, were, both of them, according to their own profession, disciples of Chaucer. In truth, however, Occleve, the only name-worthy poetical writer of the reign of Henry IV, seems to have been less akin as an author to Chaucer than to Gower, while his principal poem manifestly was, in an even greater degree than the "Confessio Amantis," a severely learned or, as its author terms it, unbuxom book. Lydgate, on the other hand, the famous monk of Bury, has in him something of the spirit as well as of the manner of Chaucer, under whose advice he is said to have composed one of his principal poems. Though a monk, he was no stay-at-home or do-nothing; like him of the "Canterbury Tales," we may suppose Lydgate to have scorned the maxim that a monk out of his cloister is like a fish out of water; and doubtless many days which he could spare from the instruction of youth at St. Edmund's Bury were spent about the London streets, of the sights and sounds of which he has left us so vivacious a record—a kind of farcical supplement to the "Prologue" of the "Canterbury Tales." His literary career, part of which certainly belongs to the reign of Henry V, has some resemblance to Chaucer's, though it is less regular and less consistent with itself; and several of his poems bear more or less distinct traces of Chaucer's influence. The "Troy-book" is not founded on "Troilus and Cressid," though it is derived from the sources which had fed the original of Chaucer's poem; but the "Temple of Glass" seems to have been an imitation of the "House of Fame"; and the "Story of Thebes" is actually introduced by its author as an additional "Canterbury Tale," and challenges comparison with the rest of the series into which it asks admittance. Both Occleve and Lydgate enjoyed the patronage of a prince of genius descended from the House, with whose founder Chaucer was so closely connected—Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Meanwhile, the sovereign of a neighbouring kingdom was in all probability himself the agent who established the influence of Chaucer as predominant in the literature of his native land. The long though honourable captivity in England of King James I of Scotland—the best poet among kings and the best king among poets, as he has been antithetically called—was consoled by the study of the "hymns" of his "dear masters, Chaucer and Gower," for the happiness of whose souls he prays at the close of his poem, "The King's Quair." That most charming of love-allegories, in which the Scottish king sings the story of his captivity and of his deliverance by the sweet messenger of love, not only closely imitates Chaucer in detail, more especially at its opening, but is pervaded by his spirit. Many subsequent Scottish poets imitated Chaucer, and some of them loyally acknowledged their debts to him. Gawin Douglas in his "Palace of Honour," and Henryson in his "Testament of Cressid" and elsewhere, are followers of the southern master. The wise and brave Sir David Lyndsay was familiar with his writings; and he was not only occasionally imitated, but praised with enthusiastic eloquence by William Dunbar, that "darling of the Scottish Muses," whose poetical merits Sir Walter Scott, from some points of view, can hardly be said to have exaggerated, when declaring him to have been "justly raised to a level with Chaucer by every judge of poetry, to whom his obsolete language has not rendered him unintelligble." Dunbar knew that this Scottish language was but a form of that which, as he declared, Chaucer had made to "surmount every terrestrial tongue, as far as midnight is surmounted by a May morning."
Meanwhile, in England, the influence of Chaucer continued to live even during the dreary interval which separates from one another two important epochs of our literary history. Now, as in the days of the Norman kings, ballads orally transmitted were the people's poetry; and one of these popular ballads carried the story of "Patient Grissel" into regions where Chaucer's name was probably unknown. When, after the close of the troubled season of the Roses, our Poetic literature showed the first signs of a revival, they consisted in a return to the old masters of the fourteenth century. The poetry of Hawes, the learned author of the crabbed "Pastime of Pleasure," exhibits an undeniable continuity with that of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, to which triad he devotes a chapter of panegyric. Hawes, however, presses into the service of his allegory not only all the Virtues and all the Vices, whom from habit we can tolerate in such productions, but also Astronomy, Geometry, Arithmetic, and the rest of the seven Daughters of Doctrine, whom we CANNOT; and is altogether inferior to the least of his models. It is at the same time to his credit that he seems painfully aware of his inability to cope with either Chaucer or Lydgate as to vigour of invention. There is in truth, more of the dramatic spirit of Chaucer in Barklay's "Ship of Fools," which, though essentially a translation, achieved in England the popularity of an original work. For this poem, like the "Canterbury Tales," introduces into its admirable framework a variety of lifelike sketches of character and manners; it has in it that dramatic element which is so Chaucerian a characteristic. But the aim of its author was didactic, which Chaucer's had never been.
When with the poems of Surrey and Wyatt, and with the first attempts in the direction of the regular drama, the opening of the second great age in our literature approached, and when, about half a century afterwards, that age actually opened with an unequalled burst of varied productivity, it would seem as if Chaucer's influence might naturally enough have passed away, or at least become obscured. Such was not, however, the case, and Chaucer survived into the age of the English Renascence as an established English classic, in which capacity Caxton had honoured him by twice issuing an edition of his works from the Westminster printing-press. Henry VIII's favourite, the reckless but pithy satirist, Skelton, was alive to the merits of his great predecessor, and Skelton's patron, William Thynne, a royal official, busied himself with editing Chaucer's works. The loyal servant of Queen Mary, the wise and witty John Heywood, from whose "Interludes" the step is so short to the first regular English comedy, in one of these pieces freely plagiarised a passage in the "Canterbury Tales." Tottel, the printer of the favourite poetic "Miscellany" published shortly before Queen Elizabeth's accession, included in his collection the beautiful lines, cited above, called "Good Counsel of Chaucer." And when, at last, the Elizabethan era properly so-called began, the proof was speedily given that geniuses worthy of holding fellowship with Chaucer had assimilated into their own literary growth what was congruous to it in his, just as he had assimilated to himself—not always improving, but hardly ever merely borrowing or taking over—much that he had found in the French trouveres, and in Italian poetry and prose. The first work which can be included in the great period of Elizabethan literature is the "Shepherd's Calendar," where Spenser is still in a partly imitative stage; and it is Chaucer whom he imitates and extols in his poem, and whom his alter ego, the mysterious "E.K.," extols in preface and notes. The longest of the passages in which reference is made by Spenser to Chaucer, under the pseudonym of Tityrus, is more especially noteworthy, both as showing the veneration of the younger for the older poet, and as testifying to the growing popularity of Chaucer at the time when Spenser wrote.
The same great poet's debt to his revered predecessor in the "Daphnaida" has been already mentioned. The "Fairy Queen" is the masterpiece of an original mind, and its supreme poetic quality is a lofty magnificence upon the whole foreign to Chaucer's genius; but Spenser owed something more than his archaic forms to "Tityrus," with whose style he had erst disclaimed all ambition to match his pastoral pipe. In a well-known passage of his great epos he declares that it is through sweet infusion of the older poet's own spirit that he, the younger, follows the footing of his feet, in order so the rather to meet with his meaning. It was this, the romantic spirit proper, which Spenser sought to catch from Chaucer, but which, like all those who consciously seek after it, he transmuted into a new quality and a new power. With Spenser the change was into something mightier and loftier. He would, we cannot doubt, readily have echoed the judgment of his friend and brother-poet concerning Chaucer. "I know not," writes Sir Philip Sidney, "whether to marvel more, either that he in that misty time could see so clearly, or that we, in this clear age, walk so stumblingly after him. Yet had he," adds Sidney with the generosity of a true critic, who is not lost in wonder at his own cleverness in discovering defects, "great wants, fit to be forgiven in so reverent an antiquity." And yet a third Elizabethan, Michael Drayton, pure of tone and high of purpose, joins his voice to those of Spenser and Sidney, hailing in the "noble Chaucer"
—the first of those that ever brakeInto the Muses' treasure and first spakeIn weighty numbers,
and placing Gower, with a degree of judgment not reached by his and Chaucer's immediate successors, in his proper relation of poetic rank to his younger but greater contemporary.
To these names should be added that of George Puttenham—if he was indeed the author of the grave and elaborate treatise, dedicated to Lord Burghley, on "The Art of English Poesy." In this work mention is repeatedly made of Chaucer, "father of our English poets;" and his learning, and "the natural of his pleasant wit," are alike judiciously commanded. One of Puttenham's best qualities as a critic is that he never speaks without his book; and he comes very near to discovering Chaucer's greatest gift when noticing his excellence in "prosopographia," a term which to Chaucer would perhaps have seemed to require translation. At the obsoleteness of Chaucer's own diction this critic, who writes entirely "for the better brought-up sort," is obliged to shake his learned head.
Enough has been said in the preceding pages to support the opinion that among the wants which fell to the lot of Chaucer as a poet, perhaps the greatest (though Sidney would never have allowed this), was the want of poetic form most in harmony with his most characteristic gifts. The influence of Chaucer upon the dramatists of the Elizabethan age was probably rather indirect and general than direct and personal; but indications or illustrations of it may be traced in a considerable number of these writers, including perhaps among the earliest Richard Edwards as the author of a non-extant tragedy, "Palamon and Arcite," and among the latest the author—or authors—of "The Two Noble Kinsmen." Besides Fletcher and Shakspere, Greene, Nash and Middleton, and more especially Jonson (as both poet and grammarian), were acquainted with Chaucer's writings; so that it is perhaps rather a proof of the widespread popularity of the "Canterbury Tales" than the reverse, that they were not largely resorted to for materials by the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. Under Charles I "Troilus and Cressid" found a translator in Sir Francis Kynaston, whom Cartwright congratulated on having made it possible "that we read Chaucer now without a dictionary." A personage however, in Cartwright's best known play, the Antiquary Moth, prefers to talk on his own account "genuine" Chaucerian English.
To pursue the further traces of the influence of Chaucer through such a literary aftergrowth as the younger Fletchers, into the early poems of Milton, would be beyond the purpose of the present essay. In the treasure-house of that great poet's mind were gathered memories and associations innumerable, though the sublimest flights of his genius soared aloft into regions whither the imagination of none of our earlier poets had preceded them. On the other hand, the days have passed for attention to be spared for the treatment experienced by Chaucer in the Augustan Age, to which he was a barbarian only to be tolerated if put into the court-dress of the final period of civilisation. Still, even thus, he was not left altogether unread; nor was he in all cases adapted without a certain measure of success. The irrepressible vigour, and the frequent felicity, of Dryden's "Fables" contrast advantageously with the tame evenness of the "Temple of Fame," an early effort by Pope, who had wit enough to imitate in a juvenile parody some of the grossest peculiarities of Chaucer's manner, but who would have been quite ashamed to reproduce him in a serious literary performance, without the inevitable polish and cadence of his own style of verse. Later modernisations—even of those which a band of poets in some instances singularly qualified for the task put forth in a collection published in the year 1841, and which, on the part of some of them at least, was the result of conscientious endeavour—it is needless to characterise here. Slight incidental use has been made of some of these in this essay, the author of which would gladly have abstained from printing a single modernised phrase or word—most of all any which he has himself been guilty of re-casting. The time cannot be far distant when even the least unsuccessful of such attempts will no longer be accepted, because no such attempts whatever will be any longer required. No Englishman or Englishwoman need go through a very long or very laborious apprenticeship in order to become able to read, understand, and enjoy what Chaucer himself wrote. But if this apprenticeship be too hard, then some sort of makeshift must be accepted, or antiquity must remain the "canker-worm" even of a great national poet, as Spenser said it had already in his day proved to be of Chaucer.
Meanwhile, since our poetic literature has long thrown off the shackles which forced it to adhere to one particular group of models, he is not a true English poet who should remain uninfluenced by any of the really great among his predecessors. If Chaucer has again, in a special sense, become the "master dear and father reverent" of some of our living poets, in a wider sense he must hold this relation to them all and to all their successors, so long as he continues to be known and understood. As it is, there are few worthies of our literature whose names seem to awaken throughout the English-speaking world a readier sentiment of familiar regard; and in New England, where the earliest great poet of Old England is cherished not less warmly than among ourselves, a kindly cunning had thus limned his likeness:—
An old man in a lodge within a park;The chamber walls depicted all aroundWith portraiture of huntsman, hawk and hound,And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,Whose song comes with the sunshine through the darkOf painted glass in leaden lattice bound;He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,Then writeth in a book like any clerk.He is the poet of the dawn, who wroteThe Canterbury Tales, and his old ageMade beautiful with song; and as I readI hear the crowing cock, I hear the noteOf lark and linnet, and from every pageRise odours of ploughed field or flowery mead.
Bencite = benedicite.Clepe, call.Deem, judge.Despitous, angry to excess.Digne, fit;—disdainful.Frere, friar.Gentle, well-born.Keep, care.Languor, grief.Meinie, following, household.Meet, mate (?), measure (?).Overthwart, across.Parage, rank, degree.Press, crowd.Rede, advise, counsel.Reeve, steward, bailiff.Ruth, pity.Scall, scab.Shapely, fit.Sithe, time.Spiced, nice, scrupulous.Targe, target, shield.Y prefix of past participle as in, y-bee = bee(n).While, time; to quite his while, to reward his pains.Wieldy, active.Wone, custom, habit.
"A.B.C." ("La Priere de Notre Dame").
"Adam" (Chaucer's Scrivener).
"African."
Albert of Brescia.
"Alcestis."
"Alchemist" (Ben Jonson).
Aldgate.
Alfred, King.
Anne, Queen.
"Antiquary Moth" (Cartwright).
"Ariadne."
Aristophanes.
"Art of English Poesy" (Puttenham).
"Arviragus."
"Assembly of Fowls or Parliament of Birds."
Astrology.
Bailly, Master Harry. See "Host."
"Ballad of Sir Thopas."
"Ballad sent to King Richard."
Balle, John.
Balzac.
Barklay.
Benedictines.
Berkeley, Sir Edward.
Berners, Lady Juliana.
Bible, Chaucer's knowledge of.
Black Friars.
Black Prince.
Blake, William.
Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster.
Boccaccio.
Boethius.
Bohemia.
"Book of Consolation and Counsel" (Albert of Brescia).
"Book of the Duchess."
"Book of the Leo."
Brembre, Sir Nicholas.
Bretigny, Peace of.
Brigham, Nicholas.
"Bukton."
Burley, Sir John.
Burns, Robert.
Byron.
Cambridge.
"Canace."
"Canon Yeoman's Tale."The "Canon's Yeoman.""The Canon."
Canterbury.
Canterbury Pilgrims.
"Canterbury Tales," Chaucer's greatest work.conjecture as to the composition of.references to in Prologue to "Legend of Good Women."characters in.framework of.what is Chaucer's obligation to Boccaccio.popular style of.language of.sources of.Chaucer's method of dealing with his originals.the two prose tales.reference to the condition of the poor.woman in the.supposed reference to Gower.Lydgate's Supplements to.vogue of the, with Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists.
"Carpenter."
Cartwright.
Caxton.
"Ceyx and Alcyone," the tale of.
Charles IV, Emperor.
Charles V, King of France.
Chaucer, Agnes (Chaucer's mother).
"Chaucer's Dream."
Chaucer, Geoffrey, difficulties as to his biography.the date of his birth.his name.his ancestry.conjecture as to his early years.enters Prince Lionel's household.accompanies the prince to France and is taken prisoner.becomes valet of the chamber of King Edward.his marriage.translation of "Roman de la Rose."promoted to the post of royal squire."Book of the Duchess."missions abroad.receives grant from the Crown of daily pitcher of wine.appointed Comptroller of the Customs in the port of London.permitted to execute the duties by deputy.granted pension of ten pounds for life.visits to the Continent.appointed to the Comptrollership of the Petty Customs in London.sits in Parliament."House of Fame" written."Troilus and Cressid.""Assembly of Fowls."translation of the "Consolation of Philosophy.""Legend of Good Women."loses his Comptrollerships.appointed Clerk of King Richard's Works.money difficulties.death of his wife."On the Astrolabe."his son.robbed by highwaymen.granted pension of twenty pounds by King Richard."Ballade sent to King Richard.""Envoy to Scogan.""Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse."his pension doubled.death.the "Canterbury Tales" left unfinished.
Chaucer, characteristics of.his personal appearance.his modesty.self-containedness.contained faith.his attitude to women.his ideal of the true gentleman.his opinion about drunkenness.his reading.French influences.Italian influences.language.his love of nature.his literary development.his mediaevalism.
Chaucer's England, its population.the Black Death.London.national spirit.trade.decline of the feudal system.condition of the people.the language.chivalry.extravagance in dress.the "Church."the clergy.learning.the life of the nation.
Chaucer's literary heirs.
Chaucer's poetry, its power to please.music of his verse.as a love poet.his joyousness.his humour.as an interpreter of character.his dramatic qualities.his receptiveness.
Chaucer's times.his feeling towards the lower classes.his attitude to the Church.as an interpreter of his age.
Chaucer, John (Chaucer's father).
Chaucer, Lewis (Chaucer's son).
Chaucer, Philippa (Chaucer's wife).
Chaucer, Richard le.
Chaucer, Thomas (Chaucer's supposed son).
Chettle.
Chivalry.
Clarence, Lionel Duke of.
Cleopatra.
"Clerk's Tale."the "Clerk."
Colonna, Guido de.
"Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse."
"Complaint of Mars."
"Complaint of the Death of Pity."
"Complaint of the Ploughman."
"Complaint of Venus."
"Confessio Amantis" (Gower).
Congreve.
"Consolation of Philosophy" (Boethius).
Constance, Duchess of Lancaster.
"Constance," the story of.
"Cook's Tale."the "Cook."
Court of Love.
"Cressid."
"Cuckoo and the Nightingale."
Dante.
"Daphnaida" (Spenser).
Dartmouth.
"Decamerone" (Boccaccio).
Deschamps, Eustace.
Dickens.
Dido.
"Divine Comedy."
"Doctor of Physic."
Dominicans.
Don Quixote.
"Dorigen."
Doglas, Gawin.
Drama in the fourteenth century.
Drayton, Michael.
Dryden.
Dunbar.
"Dunciad."
"Dyer."
"E.K."
"Earthly Paradise" (William Morris).
Edward III.
Edwards, Richard.
Elizabethan drama.
English novel.
"Envoy to Bukton."
"Envoy to Scogan."
"Fables" (Dryden).
"Fairy Queen" (Spenser).
Filostrato (Boccaccio).
Flanders.
Fletcher.
Florence.
"Flower and the Leaf."
France and England.
Francis of Assisi.
Franciscans.
"Franklin's Tale."the "Franklin."
French literary influences.
"Friar's Tale."the "Friar."
Froissart.
Genoa.
German criticism.
Gerson.
Gisors, Henry.
Gloucester, Humphrey Duke of.
Gloucester, Thomas Duke of.
Goethe.
Goldsmith.
"Good Counsel of Chaucer."
Gower.
Great Schism.
Greene.
Grey Friars.
Grisseldis, The tale of.
Hallam.
Hatcham, Surrey.
Hawes.
Hawkwood, Sir John.
Henry III.
Henry IV.
Henry V.
Henryson.
Heptameron.
"Hero and Leander" (Marlowe).
Herrick.
Heyroom, Thomas.
Heywood, John.
Homer.
Horne, Mr. R.
"Host," the (Master Harry Bailly).
"House of Fame."
Hugh of Lincoln, legend of.
"Imitation of Christ."
Inner Temple.
Inquisition.
"Interludes" (Heywood).
Italian literary influence.
James I, King of Scotland.
Jason.
John, King of England.
John, King of Bohemia.
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.
John of Trevisa.
Jonson, Ben.
Katharine, Duchess of Lancaster.
Kent, county of.
"King's Quair, The."
"Knight's Tale."the "Knight."
Kynaston, Sir Francis.
Lamb, Charles.
"Lamech."
Lancaster, House of.
Lancaster, Henry, Duke of.
Langland.
"Legend of Ariadne."
"Legend of Good Women."
"Legend of the Saints of Cupid."
Leland.
"Lieutenant Bardolph."
"Life of Saint Cecelia."
"Limitour."
Lollardry.
London.
Longfellow.
Lorris, Guillaume de.
"Love of Palamon and Arcite."
Lydgate.
Lyndsay, Sir David.
Machault.
Madame Eglantine. See "Prioress."
"Man of Law's Tale."the "Man of Law."
"Manciple's Tale."the "Manciple."
Marlowe.
Marot, Clement.
Mary Magdalene, homily on.
Medea.
Mendicant Orders.
"Merchant's Tale."the "Merchant."
"Merry Wives of Windsor."
Metrical Romances of thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Meung, Jean de.
Middleton.
"Midsummer Night's Dream."
Milan.
"Miller's Tale."the "Miller."
Milton.
Minorities.
Minot, Lawrence.
Miracle Plays.
Monastic Orders.
"Monk's Tale."the "Monk."
"Mort d'Arthure."
Nash.
Nicholas, Sir Harris.
Norwich, Bishop of.
"Nun's Priest's Tale."
Occleve.
"On Perpetual Virginity" (St. Jerome).
"On the Astrolabe."
"Oratio Gallfridi Chaucer."
Ovid.
Oxford.
Padua.
"Palace of Honour" (Gawin Douglas).
"Palamon and Arcite."tragedy by R. Edwards.
"Pandarus."
"Pardoner's Tale."the "Pardoner."
Paris.University of.
Parliament.
"Parson's Tale."the "Parson."
"Pastime of Pleasure" (Hawes).
Patient Grissel."Patient Grissel" (play).
Peasant Insurrection.
Pedro, Don.
"Pentamerone."
"Perkyn Revellour."
Pestilences in fourteenth century.
Petrarch.
"Phantasus."
Philippa, Queen.
"Phillis."
Philpot, John.
"Ploughman."
Pole, William de la.
Pope.
"Praise of Women."
Prayer of Chaucer."
"Prioress" (Madame Eglantine).
"Prologue to the Canterbury Tales."
Puttenham, George.
"Queen Anelida and the false Arcite."
"Reeve's Tale."the "Reeve."
Reformation, The.
Renascence.
"Rhyme of Sir Thopas."
Richard II.
Richardson.
Roet, Sir Paon de.
"Roman de la Rose."
"Romaunt of the Rose" (translation by Chaucer of "Roman de la Rose").
Rome, Church of.
Ronsard.
"Rosa Anglia."
Sainte-Maur, Benoit.
St. Jerome.
Salisbury, Countess of.
"Scipio."
Scogan, Henry.
Scottish heirs of Chaucer.
"Second Nun's Tale."
Seneca.
"Seven Wise Masters."
Shakspere.
"Shepherd's Calendar."
Sheridan.
"Ship of Fools."
"Shipman."
Sidney, Sir Philip.
"Sir Thomas Norray" (Dunbar).
Skelton.
Southern Road.
Speght.
Spenser.
"Squire's Tale."the "Squire."
Statute of Provisors.
"Story of Thebes."
Strode, Ralph.
Sudbury, Archbishop.
Suffolk, Michael de la Pole, Earl of.
"Summoner."
Surrey.
Swynford, Sir Hugh.
Tabard Inn.
"Tale of Meliboeus."
"Tarquin."
"Temple of Fame" (Pope).
"Temple of Glass" (Lydgate).
"Teseide" (Boccaccio).
"Testament of Cressid" (Henryson).
"Thisbe."
Thynne, William.
Tieck, Ludwig.
"Tityrus."
Tombstone, Chaucer's.
"Tottel's Miscellany."
"Troilus and Cressid."
"Troy-book" (Lydgate).
"Tullius."
"Two Noble Kinsmen."
Tyrwhitt.
Ugolino, Story of.
Ulster, Elizabeth Countess of.
Universities.
Virgil.
Visconti, Bernardo.