CHAPTER IV.

Thou hearest neither that nor this,For when thy labor all done is,And hast made all thy reckiningësIn stead of rest and of new thingës,Thou goest homë to thine house anonAnd all so dombe as any stone,Thou sittest at another bokëTill fully dazed is thy lokë.

Thou hearest neither that nor this,

For when thy labor all done is,

And hast made all thy reckiningës

In stead of rest and of new thingës,

Thou goest homë to thine house anon

And all so dombe as any stone,

Thou sittest at another bokë

Till fully dazed is thy lokë.

But though we speak of Chaucer as bookish and scholarly, it must not be supposed that he aimed at, or possessed the nice critical discernment, with respect to the literary work of others, which we now associate with highest scholarly attainments; it may well happen that his bookish allusions are not always “by the letter,” or that he may misquote, orstrain a point in interpretation. He lived before the days of exegetical niceties. He is attracted by large effects; he searches for what may kindle his enthusiasms, and put him upon his own trail of song. Books were nothing to him if they did not bring illumination; where he could snatch that, he burrowed—but always rather toward the light than toward the depths. He makes honey out of coarse flowers; not so sure always—nor much caring to be sure—of the name and habitudes of the plants he rifles. He stole not for the theft’s sake, but for the honey’s sake; and he read not for cumulation of special knowledges, but to fertilize and quicken his own spontaneities.

Nor was this poet ever so shapen to close study, but the woods or the birds or the flowers of a summery day would take the bend from his back, and straighten him for a march into the fields:

——There is gamë none,That from my bookës maketh me to gone,Save certainly whan that the month of MaieIs comen, and that I heare the foulës sing,And that the flowris ginnen for to spring—Farewell my booke, and my devocion!

——There is gamë none,

That from my bookës maketh me to gone,

Save certainly whan that the month of Maie

Is comen, and that I heare the foulës sing,

And that the flowris ginnen for to spring—

Farewell my booke, and my devocion!

And swift upon this in that musical “Legende of Good Women,” comes his rhythmical crowning of the Daisy—never again, in virtue of his verse, to be discrowned—

——above all the flowris in the medeThanne love I moste these flowris white and rede;Soche that men callin Daisies in our tounTo ’hem I have so grete affectionnAs I said erst, whan comin is the Maie,That in my bedde there dawith me no daieThat I n’ am up, and walking in the medeTo sene this floure ayenst the sunnë sprede,As she that is of all flowris the floure,Fulfilled of all vertue and honoureAnd evir alikë faire and freshe, of hewe,And evir I love it and ever alikë newe.

——above all the flowris in the mede

Thanne love I moste these flowris white and rede;

Soche that men callin Daisies in our toun

To ’hem I have so grete affectionn

As I said erst, whan comin is the Maie,

That in my bedde there dawith me no daie

That I n’ am up, and walking in the mede

To sene this floure ayenst the sunnë sprede,

As she that is of all flowris the floure,

Fulfilled of all vertue and honoure

And evir alikë faire and freshe, of hewe,

And evir I love it and ever alikë newe.

These lines of his have given an everlasting perfume to that odorless flower.

How it befell that this son of a vintner came first to have close association with members of the royal household—household of the great Edward III.—we cannot tell; but it is certain that he did come at an early day to have position in the establishment of the King’s son, Prince Lionel, Duke of Clarence; he was sometime valet, too, of Edward III., and inother years a familiarprotégéof John of Gaunt—putting his poet’s gloss upon courtly griefs and love-makings.

It is certain, moreover, that in the immediate service of either Prince or King, he went to the wars—as every young man of high spirit in England yearned to do, when war was so great a part of the business of life, and when the Black Prince was galloping in armor and in victory over the fields of Guienne. But it was a bad excursion the poet hit upon; he went when disaster attended the English forces; he was taken prisoner, and though ransomed shortly thereafter—as the record shows—it is uncertain when he returned; uncertain if he did not linger for years among the vineyards of France; maybe writing there his translation of the famousRoman de la Rose[42]—certainly loving this and othersuch, and growing by study of these Southern melodies into graces of his own, to overlap and adorn his Saxon sturdiness of speech.

There are recent continental critics[43]indeed, who claim him as French, and as finding not only his felicities of verse, but his impulse and his motives among the lilies of France. He does love these lilies of a surety; but I think he loves the English daisies better, and that it is with a thoroughly English spirit that he “powders” the meadows with their red and white, and sets among them the green blades of those island grasses, which flash upon his “morwenyngs of Maie.” To these times may possibly belong—if indeed Chaucer wrote it—“The Court of Love.” Into the discussion of its authenticity we do not enter; we run to cover under an ignorance which is more blissful than the wisdom that wearies itself with comparison of dates, with laws of prosody, with journeyman-like estimate of the tinklings of this or that spurt of rhyming habit. If Chaucer did not write it, we lift our hat to the unknown melodist—who can put the birds in choir—and pass on.

When our poet does reappear in London, it is not to tell any story of the war—of its hazards, or of its triumphs. Indeed, it is remarkable that this lissome poet, whose words like bangles shook out all tunes to his step, and who lived in the very heart of the days of Poitiers—when the doughty young Black Prince kindled a martial furor that was like the old crusade craze to followCœur de Lionto battle—remarkable, I say, that Chaucer, living on the high tide of war—living, too, in a court where he must have met Froissart, that pet of the Queen, who gloried in giving tongue to his enthusiasm about the deeds of knighthood—wonderful, I say, that Chaucer should not have brought into any of his tales or rhymes the din and the alarums and the seething passions of war. There are indeed glimpses of fluttering pennons and of spear thrusts; maybe, also, purple gouts of blood welling out from his page; but these all have the unreal look of the tourney, to which they mostly attach; he never scores martial scenes with a dagger. For all that Crécy or its smoking artillery had to do with his song, he might have sung a century earlier, or he might have sung a century later. Indeed, he does not seem tous a man of action, notwithstanding his court connection and his somewhile official place;—not even a man of loudly declared public policy, but always the absorbed, introspective, painstaking, quiet observer, to whom Nature in the gross, with its humanities now kindled by wanton appetites, and now lifted by reverence and love (with the everlasting broidery of flowers and trees and sunshine), was always alluring him from things accidental and of the time—though it were time of royal Philip’s ruin, or of a conquest of Aquitaine.

Yet withal, this Chaucer is in some sense a man of the world and courtier. The “Boke of the Duchesse” tells us this. And he can weave chaplets for those who have gone through the smoke of battles—though his own inclination may not lead him thither. To a date not very remote from that which belongs to the “Duchesse” must in all probability be assigned that other well-known minor poem of Chaucer’s, called the “Parlament of Foules.”[44]There are stories of his love-lornness in his young days, and of marriage delayed and of marriage made good—coming mostly from those who paint large pictures with few pigments—and which are exceeding hazy and indeterminate of outline: his “Troilus and Cresseide” make us know that he could go through the whole gamut of love, and fawning and teasing and conquest and forgetting, in lively earnest as well as fancy—if need were.

We have better data and surer ground to go upon when we come to score his official relations. We know that when not very far advanced in age (about 1370) he went to the continent on the King’s service; accomplishing it so well—presumably—that he is sent again, very shortly after, with a commission—his journey calling him to Genoa and Florence; Italy and the Mediterranean, then, probably for the first time, with all their glamour of old story, coming to his view. Some biographers make out, from chance lines in his after-poems, that he went over to Padua and saw Petrarch there, and learned of him some stories, which he afterward wrought into his garland of the CanterburyTales. Possibly;[45]but it was not an easy journey over the mountains to Padua in those days, even if Petrarch had been domiciled there,—which is very doubtful; for the Italian poet, old and feeble, passed most of the latter years of his life at Arqua among the Euganean hills; and if Chaucer had met him, Petrarch would have been more apt to ask the man from far-away, murky England, about his country and King and the Prince Lionel (dead in those days), who only a few years before had married, at Milan, a daughter of the Visconti—than to bore him with a story at second hand (from Boccaccio) about the patient Griselda.

However this may be, it is agreed by nearly all commentators, that by reason of his southward journeyings and his after-familiarity with Italian literature (if indeed this familiarity were not of earlier date), that his own poetic outlook became greatly widened, and he fell away, in large degree, from his old imitative allegiance to the jingling measures of France, and that pretty

“Maze of to and fro,Where light-heeled numbers laugh and go.”

“Maze of to and fro,

Where light-heeled numbers laugh and go.”

Through all this time he is in receipt of favors from the Government—sometimes in the shape of direct pension—sometimes of an annual gift of wine—sometimes in moneys for payment of his costs of travel;—sometime, too, he has a money-getting place in the Customs.

John of Gaunt continues his stalwart friend. Indeed this Prince, late in life, and when he had come to the title of Duke of Lancaster, married, in third espousals, a certain Kate Swynford (néeRoet), who, if much current tradition may be trusted, was a sister of Chaucer’s wife; it was, to be sure, looked upon by court people (for various reasons) as amatch beneath the Duke; and Froissart tells us with a chirrupy air[46]of easy confidence (but there is no mention of the poet) that the peeresses of the court vowed they would have nothing to do with the new Duchess of Lancaster—by which it may be seen that fine ladies had then the same methods of punishing social audacities which they have now. The tradition has been given a new lease of life by the memorial window which under rule of Dean Stanley was set in Westminster Abbey;[47]and, however the truth may be, Chaucer’s life-long familiarity in the household of Lancaster is undoubted; and it is every way likely that about the knee of the poet may have frisked and played the little Hal. (b. 1367), who came afterward to be King Henry IV. It is to this monarch, newly come to the throne, that Chaucer addresses—in his latter days, and with excellenteffect—that little piquant snatch of verse[48]about the lowness of his purse:

I am so sorrie now that ye be light,For certes, but ye make me heavy cheere,Me were as lief be laid upon my bereFor which unto your mercie thus I crieBe heavie againe, or ellës mote I die.

I am so sorrie now that ye be light,

For certes, but ye make me heavy cheere,

Me were as lief be laid upon my bere

For which unto your mercie thus I crie

Be heavie againe, or ellës mote I die.

Yet he seems never to lose his good humor or his sweet complacency; there is no carping; there is no swearing that is in earnest. His whole character we seem to see in that picture of him which his friend Occleve painted; a miniature, to be sure, and upon the cover of a MS. of Occleve’s poems; but it is the best portrait of him we have. Looking at it—though ’tis only half length—you would say he was what we call a dapper man; well-fed, for he loved always the good things of life—“not drinkless altogether, as I guess;” nor yet is it a bluff English face; no beefiness; regular features—almost feminine in fineness of contour—with light beard upon upper lip and chin; smooth cheeks; lips full (rosy red, they say, in the painting); eyethat is keen,[49]and with a sparkle of humor in it; hands decorously kept; one holding a rosary, the other pointing—and pointing as men point who see what they point at, and make others see it too; his hood, which seems a part of his woollen dress, is picturesquely drawn about his head, revealing only a streak of hair over his temple; you see it is one who studies picturesqueness even in costume, and to the trimming of his beard into a forked shape;—no lint on his robe—you may be sure of that;—no carelessness anywhere: dainty, delicate, studious of effects, but with mirth and good nature shimmering over his face. Yet no vagueness or shakiness of purpose show their weak lines; and in his jaw there is a certain staying power that kept him firm and active and made him pile book upon book in the new, sweet English tongue, which out of the dialects of Essex and of the East of England he had compounded, ordered, and perfected, and made the pride of every man born to the inheritance of that Island speech.

And it is with such looks and such forces and such a constitutional cheeriness, that this blithe poet comes to the task of enchaining together his Canterbury Tales, with their shrewd trappings of Prologue—his best work, getting its last best touches after he is fairly turned of middle age, if indeed he were not already among the sixties. Is it not wonderful—the distinctness with which we see, after five hundred years have passed, those nine and twenty pilgrims setting out on the sweet April day, to travel down through the country highways and meadows of Kent!

The fields are all green, “y-powdered with daisies;” the birds are singing; the white blossoms are beginning to show upon the hedge-rows. And the Pilgrims, one and all, are so touched and colored by his shrewdness and aptness of epithet that we see them as plainly as if they had been cut out, figure by figure, from the very middle of that far-away century.

There goes the Knight—

And that a worthy man,That from the timë that he first beganTo ryden out, he lovéd chyvalrieTrouth and honoúr, freedom and courtesie.

And that a worthy man,

That from the timë that he first began

To ryden out, he lovéd chyvalrie

Trouth and honoúr, freedom and courtesie.

And after him his son, the Squire, the bright bachelor, who

Was as fresh as is the month of May;Schort was his goune, with sleevës long and wide,Well coude he sit on hors, and fairë ride.He coudë songës make and wel endite,Joust and eke dance, and wel portray and write.

Was as fresh as is the month of May;

Schort was his goune, with sleevës long and wide,

Well coude he sit on hors, and fairë ride.

He coudë songës make and wel endite,

Joust and eke dance, and wel portray and write.

Then there comes the charming Prioress—

Ycleped Madame Eglantine.Ful well she sang the servicë divine,Entunëd in hir nose ful semëly:And Frensch she spak ful fair and fetisly,After the scole of Stratford attë Bowe,For Frensch of Paris was to hir unknowe.…Full fetys was her cloke, as I was waarOf smal coral aboute hir arme she baarA paire of bedës gauded all with grene,And thereon heng a broch of gold ful scheneOn which was first y-writ a crownéd A,And after—Amor Vincit Omnia!

Ycleped Madame Eglantine.

Ful well she sang the servicë divine,

Entunëd in hir nose ful semëly:

And Frensch she spak ful fair and fetisly,

After the scole of Stratford attë Bowe,

For Frensch of Paris was to hir unknowe.

…

Full fetys was her cloke, as I was waar

Of smal coral aboute hir arme she baar

A paire of bedës gauded all with grene,

And thereon heng a broch of gold ful schene

On which was first y-writ a crownéd A,

And after—Amor Vincit Omnia!

Then comes the Monk, who has a shiny pate, who is stout, well fed, pretentious; his very trappings make a portrait—

And when he rood, men might his bridel heereGingling in a whistlyng wynd as cleereAnd eek as loude as doth the chapel belle.

And when he rood, men might his bridel heere

Gingling in a whistlyng wynd as cleere

And eek as loude as doth the chapel belle.

Again, there was a Friar—a wanton and a merry one—rollicksome, and loving rich houses only,

——who lispéd for his wantonnesse,To make his Englissch swete upon his tunge;His eyen twinkled in his hed arightAs do the starrës in the frosty night.

——who lispéd for his wantonnesse,

To make his Englissch swete upon his tunge;

His eyen twinkled in his hed aright

As do the starrës in the frosty night.

And among them all goes, with mincing step, the middle-aged, vulgar, well-preserved, coquettish, shrewish Wife of Bath:

Hir hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed,Ful streyte y-tied, and schoos ful moiste and newe,Bold was her face, and faire and reed of hewe.

Hir hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed,

Ful streyte y-tied, and schoos ful moiste and newe,

Bold was her face, and faire and reed of hewe.

And so—on, and yet on—for the twenty or more; all touched with those little, life-like strokes which only genius can command, and which keep the breath in those old Pilgrims to Canterbury, as if they travelled there, between the blooming hedge rows, on every sunshiny day of every succeeding spring.

I know that praise of these and of the way Chaucer marshals them at the Tabard, and starts them on their way, and makes them tell their stories, is like praise of June or of sunshine. All poets and all readers have spoken it ever since the morning they set out upon their journeyings; and many an Americanvoyager of our day has found best illumination for that pleasant jaunt through County Kent toward the old towers of Canterbury in his recollections of Chaucer’s Pilgrims. It is true that the poet’s wayside marks are not close or strong; no more does a meteor leave other track than the memory of its brightness. We cannot fix of a surety upon the “ale-stake” where the Pardoner did “byten on a cake,” and there may be some doubt about the “litel” town

which that y-cleped is, Bob-up-and-Down.

But there is no doubt at all about the old Watling Road and Deptford, and the sight of Greenwich Heights, which must have shown a lifted forest away to their left; nor about Boughton Hill (by Boughton-under-Blean), with its far-off view of sea-water and of sails, and its nearer view of the great cathedral dominating Canterbury town. Up to the year 1874 the traveller might have found a Tabard[50]tavern in Southwark, whichat about 1600 had replaced the old inn that Chaucer knew; but it repeated the old quaintness, and with its lumbering balconies and littered court and droll signs, and its saggings and slants and smells, carried one back delightfully to fourteenth-century times. And in Canterbury, at the end of the two or three days’[51]pilgrim journey, one can set foot in very earnest upon the pavement these people from the Tabard trod, under the cathedral arches—looking after the tomb of the great Black Prince, and the scene of the slaughter of Thomas à Becket. In that quaint old town, too, are gables under which some of these story-tellers of the Pilgrimage may have lodged; and (mingling old tales with new) there are latticed casements out of which Agnes Wickfield may have looked, and sidewalks where David Copperfield may have accommodated his boy-step to the lounging pace of the always imminent Micawber. Yet it is in the country outside and in scenes the poet loved best, that the aroma of the Canterbury Tales will be caught most surely; and it isamong those picturesque undulations of land which lie a little westward of Harbledown—upon the Rochester road, which winds among patches of wood, and green stretches of grass and billowy hop-gardens, that the lover of Chaucer will have most distinctly in his ear the jingle of the “bridel” of the Monk, and in his eye the scarlet hosen and the wimple of the Wife of Bath.

Yet these Canterbury Tales convey something in them and about them beside delicacies; the host, who is master of ceremonies, throws mud at a grievous rate, and with a vigorous and a dirty hand. Boccaccio’s indecencies lose nothing of their quality in the smirched rhyme of the Reeve’s tale;[52]the Miller is not presentable in any decent company, and the Wife of Bath is vulgar and unseemly. There are others, to be sure, and enough, who have only gracious and grateful speech put into their mouths; and it is these we cherish. The stories, indeed, which these pilgrims tell, are not much in themselves; stolen, too, the most of them; stolen, justas Homer stole the current stories about Ajax and Ulysses; just as Boccaccio stole from theGesta Romanorum; just as Shakespeare stole from the Cymric fables about King Lear and Cymbeline. He stole; but so did everyone who could get hold of a good manuscript. Imagine—if all books were in such form now, and MSS. as few and sparse as then, what a range for enterprising authors! But Chaucer stole nothing that he did not improve and make his own by the beauties he added.

Take that old slight legend (everywhere current in the north of England) of the little Christian boy, who was murdered by Jews, because he sang songs in honor of the Virgin; and who—after death—still sang, and so discovered his murderers. It is a bare rag of story, with only streaks of blood-red in it; yet how tenderly touched, and how pathetically told, in Chaucer’s tale of the Prioress!

It is a widow’s son—“sevene yeres of age”—and wheresoe’er he saw the image

Of Christe’s moder, had he in usage,As him was taught, to knele adown and sayHisAve Marie!as he goth by the way.Thus hath this widowe hire litel son y-taughtTo worship aye, and he forgat it naughte.

Of Christe’s moder, had he in usage,

As him was taught, to knele adown and say

HisAve Marie!as he goth by the way.

Thus hath this widowe hire litel son y-taught

To worship aye, and he forgat it naughte.

And the “litel” fellow, with his quick ear, hears at school some day theAlma Redemptorissung; and he asks what the beautiful song may mean? He says he will learn it before Christmas, that he may say it to his “moder dere.” His fellows help him word by word—line by line—till he gets it on his tongue:

From word to word, acording with the note,Twiës a day, it passed thro’ his throte.

From word to word, acording with the note,

Twiës a day, it passed thro’ his throte.

At last he has it trippingly; so—schoolward and homeward,

as he cam to and froFull merrily than would he sing and crie,OAlma Redemptorisever mó,The sweetnesse hath his hertë perced so.

as he cam to and fro

Full merrily than would he sing and crie,

OAlma Redemptorisever mó,

The sweetnesse hath his hertë perced so.

Through the Jews’ quarter he goes one day, singing this sweet song that bubbles from him as he walks; and they—set on by Satan, who “hath in Jewe’s herte his waspës nest”—conspire and plot, and lay hold on him, and cut his throat, and cast him into a pit.

But—a wonder—a miracle!—still from the bleeding throat, even when life is gone, comes the tender song, “O Alma Redemptoris!” And thewretched mother, wandering and wailing, is led by the sweet, plaintive echoes, whose tones she knows, to where her poor boy lies dead; and even as she comes, he, with throte y-carven, his

Alma Redemptorisgan to singSo loude that al the placë gan to ring.

Alma Redemptorisgan to sing

So loude that al the placë gan to ring.

Then the Christian people take him up, and bear him away to the Abbey. His mother lies swooning by the bier. They hang those wicked Jews—and prepare the little body for burial and sprinkle it with holy water; but still from the poor bleeding throat comes “evermo’” the song:

O Alma Redemptoris mater!

And the good Abbot entreats him to say, why his soul lingers, with his throat thus all agape?

“My throte is cut unto my nekkë bone,”Saidë this child, “and as by way of kynde,I should have dyed, ye longë time agone,But Jesu Christ, as ye in bookës finde,Wol that his glory laste, and be in minde,And for the worship of his moder dere,Yet may I sing, ‘O Alma!’ loud and clere.”

“My throte is cut unto my nekkë bone,”

Saidë this child, “and as by way of kynde,

I should have dyed, ye longë time agone,

But Jesu Christ, as ye in bookës finde,

Wol that his glory laste, and be in minde,

And for the worship of his moder dere,

Yet may I sing, ‘O Alma!’ loud and clere.”

But he says that as he received his death-blow, the Virgin came, and

“Methoughte she leyde a greyn upon my tongue,Wherefore I singe and singe; I mote certeynTil from my tonge off-taken is the greyn;And after that, thus saidë she to me,‘My litel child, then wol I fecchen thee!’”[Where at] This holy monk—this Abbot—him mene I,His tonge out-caughte, and tok away the greyn,And he gaf up the goost full softëly.…And when the Abbot had this wonder seinHis saltë teres trillëd adown as raine,And graf he fell, all platt upon the grounde,And stille he lay as he had been y-bounde.

“Methoughte she leyde a greyn upon my tongue,

Wherefore I singe and singe; I mote certeyn

Til from my tonge off-taken is the greyn;

And after that, thus saidë she to me,

‘My litel child, then wol I fecchen thee!’”

[Where at] This holy monk—this Abbot—him mene I,

His tonge out-caughte, and tok away the greyn,

And he gaf up the goost full softëly.

…

And when the Abbot had this wonder sein

His saltë teres trillëd adown as raine,

And graf he fell, all platt upon the grounde,

And stille he lay as he had been y-bounde.

After this they take away the boy-martyr from off his bier—

And in a tombe of marble stonës clereEnclosen they his litel body swete;Ther he is now: God leve us for to mete!

And in a tombe of marble stonës clere

Enclosen they his litel body swete;

Ther he is now: God leve us for to mete!

How tenderly the words all match to the delicate meaning! This delightful poet knows every finest resource of language: he subdues and trails after him all its harmonies. No grimalkin stretching out silken paws touches so lightly what he wants only to touch; no cat with sharpest claws clings so tenaciously to what he would grip with his earnester words. He is a painter whose technique is never at fault—whose art is an instinct.

Yet—it must be said—there is no grand horizon at the back of his pictures: pleasant May-mornings and green meadows a plenty; pathetic episodes, most beguiling tracery of incidents and of character, but never strong, passionate outbursts showing profound capacity for measurement of deepest emotion. We cannot think of him as telling with any adequate force the story of King Lear, in his delirium of wrath: Macbeth’s stride and hushed madness and bated breath could not come into the charming, mellifluous rhythm of Chaucer’s most tragic story without making a dissonance that would be screaming.

But his descriptions of all country things are garden-sweet. He touches the daisies and the roses with tints that keep them always in freshest, virgin, dewy bloom; and he fetches the forest to our eye with words that are brim-full of the odors of the woods and of the waving of green boughs.

In our next talk we shall speak of some who sang beside him, and of some who followed; but of these not one had so rare a language, and not one had so true an eye.

In our last chapter we went back to the latter edge of the thirteenth century and to the City of Oxford, that we might find in that time and place a Franciscan Friar—known as Roger Bacon, who had an independence of spirit which brought him into difficulties, and a searchingness of mind which made people count him a magician. I spoke of Langlande and Wyclif: and of how the reforming spirit of the first expressed itself in the alliterative rhythm of the Piers Plowman allegory; and how the latter declared against Papal tyranny and the accepted dogmas of the Church: he too, set on foot those companies of “pore priests,” who in long russet gowns reaching to their heels, and with staff in hand, traversed the highways and byways of England, preaching humility and charity; he gave to us moreover that Scriptural quaintness of language,which from Wyclif’s time, down to ours, has left its trail in every English pulpit, and colored every English prayer.

Then we came to that great poet Chaucer, who wrote so much and so well, as—first and most of all contemporary or preceding writers—to make one proud of the new English tongue. He died in 1400, and was buried at Westminster—not a stone’s throw away from the site of his last London home. His tomb, under its Gothic screen, may be found in the Poet’s Corner of the Abbey, a little to the right, on entering from the Old Palace Yard; and over it, in a window that looks toward the Houses of Parliament, has been set—in these latter years, in unfading array—the gay company of Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims.

In the same year in which the poet died, died also that handsome and unfortunate Richard the Second[53](son of the Black Prince) who promised bravely; who seemed almost an heroic figure when in his young days, he confronted Wat Tyler so coolly; but he made promises he could not or wouldnot keep—slipped into the enthralment of royalties against which Lollard and democratic malcontents bayed in vain: there were court cabals that overset him; Shakespeare has told his story, and in that tragedy—lighted with brilliant passages—John of Gaunt, brother to the Black Prince, appears, old, and gray and near his grave; and his son—the crafty but resolute Henry Bolingbroke—comes on the stage as Henry IV. to take the “brittle glory” of the crown.

But I must not leave Chaucer’s immediate times, without speaking of other men who belonged there: the first is John Gower—a poet whom I name from a sense of duty rather than from any special liking for what he wrote. He was a man of learning for those days—having a good estate too, and living in an orderly Kentish home, to which he went back and forth in an eight-oared barge upon the Thames. He wrote a long Latin poemVox Clamantis, in which like Langlande he declaimed against the vices and pretensions of the clergy; and he also treated in the high-toned conservative way of awell-to-do country gentleman, the social troubles of the time, which had broken out into Wat Tyler and Jack Straw rebellions;—people should be wise and discreet and religious; then, such troubles would not come.

A better known poem of Gower—because written in English—was theConfessio Amantis: Old Classic, and Romance tales come into it, and are fearfully stretched out; and there are pedagogic Latin rubrics at the margin, and wearisome repetitions, with now and then faint scent of prettinesses stolen from Frenchfabliaux: but unless your patience is heroic, you will grow tired of him; and the monotonous, measured, metallic jingle of his best verse is provokingly like the “Caw-caw” of the prim, black raven. He had art, he had learning, he had good-will; but he could not weave words into the thrush-like melodies of Chaucer. Even the clear and beautiful type of the Bell & Daldy edition[54]does not make him entertaining. You will tire beforeyou are half through the Prologue, which is as long, and stiff as many a sermon. And if you skip to the stories, they will not win you to liveliness: Pauline’s grace, and mishaps are dull; and the sharp, tragic twang about Gurmunde’s skull, and the vengeance of Rosemunde (from the old legend which Paul the Deacon tells) does not wake one’s blood.

In his later years he was religiously inclined; was a patron and, for a time, resident of the Priory which was attached to the church, now known as St. Saviour’s, and standing opposite to the London Bridge Station in Southwark. In that church may now be found the tomb of Gower and his effigy in stone, with his head resting on “the likeness of three books which he compiled.”

Perhaps I have no right to speak of Froissart, because he was a Fleming, and did not write in English; but Lord Berners’ spirited translation of his Chronicle (1523) has made it an English classic:[55]moreover, Froissart was very much in London; he was a great pet of the Queen of EdwardIII.; he had free range of the palace; he described great fêtes that were given at Windsor, and tournaments on what is now Cheapside; a reporter of our day could not have described these things better: he went into Scotland too—the Queen Philippa giving him his outfit—and stayed with the brave Douglas “much time,” and tells us of Stirling and of Melrose Abbey. Indeed, he was a great traveller. He was at Milan when Prince Clarence of England married one of the great Visconti (Chaucer possibly there also, and Petrarch of a certainty); he was at Rome, at Florence, at Bordeaux with the Black Prince, when his son Richard II. was born; was long in the household of Gaston de Foix: we are inclined to forget, as we read him, that he was a priest, and had his parochial charge somewhere along the low banks of the Scheldt: in fact, we suspect that he forgot it himself.

He not only wrote Chronicles, but poems; and he tells us, that on his last visit to England, he presented a copy of these latter—beautifully illuminated, engrossed by his own hand, bound in crimson velvet, and embellished with silver clasps, bosses,and golden roses—to King Richard II.; and the King asked him what it was all about; and he said—“About Love;” whereat, he says, the King seemed much pleased, and dipped into it, here and there—for “he could read French as well as speak it.”

Altogether, this rambling, and popular Froissart was, in many points, what we should call an exquisite fellow; knowing, and liking to know, only knights and nobles, and flattering them to the full; receiving kindly invitations wherever he went; overcome with the pressure of his engagements; going about in the latest fashion of doublet; somewhiles leading a fine greyhound in leash, and presenting five or six of the same to his friend the Comte de Foix (who had a great love for dogs); never going near enough to the front in battle to get any very hard raps; ready with a song or a story always; pulling a long bow with infinite grace. Well—the pretty poems he thought so much of, nobody knows—nobody cares for: they have never, I think, been published in their entirety:[56]But, his Journal—his notes of what he saw andheard, clapped down night by night, in hostelries or in tent—perhaps on horseback—are cherished of all men, and must be reckoned the liveliest, if not the best of all chronicles of his time. He died in the first decade of that fifteenth century on which we open our British march to-day; and, at the outset, I call attention to a little nest of dates, which from their lying so close together, can be easily kept in mind. Richard II. son of the Black Prince, died—a disgraced prisoner—in 1400. John of Gaunt, his uncle, friend of Chaucer, died the previous year: while Chaucer, Froissart and John Gower all died in less than ten years thereafter; thus, the century opens with a group of great deaths.

That Henry IV. who appears now upon the throne, and who was not a very noticeable man, save for his kingship, you will remember as the little son of John of Gaunt, who played about Chaucer’s knee; you will remember him furtheras giving title to a pair of Shakespeare’s plays, in which appears for the first time that semi-historic character—that enormous wallet of flesh, that egregious villain, that man of a prodigious humor, all in one—Jack Falstaff. And this famous, fat Knight of Literature shall introduce us to Prince Hal who, according to traditions (much doubted nowadays), was a wild boy in his youth, and boon companion of such as Falstaff; but, afterward, became the brave and cruel, but steady and magnificent Henry V. Yet we shall never forget those early days of his, when at Gad’s Hill, he plots with Falstaff and his fellows, to waylay travellers bound to London, with plump purses. Before the plot is carried out, the Prince agrees privately with Poins (one of the rogues) to put a trick upon Falstaff: Poins and the Prince will slip away in the dusk—let Falstaff and his companions do the robbing; then, suddenly—disguised in buckram suits—pounce on them and seize the booty. This, the Prince and Poins do: and at the first onset of these latter, the fat Knight runs off, as fast as his great hulk will let him, and goes spluttering and puffing to a near tavern, where—after consuming “an intolerable deal of sack”—heis confronted by the Prince, who demands his share of the spoils. But the big Knight blurts out—“A plague on all cowards!” He has been beset, while the Prince had sneaked away; the spoils are gone:

“I am a rogue, if I was not at half a sword with a dozen of them two hours together; I have scaped by a miracle; I am eight times thrust thro’ the doublet—four thro’ the hose. My sword is hacked like a hand-saw. If I fought not with fifty of them, then am I a bunch of radish. If there were not two or three and fifty on poor old Jack, then am I no two-legged creature.”“Pray God, [says the Prince, keeping down his laughter] you have not murdered some of them!”Falstaff.Nay, that’s past praying for; for I peppered two of them—two rogues in buckram. Here I lay, and thus I bore my sword. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me.Prince.What, four?; thou said’st two.Falstaff.Four, Hal; I told thee four.

“Pray God, [says the Prince, keeping down his laughter] you have not murdered some of them!”

Falstaff.Nay, that’s past praying for; for I peppered two of them—two rogues in buckram. Here I lay, and thus I bore my sword. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me.

Prince.What, four?; thou said’st two.

Falstaff.Four, Hal; I told thee four.

And Poins comes to his aid, with—“Ay, he said four.” Whereat the fat Knight takes courage; the men in buckram growing, in whimsical stretch to seven, and nine; he, paltering and swearing, and never losing his delicious insolent swagger, till at last the Prince declares the truth, and makes show of the booty. You think this coward Falstaff may lose heart at this; not a whit of it; his eye, rollingin fat, does not blink even, while the Prince unravels the story; but at the end the stout Knight hitches up his waistband, smacks his lips:—

“D’ye think I did not know ye, my masters? Should I turn upon the true Prince? Why thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules; but beware instinct: I was a coward on instinct.”

So runs the Shakespearean scene, of which I give this glimpse only as a remembrancer of Henry IV., and his possibly wayward son.

If we keep by the strict letter of history, there is little of literary interest in that short reign of his—only fourteen years. Occleve, a poet of whom I spoke as having painted a portrait of Chaucer (which I tried to describe to you) is worth mentioning—were it only for this. Lydgate,[57]of about the same date, was a more fertile poet; wrote so easily indeed, that he was tempted to write too much. But he had the art of choosing taking subjects, and so, was vastly popular. He had excellent training, both English and Continental; he was a priest, though sometimes a naughty one; and he opened a school at his monastery of St. Edmunds.A few fragments of that monastery are still to be seen in the ancient town of Bury St. Edmunds:—a town you may remember in a profane way, as the scene of certain nocturnal adventures that befel, in our time, Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller.

Notable amongst the minor poems of this old Bury monk, is a jingling ballad calledLondon Lickpenny, in which a poor suitor pushing his way into London courts, is hustled about, has his hood stolen, wanders hither and yon, with stout cries of “ripe strawberries” and “hot sheepes feete” shrilling in his ears; is beset by taverners and thievish thread-sellers, and is glad to get himself away again into Kent, and there digest the broad, and ever good moral that a man’s pennies get “licked” out of him fast in London. Remembering that this was at the very epoch when Nym and Bardolph frequented the Boar’s Head, Eastcheap, and cracked jokes and oaths with Dame Quickly and Doll Tearsheet, and we are more grateful for the old rhyming priest’s realistic bit of London sights, than for all his classics,[58]or all his stories of the saints.

But at the very time this Lydgate was writing, a tenderer and sweeter voice was warbling music out of a prison window at Windsor; and the music has come down to us:[59]

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