Il me semble que considerant la foiblesse de nostre vie, et à combien d’escueils ordinaires et naturels elle est exposée, on n’en devroit pas faire si grande part à la naissance, à l’oisiveté te à l’apprentissageage.Montaigne, ch. 57.
Il me semble que considerant la foiblesse de nostre vie, et à combien d’escueils ordinaires et naturels elle est exposée, on n’en devroit pas faire si grande part à la naissance, à l’oisiveté te à l’apprentissageage.
Montaigne, ch. 57.
In a second visit to Europe after the death of De Mornay, I sought out the hamlet where his father lived. It wasChateaux-Prix sur L’Emmat. The place is very French, being in the neighborhood of a dismantled fortification. But the green slopes are still kept trim for promenades. Long, long rows of Lombardy poplars, very different from the spindling things we have, stretch a mile along the water. The low, red houses, with red tiles, huddle together about the red church, like a brood crowding around the hen. In the evenings, the brown peasants in blouses, and the brown mothers and maids in broad straw plats, cluster under vines at the doors, with long loaves of bread and flasks of country wine. Clumps of Grenoble walnut-trees—we call themEnglish—half conceal with their full foliage the immense rood of timber which predominates over a village spring. Near this, as the sun sinks, are heard the sound of the tabor and pipe, and the clatter ofsabots, as the boys and girls run to the merry-making. Donkeysare loose among the road-side thistles, and the long twilight is not over before all are in bed.
But the De Mornays had flitted out of France, and I found them—almost the only remaining Huguenots in Louvain, which once was so famous a Protestant town.[1]The portrait of Gaston du Plessis, Albert’s grand-uncle, hanging at Doctor De Mornay’s, might—with another dress—have passed for a likeness of my friend; but it was in feather and coat-armor. Madame Guers, a young widow, heard with tears my remembrances of her cousin. It was she who carried me to see theHôtel de Ville, built some time in the fifteenth century, and told me gay romances of the Dukes of Brabant. She had never heard of Froissart! I cannot remember whether it was here or at Liège that I wondered at the Holy Family of Quentin Matsys. The Louvain beer is famous, and I advise tourists to acquaint themselves with the Brabant John Barleycorn at theMaison des Brasseurs, or Brewer’s Hall, or at the convent of Parc, with its fish-ponds, not far distant.
Being still out of my head about teaching, I was dinned with talk concerning theMethode Jacotot, which is as little remembered there as Manual Labor Schools with us. And, surely, a comical method it was! For Jacotot presumed to teach every thing out of one book, by an everlasting repetition. Hundreds of schools were set up on this plan.
Rambling old man that I am! It is time my chapters came to an end. Alice is horrified at my reading out of Homer a passage in the twentieth book of the Odyssey, and says she shall dream of it. I defy Pfeffers to find any thing more ghastly in German story. It is where the guests are suddenly struck mad. They burst forth into sardonic laughter. Blood issues from their mouths, and tears pour from their eyes. Meanwhile Theoclymenus, gifted with sudden clairvoyance, beholds the sun perishing from the heavens, the porch filled with spectres, and the walls sweating gore. Why has it not been quoted by our Northern spiritualists?
Before I end my dictations and resolve to bid Alice close her portfolio, let me give one or two discoveries concerning old age, which my readers will better understand when they have had the “three warnings.”
Old folks do not acquire wisdom in a natural way; that is, as they acquire short breath, puckered lips, gray hairs, crowsfeet, weak knees and shuffling feet. Habit is habit. Idle youth—idle age. I love books as much and as fondly as when I was in my father’s garret. But my glasses are too young for me, and McAlister is five hundred miles away, and folios are hard to manage, and my grand-daughter is in peril of laryngitis by reading so loud to me, and my eyes close in the middle of periods, and my pipe goes out ten times a-day.
When I was young I thought life pleasant, but I also thought that after three-score I should be ready to yield it without a sigh. I do not know how it is, but my love of life has a tenacity as tough as my corded fingers. Every preparation for “that vast ocean I must sail so soon” is inducedab extra. The instinctive tendency is to live a little longer.
In old age I fancy myself not very much attended to. This I suppress; but for the life of me I cannot help observing that in all companies my chair becomes insular. The young men prefer learning of the young women. The young women attend to me sweetly—but as it were by afterthought, from sense of duty.
As an old man, I perceive that young creatures are too gay. The loud laugh reaches me, but I have lost thebon motwhich caused it. The books they are in raptures about are not in my collection. Was I ever thus? And did those grave looks of my seniors proceed from something like this in their heedless offspring? Heigh-ho! It is time for me to look for hat and stick, as aconviva satur.
The teeth which Gardette furnished me are the admiration of all companies; and I speak with only a perceptible click produced by the play of the gold and porcelain. Yet what I say is evidently less relished than when I used to be in blue broad-cloth and hair-powder, and with six unstarched cravats about my neck. My Latin quotations are unintelligible, for I retain the old continental sound of the vowels, and cannot break my organs into the Anglicism ofpayter,frayter, andnigh-sigh, forpater,frater, andnisi. I can’t learn to change the SpanishQuijoteinto Quixotte, with a double T; or to talk “of paying overoverten dollars,” when I mean “paying over more than ten dollars.” Alice has never found her favorite “reliable” in any English author before the days of Sir Robert Peel; or any classic writer who ever uttered the phrase “onto-morrow.” I am old-fashioned enough to present to each other visitors who meet at a morning call, and to show them to the door; nor can I wear my hat in the house, bald as I am.Quere.Whether Methusalem had these disabilities in proportion to his longinquity?
[1]
I may be in error, but so my Commissionaire Jean d’Ypres told me.
——
“He is insensibly subduedTo settled quiet; he is one by whomAll effort seems forgotten: one to whomLong patience hath such mild composure given,That patience now doth seem a thing of whichHe hath no need.”Wordsworth.
“He is insensibly subduedTo settled quiet; he is one by whomAll effort seems forgotten: one to whomLong patience hath such mild composure given,That patience now doth seem a thing of whichHe hath no need.”Wordsworth.
“He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet; he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten: one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need.”
Wordsworth.
They say old age is cold, but this summer weather boils my blood, and drives me to every corner where a little motion among the leaves affords a surmise of gentle airs. Which reminds me of the comic sufferings of my friend Pfeffers, when first he made trial of our cis-atlantic climate. He so panted and perspired, that we feared he might go off in a paroxysm of some tropical disease. It was many a long year ago, yet Pfeffers is still alive; by this token, that he is my guest at this present writing. His tongue retains a few scarcely perceptible Shibboleths of his German original. Long ago, he threw himself heart and soul into our American usages, and married an American wife. Age sits lightly on him.He is brown, and square built, and he dresses young. An auburn wig surmounts his mahogany visage with formidable dignity. Pfeffers is an ornithologist, and—with a zeal almost furious—has traversed all our Southern States in pursuit of the fowls of the air. That he has escaped poisoning himself with the arsenic which he uses in his taxidermy is to be ascribed to the volumes of tobacco-smoke which he has inhaled during half a century.
In the odd changes of life’s wheel, some of my youthful companions have turned up in strange places. Pfeffers has just informed me, that he met at Memphis—not in Egypt—an old lady, who remembered having seen me in Dublin. It was no other than Grace O’Meara, whom I left a bouncing girl in her gallant father’s house, and who is now a hale but wrinkled grandmamma. Through her report, I learned that Guerin—the friend of my beloved De Mornay—lived to a very great age in the island of Martinique, where he continued, till the last, to pursue his philosophical and humane studies. Gentle Frenchman—how many, less deserving, are honored with monumental marbles!
My literary reminiscences were much freshened by Pfeffers, and his presence carried me back to the vine-clad heights of the Rhine. What delicious fragrance comes back to one’s inner sense from the balmy fields of juvenile experience! Surely this is one of the principal compensations of benign Providence to men in years. Old age itself does not always impair the faculty of living over again the innocent pleasures of life. Garrulous we are, it cannot be denied, at our time of life, and every octogenarian is prone to be alaudator temporis acti. But if young folks were wise, they would lend willing ears, and thus would have us in our best moments, to wit—when we are rejoicing in the past, rather than tasking the outworn powers to receive the new impressions of the present.
I seem to float again upon the Rhine, and again to hear the song of the vine-dressers, suspended from the craggy and terraced slopes where the white wines of princes are produced.
Pfeffers and I have diverged more and more as we have grown older, and each is rigid in his cramps and oddities. Except in smoking, there is scarcely a point on which we agree. He loves to read Rabelais; whom, maugre all the eulogies of Coleridge and other great men, I continue to loathe as a filthy old man. He glories in Jean-Paul, whom I never could comprehend. He places Dante and Goethe above all poets, while I stick to Shakspeare, Milton and Schiller. He is a red-democrat, croaks songs of Freiligrath, and rehearses rhapsodies of Kinkel; I am a conservative, an old federalist, and a hater ofemeutes. He follows Blum and Heine, and is aLichtfreund, orilluminé, ready to guillotine priests and proclaim a millenium of unbelief; I am a churchgoer, and almost a Quaker in my quiet musings. He derides all such dreams as those of Guerin and De Mornay, and votes all the Pascals, Nicoles, Fenelons and Gurneys to be milksops and pietistic fools; I equally scorn his Bruno Bauers and Carlyles. His old age is fiery, restless, testy and unmerciful; on the contrary, I grow calmer, and more averse to agitation. He is a thorough-paced abolitionist, of theruat cælumschool; I am disposed to follow Sir Robert Walpole’squiteta non movere. We live in a pleasing pain of endless controversy, which puts out his pipe a dozen times a-day, while it only causes my clouds of smoke to roll away in heavier volume.
My chief amusement has been in planting trees for the use of posterity, and in decorating a little church which the ladies of our neighborhood have been rearing out of the work of their own hands. I have inserted in my will—after a competency for Alice—a provision looking toward the perpetuation of a school, in the spot where my happy pedagogic days were past. The shadows of the evening have brought with them a grateful calm. As I contemplate the setting sun, it is soothing to consider that it will rise to-morrow on a land which grows greater and happier every day; a land which, in spite of occasional agitations, has settled itself with dignity on the principles of Washington; a land in which fanatical bonfires die out without any conflagration.
Adieu, gentlest reader! If these chapters seem to you rambling and empty, be assured they seem not less so to me. Yet the utterance of trifles has given me a relief; and if they add a pleasure to any who peruse them, it will be to me a content and a recompense.
———
BY WM. ALEXANDER.
———
Brood sombrous clouds above a midnight sea;Rude, rifted rocks rise round the final shoreOf life’s wide world. Through the thick mist that o’erThe scene spreads sadness, lo! all silentlyGlides a lone, wearied, shattered bark along;Sun, moon and stars are darkened unto him,Its aged voyager. His eyesight dim,Nor joy nor pleasure can to him belong—Ferried fast on by many drooping hours,Nears he the leaden stream’s wide mouth, at last,Whose waters wildly roar as run they pastInto eternity’s vast flood. All powersFail now to him. With numerous sorrows rife,Enters he then the haven of immortal life.
Brood sombrous clouds above a midnight sea;Rude, rifted rocks rise round the final shoreOf life’s wide world. Through the thick mist that o’erThe scene spreads sadness, lo! all silentlyGlides a lone, wearied, shattered bark along;Sun, moon and stars are darkened unto him,Its aged voyager. His eyesight dim,Nor joy nor pleasure can to him belong—Ferried fast on by many drooping hours,Nears he the leaden stream’s wide mouth, at last,Whose waters wildly roar as run they pastInto eternity’s vast flood. All powersFail now to him. With numerous sorrows rife,Enters he then the haven of immortal life.
Brood sombrous clouds above a midnight sea;
Rude, rifted rocks rise round the final shore
Of life’s wide world. Through the thick mist that o’er
The scene spreads sadness, lo! all silently
Glides a lone, wearied, shattered bark along;
Sun, moon and stars are darkened unto him,
Its aged voyager. His eyesight dim,
Nor joy nor pleasure can to him belong—
Ferried fast on by many drooping hours,
Nears he the leaden stream’s wide mouth, at last,
Whose waters wildly roar as run they past
Into eternity’s vast flood. All powers
Fail now to him. With numerous sorrows rife,
Enters he then the haven of immortal life.
CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES.
———
BY THOMAS B. SHAW.
———
We consider the age of Chaucer as the true starting-point of the English literature properly so called. In Italy letters appear to have revived after the long and gloomy period characterized by the somewhat false term of “the dark ages,” with astonishing rapidity. Like germs and seeds of plants which have lain for centuries buried deep in the unfruitful bowels of the earth, and suddenly brought up by some convulsion of nature to the surface, the intellect of Italy burst forth, in the fourteenth century, into a tropical luxuriance, putting out its fairest flowers of poetry, and its solidest and most beautiful fruits of wisdom and of wit. Dante died seven years before, and Petrarch and Boccaccio about fifty years after, the birth of Chaucer, who thus was exposed to the strongest and directest influence of the genius of these great men. How great that influence was, we shall presently see. The great causes, then, which modified and directed the genius of Chaucer were—first, the new Italian poetry, which then suddenly burst forth upon the world, like Pallas from the brain of Jupiter, perfect and consummate in its virgin strength and beauty; second, the now decaying Romanz or Provençal poetry; and third, the doctrines of the Reformation, which were beginning, obscurely but irresistibly, to agitate the minds of men; a movement which took its origin, as do all great and permanent revolutions, in the lower depths of the popular heart, heaving gradually onward, like the tremendous ground-swell of the equator, until it burst with resistless strength upon the Romish Church in Germany and in England, sweeping all before it. Wickliffe, who was born in 1324, only four years before Chaucer, had undoubtedly communicated to the poet many of his bold doctrines: the father of our poetry and the father of our reformed religion were both attached to the party of the celebrated John of Gaunt, and were both honored with the friendship and protection of that powerful prince: Chaucer, indeed, was the kinsman of the earl, having married the sister of Catherine Swinford, first the mistress and ultimately the wife of “time-honored Lancaster;” and the poet’s varied and uncertain career seems to have faithfully followed all the vicissitudes of John of Gaunt’s eventful life.
Geoffrey Chaucer was born, as he informs us himself, in London; and for the date of an event so important to the destinies of English letters, we must fix it, on the authority of the inscription upon his tomb, as having happened in the year 1328; that is to say, at the commencement of the splendid and chivalrous reign of Edward III. The honor of having been the place of his education has been eagerly disputed by the two great and ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the former, however, of the two learned sisters having apparently the best established right to the maternity—or at least the fosterage—of so illustrious a nursling. Cambridge founds her claim upon the circumstance of Chaucer’s having subscribed one of his early works “PhilogenetofCambridge, clerk.” He afterward returned to London, and there became a student of the law. His detestation of the monks appears, from a very curious document, to have begun even so early as his abode in the grave walls of the Temple; for we find the name of Jeffrey Chaucer inscribed in an ancientregister as having been fined for the misdemeanor of beating a friar in Fleet street.
The first efforts of a revival of letters will always be made in the path of translation; and to this principle Chaucer forms no exception. He was an indefatigable translator; and the whole of many—nay, a great part ofall—his works bears unequivocal traces of the prevailing taste for imitation. How much he has improved upon his models, what new lights he has placed them in, with what skill he has infused fresh life into the dry bones of obscure authors, it will hereafter be our business to inquire. He was the poetical pupil of Gower, and, like Raphael and Shakspeare, he surpassed his master: Gower always speaks with respect of his illustrious pupil in the art of poetry; and, in his work entitled “Confessio Amantis,” places in the mouth of Venus the following elegant compliment;—
And grate wel Chaucer, when ye mete,As my disciple and my poéte:For in the flowers of his youth,In sundry wise, as he well couthe,Of ditees and of songés gladeThe which he for my sake made, etc.
And grate wel Chaucer, when ye mete,As my disciple and my poéte:For in the flowers of his youth,In sundry wise, as he well couthe,Of ditees and of songés gladeThe which he for my sake made, etc.
And grate wel Chaucer, when ye mete,As my disciple and my poéte:For in the flowers of his youth,In sundry wise, as he well couthe,Of ditees and of songés gladeThe which he for my sake made, etc.
And grate wel Chaucer, when ye mete,
As my disciple and my poéte:
For in the flowers of his youth,
In sundry wise, as he well couthe,
Of ditees and of songés glade
The which he for my sake made, etc.
These lines also prove that Chaucer began early to write; and probably our poet continued during the whole course of his eventful life, to labor assiduously in the fields of letters.
His earliest works were strongly tinctured with the manner, nay, even with the mannerism, of the age. They are much fuller of allegory than his later productions; they are distinguished by a greater parade of scholarship, and by a deeper tinge of that amorous and metaphysical mysticism which pervades the later Provençal poetry, and which reached its highest pitch of fantastical absurdity in theArrêts d’Amourof Picardy and Languedoc. As an example of this we may cite his “Dream,” an allegorical composition written to celebrate the nuptials of his friend and patron John of Gaunt, with Blanche, the heiress of Lancaster.
Chaucer was in every sense a man of the world: he was the ornament of two of the most brilliant courts in the annals of England—those of Edward III. and his successor Richard II. He also accompaniedthe former king in his expedition into France, and was taken prisoner about 1359, at the siege of Retters; and in 1367 we find him receiving from the crown a grant of 20 marks,i. e.about 200l.of our present money.
Our poet, thus distinguished as a soldier, as a courtier, and as a scholar, was honored with the duty of forming part of an embassy to the splendid court of Genoa, where he was present at the nuptials of Violante, daughter of Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, with the Duke of Clarence. At this period he made the acquaintance of Petrarch, and probably of Boccaccio also: to the former of these illustrious men he certainly was personally known; for he hints, in his “Canterbury Tales,” his having learned from him the beautiful and pathetic tale of the patient Griselda:—
Learned at Padua of a worthy clerkeFrancis Petrarke, the laureate poét:Highte thys clerke, whose rhethorique sweetEnlumined al Itale of poesy.
Learned at Padua of a worthy clerkeFrancis Petrarke, the laureate poét:Highte thys clerke, whose rhethorique sweetEnlumined al Itale of poesy.
Learned at Padua of a worthy clerkeFrancis Petrarke, the laureate poét:Highte thys clerke, whose rhethorique sweetEnlumined al Itale of poesy.
Learned at Padua of a worthy clerke
Francis Petrarke, the laureate poét:
Highte thys clerke, whose rhethorique sweet
Enlumined al Itale of poesy.
It was during his peregrinations in France and Italy that Chaucer drew at the fountain-head those deep draughts from the Hippocrene of Tuscany and of Provence which flow and sparkle in all his compositions. It is certain that he introduced into the English language an immense quantity of words absolutely and purely French, and that he succeeded with an admirable dexterity in harmonizing the ruder sounds of his vernacular tongue; so successfully, indeed, that it may be safely asserted that very few poets in any modern language are more exquisitely and uniformly musical than Chaucer. Indeed, he has been accused, and in rather severe terms, of having naturalized in English “a wagon-load of foreign words.”
In 1380 we find Chaucer appointed to the office of Clerk of the Works at Windsor, where he was charged with overlooking the repairs about to be made in St. George’s Chapel, then in a ruinous condition.
In 1383 Wickliffe completed his translation into the English language of the Bible, and his death, in the following year, seems to have been the signal for the commencement of a new and gloomy phase in the fortunes of the poet. Chaucer returned to England in 1386, and, the party to which he belonged having lost its political influence, he was imprisoned in the Tower, and deprived of the places and privileges which had been granted to him. Two years afterward he was permitted to sell his patents, and in 1389 he appears to have been induced to abandon, and even to accuse, his former associates, of whose treachery toward him he bitterly complains.
In reward for this submission to the government, we afterward find him restored to favor, and made, in the year 1389, Clerk of the Works at Westminster. It is at this period that he is supposed to have retired to pass the calm evening of his active life in the green shades of Woodstock, where he is related to have composed his admirable “Canterbury Tales.” This production, though, according to many opinions, neither the finest nor even the most characteristic of Chaucer’s numerous and splendid poems, is yet the one of them all by which he is now best known: it is the work which has handed his name down to future generations as the earliest glory of his country’s literature; and as such it warrants us in appealing, from the perhaps partial judgments of isolated critics, to the sovereign tribunal of posterity. The decisions of contemporaries may be swayed by fashion and prejudice; the criticism of scholars may be tinged with partiality; but the unanimous voice of four hundred and fifty years is sure to be a true index of the relative value of a work of genius.
Beautiful as are many of his other productions, it is the “Canterbury Tales” which have enshrined Chaucer in the penetralia of England’s Glory Temple; it is to the wit, the pathos, the humanity, the chivalry of those tales that our minds recur when our ear is struck with the venerable name of Chaucer. In 1390 we find the poet receiving the honorable charge of Clerk of the Works at Windsor; and, two years later, a grant from the crown of 20l.and a tun of wine annually. Toward the end of the century which his illustrious name had adorned, he appears to have fallen into some distress; for another document is in existence securing to the poet the protection of the crown (probably against importunate creditors;) and in 1399 we find the poet’s name inserted in the lease of a house holden from the Abbot and Chapter of Westminster, and occupying the spot upon which was afterward erected Henry VII.’s chapel, now forming one of the most brilliant ornaments of Westminster Abbey. In this house, as is with great probability conjectured, Chaucer died, on the 25th of October, 1400, and was buried in the Abbey, being the first of that long array of mighty poets whose bones repose with generations of kings, warriors, and statesmen, beneath the “long-drawn aisles.”
In reading the works of this poet the qualities which cannot fail to strike us most are—admirable truth, freshness, andlivingnessof his descriptions of external nature; profound knowledge of human life in the delineation of character; and that all-embracing humanity of heart which makes him, as it makes the reader, sympathise with all God’s creation, taking away from his humor every taste of bitterness and sarcasm. This humor, colored by and springing from universal sympathy, this noblest humanity—we mean humanity in the sense of Terence’s: “homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto”—is the heritage of only the greatest among mankind; and is but an example of that deep truth which Nature herself has taught us, when she placed in the human heart the spring of Laughter fast by the fountain of Tears.
We shall now proceed to examine the principal poems of Chaucer, in the hope of presenting to our readers some scale or measure of the gradual development of those powers which appear, at least to us, to have reached their highest apogee or exaltation in the “Canterbury Tales.”
In the first work to which we shall turn our attention, Chaucer has given us a translation of a poemesteemed by all French critics the noblest monument of their poetical literature anterior to the time of Francis I. This is the “Romaunt of the Rose,” a beautiful mixture of allegory and narrative, of which we shall presently give an outline in the words of Warton. The “Roman de la Rose” was commenced by William de Lorris, who died in 1260, and completed, in 1310, by Jean de Meun, a witty and satirical versifier, who was one of the ornaments of the brilliant court of Charles le Bel. Chaucer has translated the whole of the portion composed by the former, together with some of Meun’s continuation; making, as he goes on, innumerable improvements in the text, which, where it harmonizes with his own conceptions, he renders with singular fidelity. “The difficulties and dangers of a lover, in pursuing and obtaining the object of his desires, are the literal argument of the poem. This design is couched under the allegory of a rose, which our lover, after frequent obstacles, gathers in a delicious garden. He traverses vast ditches, scales lofty walls, and forces the gates of adamantine castles. These enchanted holds are all inhabited by various divinities; some of which assist, and some oppose, the lover’s progress.” The English poem is written, like the French original, in the short rhymed octo-syllabic couplets so universally adopted by the Trouvères, a measure well fitted, from its ease and flowingness, for the purpose of long narratives. We have said that the translation is in most cases very close; Chaucer was so far from desiring to make his works pass for original when they had no claim to this qualification, that he even specifies, with great care and with even a kind of exultation, the sources from whence his productions are derived. Indeed, at such early periods in the literature of any country, writers seem to attach as great or greater dignity to the office of translator than to the more arduous duty of original composition; the reason of which probably is, that in the childhood of nations as well as of men, learning is a rarer, and therefore more admired, quality than imagination.
The allegorical personages in the “Romaunt of the Rose” are singularly varied, rich, and beautiful. Sorrow, Envy, Avarice, Hate, Beauty, Franchise, Richesse, are successively brought on the stage. As an example of the remarks we have just been making, we will quote a short passage from the latter part of Chaucer’s translation,i. e.from that portion of the poem composed by John of Meun: it describes the attendants in the palace of Old Age: we will print the original French and also the extract:—
Travaile et douleur la hébergent,Mais ils la lient et la chargent,Que Mort prochaine luy présentent,En talant de se repentir;Tant luy sont de fléaux sentir;Adoncq luy vient en remembrance,En cest tardifve présence.Quand il se voit foible et chenue.With her, Labour and eke TravaileLodgid bene, with sorwe and wo.That never out of her court goPain and Distress, Sekenesse and Ire,And Melancholie that angry sire,Ben of her palais Senatoures;Goning ana Grutching her herbegeors.The day and night her to tourment,With cruel death they her present,And tellen her erliche and late,That Deth standith armid at her gate.
Travaile et douleur la hébergent,Mais ils la lient et la chargent,Que Mort prochaine luy présentent,En talant de se repentir;Tant luy sont de fléaux sentir;Adoncq luy vient en remembrance,En cest tardifve présence.Quand il se voit foible et chenue.With her, Labour and eke TravaileLodgid bene, with sorwe and wo.That never out of her court goPain and Distress, Sekenesse and Ire,And Melancholie that angry sire,Ben of her palais Senatoures;Goning ana Grutching her herbegeors.The day and night her to tourment,With cruel death they her present,And tellen her erliche and late,That Deth standith armid at her gate.
Travaile et douleur la hébergent,Mais ils la lient et la chargent,Que Mort prochaine luy présentent,En talant de se repentir;Tant luy sont de fléaux sentir;Adoncq luy vient en remembrance,En cest tardifve présence.Quand il se voit foible et chenue.With her, Labour and eke TravaileLodgid bene, with sorwe and wo.That never out of her court goPain and Distress, Sekenesse and Ire,And Melancholie that angry sire,Ben of her palais Senatoures;Goning ana Grutching her herbegeors.The day and night her to tourment,With cruel death they her present,And tellen her erliche and late,That Deth standith armid at her gate.
Travaile et douleur la hébergent,
Mais ils la lient et la chargent,
Que Mort prochaine luy présentent,
En talant de se repentir;
Tant luy sont de fléaux sentir;
Adoncq luy vient en remembrance,
En cest tardifve présence.
Quand il se voit foible et chenue.
With her, Labour and eke Travaile
Lodgid bene, with sorwe and wo.
That never out of her court go
Pain and Distress, Sekenesse and Ire,
And Melancholie that angry sire,
Ben of her palais Senatoures;
Goning ana Grutching her herbegeors.
The day and night her to tourment,
With cruel death they her present,
And tellen her erliche and late,
That Deth standith armid at her gate.
Here Chaucer’s improvements are plainly perceptible; the introduction of Death, standingarmedat the gate, is a grand and sublime thought, of which no trace is to be found in the comparatively flat original; not to mention the terrible distinctness with which Chaucer enumerates Old Age’sSenators, Pain, Distress, Sickness, Ire, and Melancholy; and her grim chamberlains, Groaning and Grudging.
The next poem which we shall mention is the love-story entitled “Troilus and Cresseide,” founded on one of the most favorite legends of the Middle Ages, and which Shakspeare himself has dramatized in the tragedy of the same name. The anachronism of placing the scene of such a history of chivalric love in the heroic age of the Trojan War is, we think, more than compensated by the pathos, the nature, and the variety which characterize many of the ancient romances on this subject. Chaucer informs us that his authority is Lollius, a mysterious personage very often referred to by the writers of the Middle Ages, and so impossible to discover and identify that he must be considered as the Ignis Fatuus of antiquaries. “Of Lollius,” says one of these unhappy and baffled investigators, “it will become every one to speak with deference.” The whole poem is saturated with the spirit not of the Ionian rhapsodist, but of the Provençal minstrel. It is written in the rhymed ten-syllabled couplet, which Chaucer has used in the greater part of his works. In the midst of a thousand anachronisms, of a thousand absurdities, this poem contains some strokes of pathos which are invariably to be found in every thing Chaucer wrote, and which show that his heart ever vibrated responsive to the touch of nature.
Though we propose, in a future volume, to give such specimens and extracts of Chaucer as may suffice to enable our readers to judge of his manner, we cannot abstain from citing here a most exquisite passage: it describes the bashfulness and hesitation of Cressida before she can find courage to make the avowal of her love:—
And as the newe-abashed nightingaleThat stinteth first, when she beginneth sing,When that she heareth any herdis tale,Or in the hedgis any wight stirring,And after siker doth her voice outring:Right so Cresseide, when that her drede stent,Opened her herte and told him her entent.
And as the newe-abashed nightingaleThat stinteth first, when she beginneth sing,When that she heareth any herdis tale,Or in the hedgis any wight stirring,And after siker doth her voice outring:Right so Cresseide, when that her drede stent,Opened her herte and told him her entent.
And as the newe-abashed nightingaleThat stinteth first, when she beginneth sing,When that she heareth any herdis tale,Or in the hedgis any wight stirring,And after siker doth her voice outring:Right so Cresseide, when that her drede stent,Opened her herte and told him her entent.
And as the newe-abashed nightingale
That stinteth first, when she beginneth sing,
When that she heareth any herdis tale,
Or in the hedgis any wight stirring,
And after siker doth her voice outring:
Right so Cresseide, when that her drede stent,
Opened her herte and told him her entent.
We may remark here the extraordinary fondness for the song of birds exhibited by Chaucer in all his works. There is not one of the English poets, and certainly none of the poets of any other nation, who has shown a more intense enjoyment for this natural music: he seems to omit no opportunity of describing the “doulx ramaige” of these feathered poets, whose accents seem to be echoed in all their delicacy, their purity and fervor, in the fresh strains of “our Father Chaucer:”—
Sound of vernal showersOn the twinkling grass,Rain-awakened flowers,All that ever wasJoyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass!
Sound of vernal showersOn the twinkling grass,Rain-awakened flowers,All that ever wasJoyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass!
Sound of vernal showersOn the twinkling grass,Rain-awakened flowers,All that ever wasJoyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass!
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass!
We have mentioned the anachronism ofplanin this poem; it abounds in others no less extraordinary. Among these, he represents Cresseide as reading the Thebaid of Statius (a very favorite book of Chaucer,) which he calls “The Romance of Thebis;” and Pandarus endeavors to comfort Troilus with arguments of predestination taken from Bishop Bradwardine, a theologian nearly contemporary with the poet.
The “House of Fame,” a magnificent allegory, glowing with all the “barbaric pearl and gold” of Gothic imagination, is the next work on which we shall remark. Its origin was probably Provençal, but the poem which Chaucer translated is now lost. We will condense the argument of this poem from Warton:—“The poet, in a vision, sees a temple of glass decorated with an unaccountable number of golden images. On the walls are engraved stories from Virgil’s Eneid and Ovid’s Epistles. Leaving this temple, he sees an eagle with golden wings soaring near the sun. The bird descends, seizes the poet in its talons, and conveys him to the Temple of Fame, which, like that of Ovid, is situated between earth and sea. He is left by the eagle near the house, which is built of materials bright as polished glass, and stands on a rock of ice. All the southern side of this rock is covered with engravings of the names of famous men, which are perpetually melting away by the heat of the sun. The northern side of the rock was alike covered with names; but, being shaded from the warmth of the sun, the characters here remained unmelted and uneffaced. Within the niches formed in the pinnacles stood all round the castle
All manera of minstrellis,And gestours, that tellen talesBoth of weping and eke of game;
All manera of minstrellis,And gestours, that tellen talesBoth of weping and eke of game;
All manera of minstrellis,And gestours, that tellen talesBoth of weping and eke of game;
All manera of minstrellis,
And gestours, that tellen tales
Both of weping and eke of game;
and the most renowned harpers—Orpheus, Arion, Chiron, and the Briton Glaskeirion. In the hall he meets an infinite multitude of heralds, on whose surcoats are embroidered the arms of the most redoubted champions. At the upper end, on a lofty shrine of carbuncle, sits Fame. Her figure is like those of Virgil and Ovid. Above her, as if sustained on her shoulders, sate Alexander and Hercules. From the throne to the gates of the hall ran a range of pillars with respective inscriptions. On the first pillar, made of lead and iron, stood Josephus, the Jewish historian, with seven other writers on the same subject. On the second, made of iron, and painted with the blood of tigers, stood Statius. On another, higher than the rest, stood Homer, Dares Phrygius, Livy, Lollius, Guido of Colonna, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, writers on the Trojan story. On a pillar of ‘tinnid iron clere’ stood Virgil; and next him, on a pillar of copper, appeared Ovid. The figure of Lucan was placed upon a pillar of iron ‘wrought full sternly,’ accompanied by many Roman historians. On a pillar of sulphur stood Claudian. The hall is filled by crowds of minor authors. In the meantime crowds of every nation and condition fill the temple, each presenting his claim to the queen. A messenger is sent to summon Eolus from his cave in Thrace, who is ordered to bring his two clarions, Slander and Praise, and his trumpeter Triton. The praises of each petitioner are then sounded, according to the partial or capricious appointment of Fame! and equal merits obtain very different success. The poet then enters the house or labyrinth of Rumor. It was built of willow twigs, like a cage, and therefore admitted every sound. From this house issue tidings of every kind, like fountains and rivers from the sea. Its inhabitants, who are eternally employed in hearing or telling news, raising reports, and spreading lies, are then humorously described: they are chiefly sailors, pilgrims, and pardoners. At length our author is awakened by seeing a venerable person of great authority; and thus the vision abruptly terminates. From the few lines we have quoted, it may be seen that this poem, like the “Romaunt of the Rose,” is written in the octosyllabic measure. Though full of extravagances, exaggerations of the already too monstrous personifications of Ovid, this work extorts our admiration by the inexhaustible richness and splendor of its ornaments; a richness as perfectly in accordance with Middle Age art, as it is extravagant and puerile in the tinsel pages of the Roman poet. That multiplicity of parts and profusion of minute embellishment which forms the essential characteristic of a Gothic cathedral is displaced and barbarous when introduced into the severer outlines of a Grecian temple or a Roman amphitheatre.
It now becomes our delightful duty to speak of the “Canterbury Tales;” and we can hardly trust ourselves to confine within reasonable limits the examination of this admirable work, containing in itself, as it does, merits of the most various and opposite kinds. It is a finished picture, delineating almost every variety of human character, crowded with figures, whose lineaments no lapse of time, no change of manners, can render faint or indistinct, and which will retain, to the latest centuries, every stroke of outline and every tint of color, as sharp and as vivid as when they came from the master’s hand. The Pilgrims of Chaucer have traversed four hundred and fifty years—like the Israelites wandering in the wilderness—arid periods of neglect and ignorance, sandy flats of formal mannerism, unfertilized by any spring of beauty, and yet “their garments have not decayed, neither have their shoes waxed old.”
Besides the lively and faithful delineation—i. e. descriptivedelineation of these personages, nothing can be more dramatic than the way in which they are set in motion, speaking and acting in a manner always conformable to their supposed characters, and mutually heightening and contrasting each other’s peculiarities. Further yet, besides these triumphs in theframingof his Tales, the Tales themselves, distributed among the various pilgrims of his troop, are, in almost every case, master-pieces of splendor, of pathos, or of drollery.
Chaucer, in the Prologue to the “Canterbury Tales,” relates that he was about to pass the night at the “Tabarde” inn in Southwark, previous to setting out on a pilgrimage to the far-famed shrine of St. Thomas of Kent—i. e.Thomas à Becket—at Canterbury. On the evening preceding the poet’s departure there arrive at the hostelry—
Wel nine and twenty in a compagnieOf sondry folk, by aventure y-fulleIn felowship, and pilgrimes wer they alle,That toward Canterbury wolden ride.
Wel nine and twenty in a compagnieOf sondry folk, by aventure y-fulleIn felowship, and pilgrimes wer they alle,That toward Canterbury wolden ride.
Wel nine and twenty in a compagnieOf sondry folk, by aventure y-fulleIn felowship, and pilgrimes wer they alle,That toward Canterbury wolden ride.
Wel nine and twenty in a compagnie
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-fulle
In felowship, and pilgrimes wer they alle,
That toward Canterbury wolden ride.
The poet, glad of the opportunity of traveling in such good company, makes acquaintance with them all, and the party, after mutually promising to start early in the morning, sup and retire to rest.
Chaucer then gives a full and minute description, yet in incredibly few words, of the condition, appearance, manners, dress, and horses of the pilgrims. He first depicts a Knight, “brave in battle, and wise in council,” courteous, grave, religious, experienced; who had fought for the faith in far lands, at Algesiras, at Alexandria, in Russia; a model of the chivalrous virtues:
And though that he was worthy, he was wise,And of his portmake as is a mayde.He was a veray parfit gentle knight.
And though that he was worthy, he was wise,And of his portmake as is a mayde.He was a veray parfit gentle knight.
And though that he was worthy, he was wise,And of his portmake as is a mayde.He was a veray parfit gentle knight.
And though that he was worthy, he was wise,
And of his portmake as is a mayde.
He was a veray parfit gentle knight.
He is mounted on a good, though not showy, horse, and clothed in a simplegiponor close tunic, of serviceable materials, characteristically stained and discolored by the friction of his armor.
This valiant and modest gentleman is accompanied by his son, a perfect specimen of thedamoyseauor “bachelor” of this, or of the graceful and gallant youth of noble blood in any period. Chaucer seems to revel in the painting of his curled and shining locks—“as they were laid in presse”—of his tall and active person, of his already-shown bravery, of his “love-longing,” of his youthful accomplishments, and of his gay and fantastic dress. His talent for music, his short, embroidered gown with long wide sleeves (the fashion of the day,) his perfect horsemanship, his skill in song-making, in illuminating and writing, his hopeful and yet somewhat melancholy love for his “lady”—
So hote he loved, that by nightertaleHe slept no more than doth the nightingale—
So hote he loved, that by nightertaleHe slept no more than doth the nightingale—
So hote he loved, that by nightertaleHe slept no more than doth the nightingale—
So hote he loved, that by nightertale
He slept no more than doth the nightingale—
nothing is omitted; not a stroke too few or too many.
This attractive pair are attended by a Yeman or retainer. This figure is a perfect portrait of one of those bold and sturdy archers, the type of the ancient national character; a type which still exists in the plain, independent peasantry of the rural districts of the land. He is clad in the picturesque costume of the greenwood, with his sheaf of peacock arrows, bright and keen, stuck in his belt, and bearing in his hand “a mighty bowe”—the far-famed “long-bow” of the English archers—the most formidable weapon of the Middle Ages, which twanged such fatal music to the chivalry of France at Poictiers and Agincourt. His “not-bed,” his “brown viságe,” tanned by sun and wind, his sword and buckler, his sharp and well-equipped dagger, the silver medal of St. Christopher on his breast, the horn in the green baldric—how life-like does he stand before us!
These three figures are admirably contrasted with a Prioress, a lady of noble birth and delicate bearing, full of the pretty affectations, the dainty tendernesses of the “grande dame religieuse.” Her name is “Madame Eglantine;” and the mixture, in her manners and costume, of gentle worldly vanities and of ignorance of the world; her gayety, and the ever-visible difficulty she feels to put on an air of courtly hauteur; the lady-like delicacy of her manners at table, and her fondness for petting lap-dogs—
Of smale houndes had she, that she fedWith rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel-bread,But sore she wept if on of hem were dead,Or if men smote it with a yerde smart,For al was conscience, and tender herte,—
Of smale houndes had she, that she fedWith rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel-bread,But sore she wept if on of hem were dead,Or if men smote it with a yerde smart,For al was conscience, and tender herte,—
Of smale houndes had she, that she fedWith rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel-bread,But sore she wept if on of hem were dead,Or if men smote it with a yerde smart,For al was conscience, and tender herte,—
Of smale houndes had she, that she fed
With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel-bread,
But sore she wept if on of hem were dead,
Or if men smote it with a yerde smart,
For al was conscience, and tender herte,—
this masterly outline is most appropriatelyframed(if we may so speak) in the external and material accompaniments—the beads of “smale coráll” hanging on her arm, and, above all, the golden brooch with its delicate device of a “crowned A,” and the inscriptionAmor vincitomnia. She is attended by an inferior nun and three priests.
The Monk follows next, and he, like all the ecclesiastics, with the single exception of the Personore or secular parish priest, is described with strong touches of ridicule; but it is impossible not to perceive the strong and ever-presenthumanityof which we have spoken as perhaps the most marked characteristic of Chaucer’s mind. The Monk is a gallant, richly-dressed, and pleasure-loving sportsman, caring not a straw for the obsolete strictness of the musty rule of his order. His sleeves are edged with rich fur, his hood fastened under his chin with a gold pin headed with a “love-knot,” his eyes are buried deep in his fleshy, rosy cheeks, indicating great love of rich fare and potent wines; and yet the impression left on the mind by this type of fat, roystering sensuality is rather one of drollery and good-fellowship than of contempt or abhorrence.
Chaucer exhibits rich specimens of the variousgeneraof that vast species “Monachus monachans,” as it may be classed by some Rabelœsian Theophrastus. The next personage who enters is the Frere, or mendicant friar, whose easiness of confession, wonderful skill in extracting money and gifts, and gay discourse, are most humorously and graphically described. He is represented as always carrying store of knives, pins, and toys, to give to his female penitents, as better acquainted with the tavern than with the lagar-house or the hospital, daintily dressed, and “lisping somewhat” in his speech, “to make his English swete upon the tongue.”
This “worthy Limitour” is succeeded by a grave and formal personage, the Merchant: solemn and wise is he, with forked beard and pompous demeanor, speaking much of profit, and strongly in favor of the king’s right to the subsidy “pour la saufgarde et custodie del mer,” as the old Norman legist phrases it. He is dressed in motley, mounted on a tall and quiet horse, and wears a “Flaundrish beaver hat.”
The learned poverty of the Clerke of Oxenforde forms a striking contrast to the Merchant’s ratherpompous “respectability.” He and his horse are “leane as is a rake” with abstinence, his clothes are threadbare, and he devotes to the purchase of his beloved books all the gold which he can collect from his friends and patrons, devoutly praying, as in duty bound, for the souls of those