Chaucer and His Times

Having thus warned his hearers against the love of money, he proceeds to show his credentials, sprinkling a few Latin terms here and there in his speech:—

“To saffron with my predicacioun[117]
And for to stire men to devocioun,”

and then shows his relics, the shoulder-bone of “an holy Jewes shepe,” a miraculous mitten which will cause the crops of the man who wears it to increase manifold:—

“By this gaude have I wonne, yeer by yeer,
An hundred mark sith I was Pardoner”—

a pillow-case, which he swears is our Lady’s veil, etc., etc. After this he preaches a vehement sermon against avarice, the object of which, he frankly explains, is

“... for to make hem free
To yeve her pens, and namely unto me.
For my entente is nat but for to winne,
And no-thing for correccioun of sinne.
I rekke never, whan that they ben beried,
Though that her soules goon a-blakeberied.”[118]

If anyone has offended him, he takes care so to point at him in what he says that the reference is unmistakable and the whole congregation understands who it is that is being denounced:—

“Thus quyte I folk that doon us displeasances.”

In fact, the whole object of his preaching is neither more nor less than the amassing of money:—

“Therfore my theme is yet, and ever was—
‘Radix malorum est Cupiditas.’
······
For I wol preche and begge in sondry londes;
I wol not do no labour with myn hondes
······
I wol have money, wolle, chese, and whete,
Al were it yeven of the poorest page,
Or of the poorest widwe in a village.”

No wonder that

Up-on a day he gat him more moneye
Than that the person[119] gat in monthes tweye.

After this shameless confession, the Pardoner offers to relate one of the moral tales which he has found most efficacious in cajoling money out of unwilling pockets.

In Flaundres whylom was a companye
Of yonge folk, that haunteden folye[120] ...

thus he begins, and so moved is he with the thought of the folly of these young people that, with his own lips scarce dry from their last draught of corny ale, he proceeds to denounce gluttony and drunkenness in no measured terms. It is an admirable sermon, full of apt illustrations and appropriate references to the Bible. It enables us to see, at the outset, how the preacher succeeds in dominating his illiterate audiences when he speaks in the village churches. Having got well into his stride, the Pardoner passes on to the promised tale. Among the riotous company are three young men. One day, as they sit drinking in a tavern, they hear the bell toll, and sending a servant to inquire the cause, they learn that Death has carried away one of their companions. With pot-valiant courage they declare their intention of seeking out and slaying this false traitor Death, and without more ado set forth on the quest. An old man, whom they meet by the way, tells them that Death is to be found in a neighbouring grove, under a tree:—

And everich of thise ryotoures ran
Til he cam to that tree, and ther they founde
Of florins fyne of golde y-coyned rounde
Wel ny an eighte busshels, as hem thoughte.

The sight effectually puts Death out of their minds. They decide that the treasure must be hidden, and since it will be well to wait for darkness before venturing to remove it, they draw lots to determine which of them shall run to the town for meat and drink, while the other two keep guard. The lot falls on the youngest, but no sooner has he gone than the two who remain plot to murder him when he comes back, since there will be the more gold for them if he is out of the way. The youngest also thinks it a pity to divide such wealth by three, and having reached the town he goes to an apothecary and demands

Som poyson, that he mighte his rattes quelle.[121]

He then buys three bottles, puts poison in two and reserves the third for his own use. On his return he is slain by the other two.

And whan that this was doon, thus spak that oon,
“Now lat us sitte and drinke, and make us merie
And afterward we wol his body berie.”

Thus all three find Death where they sought him.

The story is told with considerable force. The action moves quickly, and there is enough grim suggestiveness to stir the hearer’s imagination without the detail being in any way overloaded. The picture of the old man vainly seeking death as he strikes his staff upon the ground and cries: “Leve moder, leet me in”; the brief dialogue between the two roisterers in the wood; the description of the thoughts that chase each other through the mind of the third as he runs, all show a power of vivid dramatic presentation. It is not in the least such a tale as the pilgrims expect from the Pardoner. The poor Parson himself could point no better moral. And it ends with (of all things!) an impassioned appeal against avarice. The Pardoner has fallen unconsciously into his professional manner. Carried away by his own eloquence, he forgets that he began by explaining the trick of the whole thing. No doubt, as he himself had said, he has used the tale often enough as a means of extorting money, and with the most convincing fervour he begs the pilgrims—with his confession fresh in their minds—to beware of covetousness, and to press forward and make their offerings to his holy relics. So naturally have we been led on step by step, so easily has he passed from cynicism to sermon, and from sermon to application, that it is something of a shock when the Host, instead of hastening to kiss the relics as he is bidden, responds to the invitation with a coarse jest. The anger of the Pardoner at this indignity is explicable only on the ground that he was so consummate an actor that he had literally forgotten himself in his part. A hypocrite he undoubtedly is, but not the crude, deliberate hypocrite whom the later satirists of the Puritans delighted to draw, nor even the Pecksniffian hypocrite who, while he retains his mask, even in private, never loses consciousness of the fact that it is a mask; he has something of the artistic temperament, and his failure to impress the pilgrims gives him a real, though momentary, jar. The subtle irony with which the whole picture is drawn is perfect in its restraint. The vulgar rogue is sufficiently represented by the Friar. The Pardoner is of higher intelligence, and while we condemn him we recognise his ability.

The suggestion that the various birds in the Parlement of Foules represent courtiers of the day, has already been noticed. If it is true, the satire is of so genial and playful a kind that even the goose can scarcely have been hurt by it. More than once Chaucer draws an amusing picture of a gossiping, foolish crowd, but while it is evident that he has no very high opinion of the intelligence of people in the mass, there is no trace of bitterness in his descriptions. The well-meaning busybodies who come to comfort Criseyde are as helplessly incompetent as “the goos, the cokkow, and the doke,” but though fussy and self-centred, they have too much real kindliness for it to be possible not to feel a certain affection for them. Perhaps the best of all Chaucer’s crowds is that in the Squieres Tale which gathers to look at the horse of brass, and the other magic gifts:—

Diverse folk diversely they demed;
As many hedes, as many wittes ther been.
They murmureden as dooth a swarm of been,[122]
And maden skiles after hir fantasyes,[123]
Rehersinge of thise olde poetryes,
And seyden, it was lyk the Pegasee,
The hors that hadde winges for to flee;
Or elles it was the Grekes hors Synon,[124]
That broghte Troye to destruccion,
As men may in thise olde gestes rede.
“Myn herte,” quod oon, “is evermore in drede;
I trowe som men of armes been ther-inne,
That shapen[125] hem this citee for to winne.
It were right good that al swich thing were knowe.”
Another rowned[126] to his felawe lowe,
And seyde, “He lyeth, it is rather lyk
An apparance y-maad by som magyk
As jogelours pleyen at thise festes grete.”
Of sondry doutes thus they jangle and trete,
As lewed[127] peple demeth comunly
Of thinges that been maad more subtilly,
Than they can in her lewedness comprehende:
They demen gladly to the badder ende.

With equal learning they discuss the mirror and sword and ring, and having paraded their knowledge of “sondry harding of metal,” “fern-asshen glass” and similar wonderful inventions, come to no conclusion.

(4) Humour.—If it is difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line round other elements of comedy, and detach wit from satire, or satire from farce, it is still harder to attempt to isolate humour and discuss it as a separate and distinct property. Humour is the sympathetic appreciation of the comic, the faculty which enables us to love while we laugh, and to love the better for our laughter. Something has already been said of the softening influence of comedy. It is humour which enables us to see the other person’s point of view, to distinguish between crimes and misdemeanours, so that we no more wish to convert Sir Toby from the error of his ways than to reduce the fat boy’s appetite. Above all, it is humour which points out those endearing peculiarities, those little foibles and harmless weaknesses which give Parson Adams and the Vicar of Wakefield so warm a place in our affections. There is no sting in such laughter, no conscious superiority; on the contrary, it contains an element of tenderness. Obviously humour is distinct from satire, but it can be distinguished from farce and wit only by insisting on the externals when speaking of them. Humour is indeed the soul of all comedy. Satire, being destructive, not constructive, is in a class apart, but even satire—as we have seen in Chaucer’s picture of a crowd—may become so softened by humour that it loses the element of caricature and serves only to give a keener edge to wit.

Chaucer’s whole point of view is that of the humorist. To the tragic writer things apparently trifling in themselves may be fraught with deep significance. A chance movement, a momentary impulse, may set fire to the train which brings about the catastrophe, or may reveal some subtle shade of character which it is essential that we should see. But the tragedian has no time to waste on trifles for their own sake. If Shakespeare shows us the sleepy porter unbarring the gate of Macbeth’s castle, or the grave-diggers of Elsinore singing at their work, it is not because he wants our thoughts to dwell on either the one or the other. They have their place as part of the tragedy, and it is the sense of tragedy, not the triviality of the incident which is uppermost in our mind. But the comic poet saunters gaily through life pausing to notice every trifle as he passes. He views the world as the unaccustomed traveller views a foreign country; the old women at their cottage doors, the peasants plodding behind their patient oxen in the field, the very names above the shops, all are interesting. There is no such thing as a dull person, the mere fashion in which a man walks or wears his clothes is worth recording, not because it throws any subtle light upon his character, but because it is unusual and therefore quaint, because, in fact, the unexpected is manifesting itself in these homely details.

Chaucer possesses this faculty of amused observation in a pre-eminent degree. Again and again he contrives to invest some perfectly trifling and commonplace incident with an air of whimsicality, and by so doing to make it at once realistic and remote. We are never wholly absorbed by what amuses us, in the sense that we are absorbed by what appeals to our tragic emotions. Laughter implies a certain detachment, whereas in tragedy we feel with those concerned with an intensity which often causes us to lose all consciousness of our own individuality. We may be surprised to find the tears in our eyes, but we are always conscious of our laughter.

This homely, whimsical point of view shows itself in a thousand minute touches. Friar John, in the Somnours Tale, goes to call on friend Thomas:—

And fro the bench he droof awey the cat,
And leyde adoun his potente[128] and his hat,
And eek his scrippe, and sette him softe adoun....

The rout pursues dan Russel the fox:—

And cryden, “Out! harrow! and weylawey!
Ha, ha, the fox!” and after him they ran,
And eek with staves many another man;
Ran Colle our dogge, and Talbot, and Gerland,
And Malkin, with a distaf in her hand;
Ran cow and calf, and eek the verray hogges
So were they fered for berking of the dogges
And shouting of the men and wimmen eek,
They ronne so, hem thoughte hir herte brekke.
They yelleden as feendes doon in hellë;
The dokes[129] cryden as men wolde hem quelle;[130]
The gees for fere flowen[131] over the trees;
Out of the hyve cam the swarm of bees....

There is nothing wildly farcical in any of this. Friar John does not sit on the cat; the men and dogs do not tumble over each other. The humour consists in the point of view which finds such incidents worth recording. It is not what he says, but the way he says it; not what he sees, but the way he sees it.

As to the sympathetic quality of humour, that is even more obvious in all Chaucer’s work. It is sympathy that lies at the bottom of a tolerance so wide that it hardly finds it necessary to forgive. When Chaucer needs a melodramatic villain or villainess such as Apius, or Alle’s mother, he can depict one, but except when it affords opportunity for comedy he usually touches an evil character but lightly. His heart lies in the pure poetry of such women as Constance and Dorigen, or in broadly comic effect: he has no desire to sound the depths of human nature or to dwell upon the darker and more terrible side of life. Shakespeare’s comedy is often touched with a suggestion of something faintly tragic. Even Falstaff is by no means a wholly comic figure, and the wisdom of Jaques, with all its affectation, contains a truth that goes beneath the surface. Chaucer seldom shows us the revealing power of comedy, but, like Shakespeare, he is not afraid to blend gaiety and gravity in the same person. From one point of view the Book of the Duchesse is surely the most cheerful elegy ever written. Chaucer does not tell off certain low-class characters for comic effect, he allows even the noblest and best a sense of humour. When we think of the serious and lachrymose heroines of romance, we feel that Chaucer’s women owe half their vitality to the fact that they are not afraid to laugh, that noble and high-minded as they are, they are part and parcel of the ordinary stuff of human life.

CHAPTER VI

From the earliest days of pre-Conquest literature, English poetry has always shown a strong feeling for nature. Nature, in those early days, has something wild and terrible about her; great forests, haunted by savage beasts and more savage men, stretch over the land; the sea-birds utter their plaintive cries as they hover above the desolate salt-marshes; ice-cold waves break on the iron-bound coast. Yet the sons of the sea-kings feel the call of the sea in their blood. They know the danger and the savagery of nature, but something in them responds to her relentless force, and the spell of the sea holds them. They may picture Heaven as a place where there is neither hail nor frost, and look forward to still waters and green pastures hereafter, but on earth the welter of the waves, and the strange calm of the rime-bound trees, draw them in spite of themselves. In the charms and riddles a gentler note is sometimes sounded as the poet watches a cloud of gnats “float o’er the forest heights,” or listens to the whirr of the wild-swan’s wings; but on the whole the impression left upon our minds is one of force rather than of peace, of man putting forth his might to subdue the wild strength of nature, and winning a bride by capture.

Often their descriptions of warfare gain an added force from the skilful use of some natural detail. The wan raven circles above the conflicting hosts, waiting for his prey; the water-snakes curve and curl in the seething waters into which Beowulf plunges to meet the monster. Here again, we have the same mingling of tragic imagination and fierce exultation.

They delight in picturing actual battle, in describing the hiss of the javelins through the air, and the gleam of the flashing blade. But while they often speak of the beauty of curiously wrought armour, or of the wealth of a king’s treasure, they show little power of presenting beauty for its own sake, and none at all of depicting the beauty of a woman. Their heroines are fair and gracious and bear the mead cup round the hall where the warriors feast, and unless they are in some way concerned with causing or avenging a quarrel, that is all there is to say about them.

To the Anglo-Normans this wilder and sterner aspect of nature seems to have made little appeal. Nature forms a charming background to many of the love-lyrics of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but it is a far daintier and sunnier nature than that of the Old English poets. The time has come of the singing of birds:—

Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude nu—
Sing cuccu![132]

In the romances certain definite conventions gradually establish themselves. It is always May morning when the hero rides into the green forest, and flowers, of uncertain species but gay colours, flaunt about his path. A description of a hunt, including minute details as to the proper method of dismembering the quarry, often finds a place—Tristram first wins King Mark’s affections by teaching his huntsmen the proper method of cutting up a stag. Detailed descriptions of elaborate banquets are also popular, but it is evident in these, as in the descriptions of hunting, that the author’s interest lies rather in the actual etiquette than in any pictorial effect. Nevertheless, the romances show a growing delight in colour and beauty. The hero and heroine must conform to a certain conventional standard, but the standard is by no means contemptible.

“Fair was he and slim and tall” (so we read of Aucassin in Mr. Bourdillon’s translation) “and well fashioned in legs and feet and body arms. His hair was yellow and crisped small; and his eyes were grey and laughing; and his face was clear and shapely; and his nose high and well-set; and so endued was he with good condition, that there was none bad in him, but good only.”

And the fact that the gardens in which these gracious beings wander conform to no natural laws, does not prevent them from having a charm of their own. What could be more dainty than the following picture of a dutiful daughter reading to her parents (from the Chevalier au Lion by Chrétien de Troyes):—

Thrugh the hall sir Gawain gase[133]
Intil an orchard, playn pase;[134]
His maiden with him ledes he:
He fand a knyght under a tree,
Opon a cloth of gold he lay;
Before him sat a ful fayr may;[135]
A lady sat with them in fere[136]
The maiden read, that they myght here
A real romance in that place ...

Only occasionally do we hear any echo of that deeper note which sounded through the older poets, and catch a glimpse of winter, when

The leaves lancen from the lynde[137] and light(en) on the ground,

and

Unblithe on bare twigs sings many a bird
Piteously piping for pain of the cold.
(Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight.)

The battles and tournaments, accounts of which fill so many pages of the romances, for the most part show considerable sameness of treatment. The hero is beaten to his knees by the giant, or is almost overpowered by the poisonous breath of the dragon, when with a supreme effort he recovers himself and pierces his adversary in whatever his one vital spot may happen to be. Now and then some flash of ingenuity lights up the story, as when the Soldan’s daughter saves Roland and Oliver and their companions by flinging her father’s plate to the besieging army, thus at once distracting the attention of the soldiers and making her avaricious father ready to consent to any compromise; or some touch of real feeling breaks through all conventions, as when Sir Tristram, as he turns to meet Marhaus, kicks away his boat, since but one of them will need any means of leaving the isle; but for the most part the author follows the regular lines.

Chaucer, while he shows definite traces of the conventions of his day, in description, as in other matters, follows his own bent. Description for its own sake has little interest for him. Again and again he cuts short some passage which his contemporaries would have elaborated. In the Squieres Tale, for instance, a banquet occurs which affords admirable opportunity for that detailed account of ceremonial so dear to the hearts of medieval poets. Chaucer tells us that the steward ordered spices and wine, and then adds impatiently:—

What nedeth yow rehercen hir array?[138]
Ech man wot wel, that at a kinges feeste
Hath plentee, to the moste and to the leeste,
And deyntees mo than been in my knowing.

The dinner given by Deiphebus in Troilus and Criseyde is passed over equally perfunctorily:—

Come eek Criseyde, al innocent of this,
Antigone, hir sister Tarbe also;
But flee we now prolixitee best is,
For love of god, and lat us faste go
Right to the effect, with oute tales mo,
Why al this folk assembled in this place;
And lat us of hir saluinges pace.[139]

Even the hunt in the Book of the Duchesse is dismissed in little over a dozen lines:—

Whan we came to the forest-syde
Every man dide, right anoon,
As to hunting fil to doon.[140]
The mayster-hunte anoon, fot-hoot,[141]
With a gret horne blew three moot[142]
At the uncoupling of his houndes.
Within a whyl the hert [y]-founde is,
Y-halowed and rechased faste
Longe tyme; and at the laste
This hert rused[143] and stal away
Fro alle the houndes a prevy way ...

And then the poet turns to the real subject of his poem. Wordsworth himself does not make hunting seem a tamer occupation.

Nor are Chaucer’s descriptions of fighting much more convincing. He tells us coldly that Troilus and Diomede met in battle:—

With blody strokes and with wordes grete,

and that Troilus often beat furiously upon the helmet of Diomede, but the stanza which follows this announcement puts the matter in a nutshell:—

And if I hadde y-taken for to wryte
The armes of this ilk worthy mane,
Than wolde I of his batailles endyte.
But for that I to wryte first began
Of his love, I have seyd as that I can.
His worthy dedes, who-so list hem here,
Reed Dares, he can telle hem alle y-fere.[144]

It is emotion, not action, which interests him most. In the Knightes Tale, Palamon and Arcite

—foynen[145] ech at other wonder longe,

but Chaucer has no desire to follow the duel to its end. He remarks that they hew at each other till they are ankle deep in blood and then leaves them, still fighting, while he turns to Theseus. There is more vigour in the description of the tournament at the end. Here the clash of arms does echo through the verse, and the rapid narrative conveys a vivid sense of the heat and clamour of battle:—

Ther stomblen stedes stronge, and doun goth all.
He rolleth under foot as dooth a bal.
He foyneth on his feet with his tronchoun,
And he him hurtleth with his hors adoun ...

Possibly the poet was recalling his own fighting days in France. Certainly there is nothing stiff or conventional about this. But nowhere else does he give so lengthy and detailed a description of action, and even here it has a dramatic value, apart from its intrinsic interest, in that it enhances the suspense. Further, Chaucer, as we know, had himself probably superintended the erection of such lists, and the ceremonial of the tournament may well have had a special interest for him. His use of similes in describing action is worthy of note. He does not, like Spenser, constantly break the narrative by introducing some beautiful picture drawn from classical mythology, thus carrying the thoughts of the reader away from the actual situation at the moment. His similes are few—in this connection—and are so chosen that they add to the vividness of the whole impression. Palamon and Arcite fight like wild boars

That frothen whyte as foom for ire wood.

Of Arcite we are told,

There nas no tygre in the vale of Galgopheye,
Whan that hir whelp is stole, whan it is lyte,
So cruel on the hunte, as is Arcite.

Such comparisons are very different from Spenser’s:—

Like as the sacred Oxe that carelesse stands
With gilden hornes and flowry girlands crownd
Proud of his dying honor and deare bandes,
While th’ altars fume with frankincense arownd,
All suddeinly, with mortal stroke astownd,
Doth groveling fall, and with his streaming gore
Distaines the pillours and the holy grownd,
And the faire flowres that decked him afore:
So fell proud Marinell upon the pretious shore.

To Chaucer the interest does not lie in the pomp and pageantry, nor even in the chivalry of it all, but in the human emotion, in Emily waiting to know which of the lovers will claim her hand, in the knights filled with the lust of battle, in the quondam friends who seek each other’s life. Chivalry has, indeed, little glamour in Chaucer’s eyes. Gower’s story of Florent has a certain stateliness which is lacking in the Tale of the Wyf of Bathe. It has none of Chaucer’s digressions, none of the homeliness of his version. A description of the elf-queen and her jolly company dancing in the green meadows would perhaps be out of place in the mouth of the Wife of Bath, but it is evident that Chaucer sacrifices the dainty grace of Mab and Puck without a pang in order to allow himself a sly hit at the “limitours and othere holy freres” who have replaced them.

The same principle underlies his description of people. In the Book of the Duchesse he gives us a detailed account of Blanche’s charms; probably he felt it incumbent on him to do so. She is fair, as a heroine should be, but even in this, the most conventional of all his descriptions, he contrives to give life and individuality to the conventional type:—

For every heer [up]on hir hede,
Soth to seyn, hit was not rede,
Ne nouther yelw, ne broun hit nas;
Me thoughte most lyk gold hit was.
And whiche eyen my lady hadde!
Debonair, goode, glade, and sadde,[146]
Simple, of good mochel,[147] noght to wyde;
······
And yet more-over, thogh alle tho
That ever lived were now a-lyve,
[They] ne sholde have founde to discryve
In al hir face a wikked signe;
For hit was sad, simple, and benigne.

This is no stereotyped model of feminine beauty, but a picture of the good fair White as she was when she lived.

In describing Cressida, Chaucer keeps fairly close to his original. We realise her beauty rather from the effect it produces on others than from any particular details. She is tall, but so well made that there is nothing clumsy or “manish” about her, and she dresses in black, as beseems a widow; this is practically all that we are told about her. The strong impression of sensuous beauty which she undoubtedly produces, is due to Chaucer’s power of creating an atmosphere rather than to actual description. We hear the nightingale singing her to sleep, or watch her colour come and go as Troilus draws near, and our mind is so filled with an image of youth and beauty that we never stop to think if she is fair or dark. It is the same with Troilus. We get a gallant impression of him as he rides past Cressida’s window, his eyes down-cast, and a boyish shyness tingeing his cheeks with red, but Chaucer thinks of his feelings rather than his looks. Later in the poem, as he rides towards the palace at the head of his men, the poet’s impatience of mere description shows itself still more clearly:—

God woot if he sat on his hors a-right,
Or goodly was beseyn,[148] that ilke day!
God woot wher he was lyk a manly knight!
What sholde I dreeche[149] or telle of his array?
Criseyde, which that alle these thinges say,
To telle in short, hir lyked al y-fere
His personne, his array, his look, his chere ...

Troilus’s looks are, in fact, of importance only because they win the heart of Cressida.

But if Chaucer devotes little space to dilating upon mere beauty of person, he has a keen eye for anything in dress, manner, or appearance that is in the truest sense characteristic. The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales shows clearly enough how trifles may reflect personality. The grey fur that edges the Monk’s sleeves, and the love-knot of gold that fastens his hood, tell their tale, and a single glance at him gives us considerable insight into his character:—

His heed was balled, that shoon as any glas,
And eek his face, as he had been anoint.
He was a lord ful fat and in good point;[150]
His eyen stepe,[151] and rollinge in his heed,
That stemed as a forncye of a leed;[152]
His botes souple, his hors in greet estat.[153]
Now certainly he was a fair prelat....

The Christopher of silver that gleams on the Yeoman’s green coat; the thread-bare raiment and lean horse of the Clerk of Oxenford; the ruddy face and white beard of the Franklin, all serve to illustrate the same point. The very spurs of the Wife of Bath seem to have a subtle significance of their own.

Once only does Chaucer go out of his way to give a detailed description of one of his heroines, and the passage is worth quoting in full because not only does it illustrate his careful observation of detail, but it shows also a dramatic fitness which is eminently characteristic. The Miller is describing Alisoun, and there is not a simile, among the many used, which would not spring naturally to the lips of a peasant:—

Fair was this yonge wyf, and ther-with-al
As any wesele hir body gent[154] and smal.
A ceynt[155] she werede barred al of silk,
A barmclooth[156] eek as whyt as morne milk
Up-on hir lendes, ful of many a gore.
Whyt was hir smok and brouded al bifore
And eek bihinde, on hir coler aboute,
Of col-blak silk, with-inne and eek with-oute.
The tapes of hir whyte voluper[157]
Were of the same suyte of hir coler;[158]
Hir filet brood of silk, and set ful hye:
And sikerly she hadde a likerous ye.[159]
Ful smale y-pulled were hir browes two,[160]
And tho were bent, and blake as any sloo.[161]
She was ful more blisful on to see
Than is the newe pere-jonette[162] tree;
And softer than the wolle is of a wether.
And by hir girdel heeng a purs of lether
Tasseld with silk, and perled with latoun.[163]
In al this world, to seken up and doun,
Ther nis no man so wys, that coude thenche
So gay a popelote,[164] or swich a wenche.
Ful brighter was the shyning of hir hewe
Than in the tour the noble y-forged newe.
But of hir song, it was as loude and yerne[165]
As any swalwe sittinge on a berne.
Ther-to she coude skippe and make game,
As any kide or calf folwinge his dame.
Her mouth was swete as bragot[166] or the meeth,[167]
Or hord of apples leyd in hey or heeth.
Winsinge she was, as is a joly colt,
Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt.
A brooch she baar up-on hir lowe coler,
As brood as is the bos of a bocler.

The poet who wrote this had used his eyes to some purpose. In certain of his descriptions—notably that of Chauntecleer with his scarlet comb, black bill, azure legs, white nails, and golden tail—we notice Chaucer’s love of brilliant colour, but this makes the comparative dullness and tameness of his marvellous palaces and enchanted castles all the more remarkable. He gives us a list of golden images, “riche tabernacles” and “curious portreytures” which stand in the Temple of Glass, but it is a mere auctioneer’s catalogue of valuables which conveys no real impression of beauty or strangeness. We read of Venus “fletinge in a sec,” her head crowned with roses,

And hir comb to kembe hir heed,

and feel as if we were looking up her attributes in a classical dictionary. The thrill of the Renaissance has not yet swept across Europe. The gods still sleep, before awakening to their strange sweet Indian summer of life. Classical mythology serves Chaucer as an additional storehouse of story and illustration, but it no more intoxicates him with rapture than does the Gesta Romanorum. Spenser’s Temple of Venus, in which:—

An hundred altars round about were set,
All flaming with their sacrifices fire,
That with the steme thereof the Temple swet,
Which rould in clouds to heaven did aspire,
And in them bore true lovers vowes entire:
And eke an hundred brazen cauldrons bright
To bath in joy and amorous desire,
Every of which was to a damzell bright;
For all the Priests were damzells in soft linnen dight ...

glows with colour and warmth. Chaucer’s perfunctory statement that the windows of his chamber were well glazed and unbroken,

That to beholde it were gret joye,

and that in the glazing was wrought

... al the storie of Troye,
····
Of Ector and king Pirriamus,
Of Achilles and Lamedon,
Of Medea and of Jason,
Of Paris, Eleyne, and Lavyne ...

leaves us untouched.

But if Chaucer is ill at ease within four walls, and takes but scant pleasure in looking at tapestries and pictures, the moment he slips out of doors he becomes a different being. He is no Wordsworth noting each twig and leaf, or watching with mystic gaze the shadows fall on the silent hills. He is content to fill his garden with flowers of the regulation

... whyte, blewe, yelowe, and rede;
And colde welle-stremes no-thing dede,
That swommen ful of smale fisshes lighte
With finnes rede and scales silver-brighte,

and it is probably just as well not to inquire too closely into the natural order of either blossoms or fish. Cressida’s garden is distinguished by the neatness of its fences, and the fact that its paths have recently been gravelled and provided with nice new benches. But even in these trim and formal gardens the spirit of spring is abroad, and once in the wood, Chaucer abandons himself to the sheer joy of nature. He passes down a green glade

Ful thikke of gras, ful softe and swete,
With floures fele, faire under fete....
·····
For it was, on to beholde
As thogh the erthe envye wolde
To be gayer than the heven
To have mo floures, swiche seven
As in the welken sterres be.[168]
Hit had forgete the povertee
That winter, through his colde morwes,
Had mad hit suffre[n], and his sorwes;
Al was forgeten, and that was sene.
For al the wode was waxen grene.
Swetnesse of dewe had mad it waxe ...

and his heart keeps tune to the song of the birds. He has something of Milton’s power of giving a general sense of freshness and sweetness, and, again like Milton, his scenery always strikes one as peculiarly English. He tells us that Cambinskan reigns in Syria, but his picture of the birds singing for joy of the lusty weather and the “yonge grene,” is that of a Northern rather than an Eastern spring. His best-loved flower, the daisy, springs in every English hedgerow.

The description of May in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women is particularly charming. The poet declares that one thing, and one alone, has power to take him from his books. When May comes,

Whan that I here the smale foules singe
And that the floures ginne for to springe,
Farwel my studie, as lasting that sesoun.

Instead of poring over some ponderous tome, he wanders out into the meadows to watch the daisy open to the sun:—

And whan the sonne ginneth for to weste,
Than closeth hit, and draweth hit to reste,
So sore hit is afered of the night,
Til on the morwe, that hit is dayës light.

All day long he roams till

—closed was the flour and goon to reste,

and then he speeds swiftly home:—

And in a litel erber that I have,
Y-benched newe with turves fresshe y-grave,
I bad men shulde me my couche make;
For deyntee of the newe someres sake
I bad hem strowe floures on my bed.

But here again it is impression rather than actual description.

True to the city-bred instinct, Chaucer sees winter rather as the king of intimate delights and fire-side pleasures, than as having an especial beauty of his own. The Frankeleyns Tale contains a picture of December which brings the comfort of ingle-nook and steaming cup vividly before us:—

The bittre frostes, with the sleet and reyn,
Destroyed hath the grene in every yerd.
Janus sit by the fyr, with double berd,
And drinketh of his bugle-horn the wyn.
Before him stant braun of the tusked swyn,
And “Nowel” cryeth every lusty man.

We almost feel the pleasant glow of the fire, and hear the great logs hiss and crackle.

It is impossible to read Chaucer’s descriptions of nature without being struck by his love of birds and animals, and especially of the smaller and more helpless kinds. Birds occupy a large place in his affections. He is perpetually pausing to call attention to them and spring is to him pre-eminently the time when “smale fowles maken melodye.” Here again he shows little minute observation or discrimination, it is birds in general, rather than any bird in particular, that he loves. To praise the song of a nightingale can hardly be reckoned any proof of special bird-lore, and except in the Parlement of Foules, Chaucer scarcely mentions any other bird by name. The crow, who is the real hero of the Maunciples Tale, and who distinguishes himself by singing, “cukkow! cukkow! cukkow!” can no more be regarded as an ordinary, unsophisticated bird than can the eagle who acts as Jove’s messenger in the Hous of Fame, or the princess disguised as a falcon who seeks Canace’s aid. The Parlement of Foules, it is true, shows that Chaucer knew the names of a considerable number of birds, but the epithets that he applies to each show no more real knowledge of their habits than the epithets which he (or rather, Boccaccio) applies to the various trees, in an earlier stanza, show any love of forestry. The oak is useful for building purposes, and the elm makes good coffins. In like manner, the owl forebodes death, and the swallow eats flies, or rather, if we are to believe Chaucer, bees. Regarded as individuals, the birds are delightfully convincing: regarded as birds they are dismissed rather carelessly, though, since it is Chaucer who dismisses them, an occasional happy phrase redeems the passage from dullness and monotony.

But it is not only in a love of birds, which, after all, is common to most poets, that Chaucer shows this side of his nature. Reference has already been made to the whelp and the squirrels which he introduces into the Book of the Duchesse. The little coneys who hasten to their play in the garden of the Parlement of Foules are due in the first place to Boccaccio, but the Italian merely tells us that they “go hither and thither.” His picture is dainty and pretty, but it lacks the half-amused tenderness of Chaucer’s. Chaucer, it is evident, loves them all, bird and beast, sportive coney and timid roe, not forgetting the

Squerels, and bestes smale of gentil kinde.

The following stanza affords illustration of another point in Chaucer’s descriptions. Master of melody as he is, he has not learned the subtle art of suiting sound to sense, and producing a definite sensuous impression by sheer music. It is impossible to read of these

—instruments of strenges in acord

which make so ravishing a sweetness, without finding one’s thoughts involuntarily carried on to Spenser’s enchanted garden in which

Th’ Angelicall soft trembling voyces made
To th’ instruments divine respondence meet....

Chaucer’s little wind—“unethe it might be lesse”—which makes a soft noise in the green leaves, is too fresh ever to blow across the flowers of Acrasia’s garden, but the Bower of Bliss casts a spell over us of which Chaucer has not the secret. He is too frankly of this world to be at home in fairy-land, and the note of sincerity which sounds throughout his verse would accord ill with such intoxicating sweetness. Lady Pride and her followers, Dame Cælia and her fair daughters, Fidelia, Speranza, and Carita, find a natural home in Spenser’s world of wonders. But Chaucer’s allegorical personages must needs either come to life and turn into actual human beings, like the birds in the Parlement of Foules, or remain stiff abstractions, like Plesaunce, and Delyt, and Gentilnesse, and the other symbolic inhabitants of the garden of the Rose.

CHAPTER VII

The late fourteenth century was a time of social and political upheaval. The Church, over-rich and over-powerful for her own good, had become terribly corrupt. The fact that great offices of state were held by bishops meant, of necessity, that more and more of their purely ecclesiastical work was delegated to subordinates. In the ten years between 1376-86, out of twenty-five bishops no fewer than thirteen held secular offices of importance. William of Wykeham was appointed Chancellor of England and Bishop of the great diocese of Winchester in the same month. Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, led the English army in Flanders. No wonder that the power of the archdeacons, the oculi episcopi, increased tenfold. They frequently exercised authority in the bishop’s court, and in those days the powers of ecclesiastical courts were considerable and their jurisdiction was wide. The sketch which prefaces the Freres Tale was probably drawn from the life:—

Whilom ther was dwellinge in my contree
An erchedeken, a man of heigh degree
······
For smale tythes and for smal offringe
He made the peple pitously to singe.
For er the bisshop caughte hem with his hook,
They weren in the erchedekenes book.

Add to this the fact that one in three of the archdeacons holding office in England at this time were foreigners, and it is easy to see how much ill-feeling was likely to be stirred up between them and the laity. Nor were the parish priests much better. The black death, which ravaged Europe from time to time, had swept across England with peculiar fury in 1348. Hundreds of the noblest and best of the clergy, who stayed gallantly by their flocks, had been swept away. There were not enough priests to administer the sacraments of the Church, and between this urgent necessity for ministers to bury the dead, to baptise and marry, and the fact that many of the richer livings had fallen into the hands of foreigners, who cared nothing for the peasants committed to their charge, or of the great Abbeys, which were ready enough to appoint some illiterate boor, just able to stumble through his office, to act as their deputy at a nominal salary, it is small wonder that crying abuses came into existence. “They have parish churches,” writes Wycliff, “apropered to worldly rich bishops and abbots that have many thousand marks more than enow.... And yet they do not the office of curates, neither in teaching or preaching or giving of sacraments nor of receiving poor men in the parish: but setten an idiot for vicar or parish priest that cannot and may not do the office of a good curate, and yet the poor parish findeth him.” Chaucer finds it among the striking virtues of his poor Parson that:—

He sette nat his benefice to hyre,
And leet his sheep encombred in the myre,
And ran to London, un-to seynt Poules
To seken him a chaunterie for soules,[169]
Or with a bretherhed to been withholde;
But dwelte at hoom, and kepte wel his folde....

and that he does not attempt to wring their last penny from his unfortunate parishioners:—

Ful looth were him to cursen for his tythes.[170]

Matters were further complicated by the wandering friars who recognised no jurisdiction save that of the Pope himself, and who, having fallen far from the noble ideal of poverty, chastity, and obedience, set by their founders, took unscrupulous advantage of the ignorance and superstition of the people, and, like the pardoners, often undermined the authority of the parish priests. The custom of commuting penance for a payment in money was spreading, and naturally opened the door to abuses of all kinds.

No wonder that Wycliff arose to thunder against these malpractices, and that his poor preachers gained such a following. It was not, in the majority of cases, that people had any quarrel with the doctrines of the Church—the number of recantations and paucity of martyrs among the early Lollards show that it was not doctrine that they wished to reform—but injustice and oppression were inevitably arousing a widespread, smouldering discontent which broke into flame now at this point, now at that. As we read the history of the time, we marvel at the patience and good-humour of the inhabitants of Merry England.

How far Chaucer was in sympathy with the Lollards it is difficult to say. His works contain but the barest reference to their existence, and the fact that the Host accuses the Parson of Lollardy, and that the Shipman expresses a pious horror of heresy, cannot be said to prove anything either way. It may be intended as a carefully concealed compliment to the influence of Wycliff, or, as seems more probable, it may simply be a chance reference in keeping with the spirit of the times. That the Shipman should be so terrified lest the saintly Parson should

... springen cokkel in our clene corn,[171]

that he feels impelled to break into his threatened sermon with the story of the merchant’s wife and the monk, is a subtle enough piece of satire, but whether Chaucer so intended it, or whether it is one of the happy accidents of genius, we have no means of knowing. The Parson is a devout Catholic, the Monk, with all his faults, is at worst but a forerunner of the fox-hunting squarson of later days, with all the geniality and good-fellowship of his race. If Chaucer attacks the clergy, it is only for those things which the best Churchmen of the day were denouncing with less wit but no less bitterness. Saints are rare at the best of times, and Chaucer, whose mission is to paint life as he finds it, gives good measure when he allows the Parson and the Plowman to form two of his nine-and-twenty pilgrims.

Few things, indeed, are more striking in Chaucer than the manner in which he combines caustic observation of the weaknesses and hypocrisies of men, with innate reverence for all that is pure and noble. That the same man should enjoy the coarse humour of the Friar and the Reve, and yet treat womanhood and childhood with such tender reverence, is one of the mysteries of human nature. Prof. Ten Brink, as has been said, believes that Chaucer passed through a phase of intense religious feeling. “A worldling has to reproach himself with all sorts of things,” he writes, “especially when he lives at a court like that of Edward III and is intimate with a John of Gaunt. Chaucer ... naturally seeks in religion the power for self-conquest and improvement. He was a faithful son of the Church, even though he had his own opinions about many things.... He was specially attracted by the eternal-womanly element in this system, which finds its purest realisation in the person of the Virgin Mother Mary. In moments when life seemed hard and weary, and when he was unable to arouse and cheer himself with philosophy and poetry, he gladly turned for help and consolation to the Virgin Mother.” Certainly his poetry is never sweeter or more dignified than when he is addressing this “haven of refut,” this

... salvacioun
Of hem that been in sorwe and in distresse.

Nothing better illustrates the simplicity and sincerity of Chaucer’s religious feeling, than the tale of little St. Hugh. The story of the Christian child decoyed away and murdered by the Jews was commonly believed in the Middle Ages. Indeed, it is said that more than one anti-Semitic outbreak in Russia during the past forty years has been provoked by the relation of similar tales, and we have just seen the conclusion of a “Blood-ritual” case of the kind. The fierce racial and religious hatred which underlies belief in the possibility of such a thing, is in itself sufficiently terrible, and the story affords ample opportunity for the expression of animosity towards these

... cursed folk of Herodes al newe,

but Chaucer’s religion would appear to consist less in the denunciation of the Church’s enemies, than in affection for her saints. Dramatic justice is meted out to the murderers, but the poet takes no delight in dwelling on their dying agonies, or heaping abuse upon their memory. The point of the tale lies, not in the wickedness of the Jews, but in the simple, childish innocence and piety of Hugh, and the manner in which “Cristes moder” deigns to honour the service of this

... litel clergeon[172] of seven yeer of age.

The opening invocation is one of the most beautiful of all Chaucer’s addresses to the Virgin:—

Lady! thy bountee, thy magnificence,
Thy vertu, and thy grete humilitee
Ther may no tonge expresse in no science;
For som-tyme, lady, er men praye to thee,
Thou goost biforn, of thy benignitee,
And getest us the light, thurgh thy preyers,
To gyden us un-to thy sone so dere.

From beginning to end the limpid simplicity of the poem is marred by no unnecessary word. The picture of the little boy doing his diligence to learn the Alma redemptoris, although

Noght wiste he what this Latin was to seye
For he so yong and tendre was of age,

and going to his school-fellow to have it explained, is absolutely natural. So is the school-fellow’s hasty summary of the hymn, ending with

“I can no more expounde in this matere;
I lerne song, I can[173] but smal grammere.”

Chaucer does not, like so many hagiographers, forget the child in the saint. The prevailing note throughout is one of happy childhood. The tragedy is kept in the background. We catch a glimpse of the cruel steel as the Jews cut the boy’s throat: we see the white-faced mother hastening from place to place in search of him; but our thoughts are with St. Hugh and the gracious Queen of Heaven who comes to aid him:—

And in a tombe of marbul-stones clere
Enclosen they his litel body swete;
Ther he is now, god leve us for to mete.[174]

There is no tendency to over-elaborate the miracle or to explain it away. Chaucer accepts the fact quietly and without comment, as he accepts the miracles in the Man of Lawes Tale. In the story of Constance, indeed, it would seem as if some momentary doubt of its possibility flashed across his mind, for he goes out of his way to defend the miraculous element, but the defence itself is one of simple acceptance of facts related in the Bible, and shows none of that intellectual questioning which sometimes manifests itself in his poetry:—

Men mighte asken why she was nat slayn?
Eek at the feste who mighte hir body save?
And I answere to that demaunde agayn,
Who saved Daniel in the horrible cave,
Ther every wight save he, maister and knave
Was with the leoun fret er he asterte?[175]
No wight but god, that he bar in his herte.
······
Now, sith she was not at the feste y-slawe,[176]
Who kepte hir fro drenching[177] in the see?
Who kepte Jonas in the fisshes mawe
Til he was spouted up at Ninivee?...
······

It is obvious that Catholicism appeals to his emotions, and that the shortcomings of unworthy priests no more affect his pleasure in the tender beauty of its point of view, than the moral errors of a Benvenuto Cellini affect our pleasure in his craftsmanship. The poet’s soul responded to the poetry of worship, a poetry which underlies all forms and ceremonies, which no unworthiness on the part of the officiant can wholly obliterate, no superstition render wholly absurd. He recognises and rebukes the hypocrisy of many who minister in the name of Holy Church, but he is quick to separate wanton friar and idle priest from the religion whose dignity they profane. The fact that religion lies in the spirit rather than the observance is very clearly stated in the Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 6225-94.

As has been said, it is on the emotional side that Catholicism appeals to him. Intellectually he finds many difficulties, and more than once his poetry shows a tinge of scepticism which might well have brought him into serious difficulties had his patron been a man less powerful and less inclined to tolerate heretical sympathies than John of Gaunt. Again and again Chaucer comes to the edge of an abyss, and, after one glance into the depths, turns away with a shrug of the shoulders and a half-whimsical, half-satirical smile on his lips. Does God ordain man’s life for him, from beginning to end, and has he no choice or freedom of action left him? Chaucer plays with the question, turns it over, makes it a trifle ridiculous by applying it to the death of a cock, and then, as we have seen, tosses it aside with

I wol not han to do of swich matere;

The long disquisition on the subject—chiefly taken from his favourite philosopher, Boëthius—which he puts into the mouth of Troilus (Troilus and Criseyde, Book IV, stanzas 137-154) proves nothing, except Chaucer’s interest in the subject, which leads him to translate and insert so long a passage, and the natural inclination to fatalism of Troilus himself.

The Prologue to the Legend of Good Women begins with a characteristic shelving of an important question:—

A thousand tymes have I herd men telle,
That ther is joye in heven and peyne in helle;
And I accorde wel that hit is so;
But natheles, yit wot I wel also,
That ther nis noon dwelling in this contree,
That either hath in heven or helle y-be,
Ne may of hit non other weyes witen
But as he hath herd seyd, or founde it writen

True, the poet goes on to protest the absurdity of refusing credence to everything that we cannot see with our own eyes, but involuntarily we find ourselves recalling his refusal to commit himself as to the probable fate of Arcite’s soul, and the fact that Arcite, although a hero, was a heathen, does not seem entirely to account for it.

This tendency to dwell upon insoluble problems manifests itself also in the strange attraction that dreams have for Chaucer. He is not content simply to use the conventional dream setting for his poems. He is continually harking back to the question: Do dreams contain some mysterious warning by which men may escape a threatened fate? In the Nonnes Prestes Tale the subject is treated satirically. Pertelote’s arguments against belief in dreams are excellent, and most convincing. All sensible people must share her opinion that Chauntecleer is probably suffering from indigestion. Yet—the dream comes true. Only the fact that the whole story takes place in the hen-yard makes it impossible to take it seriously. But in Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer deliberately interpolates three, quite unnecessary, stanzas in Book V, in which he discusses whence dreams spring:—

For prestes of the temple tellen this,
That dremes been the revelaciouns
Of goddes, and as wel they telle, y-wis,
That they ben infernals illusiouns;
And leches[178] seyn, that of complexiouns[179]
Proceden they, or fast, or glotonye,[180]
Who woot in sooth thus what they signifye?...

Again in the opening lines of the Hous of Fame he asks the same question:—

God turn us every dreem to gode!
For hit is wonder, by the rode,
To my wit, what causeth swevenes[181]
Either on morwes, or on evenes;
And why th’ effect folweth of somme,
And of somme hit shal never come....

and again, characteristically, refuses to give any opinion on the matter—

For I of noon opinioun
Nil as now make mencioun.

But if Chaucer is chary of committing himself on speculative matters such as these, with regard to practical morality he has no such hesitation. It was the fashion of the day to draw a moral from the most unlikely stories, and Chaucer, while he never forces an application after the manner of Gower or the compiler of the Gesta Romanorum, is sufficiently in sympathy with the spirit of his age to conform to the practice when opportunity occurs. The Somnour, who, by the way, has just had a violent quarrel with the Friar, preaches an admirable homily against Ire, illustrating it, after the most approved method, with an apt anecdote. The Pardoner, as we have seen, inveighs against drunkenness, as does Chaucer himself in the Man of Lawes Tale. The simple statement of Averagus—