Chaucer and His Times

Southe is the hyeste thing that man may kepe—

is a sermon in itself, and the Maunciple ends his distinctly unmoral tale with some excellent advice of his dame’s:—

My sone, keep wel thy tonge, and keep thy freend,
A wikked tonge is worse than a fend[182]
My sone, god of his endelees goodnesse
Walled a tonge with teeth and lippes eek,
For man sholde him avyse what he speke....

It would be possible to multiply instances almost indefinitely. Perhaps the most striking of all is the sudden, unexpected moral application which ends Troilus and Criseyde. We have followed the passion and sins of the lovers, we have wept with Troilus and forgiven Cressida in spite of ourselves, and all at once, while our minds are still tuned to the rapture and sweetness of a love-story, Chaucer turns to bid us note the end of life and love:—

O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she,
In which that love up groweth with your age,
Repeyreth hoom from worldly vanitee,
And of your herte up-casteth the visage
To thilke god that after his image
Yow made, and thinketh al nis but a fayre
This world, that passeth sone as floures fayre.

And loveth him, the which that right for love
Upon a cros, our soules for to beye
First starf, and roos,[183] and sit in heven a-bove;
For he nil falsen no wight, dar I seye,
That wol his herte al hoolly[184] on him leye.
And sin he best to love is, and most meke,
What nedeth feyned loves for to seke?

In politics, as in religion, Chaucer shows himself keenly alive to the evils and abuses of the day, and yet no partisan. The author of Piers Plowman has left us a picture of the bitter poverty of the peasant class. The complaint of Peace against Wrong (Passus 4), shows how he has carried off his wife and stolen both geese and grys (pigs):—

He maynteneth his men to murthere myne hewen,[185]
Forstalleth my feires,[186] and fighteth in my chepyng,[187]
And breketh up my bernes dore[188] and bereth awey my whete
········
I am noght hardy for hym unethe to loke;[189]

and how completely the poor were at the mercy of the rich. When a peasant died, his lord had a right to his best possession, and if he owned not less than three cows, the parson of the parish took the next best, a condition of things against which we find Sir David Lyndsay protesting, as late as 1560, in his Satyre of the Three Estaats. John Ball, “the mad priest of Kent,” for twenty years combined the preaching of Lollardy with that of a kind of rough socialism, and the rude rhyme which contained the kernel of his teaching—

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?—

went the round of the Midlands and helped to fan the flame of discontent which finally broke into the wide-spread conflagration of the Peasants’ Revolt. It was a time when new ideals were slowly struggling to find expression, and the old order of feudalism was passing away for ever. But while the nobles were divided by factions among themselves, and the poor beat bleeding hands against the prison walls that hemmed them in, the middle class was steadily increasing in wealth and prosperity, and it is with this class that Chaucer chiefly concerns himself. The majority of the Canterbury pilgrims are prosperous, well-to-do tradesmen and artisans:—

Hir knyves were y-chaped[190] noght with bras
But al with silver, wroght ful clene and well,
Hir girdles and hir pouches every-deel.
Wel semed ech of hem a fair burgeys
To sitten in a yeldhall[191] on a deys.[192]
Everich, for the wisdom that he can,
Was shaply[193] for to been an alderman.
For catel hadde they y-nogh and rente,
And eek hir wyves wolde it wel assente;
And elles certain were they to blame.
It is ful fair to been y-clept “ma dame,”
And goon to vigilyes[194] al bifore,
And have a mantel royalliche y-bore.

This is something very different from Langland’s[195] picture of Dawe the dykere dying of hunger, or the poor farmer dining on bean-bread and bran. Even the Plowman seems fairly well off:—

His tythes payed he ful faire and wel,
Bothe of his propre swink[196] and his catel,

and the general impression is one of comfort, which even rises to a certain mild luxury. The pilgrims are well fed and well clothed, they have horses to ride, and can afford to call at the ale-house as they pass. They fill the air with the sound of laughter and song as they ride, and we can well understand the Lollard Thorpe’s complaint (made more than ten years after Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales) that, “What with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their Canterburie bells, and with the barking out of dogges after them ... they (i. e. pilgrims) make more noise than if the king came there away with all his clarions and many other minstrels” (Wycliff’s Works, ed. Arnold, I. 83). Even in the tales themselves little hint is given of the darker side of the picture. We get a glimpse of the relation between lord and vassal, in the Clerkes Tale, but no comment is made on it. Griselda is carrying her water-pot back from the well, when she hears the marquis calling her:—

And she set doun her water-pot anoon
Bisyde the threshfold, in an oxes stalle,
And doun up-on hir knees she gan to falle,
And with sad contenance kneleth stille
Til she had herd what was the lordes wille.

Apparently there is nothing in this incident to attract the attention of a fourteenth-century poet. It is quite natural to kneel on the floor of the cow-shed when your lord honours you by seeking you there and giving his commands in person.

That Chaucer has no very high opinion of the intelligence or reliability of a mob is shown, not only by his sketches of crowds, but by such passages as that in the Clerkes Tale where he breaks off the story to apostrophise the people:—

O stormy peple! unsad[197] and ever untrewe
As undiscreet and chaunging as a vane,
Delyting ever in rumbel that is newe,
For lyk the mone ay wexe ye and wane;
A ful of clapping,[198] dere y-nogh a jane[199]
Your doom is fals, your constance yvel preveth,[200]
A ful greet fool is he that on yow leveth.

But at the same time he realises that poverty has its rights. The earlier version of the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women contains much excellent advice to King Richard:—

For he that king or lord is naturel,
Him oghte nat be tiraunt or cruel,
As is a fermour,[201] to doon the harm he can.
He moste thinke hit is his lige man,
And that him oweth, of verray duetee
Shewen his peple pleyn benignitie
And wel to here hir excusatiouns,
And hir compleyntes and peticiouns....

The Lenvoy which ends the balade of Lak of Stedfastnesse holds up a noble ideal of kingship:—

O prince, desyre to be honourable,
Cherish thy folk and hate extorcioun!
Suffre no thing, that may be reprevable
To thyn estat, doon in thy regioun.
Shew forth thy swerd of castigacioun,
Dred God, do law, love trouthe and worthinesse,
And wed thy folk agein to stedfastnesse.

And in the Persones Tale the duties of the rich towards the poor are set forth in considerable detail. Superfluity of clothing and absurdly slashed and ornamented garments are to be avoided because “the more that clooth is wasted, the more it costeth to the peple for the scantnesse; and forther-over, if so be that they wolde yeven such pounsoned and dagged[202] clothing to the povre folk, it is nat convenient to were for hir estaat, ne suffisant to bete hir necessitee, to kepe hem fro the distemperance of the firmament.” Lords are bidden to take no pride in their position, and do no wrong to those dependent on them: “I rede thee, certes, that thou, lord, werke in swiche wyse with thy cherles, that they rather love thee than drede. I woot wel ther is degree above degree, as reson is; and skile it is that men do hir devoir ther-as is due; but certes, extorciouns and despit of youre underlinges is dampnable.” Chaucer’s inborn sense of justice will not allow him to condone oppression, and his speculative and inquiring mind is fully conscious of the artificiality of rank. From the Parson we might expect a homily on the fact that “we ben alle of o fader and of o moder; and alle we been of o nature roten and corrupt, both riche and povre,” but it is more surprising to find the Wife of Bath holding forth in the same strain. Her tale describes the bitter feeling of Florent when he finds himself bound to a wife old, ugly, and of base degree. The bride answers with a disquisition on true nobility:—

But for ye speken of swich gentillesse
As is descended out of old richesse,
And that therfore sholden ye be gentil men,
Swich arrogance is nat worth a hen.
Loke who that is most vertuous alwey,
Privee and apert,[203] and most entendeth
To do the gentil dedes that he can,
An tak him for the grettest gentil man.
Crist wol, we clayme of him our gentilesse,
Nat of our eldres for hir old richesse.
For thogh they yeve us al hir heritage,
For which we clayme to been of heigh parage,[204]
Yet may they nat biquethe, for no-thing,
To noon of us hir vertuous living,
That made hem gentil men y-called be.
······
Heer may ye see wel, how that genterye
Is nat annexed to possessioun
······
Redeth Senek, and redeth eek Boece,
Ther shul ye seen express that it no drede is
That he is gentil that doth gentil dedis.

John Ball himself could hardly go further.

Possibly Chaucer’s personal experience of the occasional difficulty of making both ends meet, quickened his sympathy with poor men. It is true that Florent’s wife, in the lines which follow those just quoted, goes on to defend poverty against riches on the ground that it is

A ful greet bringer out of bisinesse,

but though she calls cheerful poverty “an honest thing,” she is forced to own that at best it is “hateful good.” The Man of Law, in the prologue to his tale, speaks of it with undisguised bitterness:—

Herken what is the sentence of the wyse:—
“Bet is to dyen than have indigence;”
“Thy selve neighebour wol thee despyse;”
If thou be poore, farwel thy reverence!
······
If thou be povre, thy brother hateth thee,
And all thy freendes fleen fro thee, alas!
O riche marchaunts, ful of wele ben ye,
O noble, O prudent folk as in this cas!

And Chaucer’s lines to his empty purse show that he had no wish to share the pleasant security of those who are able, as Florent’s wife says, to sing and play in the presence of thieves.

In yet a third respect, Chaucer shows himself able to discriminate between the use and abuse of a thing. He can expose and denounce hypocrisy without losing his reverence for true religion; he can point out evils in social life, without siding wholly with nobles or people; he can laugh at the folly which allows itself to be deluded by charlatanism, without losing his respect for science. Two hundred years had yet to pass before Bacon should raise science, once and for all, above the level where it lay confused with magic and the black art. A generation to whom gunpowder was a novelty, and spectacles an almost miraculous aid to sight, found nothing strange in the sight of learned men seeking for the elixir of life, or the philosopher’s stone. In a world which was but just becoming dimly conscious of the mighty forces which lie at man’s command, limitations were unknown, and the boundary line between the possible and impossible was so uncertain as to be negligible. The populace which believed that every sage could summon legions of devils to his assistance, was not likely to criticise his pretensions too closely, and doubtless many a quack saw, and seized, the opportunity for imposing on the easy credulity of a greedy and wonder-loving people.

Chaucer shows a real interest in such rudimentary science as he was able to pick up in the midst of his other avocations. Clocks of any kind were rare in the fourteenth century, and the practice of telling the time by astronomical observations was a common one. There is nothing peculiar in noting the season or the hour by such statements as that

the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne.

or,

He wiste it was the eightetehe day
Of April, that is messager to May;
And sey wel that the shadwe of every tree
Was as the lengthe the same quantitee
That was the body erect that caused it.
And therefore by the shadwe he took his wit
That Phebus, which that shoon so clere and brighte,
Degrees was fyve and fourty clombe on highte;
And for that day, as in that latitude,
It was ten of the clokke, he gan conclude;

but Chaucer not only follows this method with an amount of detail and a persistency which show that he enjoyed it for its own sake, he also, as we have seen, writes a treatise on the use of the Astrolabe, for the instruction of his little son. The modesty and sincerity shown in the introduction are worthy of a true scientist. After saying that he purposes to teach little Lewis “a certain nombre of conclusions,” Chaucer continues, “I seye a certein of conclusiouns, for three causes. The furste cause is this: truste wel that alle the conclusiouns that have ben founde, or elles possibly mighten be founde in so noble an instrument as an Astrolabie, ben un-knowe perfitly to any mortal man in this regioun, as I suppose. A nother cause is this; that sothly, in any tretis of the Astrolabie that I have seyn, there ben some conclusiouns that wole nat in alle thinges performen hir bihestes; and some of them ben harde to thy tendre age of ten yeer to conseyve.” He then explains his reason for writing in English instead of Latin, and finally declares: “I nam but a lewd compilatour of the labour of olde Astrologiens, and have hit translated in myn English only for thy doctrine; and with this swerd shall I sleen envye.” The whole Prologue is well worth reading if only for the light it throws upon Chaucer’s view of education and the power it displays of entering into a child’s mind. Scattered references to astronomy, medicine, chemistry, and even astrology, are to be found throughout the Canterbury Tales. The Franklin shows himself well abreast of scientific discovery when he speaks of

This wyde world, which that men seye is round.

Chaucer himself in the Prologue reels off a list of medicaments which might be expected to improve the Somnour’s complexion. Pertelote shows a housewifely knowledge of the properties of herbs.

One tale, indeed, turns on the pseudo-science of the day. After the second Nun has finished her tale of St. Cecilia the pilgrims ride in silence for awhile, till, close to Boghton under Blee, they are joined by a Canon and his man. The Canon’s Yeoman soon begins to boast of his master’s marvellous powers, how

That al this ground on which we ben ryding,
Til that we come to Caunterbury toun,
He coude al clene turne it up-so-doun,
And pave it al of silver and of gold.

Whereupon the Host blesses himself, and asks, not unnaturally, why if the Canon “is of so heigh prudence,” he wears such poor and dirty clothes? The Yeoman answers that

—whan a man hath over-greet a wit
Ful oft him happeth to misusen it;
So dooth my lord ...

and is proceeding to dilate upon the hard share of the work that falls to himself, when the Canon, who is nervous as to what he may be saying, with some sharpness bids him hold his tongue. The Host, however, has no intention of allowing his authority to be over-ridden:—

“Ye,” quod our host, “telle on, what so bityde;
Of al his threting rekke nat a myte!”[205]
“In feith,” quod he, “namore I do but lyte.”

On which the Canon sets spurs to his horse and gallops off, leaving his character behind him, and the Yeoman settles down to tell the story of the foolish priest and the charlatan. The false Canon borrows a mark from the priest, promising to return it within three days:—

And at the thridde day broghte his moneye,
And to the preest he took his gold agayn,
Whereof this preest was wonder glad and fayn.

The Canon protests that under no circumstances would he ever dream of breaking his word:—

“ther was never man yet yvel apayd
For gold ne silver that he to me lente ...

and in token of friendship he offers, if the priest will send for some quicksilver, to show him a marvel.

“Sir,” quod the preest, “it shal be doon y-wis.”
He bad his servant fecchen him this thing....

The Canon then orders a fire to be prepared, and with much parade makes ready a crucible. He carefully shuts the door and pretends to be most anxious lest any one should see what they are doing. Not till the servant has gone out, and he and the priest are alone, does he solemnly cast various powders on to the blazing coals, “To blynde with the preest.” Finally, while his unfortunate victim is busy blowing the fire and making himself generally useful, the false Canon so manipulates things that an ingot of silver appears in the crucible. He repeats the trick three times, and so impresses “this sotted preest” that the poor dupe

the somnee of fourty pound anon
Of nobles fette,[206] and took hem everichon
To this chanoun, for this ilke receit....

After which, needless to say, the Canon disappears.

The whole story teems with technical terms, with descensories, and sublimatories, and cucurbites, with bole armoniak and orpiment, and the like. It shows an intimate knowledge of the laboratory work of the day, of vessels and retorts, of chemicals and minerals and their various properties. At the same time, it proves that Chaucer was well aware of the ease with which a very little knowledge combined with a great deal of assurance would enable a quack to impose on the absolute ignorance of the uninitiated. The charlatan who tried to impose upon the author of the Chanouns Yemannes Tale would soon have found out his mistake.

And yet, with all his shrewdness, Chaucer was not wholly exempt from the superstition of his age. Such vulgar trickery as that just described would never have imposed on him, but he is too truly fourteenth century in his point of view always to distinguish between astronomy and astrology. The thought that a man’s destiny may be written in the stars appealed to this lover of dreams. In the Man of Lawes Tale he breaks away from his original, to speculate on this subject:—

Paraventure in thilke large book
Which that men clepe the heven, y-writen was
With sterres, when that he (i. e. the Soldan) his birthe took
That he for love shulde han his deeth, allas!
For in the sterres, clerer than is glas,
Is writen, god wot, who-so coulde it rede,
The deeth of every man, withouten drede.

And again, after describing the grief of Constance at parting from her parents, he vehemently exclaims against the unfortunate conjunction of constellations which wrought such havoc, and asks if there were no “philosophre” to advise the emperor to consult some astrologer as to which was the auspicious time for him to marry.

Certain aspects of Chaucer’s character stand out with unmistakable clearness in his works. The most careless reader could hardly fail to be struck by his wide sympathies, ready humour, keen observation, and honesty of mind. His idealism, his poetic sensitiveness to the more imaginative side of life, are perhaps less often insisted upon, but are no less real. He is no visionary, afraid to face the facts of life, dwelling in a world of beauty and delight which has no counterpart on earth, but a poet who takes no shame in human nature, whose eyes see so clearly that they are not blinded by evil, who dares to say, with his Creator, that the world is good. In the Book of the Duchesse is a passage which explains much of Chaucer’s so-called worldliness. He is speaking of Blanche’s innocent kindliness, and how he never knew one less

Harmful, than she was in doing;

and he adds, in words as bold as Milton’s own,

I sey nat that she ne had knowing
What was harm; or elles she
Had coud[207] no good, so thinketh me.

He has little respect for a fugitive and cloistered virtue. But if he is, perhaps, over-ready to plunge into the dust and din of ordinary life, he never forgets the wonder and mystery that lie behind the commonplace.

CHAPTER VIII

The English Chaucerians, with all their admiration for their master, show but scant understanding of his real greatness. Having little ear for rhythm themselves, they only mangle his verse when they try to imitate it; and while they fully recognise the debt which English versification owes him, it is but rarely that their own lines show any hint of his sweetness and melody. Lydgate is by far the greatest of them, and of him Professor Saintsbury justly remarks: “It is enough to say that, even in rime royal, his lines wander from seven to fourteen syllables, without the possibility of allowing monosyllabic or trisyllabic feet in any fashion that shall restore the rhythm; and that his couplets, as in the Story of Thebes itself, seem often to be unaware whether they are themselves octosyllabic or decasyllabic—four-footed, or five-footed.” Instead of the suppleness and endless variety of Chaucer’s verse, we have a treatment of metre which at its best is apt to be dull and stiff, and at its worst is intolerably slipshod. Only by some rare chance does a momentary gleam of beauty flicker across these pages, and a flash of poetic feeling raise the trite and conventional language to such a level as:—

O thoughtful herte, plonged in dystresse,
With slomber of slouthe this longe winter’s night—
Out of the slepe of mortal hevinesse
Awake anon! and loke upon the light
Of thilke starr.
(Lydgate, Life of Our Lady.)

Nor is the matter much more inspiring than the form that clothes it. The English Chaucerians are worthy men, who spend their time in bewailing the errors of their youth and offering good advice to whoso will accept it. Of Chaucer’s humour and realism they have no conception, nor do they realise the force of his digressions. The allegorical form of his earlier poems appeals to them, and, disregarding the movement and life of the Canterbury Tales, they ramble along the paths marked out in the Hous of Fame without attending to their master’s excellent advice to flee prolixity. Lydgate, it is true, does show some narrative power. His Troy Book is obviously inspired by Troilus and Creseyde, and his Story of Thebes by the Knightes Tale, but he has neither the conciseness of Gower nor the dramatic insight of Chaucer. Among the 114 works attributed to him, it is only natural that some variety should be shown, and occasionally, as in the London Lickpenny, a skit on contemporary life in the City, he shows some trace of humour. The Temple of Glas is a close imitation of the Hous of Fame, but it lacks the shrewd sense, the original comments on life, the subtle humour of its model. Lydgate is most poetical when his religious feeling is touched, as in his Life of Our Lady; and most human when he becomes frankly autobiographical. The stiffness of the Temple of Glas is redeemed by such passages as that in which the author (who entered a monastery at fifteen) describes the lamentations of those

That were constrayned in hir tender youthe
And in childhode, as it is ofte couthe[208]
Yentered were into religion[209]
Or they hade yeares of discresioun;
That al her life cannot but complein
In wide copes perfeccion to feine.

Occleve, who has even less poetic genius than Lydgate, is remembered chiefly because the manuscript of his Gouvernail of Princes (a poem of good advice, addressed to Prince Hal) contains the only authentic portrait of Chaucer—a sketch drawn in the margin by the author himself. The lines which accompany the portrait, sufficiently illustrate the estimation in which Chaucer was held. Their modesty and simple affection disarm criticism.

Symple is my goste, and scars my letterure[210]
Unto youre excellence for to write
My inward love, and yit in aventure
Wol I me put, thogh I can but lyte;
My dere maister—God his soule quyte,—[211]
And fader, Chaucer, fayne wold have me taught,
But I was dulle, and lerned lyte or naught.
Allas! my worthy maister honorable,
This londes verray tresour and richesse,
Dethe by thy dethe hath harm irreperable
Unto us done: hir vengeable duresse[212]
Dispoiled hath this londe of the swetnesse
Of rethoryk, for unto Tullius
Was never man so lyk amenges us.
······
She myght have taryed hir vengeaunce a whyle,
Tyl sum man hadde egal to thee be;
Nay, let be that; she wel knew that this yle[213]
May never man forth bringe like to thee,
And her office needes do must she;
God bad her soo, I truste as for the beste,
O maystir, maystir, God thy soule reste!

His consciousness of the superiority of his master did not, however, prevent him from venturing to make use of the same material, and in the Chaste Spouse of the Emperor Gerelaus he re-tells the story of Constance.

A number of minor poets make up the list. Benedict Burgh—the shadow of Chaucer’s shadow—completed The Secrets of the Philosophers, a peculiarly dull poem which Lydgate left unfinished at his death. Side by side with him worked George Ashby, clerk of the signet to Queen Margaret, and a little later comes Henry Bradshaw, a monk of St. Werburgh’s Abbey at Chester. They are all worthy, honest men, who utter moral platitudes with an air of conviction; painstaking but unskilful apprentices in the workshop of poetry, who conscientiously blunt their tools and cut their fingers in a vain effort to do the work of master craftsmen. One curious little development is, however, worth noticing. In the latter half of the fifteenth century two poets, Sir George Ripley and Thomas Norton, wrote treatises on alchemy, in verse. Ripley’s The Compound of Alchemy, or the Twelve Gates, and Norton’s Ordinall of Alchemy, owe their interest in the first place to the proof they afford that verse at the time was a natural means of instruction rather than an end in itself; and in the second to their adventitious connection with the Chanouns Yemannes Tale. Norton endeavours to copy the Chaucerian couplet, and Professor Saintsbury suggests that he is probably the Th. Norton whom Ascham, in his Scholemaster, classes with Chaucer, Surrey, Wyatt and Phaer, as having vainly attempted to replace accent by rhyme.

Stephen Hawes falls into a class somewhat apart. Writing at the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, he stands at the parting of the ways, and while his poetry shows signs of the new influences that were at work, his heart is evidently with the old conventions which are beginning to pass away. His chief poem, The Pastime of Pleasure, or the Historye of Graunde Amoure and la Bell Pucell: containing the Knowledge of the Seven Sciences and the Course of Man’s Life in this World, is sufficiently described by its title. It stands, as it were, half-way between Chaucer and Spenser, at one moment clearly recalling the love scenes of Troilus and Criseyde, at another reminding us equally forcibly of the elaborate and ingenious allegory of the Faerie Queene. The combination of chivalry and allegory was something new, and though Hawes himself proved incapable of making the most of its possibilities, English literature owes him a real debt. He never rises to any great height. Mr. Murison, in his chapter on Hawes in Vol. II of the Cambridge History of Literature, draws attention to certain verbal resemblances between the Passetyme of Pleasure and the Faerie Queene, but the passages quoted serve only to show how far removed the music of Spenser is from the speech of ordinary men. At his worst Hawes sinks beneath the lowest level of what can possibly be allowed to pass as verse. The dialogue between Graunde Amour and Dame Grammar defies parody:—

“Madame,” quod I, “for as much as there be
Eight partes of speche, I would knowe right faine,
What a noune substantive is in his degree;
And wherefore it is so called certaine?
To whom she answered right gentely againe
Saing alway that a noune substantive
Might stand without helpe of an adjective.

That the stanza of Troilus and Criseyde should be used for such stuff as this is unbearable.

The Scottish Chaucerians are of far more intrinsic importance. The love-allegory of the Kingis Quair shows the influence of Chaucer not only in its use of the Chaucerian stanza—henceforth to be known as the rhyme royal—but in the evidence it affords of its author’s acquaintance with the English version of the Romance of the Rose. Moreover, in it may be noticed that sympathy with the freshness and joy of nature which forms so strong a bond between Chaucer and his Scottish disciples, and is so conspicuous by its absence in the work of the English Chaucerians. Emily herself might well walk in the garden where

... on the smale grene twistis[214] sat
The little sweete nyghtingale, and song
So loud and clear, the hymnes consecrate
Of loves use, now softe now loud among,
That all the gard(e)nes and the walles rong
Ryght of their song, and on the copill[215] next
Of their sweet harmony, and lo the text:

“Worschippe, ye that loveres be(ne) this May,
For of your bliss the kalendes are begonne,
And sing with us, away winter, away,
Come sumer, come, the sweet season and sonne,
Awake, for schame! that have your heavenes wonne,
And amourously lift up your heades all,
Thank Love that list you to his merci call;”

and the picture of Joan Beaufort,

The fairest or the freschest yong(e) floure
That ever I sawe, me thoght, before that houre;

has something of Chaucer’s daintiness and grace.

The Scottish poets have, also, far more sense of form than the English. Henryson’s Testament of Cressid, written to satisfy its author’s thirst for poetic justice and to show Cressida paying the penalty of her misdeeds, with all its conventional morality, for sincerity of feeling and felicity of style will bear comparison with its great original. His fables show a quick sense of humour, a combination of tenderness and realism which recall Chaucer again and again. The feast spread by the Burgis Mouse for the Uplandis Mouse is delightful:—

After when they disposed were to dine,
Withouten grace they wash’d and went to meat,
With all the courses that cooks could define,
Mutton and beef laid out in slices greet;
And lordis fare thus could they counterfeit,
Except one thing, they drank the water clear
Instead of wine, but yet they made good cheer.

Gawain Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, was perhaps most nearly akin to the English Chaucerians. A scholar and a man of distinguished position, he has none of the lightness of Henryson. He takes poetry seriously, and inclines to trace a moral purpose even in the Æneid. His Palice of Honour well illustrates the manner in which Chaucer’s successors made free with the framework of his poems, while at the same time it shows the growing delight in picturesque effect which was one day to break into the Elizabethan glow of colour. The poet finds himself wandering in a dreary wilderness and breaks out in complaint against Fortune, who has led him there. As he laments, he sees approaching him a rout “of ladyis fair and gudlie men”:—

Amiddes(t) whom borne in a golden chair
O’er-fret with pearl and stones most preclair[216]
That draw(e)n was by hackneys all milk-white
Was set a Queen, as lily sweet of swair[217]
In purple robe, hemmed with gems each gair[218]
Which gemmed claspes closed all perfite[219]
A diadem, most pleasantly polite,
Set on the tresses of her golden hair.

The original form, which illustrates the comparatively modernness of the language used by Chaucer, is as follows:

Amiddes quhome, borne in ane goldin chair
Ourfret with perle and stanis maist preclair
That drawin was by haiknayis all milk quhite,
Was set a Quene, as lyllie sweit of swair
In purpor rob hemmit with gold ilk gair,
Quhilk gemmit claspis closit all perfite.
A diademe maist plesandlie polite.
Set on the tressis of her giltin hair.
And in her hand a scepter of delight.

This is Dame Sapyence, and with her come Diana, Jephtha’s daughter, Palamon, Arcite and Emily, Troilus and Cressida, David and Bathsheba, Delilah, Cleopatra, Jacob and Rachel, Venus (whose “hair as gold or topasis was hewit”) and a number more famous lovers of antiquity. A “ballet of inconstant love” follows. This offends Venus, and the poet is brought before her to answer for his lack of respect. Poetry, the Muses, and the Poets from Homer to Chaucer and Dunbar, form a Court. Calliope pleads for him, and he is allowed to atone for his misdeed by composing “A ballet for Venus’ pleasour,” which so delights the company that he is invited to join the cavalcade. After travelling through Germany, France, Italy, and other countries, they reach the Fountain of the Muses. Here they alight:—

Our horses pastured in ain pleasand plane,
Low at the foot of ain fair grene montane,
Amid ain mead shaddowit with cedar trees,

where

... beriall stremis rinnand ouir stanerie greis[220]
Made sober noise, the shaw dinned agane
For birdis song and sounding of the beis.[221]

In the midst of the field Douglas finds a gorgeous pavilion in which knights and ladies are feasting, while a poet relates the brave deeds of those who in the past proved “maist worthie of thair handis.” After listening to these heroic tales the company once more sets out. Beyond Damascus they reach their journey’s end. The poet is guided by a nymph to the foot of a steep mountain, at the summit of which stands the Palace of Honour. As he climbs he sees before him a dreadful abyss out of which proceed flames. His ears are filled with the sound of terrible cries; on either side lie dead bodies. These beings in torment are they who set out to pursue Honour, but “fell on sleuthfull sleip,” and so were “drownit in the loch of cair.” (It has been suggested by critics bent on finding an original for the Pilgrim’s Progress, that Bunyan found in this the idea of his “byway to Hell.”) At last he reaches the Palace, where he is shown many treasures, including Venus’ mirror, which reflects “the deidis and fatis of euerie eirdlie wicht.” Prince Honour is attended by all the virtues, and the poem ends by contrasting worldly and heavenly honour and commending virtue.

The gracious figure of Sapience, her dress gleaming with jewels, her head crowned with a diadem, is very different from any being of Lydgate’s or Occleve’s creation; already the first rays of Renaissance light are showing above the horizon, and the cold gray mists of fifteenth-century poetry are dispersing before its warmth and brilliance; but the radiance that heralds the new era is that of sunrise, flushing the world with a wonder of colour, rather than of that light of common day in which Chaucer is content to walk. In the great age to come, the Elizabethans are to show how the rapture and intoxication of beauty may be combined with the sternest realism, but in the early sixteenth century the children of the new birth walk with uncertain steps towards the dawn.

The poet who most clearly shows the growing love of beauty, and at the same time is most truly in sympathy with Chaucer, is William Dunbar. No other poet of the period has such skill in versification, such freshness and vigour, or such variety. His humour is as all-pervading as Chaucer’s. Now he addresses a daring poem to King James, slyly laughing at one of his numerous love affairs; now he writes the story of the Two Friars of Berwick, or the Treatise of the Two Married Women and the Widow, broadly comic fabliaux which might well have found a place among the Canterbury Tales. One of the wittiest of his poems is the Visitation of St. Francis, in which the poet describes how his patron saint appeared to him in a dream, bidding him wear the habit of a friar. Dunbar answers slyly that he has noticed more bishops than friars are among the saints, so perhaps it will be as well if St. Francis, to make all sure, provides him with a bishop’s robes instead, and then he is sure to go to heaven. Whereupon his visitant reveals himself in his true character and vanishes in a cloud of brimstone. Two little lyrics on James Dog, Keeper of the Queen’s wardrobe, are very characteristic. In the first, “whan that he had offendit him,” each verse ends with the refrain:—

Madame, ye have a dangerous Dog;

in the second, when the quarrel had been made up, the refrain runs:—

He is na Dog: he is a Lamb.

As Mr. Gregory Smith points out, “Dunbar is unlike Henryson in lacking the gentler and more intimate fun of their master. He is a satirist in the stronger sense; more boisterous in his fun, and showing, in his wildest frolics, an imaginative range which has no counterpart in the southern poet”; but his sincerity and virility, his boyish sense of fun, remind us of Chaucer again and again. The Reve would thoroughly have enjoyed telling the story of the flying friar of Tungland who courted disaster by using hen’s feathers. Chaucerian, too, in the truest sense, is Dunbar’s power of combining this keen sense of the ridiculous with a no less keen appreciation of beauty. The charm of his verse is incontestible, and his skill in making effective use of burdens and refrains shows an ear sensitive to music. The Thistle and the Rose, written in honour of the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor, borrows its idea from the Parlement of Foules, and has something of Chaucer’s tenderness and charm. Dame Nature commands all birds, beasts, and flowers to appear before her, and after some debate proceeds to crown the thistle with rubies, while the birds unite in singing the praises of the “freshe Rose of colour red and white.”

The Golden Targe, an allegorical poem of the conventional type, in which the shield of Reason proves no defence against the arrows of Beauty, contains a description of spring which Chaucer himself never equalled:—

Full angel-like the birdes sang their houres
Within their curtains green, into their boweres
Apparelled white and red with blossoms sweet;
Enamelled was the field with all coloures
The pearly dropes shook in silver showeres
While all in balm did branch and leaves flete[222]
To part from Phœbus did Aurora weep;
Her crystal tears I saw hang on the floweres
Which he for love all drank up with his heat.
·······
For mirth of May with skippes and with hoppes
The birdes sang upon the tender croppes[223]
With curious notes as Venus chapell clerkes;
The rose yong, new spreding of her knoppes[224]
War powdered bright with hevenly beriall[225] droppes
Through beames red, burning as ruby sparkes
The skyes rang for shouting of the larkes.

And in addition to all these, Dunbar writes serious religious poetry on such subjects as Love, Earthly and Divine, draws a by no means unimpressive picture of the Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins, and in his Lament for the Makaris (poets), with its haunting refrain:—

Timor Mortis conturbat me

shows a sense of the transitoriness of all earthly pleasure.

Enough has already been said to show that the influences that moulded sixteenth-century literature in England were not such as to lead its poets to model themselves on Chaucer. In the Golden Targe, Dunbar gives expression to the popular view of Chaucer in his day:—

O reverend Chaucer, rose of rethoris[226] all,
As in our tongue a flower imperial,
That rose in Britain ever, who readeth right,
Thou bear’st, of makers[227] the triumph royal;
Thy fresh enamelled termes celestial
This matter could illumined have full bright,
Wert thou not of our English all the light,
Surmounting every tongue terrestrial
As far as Mayes morrow doth midnight?

And here again, as in Occleve, we see that it is for his language rather than for his invention that the poet is praised. But the sixteenth century saw the change from Middle English to Modern, a change which, for the time being, lost men the key to Chaucer’s verse. Old inflections had gradually dropped off, the accented “e” which ends so many of Chaucer’s words had become mute, and the result was that the poets of the new age found Chaucer’s lines impossible to scan. A generation whose taste was formed on Classical and Italian models, whose precisians urged the necessity of discarding “bald and beggarly rhymning” in favour of the classical system of accent, had not patience enough to rediscover the laws that governed Chaucer’s verse. It says much for the insight and genuine poetic taste of Elizabethan critics that they one and all speak of Chaucer with admiration and respect. Fresh editions of his works continued to appear at frequent intervals throughout the century, and frequent references to his name show that they were well known to the poets of the period. To Spenser he is “The God of shepheards”:—

Who taught me homely, as I can, to make.
He, whilst he lived, was the soueraigne head
Of shepheards all, that been with loue ytake;

and he goes on to protest that

... all hys passing skil with him is fledde,
The fame whereof doth dayly greater growe.

The famous reference in the Faerie Queene to

Dan Chaucer, well of Englishe undefyled,
On Fames eternal beadroll worthie to be fyled,

has become part of the Chaucerian critic’s stock in trade, and is as apt and as well-known as Dryden’s phrase which speaks of Chaucer as “a perpetual fountain of good sense.” Book III, canto xxv of the Faerie Queene contains a paraphrase of some of the lines on true love in the Frankleyns Tale, and Book IV boldly promises to continue the story of

Couragious Cambell, and stout Triamond,
With Canacee and Cambine linckt in lovely bond.

Whether the Spenserian stanza is a modification of the rhyme royal or of the stanza used by Boccaccio and Ariosto it is impossible to say—all three are obviously related to each other—but in view of Spenser’s admiration for Chaucer, and his deliberate attempt to use “Chaucerisms,” it is at least probable that in this respect the Faerie Queene owes a debt to Troilus and Criseyde. In Mother Hubbard’s Tale and Colin Clouts come home again, Spenser is frankly, though unsuccessfully, imitating Chaucer’s style. William Browne, the poet of Tavistock, also showed his admiration for Chaucer by an attempt to imitate him in his Shepheard’s Pipe, a series of eclogues modelled partly on the Shepherd’s Calendar and partly on the Canterbury Tales. In the concluding lines of the first eclogue, which contains the story of Jonathas, Browne confesses his indebtedness to Occleve:—

Scholler unto Tityrus
Tityrus the bravest swaine
Ever lived on plaine ...

thus using for Chaucer the name bestowed on him by Spenser.

During the seventeenth century Chaucer’s fame seems to have suffered a temporary eclipse. Between 1602 and 1687 not a single edition of his works appeared, and the edition of 1687 is in reality no more than a re-issue of Speght’s. The poets hardly mention his name. Milton does indeed make a reference to the Squieres Tale, but his works show no trace of Chaucer’s influence. Towards the end of the century, however, there was a revival of interest. Dryden tells us that Mr. Cowley declared he had no taste of him, but my lord of Leicester, on the other hand, was so warm an admirer of the Canterbury Tales that he thought it “little less than profanation and sacrilege” to modernise their language, and not until his death did Dryden venture to turn into modern English the tales of the Knight, the Nun’s Priest, and the Wife of Bath, and the character of the poor Parson in the Prologue. The wigs and ruffles of the seventeenth century, however, suit but ill the sturdy figure of the fourteenth-century poet. We stand aghast before Dryden’s Arcite, who, in the throes of death, exclaims:—

No language can express the smallest part
Of what I feel, and suffer in my heart,
······
How I have loved; excuse my faltering tongue:
My spirit’s feeble, and my pains are strong.
This I may say, I only grieve to die,
Because I lose my charming Emily.

It is an excellent specimen of the poetry of 1699, but it is not Chaucer.

Dryden is, indeed, far more eighteenth than seventeenth century in feeling, and while the authors of the eighteenth century are too really great not to appreciate true poetry wherever they see it, their own taste leads them to the erection of “neat Modern buildings” rather than to the admiration of “an ancient majestick piece of Gothick Architecture,” and all attempts to combine the two must necessarily be foredoomed to failure. Pope paraphrases the Hous of Fame; Prior writes Two Imitations of Chaucer, viz. Susanah and the Two Elders, and Earl Robert’s Mice; Gay writes a comedy on the Wife of Bath, with Chaucer himself for hero; the Rev. Thomas Warton, who, as professor of poetry at Oxford, ought to have known better, writes an elegy on the death of Pope in an extraordinary jargon which he apparently considers Chaucerian English. (See Miss Spurgeon’s Chaucer devant la Critique, pp. 62-75.) But while these, and numerous other works of the same kind, prove that Chaucer was widely read at the time, they afford no evidence at all of his having any direct influence upon the general development of eighteenth-century poetry. His place as an English classic is firmly established, but centuries have passed since he wrote, and the point of view of the men of the new age differs too widely from that of their forefathers for any imitation to be possible, except by way of a conscious experiment. The most amazing of all modernisations was that of 1841. Richard Hengist Horne, inspired, if we may believe his own words, by no less a person than Wordsworth, hit on the most unfortunate idea of issuing Chaucer’s poems in two volumes done into modern English by a sort of joint-stock company of contemporary poets. Wordsworth himself, Leigh Hunt, Miss Barrett, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Bulwer-Lytton and the Cowden Clarkes, were to be among the contributors. Landor showed his usual common-sense by refusing to take any part in it, and his letter to Horne on the subject is worth quoting: “Indeed I do admire him (Chaucer), or rather, love him.... Pardon me if I say that I would rather see Chaucer quite alone, in the dew of his sunny morning, than with twenty clever gentlefolks about him, arranging his shoestrings and buttoning his doublet. I like even his language. I will have no hand in breaking his dun but rich-painted glass to put in (if clearer) much thinner panes.” It is comforting to reflect that the first volume proved a failure, and the second never saw the light.

Fortunately the labours of such scholars as Professor Skeat and Dr. Furnivall have saved us from all fear of being left in future to the tender mercies of the moderniser. However great may be the changes that are to pass over our language, however strange the tongue of fourteenth-century England may sound in the ears of our descendants, Chaucer’s English has been preserved once for all, and never again can we lose the key to his world of harmony and delight.

In Chaucer I am sped
His tales I have red;
His mater is delectable
Solacious and commendable;
His english wel alowed,
So as it enprowed,[228]
For as it is enployed
There is no englyshe voyd—
At those days moch commended,
And now men wold haue amended
His englishe where-at they barke,
And marre all they warke;
Chaucer, that famous Clarke
His tearmes were not darcke,
But pleasunt, easy, and playne;
No worde he wrote in vayne.
(Skelton, introductory lines to the Book of Phillip sparow, 1507?)

BIBLIOGRAPHY