hand; but the student of history can discern forces, political, social, and spiritual, at work beneath the smooth surface, destined within a few years to produce momentous results. The national life and thought of England are now passing through a quicken ing process; a brilliant page in her history is about to open, on which will appear many bright names, but none brighter than that of GEOFFREY CHAUCER, the first man who speaks to the hearts of all classes of the English people.

CHAPTER IV.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

"I consider Chaucer as a genial day in an English spring."-Thomas Warton.

"I take increasing delight in Chaucer. *** How exquisitely tender he is, yet how perfectly free he is from the least touch of sickly melancholy or morbid drooping."-S. T. Coleridge.

"Here was a healthy and hearty man, so genuine that he need not ask whether he were genuine or no, so sincere as quite to forget his own sincerity, so truly pious that he could be happy in the best world that God chose to make, so human that he loved even the foibles of his kind."

"There is no touch of cynicism in all he wrote."-J. R. Lowell.

HE fourteenth century is the most important epoch in

THE intefectual history of Europe. It is the point

of contact between two widely-differing eras in the social, religious, and political annals of our race. Feudalism and chivalry had fulfilled their mission, and were yielding to the pressure of ideas that betokened the oncoming of the Revival of Letters and the Protestant Reformation. Of this great transition from the old order to the new, the personal career and the works of Chaucer, the first great English poet, "the Father of English Poetry," furnish us with the most exact type and expression; for, like all men of the highest order of genius, he at once followed and directed the intellectual tendencies of his age, and was himself the "abstract and brief chronicle" of the spirit of his time. In the age in which he lived he was eminently happy; the magnificent court of Edward III. had carried the splendor of chivalry to the height of its development; the victories of Sluys, of Crécy, and Poitiers, by exciting the national

pride, tended to fuse into one vigorous nationality the two elements which formed the English people and the English language. The literature, too, abundant in quantity, if not remarkable for much originality of form,) was rapidly taking a purely English tone; the rhyming chronicles and legendary romances were either translated into, or originally composed in, the vernacular language.

B. 1328.]
D. 1400.]

The date of Chaucer's birth is uncertain. There are reasons for fixing it at 1328, and yet others in favor of 1340. He is supposed to have been a child of wealth. His surname,

the French Chaussier, points to a Continental origin, which at that time was almost a sure sign of aristocratic rank. He was "armed a knight," he held lucrative and responsible positions, he married one of the Queen's maids of honor. These facts indicate that he belonged to the higher classes of English society. But whatever his social position may have been, his spirit was tolerant and generous, he took broad views of life, and, having the soul of a true poet, he loved nature and humanity.

In the Testament of Love, Chaucer speaks of London as his birth-place. In his Court of Love he speaks of himself under the name and character of "Philogenet-of Cambridge, Clerk;" but this hardly proves that he was educated at Cambridge. During the years 1356-9 he was in the service of the wife of the Duke of Clarence, probably as page. He was taken prisoner by the French in 1359, and being ransomed, according to the custom of those times, was enabled to return to England in 1360.

He next appears, in 1367, as one of the "valets of the king's chamber," and writs are addressed to him as "dilectus valettus noster." His official career was active and even distinguished; during a long period, he enjoyed various profitable offices, having been for twelve years comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wools, skins, and

tanned hides in the port of London; and he seems also to have been occasionally employed in diplomatic negotiations. Thus he was, in 1373, associated with two citizens of Genoa in a commission to Italy. On this occasion he is supposed to have made the acquaintance of Petrarch, then the most illustrious man of letters in Europe. Partly in consequence of his marriage with a sister of the wife of John of Gaunt, and partly perhaps from sharing in some of the political and religious opinions of that powerful prince, Chaucer was identified, to a considerable degree, with the household and with the party of the Duke of Lancaster. His Complaynte of the Blacke Knight, his Dream, and his Boke of the Duchesse were suggested to him, the first by the courtship of the duke and the duchess Blanche, the second by their marriage, and the third by her death in 1369. In the Dream, allusions to Chaucer's own courtship and marriage may be found. One of the most interesting particulars of his life was his election as representative for Kent in the Parliament of 1386. In the political turmoil of this year he lost all his offices, and fled from England. After a brief exile he returned; and if there be any truth in the notion that the Testament of Love is an allegorical description of a chapter in the poet's own life, he was obliged to submit to the bitter humiliation of imprisonment.

In 1389, however, he was appointed to the office of clerk of the king's works, which he held for about two years. There is reason to believe that, though his pecuniary circumstances must have been, during a great part of his life, in proportion to the position he occupied in the state and in society, his last days were more or less clouded by embarrassment. His death took place at Westminster on the 25th of October, 1400.

An ancient and probably authentic portrait of Chaucer, attributed to his contemporary and fellow-poet, Occleve, as

well as a curious and beautiful miniature, introduced, according to the fashion of those times, into one of the most valuable manuscript copies of his works,) give this great poet a pleasing and meditative countenance, and indicate that he was somewhat corpulent. In the prologue to The Rime of Sir Thopas, the host of the Tabard, himself represented as a "large man," and a "faire burgess," calls upon Chaucer in his turn to contribute a story to the amusement of the pilgrims, and rallies him on his corpulency, as well as on his studious and abstracted air:

"What man art thou?" quod he;

"Thou lokest as thou woldest fynde an hare;
For ever on the ground I se the stare.

Approche nere, and loke merrily.

Now ware you, sires, and let this man have space.

He in the wast is schape as well as I:

He semeth elvisch by his countenance,
For unto no wight doth he daliaunce."

The literary and intellectual career of Chaucer divides itself into two periods, closely corresponding to the two great social and political tendencies which meet in the fourteenth century. His earlier productions bear the stamp of the Chivalric, his later and more original creations, of the Italian literature. It is more than probable that the poet's visits to Italy, then the fountain of new literary life, brought him into contact with the works and the men by whose example the change in the taste of Europe was brought about. The religious element, too, enters largely into the character of his writings, though it is difficult to ascertain how far the poet sympathized with the bold doctrines of Wycliffe, who, like himself, was favored and protected by John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III. Many satirical passages in his poems indicate that in hostility to the monastic orders and in contempt for corrupt men in the church, he heartily sympathized with Wycliffe;