it the vehicle of spirited representations of life and native manners; and, secondly, from having been the first great architect of our versification, in giving our language the ten-syllable or heroic measure, which, though it may sometimes be found among the lines of more ancient versifiers, evidently comes in only by accident. Nor among the characteristics of his genius should the rich and quaint humour which is seen and enjoyed both in his description and sentiment, be overlooked, connecting itself, as it does, with the fact, that this satirical banter, drollery, and wit, is a characteristic feature in the literature of these early centuries, when learning and authorship were leaving the doors of the cloister, to mix in a more general commerce with mankind.* We doubt not but the contrasts afforded by society were striking and strong; the peculiarities of individuals prominent and remarkable; the long intervals of lassitude and leisure required excitement, and fitted the mind for it; and, above all, the danger of openly denouncing the vices or corruptions of the age, led to the safer way of turning indignation into ridicule, of making the moralist put on the cap of the jester, till at length the general mind was accustomed to these peculiar associations, which, however philosophically incorrect, yet, by delighting the fancy with their novel images and creations, became the useful and formidable ally of truth herself. In the grotesque characters, in the extravagant and burlesque buffoonery, in the broad, humorous, and ribald dialogue, and in the ludicrous images of the old drama, Chaucer had a prototype for his satyrical and comical vein, as he had in the old romances for his Gothic pageantries and his pictures of love and chivalry. The life of Chaucer has been often written, in various style and manner, according to the degree of taste or knowledge of the biographer. Perhaps the two most generally known are those composed on opposite principles by Godwin and Tyrwhitt; the former has swollen out like a gourd, and the latter is compressed into a nutshell: Godwin was a writer of abilities, and has given an amusing and, perhaps, instructive work, which he has been pleased to call a Life of Chaucer, but which might rather be named a dissertation on the times when Chaucer lived,† or a running commentary on English history. Tyrwhitt was a scholar of the first order, and had a truly critical mind, which fitted him for such investigations in the remote paths of a refined literature as he delighted in, beyond any one of his age; but, as he knew the love of truth to be the only sure foundation of critical investigation, he was slow to receive any theories or conjectural hypotheses or doubtful points into his biography; and, consequently, by admitting, with a minute and scrupulous exactness, the disadvantage arising from the small collections of individuals. They were prevented from being so minute and accurate as scholars of our days frequently are, in quotation, but not from being learned." Godwin's Life, i. 28. * See the religious controversies and works of the early Reformers, as well as the allegorical fables, both in prose and verse, so numerous in those days. See also Fitzstephen's account of the assemblies of the schools in London on public holidays, and of the revival of the ancient Fescennine liberty of sarcasm in the declamations. See Fitzstephen apud Leland Itin. vol. viii. + Mr. Hallam allows "that another modern book may be named with some commendation, Godwin's Life of Chaucer." Vid. Middle Ages, iii. p. 81. It ought to have been called "A History of John of Gaunt and his Man Chaucer.". In one place he supposes John of Gaunt addressing Chaucer in the following words: "Man is a complex being, and affected with mixed considerations," &c. vol. ii. p. 510. Much of the reading in Mr. Godwin's book is at second hand, and he had too great a desire to make it entertaining. only the very few facts known, and rejecting the others, he reduced the account of his author to a very small compass. The present biographer comes under happier auspices to his task. He says, "Although great trouble was taken to illustrate the life of Chaucer by his former biographers, the field of research was but imperfectly gleaned. Many material facts in his history have been very recently brought to light, and are now, for the first time, published; but it is not from these discoveries only that this account of the poet will derive its claim to attention. An erroneous construction has been given to much of what was before known of him; and absurd inferences have, in some cases, been drawn from supposed allusions to himself in his writings. A life of the poet, founded on documentary evidence* instead of imagination, was much wanted; and this, it is hoped, the present memoir will supply." We will now give a short abridgment of the poet's life from the narrative before us. r Chaucer's parentage is unknown, but probably his family was connected with the city of London. We trust that he was not the son of Elizabeth Chaucer, a nun of St. Helen's; but it is possible, as Speght suggests, that Richard Chaucer, vintner of London, might have been his father. If so, he had a brother also a citizen and vintner. The name of Chaucer existed in other counties; one was a burgess of Colchester, another, deputy to the king's butler at Southampton, and others are mentioned in contemporary records and charters whose names alone are known, but who seem to have filled a respectable station in society. "That he was of a gentleman's family," Sir Harris says, can scarcely be doubted;" but if by gentleman" he means a rank above that of merchant, or citizen, we see no reason to admit the assertion; apparently he was in such a rank of life as enabled him to have the advantages of an education which unfolded and improved his talents. The time of his birth seems to depend on the conjectures of his biographers, but has generally been assigned to the year 1328. When, however, he was examined at Westminster in 1386, he deposed that he was of the age of " forty and upwards, and had been armed twentyseven years." This would materially alter the date, and he would have been born about 1345; but his biographer says that there are strong reasons, derived from many passages in his own works, and the writings of Gower and Occleve, for believing that he was born long before 1345. Some of Chaucer's biographers most confidently speak of his being educated at Oxford, others, not less confidently, at Cambridge, and some give him the benefit of both Universities. There is not the least proof that he was ever at either, yet his biographer says, "It is impossible to believe that he quitted college at the early period at which persons destined for a military life usually begin their career;"† presuming, and justly we think, though in the * Mr. D'Israeli tells us that, "after Godwin had sent to press his biography of Chaucer, a deposition on the poet's age in the Heralds' College, detected the whole erroneous arrangement."' Vid. Amenities of Literature, vol. i. p. 253. See also Hippesley's Chapters on Early English Literature, p. 85. The inference which the learned biographer draws from his early quiting college for a military life being incompatible with his acknowledged acquirements, scarcely appears to us sufficiently convincing; for at that period, and long after, colleges were schools, and not post-schools as they are now, and youths entered the universities at a very early age. Besides at college the student does not acquire proficiency in various branches of learning, but rather lays a foundation for future inquiries; his knowledge is gained afterwards by his independent exertions, and when the mind has attained an elevation, by which it is enabled to select the path that it can most successfully pursue. The custom of sending youths to college at an early age long subsisted. Lord Burghley was sent in his 15th year, Selden in his 14th year, Lord Clarendon also in his 14th, &c.; before that time much earlier still. absence of proof, that his various attainments, his acquaintance with classics, with divinity, with astronomy, and other branches of scholastic learning, prove that he had received a superior education, and we may suppose that he was educated for a learned profession, as the Bar or the Church; if for the latter, it was for the church militant, as he showed his fondness for polemical divinity very early, and in a manner rather unusual, "for he was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street," and it is said by Speght that a record in the Temple proves the truth of the anecdote. Leland, however, inclines to the law, and says when in France" collegia leguleiorum frequentavit:" however, this is certain, that in 1359, when he was about 30 years old, he was in the army (certainly not as chaplain) with Edward III. in France, and that he was taken prisoner by the French in the expedition which terminated in the peace of Chartres in May 1360. After this, a blank of seven years occurs, in which nothing is known of him, and we think it not improbable that during this interval he was laying in that stock of knowledge which his writings show him to possess,* for his was now the very period of life when the mind is most ardent after knowledge, and most capable of exertion. Milton never studied s o uninterruptedly and so intensely as during the six or seven years he resided under his father's roof in Hertfordshire, after he left the University; and such are what Bishop Hurd calls "the golden hours of study "in a scholar's life. If Chaucer during part of this interval were resident as we believe in France, we cannot but consider it to have been most advantageous to him, as affording the best opportunity of studying the very source of that fabulous and romantic history from which the subjects and decorations of his own poetry were subsequently drawn. Tyrwhitt says, "that we have not one English romance anterior to Chaucer which is not borrowed from á French one. The Norman muse was the preceptress of our own, and the Since writing the above we are pleased to see a confirmation of our conjecture in Leland.-"Constat utique illum circa postremos Ricardi 2d, cui non incognitus erat annos in Gallia floruisse magnamque ex assidua in literis exercitatione gloriam sibi comparasse, tum præterea eadem operâ omnes veneres, lepores, delicias, sales, ac postumo gratias linguæ gallicæ tam alte combibisse, quam cinquam vix credibile. Laus ista Gallofridum in Angliæ reversum sequebatur, tanquam comes ejus virtutis individua." V. Cap. D.V. de Gallofrido Chaucero. Leland mentions a friend of Chaucer's of the name of Strode, to whom he submitted his verses,-a trifling fact not mentioned by the present biographer. Winstanley says, By his travels in France and Flanders he attained to great perfection in all kinds of learning. About the latter end of King Richard the Second's days, he flourished in France, and got himself in high esteem there by his diligent exercise in learning." Chaucer was always distinguished for his superior learning; let us give old Puttenham's account of him. "But of them all particularly this is mine opinion that Chaucer, with Gower, and Lydgate, and Harding, for ther antiquitie ought to have the first place, and Chaucer, as the most renouned of them all, for the much learning appeareth to be in him above any of the rest. And though many of his bookes be but bare translations out of the Latin and French, yet are they well handled, as his bookes of Troilus and Cressid, and the Romance of the Rose, whereof he translated not one halfe; the device was John de Mehun's, a French poete. The Canterbury Tales' were Chaucer's own invention, as I suppose, and where he showeth more the naturall of his pleasant wit then in any other of his workes; his similarities, comparisons, and all other descriptions, are such as cannot be amended. His meetre heroicall of Troilus and Cressid is very grave and stately, keeping the staff of seven and the verse of ten; his other verses of the Canterbury Tales be but riding rhyme, nevertheless very well becoming the matter of that pleasant pilgrimage in which every man's part is played with much decency."-Of Poets and Poesie, p. 50. Winstanley says of him," In passing his time in the University he became a witty logician, a sweet rhetorician, a grave philosopher, a holy divine and skilful mathematician, and a pleasant poet." Vide Life in England's Worthies. Warton says that "Chaucer was an universal reader.” Armorican fables were transplanted to another climate as congenial to them as their own. Here then Chaucer had ample leisure to study the mythology and imbibe the spirit of the Norman minstrels, which he was to naturalise in his own language; to store his memory with the marvellous events and achievements of chivalrous life, with the fabulous legends of oriental enchantment, and the visionary and fantastic allegories of the Provençal bards; to study the manners and superstitions there recorded, to describe the public pageants and splendid festivities with accuracy of detail and correctness of costume; to rear his palaces and castles with all the barbaric splendour of the Byzantine architects, and to array his jousts and tournaments with the magnificent display, and according to the acknowledged laws and institutions of Western chivalry. In 1367 Chaucer was one of the valets of the king's chamber, "dilectus Valettus noster," and had an annual salary of twenty marks for life. This handsome annuity authorised him to solicit the hand of Philippa, eldest daughter of Sir Payne Roet,* and sister of Katherine Swynford, mistress of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. She was one of the ladies in attendance on the queen. Chaucer was abroad for a few months in the summer of 1370. In 1372 he was joined in a commission in a commercial treaty with the Genoese, and in December of that year an advance of 667. 13s. 4d. was made him for his expenses, and he left England soon after. All that is known of his mission is, that he went to Florence and to Genoa, that he had returned in Nov. 1373, and that he received a further sum from the king's exchequer for his expense in 1374. Some of the biographers of Chaucer have surmised, and others of a bolder temperament have asserted, that, during his stay in Italy, Chaucer visited Petrarch at Padua, † and obtained from him the tale of Griselda, which the Clerk of Oxenford recites; but, in this case, as in others, "the wish" is alone the "father to the thought," for the only foundation for such an event is, that an imaginary character in the Canterbury Tales prefaces his story by saying that it was "Lernd at Padoue of a worthy clerk," an introduction calculated very naturally to draw the attention of his auditors to the story by giving to it a kind of personal interest, but in no way identifying any part of the narrative with the poet himself, and, indeed, such strained and fanciful interpretations are to be carefully avoided, and no more to be admitted into biographical memoirs, than they would be allowed to mix with the authentic materials of history. Ă * See an "Ode in pure Iambic feet to my noble friend Sir T. H. (Hawkins), knight, on his translation [of Horace], by Hugh Holland. "That Astrophell of arts the life A knight was and a poet, The daughter of La Roet," &c. Yet Sir Harris says, "It has not been ascertained positively whom Chaucer married; the statement that his wife was Philippa, daughter of Sir P. Roet, scarcely admits a doubt." His wife's name, however, was not Philippa Roet, but Picard. See Life, p. 60 to 66, and Godwin's Life, II. 374. She probably died in 1387. + Mr. Godwin,in one of his tales of fiction, or novels, called "The Life of Chaucer," has described Chaucer's motives for seeking an interview with Petrarch, the interview itself, the feelings of the two poets, and the very substance of their conversation. Vide Life, i. 463. To do this, he falsifies a letter of Petrarch (See Nicolas's Life of Chancer, p. 20) both as to the date and substance of the letter, all being material points. question, however, does arise deserving an answer, why Chaucer acknowledges his obligations to Petrarch for his tale of Griselda, and not to the original author, Boccaccio? The reason, we confidently suggest, is to be found, first, in the fact that the name of Petrarch was far more illustrious and more widely known than that of Boccaccio.* We own that, when the name of Petrarch is mentioned in England, it connects itself in the minds of most men, and all women, with the lover of Laura, and the inditer of amorous sonnets ; and we have seen the poet painted in a Venetian cloak, with a hat and feather, and Provençal roses in his shoes, lying by the fountain of Vaucluse, dreaming life away in the languor of romantic and visionary aspirations. This may do very well for " young ladies' seminaries at Hampstead or Hammersmith; but Petrarch was not only a poet and a lover, but a man of great scholastic attainments; a man of laborious study, of practical knowledge, of varied acquaintance with the characters of men, and the social and political state of empires; he was the friend and counsellor of more than one of the Italian princes; he was in high honour in the Papal Court, ardently attached to the liberties and honour of his country,-in short, in activity, in acquirements, in conduct, in honourable estimation, he was among the first and foremost men of his age. As for self-indulgence, luxuriousness, or softness of life, he knew nothing about it he lived on the coarsest and hardest fare, he ate the hard brown bread of the valley; he drank the pure and crystal waters of his fountain; and, instead of cloaks of Genoa velvet, he wore a kind of tanned jacket or pelisse of sheepskin, scribbled over with the scraps of verse and prose, which, for want of better materials at hand, he had written on it. Petrarch was the great man of his age; and that is the reason why Chaucer mentioned him; and secondly, it was more honourable, and more scholarlike, to quote from Latin than Italian. The vernacular languages were little esteemed; no one wrote in them who could write in the ancient, and Petrarch himself looked for the immortality to which he aspired, not to his canzone or his Italian sonnetti, but to his great epic poem, recording the events of Roman history, and written in that noble language which had been spoken by the sons and matrons of Rome. To rival Statius and to emulate Virgil in their own tongue, was the highest ambition of him who was the most illustrious poet of his age and country, and who even now yields to none in his delineation of the purest and most powerful passion that at once agitates, and enthralls, yet refines and purifies the human heart. There is, besides, no ground for presuming that Chaucer * The Knight's Tale is taken from Boccaccio; so is the Reve's Tale. January and May is a Lombard story. Nonne's Priest's Tale is an English fable. The Clerk of Oxenford's Tale from Boccaccio through Petrarch's version. Lydgate, in his Temple of Glas, seems to speak as if he had seen a completed copy of the Squire's Tale. "And how her brother so often helpe was In his mischefe, by the stede of bras." That part of the story which is hinted at in these two lines is lost, which, however, might have been remaining in the time of Lydgate. See Warton on Spenser, i. p. 154. Philips says, the Squire's Tale is said to be complete in Arundel House Library; vid. Theatr. Poet. p. 6. An original ballad of Chaucer, which had escaped all the editors of his works, was printed in Percy's Reliques, vol. ii. p. 11, for the first time from the Pepys Manuscripts. For some late illustrations of Chaucer, see Hippesley's Chapters on Early English Literature, 1837. Two tales, the Coke's Tale of Gamelyn and the Merchant's Second Tale, or the History of Beryn, were first printed in Urry's edition, 1721. They are singularly curious and valuable, but are not Chaucer's. See, on this subject, Ritson's Bibliog. Poetica, art. Chaucer. GENT. MAG. VOL. XXI. B |