Brought the late-ejected devil with a score more in his train, 190 "Gentlemen, attention-pray! That's for you to judge. Reprieval I pro First, one word!' cured, at any rate. Ugh the memory of that minute's fear makes gooseflesh rise! Why prate Longer? You've my story, there's your instance: fear I did, you see!" "Well” —I hardly kept from laughing"if I see it, thanks must be Wholly to your Lordship's candor. Not that in a common case Which permits me to forgive you!' What if, with such words as these, He had cast away his weapon? How should I have borne me, please? Nay, I'll spare you pains and tell you. This, and only this, remainedPick his weapon up and use it on myself. If so had gained 220 Sleep the earlier, leaving England probably to pay on still Rent and taxes for half India, tenant at the Frenchman's will." EPILOGUE In regard to the third verse of this poem the Pall Mall Gazette of February 1, 1890, related this incident: "One evening, just before his death-illness, the poet was reading this from a proof to his daughter-in-law and sister. He said: It almost looks like bragging to say this, and as if I ought to cancel it; but it's the simple truth; and as it's true, it shall stand.'' AT the midnight in the silence of the sleeptime, fancies free, When you set your Will they pass to where- by death, fools think, imprisoned Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES GEOFFREY CHAUCER ENGLAND in the fourteenth century presented the spectacle of a people not amalgamated, not unified in language, customs, or feeling. The descendants of the Norman conquerors held themselves aloof from the natives, treating the latter as of inferior clay. By social distinctions, by laws, by exactions of enforced and unrewarded labor, and by grinding taxes the court and the nobility kept down the English and exalted the French element in the nation. Thus the ordinary contrasts between the classes in human society were accentuated by the difference in blood. It was a time of profuse extravagance among the rich and of pinching necessity among the poor. In full knowledge of the poverty through the realm, kings poured forth the public monies on profitless foreign wars, or strutted in the pageantry of outworn chivalry and wasted huge sums in reviving the pomp of tournaments and of the fabled Round Table. Richard II could set an example of carelessness and extravagance by paying thirty thousand marks for a new cloak while his unhappy people were starving in a succession of harvest failures or were being decimated by the ravages of the plague. Upon a few occasions the general discontent found expression. William Langland embodied in his Complaint of Piers Plowman his realization of the social injustice and the widespread misery of the time. John Ball, the “mad priest of Kent," stung the peasants to revolt by his violent attacks on the social order and by his rude couplet: "When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman?" In this fourteenth century England of such sharp contrasts, such extravagance on the one hand and such misery on the other, was born, about 1340, Geoffrey Chaucer. Of the details of his life we know little. His father, it seems, was a vintner of Thames Street, London, and a man of wealth and importance. He succeeded in having Geoffrey installed as a page in the household of Elizabeth, wife of Lionel, Duke of Clarence. Thus Chaucer from a very early age became a part of the courtly class. The importance of this fact upon his literary work was immeasurable. In all his poetry we find little reference to the political or social wrongs of the time. He saw life from the point of view of men of his class. A few years later he seems to have accompanied Edward III on the French campaign, for in March of 1360 we have a record of the king paying sixteen pounds for Chaucer's ransom. In modern value, sixteen pounds would be worth all of one thousand dollars, so we can judge that Chaucer, or the Chaucer family, must have been of some importance in the world. Again consulting the royal records, we find in 1366 a pension granted to Philippa Chaucer and, in 1381, the payment of this pension "to Geoffrey Chaucer, her husband." Putting the two notes together, Chaucerian scholars have deduced that about 1366 Chaucer married Philippa, a lady in waiting to the Queen. Further precise knowledge of the character or family of Philippa, or of the married felicity of Chaucer, is not obtainable. Geoffrey Chaucer seems to have been successful in his attendance upon the royal wishes, for in 1367 we have a record of the grant of a pension to him of twenty marks a year for life, equivalent in purchasing power to-day to about eight hundred dollars. A year later his services were further recognized by his promotion to be an Esquire of the Royal Household. His rise in importance continued. In 1369 he again accompanied the king with the army in France. In 1370 he was entrusted with a secret mission abroad, the exact nature of which has remained unknown to this day. In 1372 he was sent to Genoa to conclude certain commercial arrangements. From Genoa he went to Florence, where he may have met Petrarch and |