lishment of the British woman as a literary factor, while Lamb, Hunt and Hazlitt, each according to his bent, gathered his stint of immortality. Thus the way was paved successfully for the literary brilliancy of the young queen's reign, which was destined to take rank with the glory of the sway of the great Elizabeth. The accomplishment of the Victorian era is known even to the most casual follower of the progress of the English literary movement. The reign that gave to the world the poetry of Tennyson, the Rossettis, Arnold, Swinburne and the Brownings, the novels of Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer, George Eliot, Collins, Reade and Hardy, that saw the promise and fulfillment of the titanic Carlyle, the matchless Macaulay, the beautyseeking Ruskin, the stylist Stevenson, and added to the noble roster a wealth of contributing intellectual force, earned for itself all that has been said and is to be said in full realization of the literary impetus. It was an age of wars and political disturbance, when all Europe was jarred by the jealousies and quarrels of its powers, but England, isolated in its seas, though measurably a participant in the discord, was too secure, too powerful, to suffer from the shocks. And so its literature thrived and expanded, the patronage of arts and letters was the more marked, and a greater public following eagerly awaited the output of the presses. For as Lord Brougham had significantly said a century before: "The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer; against the soldier in full military array."

Of our own contemporaneous literature it is too early to judge hastily or speak authoritatively. The perspective is too close and critical opinion has not been mellowed or settled to deliberate judgment, for "what posterity will say" is the real test of every enterprise. If it is true that there are no giants in these days it is also true that never in the literary history of England has there been such general excellence of literary performance as now characterizes the productions of the English writing world. If this is a commercial age, as often despondently suggested, and if a certain lust for gold and creature luxuries has seemingly acted to the discouragement of the loftiest literary ambition, it is still to be remembered that literature represents the purpose and intent of its period, and there is consolation in the thought that so much that is done is done so well.

CHAUCER stands pre-eminent as the Father of English Poetry. His immediate successors cheerfully acknowledged him as their master, and later followers have delighted to award him tribute in a variety of phrases. In one of the best-known of these,

bestowed by Spenser, he is called "Dan (ie., Dominus, Don or Master) Chaucer, well of English undefiled." Yet some critics maintain that his real merit, as far as language was concerned, lay in his skillful mingling of NormanFrench with Anglo-Saxon or Old English, and that thus he is entitled to the honor of originating a new literature. In the middle of the fourteenth century English was not merely the speech of the common people, whose ancestors had been conquered by the Normans. Modified and enriched by the French of the ruling class, it had been accepted by court and parliament as the national language. The victories of Edward III. in France revealed and strengthened the strong national feeling, common to both Norman earls and Saxon churls. In baronial halls the romances and lighter poems of northern France, and the lays of the troubadours of sunny Provence had been the favorite forms of poetry, but it was no longer felt necessary or convenient to use the language of the originals. English was the familiar speech of every day, and when used by a well-trained poet, was recognized and welcomed as a fit organ for literary composition. This was the origin of the various works of Chaucer, starting with translations and paraphrases of French and Italian poets, working on through imitations and adaptations of their recognized

master-pieces, and developing at last into a stately and picturesque presentation of the life and manners of England.

Geoffrey Chaucer is said to have been born in London in 1328, or more probably about ten years later. His father was a vintner, and seems to have had connection with the king's court. At an early age Geoffrey was in the service of the Countess of Ulster, wife of Lionel of Clarence, the third son of Edward III. In 1359 he was shield-bearer to that king in his invasion of France, and being taken prisoner, suffered two months' captivity. He was ransomed and employed in the king's household, and when war called him again, served in a French campaign. In 1373 he was appointed one of the commissioners who negotiated with the city of Genoa for the promotion of trade with England. In his "Canterbury Tales" the Clerk of Oxford says he heard the tale of Griselda from Petrarch at Padua, and if this clerk be Chaucer himself, the interview must have occurred about this time. In connection with other diplomatic missions to France, Flanders and Italy, his name is found in official documents. Besides other rewards for his services, the king granted him a pitcher of wine daily in London, which allowance was afterwards commuted for an annual pension of twenty marks. From this grant it has been erroneously inferred that Chaucer was recognized as "Poet Laureate." But while some of his poems have reference to court events, there was no such official position till two centuries later. Chaucer, however, was in high favor at court, and was made comptroller of the customs of London, and received from the city authorities a house rentfree. He was a close adherent of the king's son, John of Gaunt (Ghent), "time-honored Lancaster." He married Philippa, a lady of the court, and some say, at the Duke's suggestion. It is also said that her sister was a governess in John of Gaunt's family, and eventually became the Duke's third wife. From some of the poet's comments on married life he is thought not to have enjoyed happiness therein. John of Gaunt favored the Reformer Wiclif, and · Chaucer's sharp satire on the monks and friars may show a leaning toward Lollard views. Gaunt lost the favor of Parliament, and Chaucer in December, 1386, was stripped

of all his appointments. Yet, before three years had elapsed, he was made clerk of the king's works at Westminster. Under King Richard II. the poet fell into sore distress and seems to have fled to the Continent to avoid imprisonment for debt. The accession of Henry IV., the son of John of Gaunt, to the crown in 1399, relieved him of his difficulties and restored his grants, his pension being doubled. But the poet did not long survive this return of prosperity. He died on the 25th of October, 1400, and was interred in Westminster Abbey, being the first of the English poets who have received that tribute of honor.

Though Chaucer describes himself as a devoted student of books, this brief record of his life shows that he was also a man of the world, a traveler and a courtier. His diversity of occupation gave him ample opportunity for observation and fitted him to enlarge the scope of English writing hitherto employed only by clerics and devoted to rhymed chronicles and moral lessons. His early works were translations of the Roman de la Rose, and other tedious French romances which were then the standard entertainment in court and hall. Next he essayed imitations of the fanciful allegories then rife in Europe. But the power of his genius steadily increased, and he was able to subordinate the acquisitions from foreign sources to the purpose of his own invention.

Chaucer's "Troilus and Cressida" is derived from the "Filostrato" of Boccaccio, though, contrary to his usual practice, he nowhere mentions that author's name. Chaucer used but half of the Italian original, but enlarged that part threefold and changed altogether the drift of the story, bringing it in fact into the form used by Shakespeare. Yet such was then the weight of authority in literature, as in Church and State, that he felt compelled to give some writer as his original, and therefore feigned an imaginary Latin historian Lollius. Chaucer in exposing the faults of Cressida, had violated the moral regulations of the Courts of Love, established by the troubadours, and long afterwards made a recantation in the Prologue to his "Legend of Good Women."

A favorite setting for the allegorical poems of that age was a dream in which the poet was transported to a new land

or place full of marvels. Here the fancy might introduce improbabilities and impossibilities at pleasure, yet the requirements of the allegory might serve as a limit not to be transgressed. Such a framework did Chaucer use in several poems, at first awkwardly as in the elegy called "The Boke of the Duchesse," but afterwards more skillfully yet fantastically as in the unfinished "House of Fame," in which, taking as his theme a passage of Ovid, he essayed in a humble fashion to recast Dante's sublime epic. The attempt as a whole was unsuccessful, as the poet seems to have acknowledged.

The "House of Fame," as well as some of the earlier poems, was in the easy-flowing eight-syllabled couplet. But in the "Legend of Good Women," and in most of the "Canterbury Tales," Chaucer used the ten-syllabled couplet, which he was the first to introduce into English, and which has so proved the favorite with his successors, that it is now regarded as the standard form for narrative and didactic poetry. Ignorance of the early English pronunciation, as well as the errors and corruptions in the first printed editions of Chaucer, caused his verse to be regarded as often lame and halting. But a more correct text, and a better understanding of the rules of reading it, have proved that he is most skillful in management of rhythm and melody.

Several poems were formerly attributed to Chaucer on slight grounds, but are now considered spurious by the best critics. Among them are "The Court of Love," "The Flower and the Leaf," and "Chaucer's Dream." But the dispute has not been decided in regard to the English translation of the famous French allegory, "Roman de la Rose. While Chaucer expressly mentions "The Romaunt of the Rose" among his early works, Professor W. W. Skeat and others declare that the diction and metre of the extant version deviate widely from the poet's practice. On the other hand, Professor T. R. Lounsbury, after a minute examination, regards those objections as groundless. But Chaucer will always be best known as the author of the "Canterbury Tales." In these he shines as the master delineator of human nature, which never changes. His portraits of character are as fresh and true to-day as when he penned them five centuries ago.