the "House of Fame" shows Chaucer to have been gifted with much natural
humour. Among its happy touches are the various rewards bestowed by
Fame upon the claimants for her favour, including the ready grant of
evil fame to those who desire it (a bad name, to speak colloquially, is
to be had for the asking; and the wonderful paucity of those who wish
their good works to remain in obscurity and to be their own reward, but
then Chaucer was writing in the Middle Ages. And as pointing in a
direction which the author of the poem was subsequently to follow out,
we may also specially notice the company thronging the House of Rumour:
shipmen and pilgrims, the two most numerous kinds of travellers in
Chaucer's age, fresh from seaport and sepulchre, with scrips brimful of
unauthenticated intelligence. In short, this poem offers in its
details much that is characteristic of its author's genius; while, as a
whole, its abrupt termination notwithstanding, it leaves the impression
of completeness. The allegory, simple and clear in construction,
fulfils the purpose for which it was devised; the conceptions upon
which it is based are neither idle, like many of those in Chaucer's
previous allegories, nor are they so artificial and far-fetched as to
fatigue instead of stimulating the mind. Pope, who reproduced parts of
the "House of Fame" in a loose paraphrase, in attempting to improve the
construction of Chaucer's work, only mutilated it. As it stands, it is
clear and digestible; and how many allegories, one may take leave to
ask, in our own allegory-loving literature or in any other, merit the
same commendation? For the rest, Pope's own immortal "Dunciad," though
doubtless more immediately suggested by a personal satire of Dryden's,
is in one sense a kind of travesty of the "House of Fame,"--A "House of
Infamy."
In the theme of this poem there was undoubtedly something that could
hardly fail to humour the half-melancholy mood in which it was
manifestly written. Are not, the poet could not but ask himself, all
things vanity; "as men say, what may ever last?" Yet the subject
brought its consolation likewise. Patient labour, such as this poem
attests, is the surest road to that enduring fame, which is "conserved
with the shade;" and awaking from his vision, Chaucer takes leave of
the reader with a resolution already habitual to him--to read more and
more, instead of resting satisfied with the knowledge he has already
acquired. And in the last of the longer poems which seem assignable to
this period of his life, he proves that one Latin poet at least--Venus'
clerk, whom in the "House of Fame" he behold standing on a pillar of
her own Cyprian metal--had been read as well as celebrated by him
Of this poem, the fragmentary "Legend of Good Women," the "Prologue"
possesses a peculiar biographical as well as literary interest. In his
personal feelings on the subject of love and marriage, Chaucer had,
when he wrote this "Prologue," evidently almost passed even beyond the
sarcastic stage. And as a poet he was now clearly conscious of being
no longer a beginner, no longer a learner only, but one whom his age
knew, and in whom it took a critical interest. The list including most
of his undoubted works, which he here recites, shows of itself that
those already spoken of in the foregoing pages were by this time known
to the world, together with two of the "Canterbury Tales," which had
either been put forth independently, or (as seems much less probable)
had formed the first instalment of his great work. A further proof of
the relatively late date of this "Prologue" occurs in the contingent
offer which it makes of the poem to "the Queen," who can be no other
than Richard II's young consort Anne. At the very outset we find
Chaucer as it were reviewing his own literary position--and doing so in
the spirit of an author who knows very well what is said against him,
who knows very well what there is in what is said against him, and who
yet is full of that true self-consciousness which holds to its
course--not recklessly and ruthlessly, not with a contempt for the
feelings and judgments of his fellow-creatures, but with a serene trust
in the justification ensured to every honest endeavour. The principal
theme of his poems had hitherto been the passion of love, and woman who
is the object of the love of man. Had he not, the superfine critics of
his day may have asked--steeped as they were in the artificiality and
florid extravagance of chivalry in the days of its decline, and
habituated to mistranslating earthly passion into the phraseology of
religious devotion--had he not debased the passion of love, and defamed
its object? Had he not begun by translating the wicked satire of Jean
de Meung, "a heresy against the law" of Love, and had he not, by
cynically painting in his Cressid a picture of woman's perfidy,
encouraged men to be less faithful to women
That be as true as ever was any steel?
In Chaucer's way of meeting this charge, which he emphasises by putting
it in the mouth of the God of Love himself, it is, to be sure,
difficult to recognise any very deeply penitent spirit. He mildly
wards off the reproach, sheltering himself behind his defender, the
"lady in green," who afterwards proves to be herself that type of
womanly and wifely fidelity unto death, the true and brave Alcestis.
And even in the body of the poem one is struck by a certain
perfunctoriness, not to say flippancy, in the way in which its moral is
reproduced. The wrathful invective against the various classical
followers of Lamech, the maker of tents, wears no aspect of deep moral
indignation; and it is not precisely the voice of a repentant sinner
which concludes the pathetic story of the betrayal of Phillis with the
adjuration to ladies in general:--
Beware ye women of your subtle foe,
Since yet this day men may example see
And as in love trust ye no man but me.
(Lamech, Chaucer tells us in "Queen Annelida and the false Arcite," was
the
first father that began
The love of two, and was in bigamy.
This poem seems designed to illustrate much the same moral as that
enforced by the "Legend of Good Women"--a moral which, by-the-bye, is
already foreshadowed towards the close of "Troilus and Cressid," where
Chaucer speaks of
women that betrayed be
Through false folk, (God give them sorrow, amen!)
That with their greate wit and subtlety
Betray you; and 'tis this that moveth me
To speak; and, in effect, you all I pray:
Beware of men, and hearken what I say.)
At the same time the poet lends an attentive ear, as genius can always
afford to do, to a criticism of his shortcomings, and readily accepts
the sentence pronounced by Alcestis that he shall write a legend of
GOOD women, both maidens and also wives, that were
true in loving all their lives.
And thus, with the courage of a good or at all events easy conscience,
he sets about his task which unfortunately--it is conjectured by reason
of domestic calamities, probably including the death of his
wife--remained, or at least has come down to us unfinished. We have
only nine of the nineteen stories which he appears to have intended to
present (though indeed a manuscript of Henry IV's reign quotes
Chaucer's book of "25 good women"). It is by no means necessary to
suppose that all these nine stories were written continuously; maybe,
too, Chaucer, with all his virtuous intentions, grew tired of his
rather monotonous scheme, at a time when he was beginning to busy
himself with stories meant to be fitted into the more liberal framework
of the "Canterbury Tales." All these illustrations of female constancy
are of classical origin, as Chaucer is glad to make known and most of
them are taken from Ovid. But though the thread of the English poet's
narratives is supplied by such established favourites as the stories of
Cleopatra the Martyr Queen of Egypt, of Thisbe of Babylon the Martyr,
and of Dido to whom "Aeneas was forsworn," yet he by no means slavishly
adheres to his authorities, but alters or omits in accordance with the
design of his book. Thus, for instance, we read of Medea's desertion
by Jason, but hear nothing of her as the murderess of her children;
while, on the other hand, the tragedy of Dido is enhanced by pathetic
additions not to be found in Virgil. Modern taste may dislike the way
in which this poem mixes up the terms and ideas of Christian
martyrology with classical myths, and as "the Legend of the Saints of
Cupid" assumes the character of a kind of calendar of women canonised
by reason of their faithfulness to earthly love. But obviously this is
a method of treatment belonging to an age, not to a single poem or
poet. Chaucer's artistic judgment in the selection and arrangement of
his themes, the wonderful vivacity and true pathos with which he turns
upon Tarquin or Jason as if they had personally offended him, and his
genuine flow of feeling not only FOR but WITH his unhappy heroines, add
a new charm to the old familiar faces. Proof is thus furnished, if any
proof were needed, that no story interesting in itself is too old to
admit of being told again by a poet; in Chaucer's version Ovid loses
something in polish, but nothing in pathos; and the breezy freshness of
nature seems to be blowing through tales which became the delight of a
nation's, as they have been that of many a man's, youth.
A single passage must suffice to illustrate the style of the "Legend of
Good Women"; and it shall be the lament of Ariadne, the concluding
passage of the story which is the typical tale of desertion, though
not, as it remains in Chaucer, of desertion unconsoled. It will be
seen how far the English poet's vivacity is from being extinguished by
the pathos of the situation described by him.
Right in the dawening awaketh she,
And gropeth in the bed, and found right naught.
"Alas," quoth she, "that ever I was wrought!
I am betrayed!" and her hair she rent,
And to the strande barefoot fast she went,
And criede: "Theseus, mine hearte sweet!
Where be ye, that I may not with you meet?
And mighte thus by beastes been y-slain!"
The hollow rockes answered her again.
No man she sawe; and yet shone the moon,
And high upon a rock she wente soon,
And saw his barge sailing in the sea.
Cold waxed her heart, and right thus said she:
"Meeker than ye I find the beastes wild!"
(Hath he not sin that he her thus beguiled?)
She cried, "O turn again for ruth and sin,
Thy barge hath not all thy meinie in."
Her kerchief on a pole sticked she,
Askance, that he should it well y-see,
And should remember that she was behind,
And turn again, and on the strand her find.
But all for naught; his way he is y-gone,
And down she fell aswoone on a stone;
And up she rose, and kissed, in all her care,
The steppes of his feet remaining there;
And then unto her bed she speaketh so:
"Thou bed," quoth she, "that hast received two,
Thou shalt answer for two, and not for one;
Where is the greater part away y-gone?
Alas, what shall I wretched wight become?
For though so be no help shall hither come,
Home to my country dare I not for dread,
I can myselfe in this case not rede."
Why should I tell more of her complaining?
It is so long it were a heavy thing.
In her Epistle Naso telleth all.
But shortly to the ende tell I shall.
The goddes have her holpen for pity,
And in the sign of Taurus men may see
The stones of her crown all shining clear.
I will no further speak of this matter.
But thus these false lovers can beguile
Their true love; the devil quite him his while!
Manifestly, then, in this period of his life--if a chronology which is
in a great measure cojectural may be accepted--Chancer had been a busy
worker, and his pen had covered many a page with the results of his
rapid productivity. Perhaps, his "Words unto his own Scrivener," which
we may fairly date about this time, were rather too hard on "Adam."
Authors ARE often hard on persons who have to read their handiwork
professionally; but in the interest of posterity poets may be permitted
an execration or two against whosoever changes their words as well as
against whosoever moves their bones:--
Adam Scrivener, if ever it thee befall
"Boece" or "Troilus" to write anew,
Under thy long locks may'st thou have the scall,
If thou my writing copy not more true!
So oft a day I must thy work renew,
It to correct and eke to rub and scrape;
And all is through thy negligence and rape.
How far the manuscript of the "Canterbury Tales" had already progressed
is uncertain; the "Prologue" to the "Legend of Good Women" mentions the
"Love of Palamon and Arcite"--an earlier version of the "Knight's
Tale," if not identical with it--and a "Life of Saint Cecilia" which is
preserved, apparently without alteration, in the "Second Nun's Tale."
Possibly other stories had been already added to these, and the
"Prologue" written--but this is more than can be asserted with safety.
Who shall say whether, if the stream of prosperity had continued to
flow, on which the bark of Chaucer's fortunes had for some years been
borne along, he might not have found leisure and impulse sufficient for
completing his masterpiece, or at all events for advancing it near to
completion? That his powers declined with his years is a conjecture
which it would be difficult to support by satisfactory evidence; though
it seems natural enough to assume that he wrote the best of his
"Canterbury Tales" in his best days. Troubled times we know to have
been in store for him. The reverse in his fortunes may perhaps fail to
call forth in us the sympathy which we feel for Milton in his old age
doing battle against a Philistine reaction, or for Spenser overwhelmed
with calamities at the end of a life full of bitter disappointment.
But at least we may look upon it with the respectful pity which we
entertain for Ben Jonson groaning in the midst of his literary honours
under that dura rerum necessitas, which is rarely more a matter of
indifference to poets than it is to other men.
In 1386, as already noted, Chaucer, while continuing to hold both his
offices at the Customs, had taken his seat in Parliament as one of the
knights of the shire of Kent. He had attained to this honour during
the absence in Spain of his patron the Duke of Lancaster, though
probably he had been elected in the interest of that prince. But John
of Gaunt's influence was inevitably reduced to nothing during his
absence, and no doubt King Richard now hoped to be a free agent. But
he very speedily found that the hand of his younger uncle, Thomas Duke
of Gloucester, was heavier upon him than that of the elder. The
Parliament of which Chaucer was a member was the assembly which boldly
confronted the autocratical tendencies of Richard II, and after
overthrowing the Chancellor, Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk,
forced upon the king a Council controlling the administration of
affairs. Concerning the acts of this Council, of which Gloucester was
the leading member, little or nothing is known, except that in
financial matters it attempted, after the manner of new brooms, to
sweep clean. Soon the attention of Gloucester and his following was
occupied by subjects more absorbing than a branch of reform fated to be
treated fitfully. In this instance the new administration had as usual
demanded its victims--and among their number was Chaucer. For it can
hardly be a mere coincidence that by the beginning of December in this
year, 1386, Chaucer had lost one, and by the middle of the same month
the other, of his comptrollerships. At the same time, it would be
presumptuously unfair to conclude that misconduct of any kind on his
part had been the reason of his removal. The explanation usually given
is that he fell as an adherent of John of Gaunt; perhaps a safer way of
putting the matter would be to say that John of Gaunt was no longer in
England to protect him. Inasmuch as even reforming Governments are
occasionally as anxious about men as they are about measures, Chaucer's
posts may have been wanted for nominees of the Duke of Gloucester and
his Council--such as it is probably no injustice to Masters Adam
Yerdely and Henry Gisors (who respectively succeeded Chaucer in his two
offices) to suppose them to have been. Moreover, it is just possible
that Chaucer was the reverse of a persona grata to Gloucester's faction
on account of the Comptroller's previous official connexion with Sir
Nicholas Brembre, who, besides being hated in the city, had been
accused of seeking to compass the deaths of the Duke and of some of his
adherents. In any case, it is noticeable that four months BEFORE the
return to England of the Duke of Lancaster, i.e. in July, 1389, Chaucer
was appointed Clerk of the King's Works at Westminster, the Tower, and
a large number of other royal manors or tenements, including (from 1390
at all events) St. George's Chapel, Windsor. In this office he was not
ill-paid, receiving two shillings a day in money, and very possibly
perquisites in addition, besides being allowed to appoint a deputy.
Inasmuch as in the summer of the year 1389 King Richard had assumed the
reins of government in person, while the ascendancy of Gloucester was
drawing to a close, we may conclude the King to have been personally
desirous to provide for a faithful and attached servant of his house,
for whom he had had reason to feel a personal liking. It would be
specially pleasing, were we able to connect with Chaucer's restoration
to official employment the high-minded Queen Anne, whose impending
betrothal he had probably celebrated in one poem, and whose patronage
he had claimed for another.
The Clerkship of the King's Works to which Chaucer was appointed, seems
to have been but a temporary office; or at all events he only held it
for rather less than two years, during part of which he performed its
duties by deputy. Already, however, before his appointment to this
post, he had certainly become involved in difficulties. For in May,
1388, we find his pensions, at his own request, assigned to another
person (John Scalby)--a statement implying that he had raised money on
them which he could only pay by making over the pensions themselves.
Very possibly, too, he had, before his dismissal from his
comptrollerships, been subjected to an enquiry which, if it did not
touch his honour, at all events gave rise to very natural apprehensions
on the part of himself and his friends. There is accordingly much
probability in the conjecture which ascribes to this season of peril
and pressure the composition of the following justly famous stanzas
entitled "Good Counsel of Chaucer":-
Flee from the press, and dwell with soothfastness;
Suffice thee thy good, though it be small;
For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness:
Press hath envy, and wealth is blinded all.
Savour no more than thee behove shall;
Do well thyself that other folk canst rede;
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread.
Pain thee not each crooked to redress
In trust of her (Fortune) that turneth as a ball.
Greate rest stands in little business.
Beware also to spurn against a nail.
Strive not as doth a pitcher with a wall.
Deeme thyself that deemest others' deed;
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread.
That thee is sent receive in buxomness;
The wrestling of this world asketh a fall.
Here is no home, here is but wilderness.
Forth, pilgram! forth, beast, out of thy stall!
Look up on high, and thank God of all.
Waive thy lust, and let thy ghost thee lead,
And truth shall thee deliver, it is no dread.
Misfortunes, it is said, never come alone; and whatever view may be
taken as to the nature of the relations between Chaucer and his wife,
her death cannot have left him untouched. From the absence of any
record as to the payment of her pension after June, 1387, this event is
presumed to have taken place in the latter half of that year. More
than this cannot safely be conjectured; but it remains POSSIBLE that
the "Legend of Good Women" and its "Prologue" formed a peace-offering
to one whom Chaucer may have loved again after he had lost her, though
without thinking of her as of his "late departed saint." Philippa
Chaucer had left behind her a son of the name of Lewis; and it is
pleasing to find the widower in the year 1391 (the year in which he
lost his Clerkship of the Works) attending to the boy's education, and
supplying him with the intellectual "bread and milk" suitable for his
tender age in the shape of a popular treatise on a subject which has at
all times excited the intelligent curiosity of the young. The treatise
"On the Astrolabe," after describing the instrument itself, and showing
how to work it, proceeded, or was intended to proceed, to fulfil the
purposes of a general astronomical manual; but, like other and more
important works of its author, it has come down to us in an
uncompleted, or at all events incomplete, condition. What there is of
it was, as a matter of course, not original--popular scientific books
rarely are. The little treatise, however, possesses a double interest
for the student of Chaucer. In the first place it shows explicitly,
what several passages imply, that while he was to a certain extent fond
of astronomical study (as to his capacity for which he clearly does
injustice to himself in the "House of Fame"), his good sense and his
piety alike revolted against extravagant astrological speculations. He
certainly does not wish to go as far as the honest carpenter in the
"Miller's Tale," who glories in his incredulity of aught besides his
credo, and who yet is afterwards befooled by the very impostor of whose
astrological pursuits he had reprehended the impiety. "Men," he says,
"should know nothing of that which is private to God. Yea, blessed be
alway a simple man who knows nothing but only his belief." In his
little work "On the Astrolobe," Chaucer speaks with calm reasonableness
of superstitions in which his spirit has no faith, and pleads guilty to
ignorance of the useless knowledge with which they are surrounded. But
the other, and perhaps the chief value, to us of this treatise lies in
the fact that of Chaucer in an intimate personal relation it contains
the only picture in which it is impossible to suspect any false or
exaggerated colouring. For here we have him writing to his "little
Lewis" with fatherly satisfaction in the ability displayed by the boy
"to learn sciences touching numbers and proportions," and telling how,
after making a present to the child of "a sufficient astrolabe as for
our own horizon, composed after the latitude of Oxford," he has further
resolved to explain to him a certain number of conclusions connected
with the purposes of the instrument. This he has made up his mind to
do in a forcible as well as simple way; for he has shrewdly divined a
secret, now and then overlooked by those who condense sciences for
babes, that children need to be taught a few things not only clearly
but fully--repetition being in more senses than one "the mother of
studies":--
"Now will I pray meekly every discreet person that readeth or heareth
this little treatise, to hold my rude inditing excused, and my
superfluity of words, for two causes. The first cause is: that curious
inditing and hard sentences are full heavy at once for such a child to
learn. And the second cause is this: that truly it seems better to me
to write unto a child twice a good sentence, than to forget it once."
Unluckily we know nothing further of Lewis--not even whether, as has
been surmised, he died before he had been able to turn to lucrative
account his calculating powers, after the fashion of his apocryphal
brother Thomas or otherwise.
Though by the latter part of the year 1391 Chaucer had lost his
Clerkship of the Works, certain payments (possibly of arrears) seem
afterwards to have been made to him in connexion with the office. A
very disagreeable incident of his tenure of it had been a double
robbery from his person of official money, to the very serious extent
of twenty pounds. The perpetrators of the crime were a notorious gang
of highwaymen, by whom Chaucer was, in September, 1390, apparently on
the same day, beset both at Westminster, and near to "the foul Oak" at
Hatcham in Surrey. A few months afterwards he was discharged by writ
from repayment of the loss to the Crown. His experiences during the
three years following are unknown; but in 1394 (when things were fairly
quiet in England) he was granted an annual pension of twenty pounds by
the King. This pension, of which several subsequent notices occur,
seems at times to have been paid tardily or in small instalments, and
also to have been frequently anticipated by Chaucer in the shape of
loans of small sums. Further evidence of his straits is to be found in
his having, in the year 1398, obtained letters of protection against
arrest, making him safe for two years. The grant of a tun of wine in
October of the same year is the last favour known to have been extended
to Chaucer by King Richard II. Probably no English sovereign has been
more diversely estimated, both by his contemporaries and by posterity,
than this ill-fated prince, in the records of whose career many
passages betokening high spirit strangely contrast with the impotence
of its close. It will at least be remembered in his favour that he was
a patron of the arts; and that after Froissart had been present at his
christening, he received, when on the threshold of manhood, the homage
of Gower, and on the eve of his downfall showed most seasonable
kindness to a poet far greater than either of these. It seems scarcely
justifiable to assign to any particular point of time the "Ballade sent
to King Richard" by Chaucer; but its manifest intention was to apprise
the king of the poet's sympathy with his struggle against the opponents
of the royal policy, which was a thoroughly autocratical one.
Considering the nature of the relations between the pair, nothing could
be more unlikely than that Chaucer should have taken upon himself to
exhort his sovereign and patron to steadfastness of political conduct.
And in truth, though the loyal tone of this address is (as already
observed) unmistakeable enough, there is little difficulty in
accounting for the mixture of commonplace reflexions and of admonitions
to the king, to persist in a spirited domestic policy. He is to
"Dread God, do law, love truth and worthiness,"
and wed his people--not himself--"again to steadfastness." However,
even a quasi-political poem of this description, whatever element of
implied flattery it may contain, offers pleasanter reading than those
least attractive of all occasional poems, of which the burden is a cry
for money. The "Envoy to Scogan" has been diversely dated, and
diversely interpreted. The reference in these lines to a deluge of
pestilence, clearly means, not a pestilence produced by heavy rains,
but heavy rains which might be expected to produce a pestilence. The
primary purpose of the epistle admits of no doubt, though it is only
revealed in the postscript. After bantering his friend on account of
his faint-heartedness in love:--
"Because thy lady saw not thy distress,
Therefore thou gavest her up at Michaelmas--"
Chaucer ends by entreating him to further his claims upon the royal
munificence. Of this friend, Henry Scogan, a tradition repeated by Ben
Jonson averred that he was a fine gentleman and Master of Arts of Henry
IV's time, who was regarded and rewarded for his Court "disguisings"
and "writings in ballad-royal." He is therefore appropriately
apostrophised by Chaucer as kneeling
--at the streames head
Of grace, of all honour and worthiness,
and reminded that his friend is at the other end of the current. The
weariness of tone, natural under the circumstances, obscures whatever
humour the poem possesses.
Very possibly the lines to Scogan were written not before, but
immediately after, the accession of Henry IV. In that case they belong
to about the same date as the wellknown and very plainspoken "Complaint
of Chaucer to his Purse," addressed by him to the new Sovereign without
loss of time, if not indeed, as it would be hardly uncharitable to
suppose, prepared beforehand. Even in this "Complaint" (the term was a
technical one for an elegiac piece, and was so used by Spenser) there
is a certain frank geniality of tone, the natural accompaniment of an
easy conscience, which goes some way to redeem the nature of the
subject. Still, the theme remains one which only an exceptionally
skilful treatment can make sufficiently pathetic or perfectly comic.
The lines had the desired effect; for within four days after his
accession--i.e. on October 3rd, 1399--the "conqueror of Brut's Albion,"
otherwise King Henry IV, doubled Chaucer's pension of twenty marks, so
that, continuing as he did to enjoy the annuity of twenty pounds
granted him by King Richard, he was now once more in comfortable
circumstances. The best proof of these lies in the fact that very
speedily--on Christmas Eve, 1399--Chaucer, probably in a rather
sanguine mood, covenanted for the lease for fifty-three years of a
house in the garden of the chapel of St. Mary at Westminster. And
here, in comfort and in peace, as there seems every reason to believe,
he died before another year, and with it the century, had quite run
out--on October 25th, 1400.
Our fancy may readily picture to itself the last days of Geoffrey
Chaucer, and the ray of autumn sunshine which gilded his reverend head
before it was bowed in death. His old patron's more fortunate son,
whose earlier chivalrous days we are apt to overlook in thinking of him
as a politic king and the sagacious founder of a dynasty, cannot have
been indifferent to the welfare of a subject for whose needs he had
provided with so prompt a liberality. In the vicinity of a throne the
smiles of royalty are wont to be contagious--and probably many a
courtier thought well to seek the company of one who, so far as we
know, had never forfeited the goodwill of any patron or the attachment
of any friend. We may, too, imagine him visited by associates who
loved and honoured the poet as well as the man--by Gower, blind or
nearly so, if tradition speak the truth, and who, having "long had
sickness upon hand," seems unlike Chaucer to have been ministered to in
his old age by a housewife whom he had taken to himself in
contradiction of principles preached by both the poets; and by
"Bukton," converted, perchance, by means of Chaucer's gift to him of
the "Wife of Bath's Tale," to a resolution of perpetual bachelorhood,
but otherwise, as Mr. Carlyle would say, "dim to us." Besides these,
if he was still among the living, the philosophical Strode in his
Dominican habit, on a visit to London from one of his monasteries;
or--more probably--the youthful Lydgate, not yet a Benedictine monk,
but pausing, on his return from his travels in divers lands, to sit
awhile, as it were, at the feet of the master in whose poetic example
he took pride; the courtly Scogan; and Occleve, already learned, who
was to cherish the memory of Chaucer's outward features as well as of
his fruitful intellect:--all these may in his closing days have
gathered around their friend; and perhaps one or the other may have
been present to close the watchful eyes for ever.
But there was yet another company with which, in these last years, and
perhaps in these last days of his life, Chaucer had intercourse, of
which he can rarely have lost sight, and which even in solitude he must
have had constantly with him. This company has since been well known
to generations and centuries of Englishmen. Its members head that
goodly procession of figures which have been familiar to our fathers as
livelong friends, which are the same to us, and will be to our children
after us--the procession of the nation's favourites among the
characters created by our great dramatists and novelists, the eternal
types of human nature which nothing can efface from our imagination.
Or is there less reality about the "Knight" in his short cassock and
old-fashioned armour and the "Wife of Bath" in hat and wimple,
than--for instance--about Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman? Can we not
hear "Madame Eglantine" lisping her "Stratford-atte-Bowe" French as if
she were a personage in a comedy by Congreve or Sheridan? Is not the
"Summoner" with his "fire-red cherubim's face" a worthy companion for
Lieutenant Bardolph himself? And have not the humble "Parson" and his
Brother the "Ploughman" that irresistible pathos which Dickens could
find in the simple and the poor? All these figures, with those of
their fellow-pilgrims, are to us living men and women; and in their
midst the poet who created them lives, as he has painted himself among
the company, not less faithfully than Occleve depicted him from memory
after death.
How long Chaucer had been engaged upon the "Canterbury Tales" it is
impossible to decide. No process is more hazardous than that of
distributing a poet's works among the several periods of his life
according to divisions of species--placing his tragedies or serious
stories in one season, his comedies or lighter tales in another, and so
forth. Chaucer no more admits of such treatment than Shakspere, nor
because there happens to be in his case little actual evidence by which
to control or contradict it, are we justified in subjecting him to it.
All we know is that he left his great work a fragment, and that we have
no mention in any of his other poems of more than three of the
"Tales"--two, as already noticed, being mentioned in the Prologue to
the Legend of Good Women, written at a time when they had perhaps not
yet assumed the form in which they are preserved, while to the third
(the "Wife of Bath") reference is made in the "Envoi to Bukton," the
date of which is quite uncertain. At the same time, the labour which
was expended upon the "Canterbury Tales" by their author manifestly
obliges us to conclude that their composition occupied several years,
with inevitable interruptions; while the gaiety and brightness of many
of the stories, and the exuberant humour and exquisite pathos of
others, as well as the masterly effectiveness of the "Prologue," make
it almost certain that these parts of the work were written when
Chaucer was not only capable of doing his best, but also in a situation
which admitted of his doing it. The supposition is therefore a very
probable one, that the main period of their composition may have
extended over the last eleven or twelve years of his life, and have
begun about the time when he was again placed above want by his
appointment to the Clerkship of the Royal Works.
Again, it is virtually certain that the poem of the "Canterbury Tales"
was left in an unfinished and partially unconnected condition, and it
is altogether uncertain whether Chaucer had finally determined upon
maintaining or modifying the scheme originally indicated by him in the
"Prologue." There can accordingly be no necessity for working out a
scheme into which everything that he has left belonging to the
"Canterbury Tales" may most easily and appropriately fit. Yet the
labour is by no means lost of such inquiries as those which have with
singular zeal been prosecuted concerning the several problems that have
to be solved before such a scheme can be completed. Without a review
of the evidence it would however be preposterous to pronounce on the
proper answer to be given to the questions: what were the number of
tales and that of tellers ultimately designed by Chaucer; what was the
order in which he intended the "Tales" actually written by him to
stand; and what was the plan of the journey of his pilgrims, as to the
localities of its stages and as to the time occupied by it--whether one
day for the fifty-six miles from London to Canterbury (which is by no
means impossible), or two days (which seems more likely), or four. The
route of the pilgrimage must have been one in parts of which it is
pleasant even now to dally, when the sweet spring flowers are in bloom
which Mr. Boughton has painted for lovers of the poetry of English
landscape.
There are one or two other points which should not be overlooked in
considering the "Canterbury Tales" as a whole. It has sometimes been
assumed as a matter of course that the plan of the work was borrowed
from Boccaccio. If this means that Chaucer owed to the "Decamerone"
the idea of including a number of stories in the framework of a single
narrative, it implies too much. For this notion, a familiar one in the
East, had long been known to Western Europe by the numerous versions of
the terribly ingenious story of the "Seven Wise Masters" (in the
progress of which the unexpected never happens), as well as by similar
collections of the same kind. And the special connexion of this device
with a company of pilgrims might, as has been well remarked, have been
suggested to Chaucer by an English book certainly within his ken, the
"Vision concerning Piers Plowman," where in the "fair field full of
folk" are assembled among others "pilgrims and palmers who went forth
on their way" to St. James of Compostella and to saints at Rome "with
many wise tales"--("and had leave to lie all their life after"). But
even had Chaucer owed the idea of his plan to Boccaccio, he would not
thereby have incurred a heavy debt to the Italian novelist. There is
nothing really dramatic in the schemes of the "Decamerone" or of the
numerous imitations which it called forth, from the French "Heptameron"
and the Neapolitan "Pentamerone" down to the German "Phantasus." It is
unnecessary to come nearer to our own times; for the author of the
"Earthly Paradise" follows Chaucer in endeavouring at least to give a
framework of real action to his collection of poetic tales. There is no
organic connexion between the powerful narrative of the Plague opening
Boccaccio's book, and the stories chiefly of love and its adventures
which follow; all that Boccaccio did was to preface an interesting
series of tales by a more interesting chapter of history, and then to
bind the tales themselves together lightly and naturally in days, like
rows of pearls in a collar. But while in the "Decamerone" the
framework in its relation to the stories is of little or no
significance, in the "Canterbury Tales" it forms one of the most
valuable organic elements in the whole work. One test of the
distinction is this: what reader of the "Decamerone" connects any of
the novels composing it with the personality of the particular
narrator, or even cares to remember the grouping of the stories as
illustrations of fortunate or unfortunate, adventurous or illicit,
passion? The charm of Boccaccio's book, apart from the independent
merits of the Introduction, lies in the admirable skill and unflagging
vivacity with which the "novels" themselves are told. The scheme of the
"Canterbury Tales," on the other hand, possesses some genuinely
dramatic elements. If the entire form, at all events in its extant
condition, can scarcely be said to have a plot, it at least has an
EXPOSITION unsurpassed by that of any comedy, ancient or modern; it has
the possibility of a growth of action and interest; and (which is of
far more importance, it has a variety of characters which mutually both
relieve and supplement one another. With how sure an instinct, by the
way, Chaucer has anticipated that unwritten law of the modern drama
according to which low comedy characters always appear in couples!
Thus the "Miller" and the "Reeve" are a noble pair running in parallel
lines, though in contrary directions; so are the "Cook" and the
"Manciple," and again and more especially the "Friar" and the
"Summoner." Thus at least the germ of a comedy exists in the plan of
the "Canterbury Tales." No comedy could be formed out of the mere
circumstance of a company of ladies and gentlemen sitting down in a
country-house to tell an unlimited number of stories on a succession of
topics; but a comedy could be written with the purpose of showing how a
wide variety of national types will present themselves, when brought
into mutual contact by an occasion peculiarly fitted to call forth
their individual rather than their common characteristics.
For not only are we at the opening of the "Canterbury Tales" placed in
the very heart and centre of English life; but the poet contrives to
find for what may be called his action a background, which seems of
itself to suggest the most serious emotions and the most humorous
associations. And this without anything grotesque in the collocation,
such as is involved in the notion of men telling anecdotes at a
funeral, or forgetting a pestilence over love-stories. Chaucer's
dramatis personae are a company of pilgrims, whom at first we find
assembled in a hostelry in Southwark, and whom we afterwards accompany
on their journey to Canterbury. The hostelry is that "Tabard" inn
which, though it changed its name, and no doubt much of its actual
structure, long remained both in its general appearance, and perhaps in
part of its actual self, a genuine relic of mediaeval London. There,
till within a very few years from the present date, might still be had
a draught of that London ale of which Chaucer's "Cook" was so thorough
a connoisseur; and there within the big courtyard, surrounded by a
gallery very probably a copy of its predecessor, was ample room for
--well nine and twenty in a company
Of sundry folk,
with their horses and travelling gear sufficient for a ride to
Canterbury. The goal of this ride has its religious, its national, one
might even say its political aspect; but the journey itself has an
importance of its own. A journey is generally one of the best of
opportunities for bringing out the distinctive points in the characters
of travellers; and we are accustomed to say that no two men can long
travel in one another's company unless their friendship is equal to the
severest of tests. At home men live mostly among colleagues and
comrades; on a journey they are placed in continual contrast with men
of different pursuits and different habits of life. The shipman away
from his ship, the monk away from his cloister, the scholar away from
his books, become interesting instead of remaining commonplace, because
the contrasts become marked which exist between them. Moreover, men
undertake journeys for divers purposes, and a pilgrimage in Chaucer's
day united a motley group of chance companions in search of different
ends at the same goal. One goes to pray, the other seeks profit, the
third distraction, the fourth pleasure. To some the road is
everything; to others, its terminus. All this vanity lay in the mere
choice of Chaucer's framework; there was accordingly something of
genius in the thought itself; and even an inferior workmanship could
hardly have left a description of a Canterbury pilgrimage unproductive
of a wide variety of dramatic effects.
But Chaucer's workmanship was as admirable as his selection of his
framework was felicitous. He has executed only part of his scheme,
according to which each pilgrim was to tell two tales both going and
coming, and the best narrator, the laureate of this merry company, was
to be rewarded by a supper at the common expense on their return to
their starting-place. Thus the design was, not merely to string
together a number of poetical tales by an easy thread, but to give a
real unity and completeness to the whole poem. All the tales told by
all the pilgrims were to be connected together by links; the reader was
to take an interest in the movement and progress of the journey to and
fro; and the poem was to have a middle as well as a beginning and an
end:--the beginning being the inimitable "Prologue" as it now stands;
the middle the history of the pilgrims' doings at Canterbury; and the
close their return and farewell celebration at the Tabard inn. Though
Chaucer carried out only about a fourth part of this plan, yet we can
see, as clearly as if the whole poem lay before us in a completed form,
that its most salient feature was intended to lie in the variety of its
characters.
Each of these characters is distinctly marked out in itself, while at
the same time it is designed as the type of a class. This very obvious
criticism of course most readily admits of being illustrated by the
"Prologue"--a gallery of genre-portraits which many master-hands have
essayed to reproduce with pen or with pencil. Indeed one lover of
Chaucer sought to do so with both--poor gifted Blake, whose descriptive
text of his picture of the Canterbury Pilgrims Charles Lamb, with the
loving exaggeration in which he was at times fond of indulging,
pronounced the finest criticism on Chaucer's poem he had ever read.
But it should be likewise noticed that the character of each pilgrim is
kept up through the poem, both incidentally in the connecting passages
between tale and tale, and in the manner in which the tales themselves
are introduced and told. The connecting passages are full of dramatic
vivacity; in these the "Host," Master Harry Bailly, acts as a most
efficient choragus, but the other pilgrims are not silent, and in the
"Manciple's" Prologue, the "Cook" enacts a bit of downright farce for
the amusement of the company and of stray inhabitants of
"Bob-up-and-down." He is, however, homoeopathically cured of the
effects of his drunkenness, so that the "Host" feels justified in
offering up a thanksgiving to Bacchus for his powers of conciliation.
The "Man of Law's" Prologue is an argument; the "Wife of Bath's" the
ceaseless clatter of an indomitable tongue. The sturdy "Franklin"
corrects himself when deviating into circumlocution:--
Till that the brighte sun had lost his hue,
For th' horizon had reft the sun of light,
(This is as much to say as: it was night).
The "Miller" "tells his churlish tale in his manner," of which manner
the less said the better; while in the "Reeve's Tale," Chaucer even,
after the manner of a comic dramatist, gives his Northern undergraduate
a vulgar ungrammatical phraseology, probably designedly, since the poet
was himself a "Southern man." The "Pardoner" is exuberant in his
sample-eloquence; the "Doctor of Physic" is gravely and sententiously
moral--
--a proper man,
And like a prelate, by Saint Runyan,
says the "Host." Most sustained of all, though he tells no tale, is,
from the nature of the case, the character of Harry Bailly, the host of
the Tabard, himself--who, whatever resemblance he may bear to his
actual original, is the anecestor of a long line of descendants,
including mine Host of the Garter in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." He
is a thorough worldling, to whom anything smacking of the precisian in
morals is as offensive as anything of a Romantic tone in literature; he
smells a Lollard without fail, and turns up his nose at an
old-fashioned ballad or a string of tragic instances as out of date or
tedious. In short, he speaks his mind and that of other more timid
people at the same time, and is one of those sinners whom everybody
both likes and respects. "I advise," says the "Pardoner," with polite
impudence (when inviting the company to become purchasers of the holy
wares which he has for sale), that
--our host, he shall begin,
For he is most enveloped in sin.
He is thus both an admirable picture in himself, and an admirable foil
to those characters which are most unlike him--above all to the
"Parson" and the "Clerk of Oxford," the representatives of religion and
learning.
As to the "Tales" themselves, Chaucer beyond a doubt meant their style
and tone to be above all things POPULAR. This is one of the causes
accounting for the favour shown to the work,--a favour attested, so far
as earlier times are concerned, by the vast number of manuscripts
existing of it. The "Host" is, so to speak, charged with the constant
injunction of this cardinal principle of popularity as to both theme
and style. "Tell us," he coolly demands of the most learned and sedate
of all his fellow-travellers,
--some merry thing of adventures;
Your termes, your colours, and your figures,
Keep them in store, till so be ye indite
High style, as when that men to kinges write;
Speak ye so plain at this time, we you pray,
That we may understande that ye say.
And the "Clerk" follows the spirit of the injunction both by omitting,
as impertinent, a proeme in which his original, Petrarch, gives a great
deal of valuable, but not in its connexion interesting, geographical
information, and by adding a facetious moral to what he calls the
"unrestful matter" of his story. Even the "Squire," though, after the
manner of young men, far more than his elders addicted to the grand
style, and accordingly specially praised for his eloquence by the
simple "Franklin," prefers to reduce to its plain meaning the courtly
speech of the Knight of the Brazen Steed. In connexion with what was
said above, it is observable that each of the "Tales" in subject suits
its narrator. Not by chance is the all-but-Quixotic romance of
"Palamon and Arcite," taken by Chaucer from Boccaccio's "Teseide,"
related by the "Knight"; not by chance does the "Clerk," following
Petrarch's Latin version of a story related by the same author, tell
the even more improbable, but, in the plainness of its moral,
infinitely more fructuous tale of patient Griseldis. How well the
"Second Nun" is fitted with a legend which carries us back a few
centuries into the atmosphere of Hrosvitha's comedies, and suggests
with the utmost verisimilitude the nature of a Nun's lucubrations on
the subject of marriage. It is impossible to go through the whole list
of the "Tales"; but all may be truly said to be in keeping with the
characters and manners (often equally indifferent) of their
tellers--down to that of the "Nun's Priest," which, brimful of humour
as it is, has just the mild naughtiness about it which comes so drolly
from a spiritual director in his worldlier hour.
Not a single one of these "Tales" can with any show of reason be
ascribed to Chaucer's own invention. French literature--chiefly though
not solely that of fabliaux--doubtless supplied the larger share of his
materials; but that here also his debts to Italian literature, and to
Boccaccio in particular, are considerable, seems hardly to admit of
denial. But while Chaucer freely borrowed from foreign models, he had
long passed beyond the stage of translating without assimilating. It
would be rash to assume that where he altered he invariably improved.
His was not the unerring eye which, like Shakspere's in his dramatic
transfusions of Plutarch, missed no particle of the gold mingled with
the baser metal, but rejected the dross with sovereign certainty. In
dealing with Italian originals more especially, he sometimes altered
for the worse, and sometimes for the better; but he was never a mere
slavish translator. So in the "Knight's Tale" he may be held in some
points to have deviated disadvantageously from his original; but, on
the other hand, in the "Clerk's Tale," he inserts a passage on the
fidelity of women, and another on the instability of the multitude,
besides adding a touch of nature irresistibly pathetic in the
exclamation of the faithful wife, tried beyond her power of concealing
the emotion within her:
O gracious God! how gentle and how kind
Ye seemed by your speech and your visage
The day that maked was our marriage.
So also in the "Man of Law's Tale," which is taken from the French, he
increases the vivacity of the narrative by a considerable number of
apostrophes in his own favourite manner, besides pleasing the general
reader by divers general reflexions of his own inditing. Almost
necessarily, the literary form and the self-consistency of his
originals lose under such treatment. But his dramatic sense, on which
perhaps his commentators have not always sufficiently dwelt, is rarely,
if ever, at fault. Two illustrations of this gift in Chaucer must
suffice, which shall be chosen in two quarters where he has worked with
materials of the most widely different kind. Many readers must have
compared with Dante's original (in canto 33 of the "Inferno") Chaucer's
version in the "Monk's Tale" of the story of Ugolino. Chaucer, while
he necessarily omits the ghastly introduction, expands the pathetic
picture of the sufferings of the father and his sons in their dungeon,
and closes, far more briefly and effectively than Dante, with a touch
of the most refined pathos:--
DE HUGILINO COMITE PISAE.
Of Hugolin of Pisa the langour
There may no tongue telle for pity.
But little out of Pisa stands a tower,
In whiche tower in prison put was he;
And with him be his little children three.
The eldest scarcely five years was of age;
Alas! fortune! it was great cruelty
Such birds as these to put in such a cage.
Condemned he was to die in that prison,
For Royer, which that bishop was of Pise,
Had on him made a false suggestion,
Through which the people gan on him arise,
And put him in prison in such a wise,
As ye have heard, and meat and drink he had
So little that it hardly might suffice,
And therewithal it was full poor and bad.
And on a day befell that in that hour
When that his meat was wont to be y-brought,
The gaoler shut the doors of that tower.
He heard it well, although he saw it not;
And in his heart anon there fell a thought
That they his death by hunger did devise.
"Alas!" quoth he, "alas! that I was wrought!"
Therewith the teares fell from his eyes
His youngest son, that three years was of age,
Unto him said: "Father, why do ye weep?
When will the gaoler bring us our pottage?
Is there no morsel bread that ye do keep?
I am so hungry that I cannot sleep.
Now woulde God that I might sleep for ever!
Then should not hunger in my belly creep.
There is no thing save bread that I would liever."
Thus day by day this child began to cry,
Till in his father's lap adown he lay,
And saide: "Farewell, father, I must die!"
And kissed his father, and died the same day.
The woeful father saw that dead he lay,
And his two arms for woe began to bite,
And said: "Fortune, alas and well-away!
For all my woe I blame thy treacherous spite."
His children weened that it for hunger was,
That he his arms gnawed, and not for woe.
And saide: "Father, do not so, alas!
But rather eat the flesh upon us two.
Our flesh thou gavest us, our flesh thou take us fro,
And eat enough." Right thus they to him cried;
And after that, within a day or two,
They laid them in his lap adown and died.
The father in despair likewise died of hunger; and such was the end of
the mighty Earl of Pisa, whose tragedy whosoever desires to hear at
greater length may read it as told by the great poet of Italy hight
Dante.
The other instance is that of the "Pardoner's Tale," which would appear
to have been based on a fabliau now lost, though the substance of it is
preserved in an Italian novel, and in one or two other versions. For
the purpose of noticing how Chaucer arranges as well as tells a story,
the following attempt at a condensed prose rendering of his narrative
may be acceptable:--
Once upon a time in Flanders there was a company of young men, who gave
themselves up to every kind of dissipation and debauchery--haunting the
taverns where dancing and dicing continues day and night, eating and
drinking, and serving the devil in his own temple by their outrageous
life of luxury. It was horrible to hear their oaths, how they tore to
pieces our blessed Lord's body, as if they thought the Jews had not
rent Him enough; and each laughed at the sin of the others, and all
were alike immersed in gluttony and wantonness.
And so one morning it befel that three of these rioters were sitting
over their drink in a tavern, long before the bell had rung for nine
o'clock prayers. And as they sat, they heard a bell clinking before a
corpse that was being carried to the grave. So one of them bade his
servant-lad go and ask what was the name of the dead man; but the boy
said that he knew it already, and that it was the name of an old
companion of his master's. As he had been sitting drunk on a bench,
there had come a privy thief, whom men called Death, and who slew all
the people in this country; and he had smitten the drunken man's heart
in two with his spear, and had then gone on his way without any more
words. This Death had slain a thousand during the present pestilence;
and the boy thought it worth warning his master to beware of such an
adversary, and to be ready to meet him at any time. "So my mother
taught me; I say no more." "Marry," said the keeper of the tavern;
"the child tells the truth: this Death has slain all the inhabitants of
a great village not far from here; I think that there must be the place
where he dwells." Then the rioter swore with some of his big oaths
that he at least was not afraid of this Death, and that he would seek
him out wherever he dwelt. And at his instance his two boon-companions
joined with him in a vow that before nightfall they would slay the
false traitor Death, who was the slayer of so many; and the vow they
swore was one of closest fellowship between them--to live and die for
one another as if they had been brethren born. And so they went forth
in their drunken fury towards the village of which the taverner had
spoken, with terrible execrations on their lips that "Death should be
dead, if they might catch him."
They had not gone quite half a mile when at a stile between two fields
they came upon a poor old man, who meekly greeted them with a "God save
you, sirs." But the proudest of the three rioters answered him
roughly, asking him why he kept himself all wrapped up except his face,
and how so old a fellow as he had managed to keep alive so long? And
the old man looked him straight in the face and replied, "Because in no
town or village, though I journey as far as the Indies, can I find a
man willing to exchange his youth for my age; and therefore I must keep
it so long as God wills it so. Death, alas! will not have my life, and
so I wander about like a restless fugitive, and early and late I knock
on the ground, which is my mother's gate, with my staff, and say, 'Dear
mother, let me in! behold how I waste away! Alas! when shall my bones
be at rest? Mother, gladly will I give you my chest containing all my
worldly gear in return for a shroud to wrap me in.' But she refuses me
that grace, and that is why my face is pale and withered. But you,
sirs, are uncourteous to speak rudely to an inoffensive old man, when
Holy Writ bids you reverence grey hairs. Therefore, never again give
offence to an old man, if you wish men to be courteous to you in your
age, should you live so long. And so God be with you: I must go
whither I have to go." But the second rioter prevented him, and swore
he should not depart so lightly. "Thou spakest just now of that traitor
Death, who slays all our friends in this country. As thou art his spy,
hear me swear that, unless thou tellest where he is, thou shalt die;
for thou art in his plot to slay us young men, thou false thief!" Then
the old man told them that if they were so desirous of finding Death,
they had but to turn up a winding path to which he pointed, and there
they would find him they sought in a grove under an oak-tree, where the
old man had just left him; "he will not try to hide himself for all
your boasting. And so may God the Redeemer save you and amend you!"
And when he had spoken, all the three rioters ran till they came to the
tree. But what they found there was a treasure of golden
florins--nearly seven bushels of them as they thought. Then they no
longer sought after Death, but sat down all three by the shining gold.
And the youngest of them spoke first, and declared that Fortune had
given this treasure to them, so that they might spend the rest of their
lives in mirth and jollity. The question was how to take this
money--which clearly belonged to some one else--safely to the house of
one of the three companions. It must be done by night; so let them
draw lots, and let him on whom the lot fell run to the town to fetch
bread and wine, while the other two guarded the treasure carefully till
the night came, when they might agree whither to transport it.
The lot fell on the youngest, who forthwith went his way to the town.
Then one of those who remained with the treasure said to the other:
"Thou knowest well that thou art my sworn brother, and I will tell thee
something to thy advantage. Our companion is gone, and here is a great
quantity of gold to be divided among us three. But say, if I could
manage so that the gold is divided between us two, should I not do thee
a friend's turn?" And when the other failed to understand him, he made
him promise secrecy and disclosed his plan. "Two are stronger than
one. When he sits down, arise as if thou wouldest sport with him; and
while thou art struggling with him as in play, I will rive him through
both his sides; and look thou do the same with thy dagger. After
which, my dear friend, we will divide all the gold between you and me,
and then we may satisfy all our desires and play at dice to our hearts'
content."
Meanwhile the youngest rioter, as he went up to the town, revolved in
his heart the beauty of the bright new florins, and said unto himself:
"If only I could have all this gold to myself alone, there is no man on
earth who would live so merrily as I." And at last the Devil put it
into his relentless heart to buy poison, in order with it to kill his
two companions. And straightway he went on into the town to an
apothecary, and besought him to sell him some poison for destroying
some rats which infested his house and a polecat which, he said, had
made away with his capons. And the apothecary said: "Thou shalt have
something of which (so may God save my soul!) no creature in all the
world could swallow a single grain without losing his life thereby--and
that in less time than thou wouldest take to walk a mile in." So the
miscreant shut up this poison in a box, and then he went into the next
street and borrowed three large bottles, into two of which he poured
his poison, while the third he kept clean to hold drink for himself;
for he meant to work hard all the night to carry away the gold. So he
filled his three bottles with wine, and then went back to his
companions under the tree.
What need to make a long discourse of what followed? As they had
plotted their comrade's death, so they slew him, and that at once. And
when they had done this, the one who had counselled the deed said, "Now
let us sit and drink and make merry, and then we will bury his body."
And it happened to him by chance to take one of the bottles which
contained the poison; and he drank, and gave drink of it to his fellow;
and thus they both speedily died.
The plot of this story is, as observed, not Chaucer's. But how
carefully, how artistically the narrative is elaborated, incident by
incident, and point by point! How well every effort is prepared, and
how well every turn of the story is explained! Nothing is superfluous,
but everything is arranged with care, down to the circumstances of the
bottles being bought, for safety's sake, in the next street to the
apothecary's, and of two out of three bottles being filled with poison,
which is at once a proceeding natural in itself, and increases the
chances against the two rioters when they are left to choose for
themselves. This it is to be a good story-teller. But of a different
order is the change introduced by Chaucer into his original, where the
old hermit--who, of course, is Death himself--is fleeing from Death.
Chaucer's Old Man is SEEKING Death, but seeking him in vain--like the
Wandering Jew of the legend. This it is to be a poet.
Of course it is always necessary to be cautious before asserting any
apparent addition of Chaucer's to be his own invention. Thus, in the
"Merchant's Tale," the very naughty plot of which is anything but
original, it is impossible to say whether such is the case with the
humorous competition of advice between Justinus and Placebo, ("Placebo"
seems to have been a current term to express the character or the ways
of "the too deferential man." "Flatterers be the Devil's chaplains,
that sing aye Placebo."--"Parson's Tale."), or with the fantastic
machinery in which Pluto and Proserpine anticipate the part played by
Oberon and Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." On the other hand,
Chaucer is capable of using goods manifestly borrowed or stolen for a
purpose never intended in their original employment. Puck himself must
have guided the audacious hand which could turn over the leaves of so
respected a Father of the Church as St. Jerome, in order to derive from
his treatise "On Perpetual Virginity" materials for the discourse on
matrimony delivered, with illustrations essentially her own, by the
"Wife of Bath."
Two only among these "Tales" are in prose--a vehicle of expression, on
the whole, strange to the polite literature of the pre-Renascence
ages--but not both for the same reason. The first of these "Tales" is
told by the poet himself, after a stop has been unceremoniously put
upon his recital of the "Ballad of Sir Thopas" by the Host. The ballad
itself is a fragment of straightforward burlesque, which shows that in
both the manner and the metre (Dunbar's burlesque ballad of "Sir Thomas
Norray" is in the same stanza) of ancient romances, literary criticism
could even in Chaucer's days find its opportunities for satire, though
it is going rather far to see in "Sir Thopas" a predecessor of "Don
Quixote." The "Tale of Meliboeus" is probably an English version of a
French translation of Albert of Brescia's famous "Book of Consolation
and Counsel," which comprehends in a slight narrative framework a long
discussion between the unfortunate Meliboeus, whom the wrongs and
sufferings inflicted upon him and his have brought to the verge of
despair, and his wise helpmate, Dame Prudence. By means of a long
argumentation propped up by quotations (not invariably assigned with
conscientious accuracy to their actual source) from "The Book," Seneca,
"Tullius," and other authors, she at last persuades him not only to
reconcile himself to his enemies, but to forgive them, even as he hopes
to be forgiven. And thus the Tale well bears out the truth impressed
upon Meliboeus by the following ingeniously combined quotation:--
And there said once a clerk in two verses: What is better than gold?
Jasper. And what is better than jasper? Wisdom. And what is better
than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than woman? No thing.
Certainly, Chaucer gave proof of consummate tact and taste, as well as
of an unaffected personal modesty, in assigning to himself as one of
the company of pilgrims, instead of a tale bringing him into
competition with the creatures of his own invention, after his mocking
ballad has served its turn, nothing more ambitious than a version of a
popular discourse--half narrative, half homily--in prose. But a
question of far greater difficulty and moment arises with regard to the
other prose piece included among the "Canterbury Tales." Of these the
so-called "Parson's Tale" is the last in order of succession. Is it to
be looked upon as an integral part of the collection; and, if so, what
general and what personal significance should be attached to it?
As it stands, the long tractate or sermon (partly adapted from a
popular French religious manual), which bears the name of the "Parson's
Tale," is, if not unfinished, at least internally incomplete. It lacks
symmetry, and fails entirely to make good the argument or scheme of
divisions with which the sermon begins, as conscientiously as one of
Barrow's. Accordingly, an attempt has been made to show that what we
have is something different from the "meditation" which Chaucer
originally put into his "Parson's" mouth. But, while we may stand in
respectful awe of the German daring which, whether the matter in hand
be a few pages of Chaucer, a Book of Homer, or a chapter of the Old
Testament, is fully prepared to show which parts of each are mutilated,
which interpolated, and which transposed, we may safely content
ourselves, in the present instance, with considering the preliminary
question. A priori, is there sufficient reason for supposing any
transpositions, interpolations, and mutilations to have been introduced
into the "Parson's Tale"? The question is full of interest; for while,
on the one hand, the character of the "Parson" in the "Prologue" has
been frequently interpreted as evidence of sympathy on Chaucer's part
with Wycliffism, on the other hand, the "Parson's Tale," in its extant
form, goes far to disprove the supposition that its author was a
Wycliffite.
This, then, seems the appropriate place for briefly reviewing the vexed
question--WAS CHAUCER A WYCLIFFITE? Apart from the character of the
"Parson" and from the "Parson's Tale," what is the nature of our
evidence on the subject? In the first place, nothing could be clearer
than that Chaucer was a very free-spoken critic of the life of the
clergy--more especially of the Regular clergy,--of his times. In this
character he comes before us from his translation of the "Roman de la
Rose" to the "Parson's Tale" itself, where he inveighs with significant
earnestness against self indulgence on the part of those who are
Religious, or have "entered into Orders, as sub-deacon, or deacon, or
priest, or hospitallers." In the "Canterbury Tales," above all, his
attacks upon the Friars run nearly the whole gamut of satire, stopping
short perhaps before the note of high moral indignation. Moreover, as
has been seen, his long connexion with John of Gaunt is a
well-established fact; and it has thence been concluded that Chaucer
fully shared the opinions and tendencies represented by his patron. In
the supposition that Chaucer approved of the countenance for a long
time shown by John of Gaunt to Wyclif there is nothing improbable;
neither, however, is there anything improbable in this other
supposition, that, when the Duke of Lancaster openly washed his hands
of the heretical tenets to the utterance of which Wyclif had advanced,
Chaucer, together with the large majority of Englishmen, held with the
politic duke rather than with the still unflinching Reformer. So long
as Wyclif's movement consisted only of an opposition to ecclesiastical
pretensions on the one hand, and of an attempt to revive religious
sentiment on the other, half the country or more was Wycliffite, and
Chaucer no doubt with the rest. But it would require positive evidence
to justify the belief that from this feeling Chaucer ever passed to
sympathy with LOLLARDRY, in the vague but sufficiently intelligible
sense attaching to that term in the latter part of Richard the Second's
reign. Richard II himself, whose patronage of Chaucer is certain, in
the end attempted rigorously to suppress Lollardry; and Henry IV, the
politic John of Gaunt's yet more politic son, to whom Chaucer owed the
prosperity enjoyed by him in the last year of his life, became a
persecutor almost as soon as he became a king.
Though, then, from the whole tone of his mind, Chaucer could not but
sympathise with the opponents of ecclesiastical domination--though, as
a man of free and critical spirit, and of an inborn ability for
penetrating beneath the surface, he could not but find subjects for
endless blame and satire in the members of those Mendicant Orders in
whom his chief patron's academical ally had recognised the most
formidable obstacles to the spread of pure religion--yet all this would
not justify us in regarding him as personally a Wycliffite. Indeed, we
might as well at once borrow the phraseology of a recent respectable
critic, and set down Dan Chaucer as a Puritan! The policy of his
patron tallied with the view which a fresh practical mind such as
Chaucer's would naturally be disposed to take of the influence of monks
and friars, or at least of those monks and friars whose vices and
foibles were specially prominent in his eyes. There are various
reasons why men oppose established institutions in the season of their
decay; but a fourteenth century satirist of the monks, or even of the
clergy at large, was not necessarily a Lollard, any more than a
nineteenth century objector to doctors' drugs is necessarily a
homoeopathist.
But, it is argued by some, Chaucer has not only assailed the false; he
has likewise extolled the true. He has painted both sides of the
contrast. On the one side are the Monk, the Friar, and the rest of
their fellows; on the other is the "Poor Parson of a town"--a portrait,
if not of Wyclif himself, at all events of a Wycliffite priest; and in
the "Tale" or sermon put in the Parson's mouth are recognisable beneath
the accumulations of interested editors some of the characteristic
marks of Wycliffism. Who is not acquainted with the exquisite portrait
in question?--
A good man was there of religion,
And was a poore Parson of a town.
But rich he was of holy thought and work.
He was also a learned man, a clerk
That Christes Gospel truly woulde preach;
And his parishioners devoutly teach.
Benign he was, and wondrous diligent,
And in adversity full patient.
And such he was y-proved ofte sithes.
Full loth he was to curse men for his tithes;
But rather would he give, without doubt,
Unto his poor parishioners about
Of his off'ring and eke of his substance.
He could in little wealth have suffisance.
Wide was his parish, houses far asunder,
Yet failed he not for either rain or thunder
In sickness nor mischance to visit all
The furthest in his parish, great and small,
Upon his feet, and in his hand a staff.
This noble ensample to his sheep he gave,
That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught
Out of the Gospel he those wordes caught,
And this figure he added eke thereto,
That "if gold ruste, what shall iron do?"
For if a priest be foul, on whom we trust,
No wonder is it if a layman rust;
And shame it is, if that a priest take keep,
A foul shepherd to see and a clean sheep;
Well ought a priest ensample for to give
By his cleanness, how that his sheep should live.
He put not out his benefice on hire,
And left his sheep encumbered in the mire,
And ran to London unto Sainte Paul's,
To seek himself a chantery for souls,
Or maintenance with a brotherhood to hold;
But dwelt at home, and kepte well his fold,
So that the wolf ne'er made it to miscarry;
He was a shepherd and no mercenary.
And though he holy were, and virtuous,
He was to sinful man not despitous,
And of his speech nor difficult nor digne,
But in his teaching discreet and benign.
For to draw folk to heaven by fairness,
By good ensample, this was his business:
But were there any person obstinate,
What so he were, of high or low estate,
Him would he sharply snub at once. Than this
A better priest, I trow, there nowhere is.
He waited for no pomp and reverence,
Nor made himself a spiced conscience;
But Christes lore and His Apostles' twelve
He taught, but first he followed it himself.
The most striking features in this portrait are undoubtedly those which
are characteristics of the good and humble working clergyman of all
times; and some of these, accordingly, Goldsmith could appropriately
borrow for his gentle poetic sketch of his parson-brother in "Sweet
Auburn." But there are likewise points in the sketch which may be
fairly described as specially distinctive of Wyclif's Simple
Priests--though, as should be pointed out, these Priests could not
themselves be designated parsons of towns. Among the latter features
are the specially evangelical source of the "Parson's" learning and
teaching; and his outward appearance--the wandering, staff in hand,
which was specially noted in an archiepiscopal diatribe against these
novel ministers of the people. Yet it seems unnecessary to conclude
anything beyond this: that the feature which Chaucer desired above all
to mark and insist upon in his "Parson," was the Poverty and humility
which in him contrasted with the luxurious self-indulgence of the
"Monk," and the blatant insolence of the "Pardoner." From this point of
view it is obvious why the "Parson" is made brother to the "Ploughman."
For, in drawing the latter, Chaucer cannot have forgotten that other
Ploughman whom Langland's poem had identified with Him for whose sake
Chaucer's poor workman laboured for his poor neighbours, with the
readiness always shown by the best of his class. Nor need this
recognition of the dignity of the lowly surprise us in Chaucer, who had
both sense of justice and sense of humour enough not to flatter one
class at the expense of the rest, and who elsewhere (in the "Manciples
Tale") very forcibly puts the truth that what in a great man is called
a coup d'etat is called by a much simpler name in a humbler
fellow-sinner.
But though, in the "Parson of a Town," Chaucer may not have wished to
paint a Wycliffite priest--still less a Lollard, under which
designation so many varieties of malcontents, in addition to the
followers of Wyclif, were popularly included--yet his eyes and ears
were open; and he knew well enough what the world and its children are
at all times apt to call those who are not ashamed of their religion,
as well as those who make too conscious a profession of it. The world
called them Lollards at the close of the fourteenth century, and it
called them Puritans at the close of the sixteenth, and Methodists at
the close of the eighteenth. Doubtless the vintners and the shipmen of
Chaucer's day, the patrons and purveyors of the playhouse in Ben
Jonson's, the fox-hunting squires and town wits of Cowper's, like their
successors after them, were not specially anxious to distinguish nicely
between more or less abominable varieties of saintliness. Hence, when
Master Harry Bailly's tremendous oaths produce the gentlest of protests
from the "Parson," the jovial "Host" incontinently "smells a Lollard in
the wind," and predicts (with a further flow of expletives) that there
is a sermon to follow. Whereupon the "Shipman" protests not less
characteristically:--
"Nay, by my father's soul, that shall he not,"
Saide the Shipman, "here shall he not preach,
He shall no gospel here explain or teach.
We all believe in the great God," quoth he;
"He woulde sowe some difficulty,
Or springe cockle in our clean corn."
(The nickname Lollards was erroneously derived from "lolia" (tares).)
After each of the pilgrims except the "Parson" has told a tale (so that
obviously Chaucer designed one of the divisions of his work to close
with the "Parson's"), he is again called upon by the "Host". Hereupon
appealing to the undoubtedly evangelical and, it might without
straining be said, Wycliffite authority of Timothy, he promises as his
contribution a "merry tale in prose," which proves to consist of a
moral discourse. In its extant form the "Parson's Tale" contains, by
the side of much that might suitably have come from a Wycliffite
teacher, much of a directly opposite nature. For not only is the
necessity of certain sacramental usages to which Wyclif strongly
objected insisted upon, but the spoliation of Church property is
unctuously inveighed against as a species of one of the cardinal sins.
No enquiry could satisfactorily establish how much of this was taken
over or introduced into the "Parson's Tale" by Chaucer himself. But
one would fain at least claim for him a passage in perfect harmony with
the character drawn of the "Parson" in the "Prologue"--a passage
(already cited in part in the opening section of the present essay)
where the poet advocates the cause of the poor in words which, simple
as they are, deserve to be quoted side by side with that immortal
character itself. The concluding lines may therefore be cited here:--
Think also that of the same seed of which churls spring, of the same
seed spring lords; as well may the churl be saved as the lord.
Wherefore I counsel thee, do just so with thy churl as though wouldest
thy lord did with thee, if thou wert in his plight. A very sinful man
is a churl as towards sin. I counsel thee certainly, thou lord, that,
thou work in such wise with thy churls that they rather love thee than
dread thee. I know well, where there is degree above degree, it is
reasonable that men should do their duty where it is due; but of a
certainty, extortions, and despite of our underlings, are damnable.
In sum, the "Parson's Tale" cannot, any more than the character of the
"Parson" in the "Prologue," be interpreted as proving Chaucer to have
been a Wycliffite. But the one as well as the other proves him to have
perceived much of what was noblest in the Wycliffite movement, and much
of what was ignoblest in the reception with which it met at the hands
of worldlings--before, with the aid of the State, the Church finally
succeeded in crushing it, to all appearance, out of existence.
The "Parson's Tale" contains a few vigorous touches, in addition to the
fine passage quoted, which make it difficult to deny that Chaucer's
hand was concerned in it. The inconsistency between the religious
learning ascribed to the "Parson" and a passage in the "Tale," where
the author leaves certain things to be settled by divines, will not be
held of much account. The most probable conjecture seems therefore to
be that the discourse has come down to us in a mutilated form. This
MAY be due to the "Tale" having remained unfinished at the time of
Chaucer's death: in which case it would form last words of no unfitting
kind. As for the actual last words of the "Canterbury Tales"--the
so-called "Prayer of Chaucer"--it would be unbearable to have to accept
them as genuine. For in these the poet, while praying for the
forgiveness of sins, is made specially to entreat the Divine pardon for
his "translations and inditing in worldly vanities," which he "revokes
in his retractions." These include, besides the Book of the Leo
(doubtless a translation or adaptation from Machault) and many other
books which the writer forgets, and "many a song and many a lecherous
lay," all the principal poetical works of Chaucer (with the exception
of the "Romaunt of the Rose") discussed in this essay. On the other
hand, he offers thanks for having had the grace given him to compose
his translation of Boethius and other moral and devotional works.
There is, to be sure, no actual evidence to decide in either way the
question as to the genuineness of this "Prayer," which is entirely one
of internal probability. Those who will may believe that the monks,
who were the landlords of Chaucer's house at Westminster, had in one
way or the other obtained a controlling influence over his mind.
Stranger things than this have happened; but one prefers to believe
that the poet of the "Canterbury Tales" remained master of himself to
the last. He had written much which a dying man might regret; but it
would be sad to have to think that, "because of humility," he bore
false witness at the last against an immortal part of himself--his
poetic genius.