documents, with the few others to be gleaned from passages in his works.
Such as are attested by neither of these vouchers have no claim to
implicit credit. In his Testament of Love, he speaks of having “endured
penance in a dark prison.” Again, “Although I had little in respect of
other great and worthy, yet had I a fair parcel, as methought for the
time; I had riches sufficiently to wave need. I had dignity to be
reverenced in worship; power methought that I had to keep from mine
enemies, and me seemed to shine in glory of renown.” With this picture
of former prosperity, he contrasts his present state. “For riches now
have I poverty; instead of power, wretchedness I suffer; and for glory
of renown, I am now despised and foully hated.” We cannot with certainty
connect this reverse of personal fortune with any passage of general
history. He alludes to it thus:—“In my youth I was drawn to be
assenting, and in my might helping to certain conjurations, and other
great matters of ruling of citizens, so painted and coloured, that at
first to me seemed then noble and glorious to all the people.” He
intimates that he had made some discoveries concerning certain
transactions in the city. He was, consequently, exposed to calumny, and
the charge of falsehood. To prove his veracity, he offered an appeal to
arms, and “had prepared his body for Mars’s doing, if any contraried his
saws.” He alludes to his escape out of the kingdom, when we are told by
his biographers that he spent his time in Hainault, France, and Zealand,
where he wrote many of his books. He himself says, that during his exile
those whom he had served never refreshed him with the value of the least
coined plate; those who owed him money would pay nothing, because they
thought his return impossible. Mr. Godwin, like preceding biographers,
refers these personal misfortunes to his support of John Comberton,
generally styled John of Northampton, who, in 1382, attempted reform in
the city on Wiclif’s principles. This was highly resented by the clergy;
Comberton was taken into custody, and Chaucer is stated to have fled the
kingdom. Mr. Turner thinks, that as the date assigned to these reverses
is purely conjectural, they may be referred with more probability to a
later period. He argues that, had Chaucer joined any party against the
court, he would not have enjoyed Richard’s continued favour. The
protection from the king, in 1398, implies that he was intermeddling in
hazardous concerns; and in the Testament of Love, which may be
considered as an autobiography composed of hints rather than facts,
there is this remarkable passage. “Of the confederacies made by my
sovereigns, I was but a servant; and thereof ought nothing in evil to be
laid to me wards, sithen as repentant I am turned.” Mr. Turner infers,
from the singular protection granted to Chaucer, in the very year when,
after Gloucester’s murder, Richard adopted his most illegal and
tyrannical measures, that the poet was prosecuted as an accomplice in
those measures; that Henry might have thrown him into prison, as
implicated in the deposed monarch’s unlawful acts; but on his
professions of repentance, and in consideration of his connexion and
alliance with his own father, might have pardoned him with others, at
his coronation. In this difference of opinion, or rather of conjecture,
between the biographers and the historian, we may, perhaps, be allowed
to hazard the supposition, that those scattered allusions in the
Testament may refer not to the same, but to different periods of evil
fortune; indeed, the very expressions quoted seem hardly reconcileable
with any one event. The “conjurations, noble and glorious to the
people,” seem to point at some measures distasteful to the higher
powers: and as both Chaucer and his patron the Duke of Lancaster had
adopted many of Wiclif’s tenets, it seems not improbable that the
conspiracy alluded to may be identified with that of John of
Northampton. Delicately as the circumstance is glossed over by the poet,
he appears to have turned what in homely phrase is called _king’s
evidence_, the imputation of which he parries by a chivalrous appeal to
“Mars’s doing.” This will account for his being received back into royal
favour, and for his lending himself in after-time, no longer to the
conjurations of the people, in plain English, the rebellion of the
commons, but to the confederacies of his sovereigns. If his allusion to
his personal misfortunes, and his expressions of conscientious remorse,
may be referred to different periods, and to events of opposite
character; in that view of the case, neither Mr. Godwin nor Mr. Turner
may be in the wrong.
Few particulars of Chaucer’s private history are to be gathered from his
poems. In his Dream, of which Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, is the
subject, the poet describes himself as a victim to nervous melancholy
from habitual want of sleep, accompanied with a dread of death. The
translation of Boethius, and occasional quotations from Seneca and
Juvenal, attest that he retained through life his juvenile acquaintance
with the Latin classics. The chronology of his works must be rendered
doubtful by the uncertainty respecting that of his life. Mr. Turner
places the time of his death later than 1400, but before 1410. The poet
is said to have had the unusual honour of being brother-in-law to a
prince of the blood, by the marriage of John of Gaunt, Duke of
Lancaster, with Catherine, widow of Sir Hugh Swinford, and sister to
Chaucer’s wife. He is said to have lived at Woodstock at a late period
of his life, and finally, to have retired to Donnington Castle on the
Duke of Lancaster’s death. By his wife, Philippa, he had two sons,
Thomas and Lewis. Thomas was Speaker of the House of Commons in the
reign of Henry IV., ambassador to France and Burgundy, and discharged
other public duties. Chaucer’s principal biographers are Leland, Thomas
Speght, Mr. Tyrwhitt, and Mr. Godwin. The work of the latter would have
been more valuable had it been less voluminous, less discursive, and
less conjectural. Mr. Tyrwhitt’s edition of the Canterbury Tales is a
model of criticism on an old English classic. His Introductory Discourse
on the Language and Versification of Chaucer will enable its readers to
form just and clear ideas of the history of our ancient tongue, and
Chaucer’s peculiar use of it.
Chaucer was held in high estimation by his most distinguished
contemporaries. John the Chaplain, who translated Boethius into English
verse, as Chaucer had into prose, calls him the Flower of Rhetoric.
Occleve laments him with personal affection as his father and master,
and styles him the honour of English tongue. Lydgate, the monk of Bury,
mentions him as a chief poet of Britain; the loadstar of our language;
the notable rhetor. Dryden says, in the preface prefixed to his
Fables,—“As Chaucer is the father of English poetry, so I hold him in
the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or the Romans
Virgil; he is a perpetual fountain of good sense, learned in all
sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects; as he knew what
to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence which is
practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting
Virgil and Horace.”
Our account of his principal works must be brief. The Romaunt of the
Rose is professedly a translation of the French Roman de la Rose. It is
a long allegory, representing the difficulties and dangers encountered
by a lover in the pursuit of his mistress, who is emblematically
described as a Rose, and the plot, if so it may be called, ends with his
putting her in a beautiful garden.
Troilus and Creseide is for the most part a translation of the
Filostrato of Boccaccio, but with many variations and large additions.
As a tale, it is barren of incident, although, according to Warton, as
long as the Æneid; but it contains passages of great beauty and pathos.
The story of Queen Annelida and false Arcite is said to have been
originally told in Latin. Chaucer names the authors whom he professes to
follow. “First folwe I Stace, and after him Corinne.” The opening only
is taken from Statius, so that Corinne must be supposed to have
furnished the remainder; but who she was has never yet been discovered.
False Arcite is a different person from the Arcite of the Knight’s Tale.
It is probable therefore that this poem was written before Chaucer had
become acquainted with the Teseide of Boccaccio.
The opening of the Assembly of Foules is built on the Somnium Scipionis
of Cicero. The description of a garden and temple is almost entirely
taken from the description of the Temple of Venus in the Fourth Book of
the Teseide. Mr. Tyrwhitt suspects this poem to allude to the intended
marriage between John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster, which took
place in 1359.
Warton, in his History of English Poetry, intimates his belief that the
House of Fame was originally a Provençal composition. But Mr. Tyrwhitt
differs from him in opinion, and states that he “has not observed, in
any of Chaucer’s writings, a single phrase or word which has the least
appearance of having been fetched by him from the South of the Loire.”
With respect to the matter and manner of his compositions, Mr. Tyrwhitt
adds, that he “shall be slow to believe that in either he ever copied
the poets of Provence,” or that he had more than a very slender
acquaintance with them. The poem is an allegorical vision; a favourite
theme with all the poets of Chaucer’s time, both native and foreign.
The Flower and the Leaf was printed for the first time in Speght’s
edition of 1597. Mr. Tyrwhitt suggests a doubt of its correct ascription
to Chaucer; but it seems to afford internal evidence of powers at all
events congenial with those of Chaucer, in its description of rural
scenery and its general truth and feeling. Dryden has modernised it,
without a suspicion of its authenticity.
Chaucer’s prose works are—his Translation of Boethius, the Treatise on
the Astrolabe, and the Testament of Love. The Canterbury Tales were his
latest work. The general plan of them is, that a company of Pilgrims,
going to Canterbury, assemble at an inn in Southwark, and agree that
each shall tell at least one tale in going and another on returning; and
that he who shall tell the best tales shall be treated by the rest with
a supper at the inn, before they separate. The characters of the
Pilgrims, as exhibited in their respective Prologues, are drawn from the
various departments of middle life. The occurrences on the journey, and
the adventures of the company at Canterbury, were intended to be
interwoven as Episodes, or connected by means of the Prologues; but the
work, like its prototype the Decameron, was undertaken when the author
was past the meridian of life, and was left imperfect. Chaucer has, in
many respects, improved on his model, especially in variety of character
and its nice discrimination; but the introductory machinery is not
contrived with equal felicity. Boccaccio’s narrators indulge in the ease
and luxury of a palace; a journey on horse-back is not the most
convenient opportunity of telling long stories to a numerous company.
The works of Chaucer, notwithstanding the encomiums of four successive
centuries, emanating from poets and critics of the highest renown and
first authority, are little read excepting by antiquaries and
philologers, unless in the polished versions of Dryden and Pope. This is
principally to be attributed neither to any change of opinion respecting
the merit of the poet, nor to the obsoleteness of the language; but to
the progressive change of manners and feelings in society, to the
accumulation of knowledge, and the improvement of morals. His command
over the language of his day, his poetical power, and his exhibition of
existing characters and amusing incidents, constitute his attractions;
but his prolixity is ill suited to our impatient rapidity of thought and
action. Unlike the passionate and natural creations of Shakspeare, which
will never grow obsolete, the sentiments of Chaucer are not congenial
with our own: his love is fantastic gallantry; he is the painter and
panegyrist of exploded knight-errantry. Hence the preference of the
Canterbury Tales above all his other works; because the manners of the
time are dramatized, in other ranks of life than that of chivalry; his
good sense, and capacity for keen observation are called forth, to the
exclusion of conventional affectations. With respect to his prose, it is
curious as that “strange English” and “ornate style,” adopted by him as
a scholar for the sake of distinction, rather than as a specimen of the
language and mode of expression characteristic of his age.
[Illustration: [The Wife of Bath, from Stothard’s Canterbury
Pilgrimage.]]
[Illustration]
SOBIESKI.
So rapid and complete has been the decay of the Ottoman empire as an
aggressive power, that any person now living, unacquainted with history
anterior to the date of his own birth, would treat the notion of danger
to Christian Europe from the ambition of Turkey, as the idle fear of an
over-anxious mind. Yet there was a time, and that within a century and a
half, when Popes summoned the princes of Europe to support the Cross,
and the Eastern frontier of Christendom was the scene of almost constant
warfare between Christian and Moslem. That period of danger was to
Poland a period of glory; and the brightest part of it is the reign of
the warrior-king, John Sobieski. It proved, indeed, no better than an
empty glitter, won at a vast expense of blood and treasure, the benefits
of which were chiefly reaped by the faithless and ungrateful Austria.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by J. Thomson._
JOHN SOBIESKI.
_From an original Picture, in the
Gallery of the Louvre._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
Sobieski was the younger son of a Polish nobleman, high in rank and
merit. He was born in 1629. The death of his brother, slain in warfare
with the Cossacks of the Ukraine, in 1649, placed him in possession of
the hereditary titles and immense estates of his house. To these
distinctions he added high personal merits, an athletic body, a
powerful, active, and upright mind, and, as the result proved, the
qualities which make a general and statesman. It is no wonder therefore
that, in the wars carried on by Poland during his youth against Tartars,
Cossacks, and Swedes, he won laurels, though the Republic gained neither
honour nor advantage. At an early age he acquired the confidence of
Casimir, the reigning king of Poland, and was employed in various
services of importance. On the revolt of Lubomirski, Grand Marshal of
Poland, Sobieski was invested with that office, and soon after made
Lieutenant-General (if we may so translate it) of the Polish army. In
that capacity he led the royal troops against Lubomirski. The king’s
obstinacy forced him to give battle at a disadvantage, and he was
defeated, July 13, 1666; but the blame of this mishap was universally
thrown on the right person, while the skilful conduct of Sobieski’s
retreat obtained general admiration.
He married Marie de la Grange d’Arquien, a French lady of noble birth,
who had accompanied the queen into Poland. She was a woman of wit and
beauty, who exercised throughout life an unusual and unfortunate
influence over a husband devotedly attached to her. Aided by her favour
with her mistress, Sobieski obtained the highest military office, that
of Grand General, in 1667. Happy for Poland, that in this instance
favour and merit went hand in hand: for a host of fourscore thousand
Tartars broke into the kingdom, when its exhausted finances could not
maintain an army, and its exhausted population could hardly supply one.
By draining his own purse, pledging his own resources, and levying
recruits on his immense estates, the General raised his troops from
twelve to twenty thousand, and marched fearlessly against a force four
times as great. The scheme of his campaign was singularly confident, so
much so as to excite the disapprobation even of the intrepid Condé. He
detached eight thousand men in several corps, with secret orders, and
took post with the remaining twelve thousand in a fortified camp at
Podahiecz, a small town in the Palatinate of Russia, to stand the attack
of eighty thousand Tartars, while his detachments were converging to
their assigned stations. The assault was renewed for sixteen successive
days; and day after day the assailants were repulsed with slaughter. On
the seventeenth, Sobieski offered battle in the open field. A bloody
contest ensued; but while victory was doubtful, the Polish detachments
appeared on the Tartar flanks, and turned the balance. Disheartened by
their loss, the Tartars made overtures of peace, which was concluded
equally to the satisfaction of both the belligerents, October 19, 1667.
The circumstances attendant on the abdication of Casimir, in 1668, and
the election of his successor Michael Wiesnowieski, do not demand our
notice, for Sobieski took little part in the intrigues of the
candidates, or the deliberations of the Diet. The new king wept and
trembled as he mounted a throne to which he had never aspired, and which
he protested himself incapable to fill; and the event proved that he was
right. Yet, when he had tasted the sweets of power, he looked jealously
on the man most highly esteemed and most able to do his country service,
and therefore most formidable to a weak and suspicious prince. The
Ukraine Cossacks had been converted by oppression from good subjects
into bad neighbours, and on the accession of Michael they again raised
the standard of war. Partly by negotiation, partly by force, the Grand
General reduced all the country from the Bog to the Dniester in the
campaign of 1671, and he received the thanks of the Republic for
performing such eminent services with such scanty means. It is still
more to his credit that he interfered, not for the first time, in favour
of the revolted Cossacks, and insisted on their being received into
allegiance with kindness, and encouraged to good behaviour by equitable
and friendly treatment.
King Michael was of a very different mind in this matter. Determined on
the subjugation of the whole Ukraine, he intrigued to hinder the Diet
from confirming the peace, and thus induced the Cossacks to call in the
help of Turkey, by threatening which they had stopped the progress of
Sobieski. This brought on a fresh discussion in the Diet, in which
Sobieski warmly urged the expediency of concession. Michael, however,
persisted in his course; and from this period we may date the
commencement of a league to dethrone him. In this, at first, Sobieski
took no active, certainly no open, part. When compelled to declare
himself, he asserted, with zeal, the right of the Republic to depose a
prince who had shown himself unfit to reign. The consequences of this
discord were very serious. At a Diet held in the spring of 1672, Michael
was openly required to abdicate. To avoid this he summoned the minor
nobility, who had no seats in the Diet, and with whom, having formerly
been of their body, he was more popular, to meet in the field of
Golemba, on the bank of the Vistula; and he thus raised a sort of
militia, to the number of a hundred thousand, ready to uphold him as the
king. Sobieski, encamped at Lowicz with an army devoted to him,
maintained the cause of the confederate nobles. Neither party, however,
was in haste to appeal to arms; and in the interim, Mahomet IV., with
150,000 Turks and 100,000 Tartars, invaded Poland. The king, instead of
marching against the enemy, contented himself with setting a price on
Sobieski’s head, in whom alone the hope of Poland rested. Too weak
however to oppose the Turks, he sought the Tartars, who had dispersed to
carry ruin through the country, routed them in five successive battles,
and recovered an immense booty and thirty thousand prisoners from their
hands. Meanwhile the Turks overran Podolia, and took its capital town,
the strong fortress of Kaminiec, the bulwark of Poland. Incapable
himself of action, and apprehensive alike of the failure or success of
Sobieski, Michael hastily concluded an ignominious peace, by which the
Ukraine and part of Podolia were ceded to Turkey, and the payment of an
annual tribute was agreed upon.
This treaty of Boudchaz, signed October 8, 1672, prevented Sobieski from
continuing the war, and he returned indignantly to his camp at Lowicz.
Before the end of the year, the king found it necessary to adopt
conciliatory measures, and Sobieski, and other nobles who had been
outlawed with him, were restored to civil rights and the enjoyment of
their property. At the Diet held in February, 1673, he inveighed against
the scandalous treaty of Boudchaz, which, in truth, was void, being
concluded without the sanction of that body, and it was resolved to
renounce the treaty, and renew the war. Eighty thousand Turks were
stationed in a fortified camp at Choczim, to overawe the newly-conquered
provinces. November 12, 1673, Sobieski stormed their camp. Observing
that the infantry wavered, he dismounted his own regiment of dragoons,
and led them to the ramparts, which they were the first to scale. The
infantry rushed forward to support their general; the entrenchments were
won, and the Turks routed with great slaughter, and entirely
disorganized. This victory was disgraced by the massacre of a great
number of prisoners in cold blood. Soon after it the death of Michael
relieved Poland from the burden of a weak king, and the Interrex stopped
the victorious general’s progress, by requiring his attendance in
Poland.
The diet of election commenced its sittings May 1, 1674. As before,
there were a number of foreign candidates, but none who commanded a
decisive majority among the electors; and at last the choice of the
assembly fell on Sobieski, who, whatever his secret wishes or intrigues
may have been, had never openly pretended to the crown. That choice was
received with general rejoicing. The new king’s first care was to follow
up the blow struck at Choczim, and wrest the Ukraine from Turkey. During
this and the two following years, that unhappy country was again the
scene of bloodshed and rapine. There is little in the history of the war
to claim our attention. It was concluded at the memorable leaguer of
Zurawno, where, with a policy somewhat similar to that which he pursued
at Podahiecz, he advanced to meet an invading army outnumbering his own
six to one. Fortunately the Turkish government stood in need of peace,
and their general had authority and orders to put an end to the war in
the best manner he could; and after besieging the Polish camp for five
weeks, he consented to a treaty, signed October 29, 1676, the terms of
which were far more favourable than could have been anticipated by
Poland. Two-thirds of the Ukraine, and part of Podolia, were restored to
her, and the tribute imposed by the treaty of Boudchaz was given up.
These terms were ratified by the Porte, and seven years of peace
succeeded to almost constant war.
This interval of rest from arms is not important in the history of
Sobieski’s life. As he had anticipated, he found the throne no easy
seat; and his criminal weakness in admitting the queen, who never
scrupled at disturbing public affairs to gratify her own passions or
prejudices, to an undue weight in his counsels, lessens our sympathy
with his vexations, and casts a shade over his brilliant qualities. In
1680, greater matters began to be moved. Ever watchful of the Porte,
Sobieski knew through his spies that Mahomet was preparing for war with
Austria, as soon as the existing truce expired; and he conceived the
project of uniting the money of Rome, and the arms of Austria and
Venice, with those of Poland; and, by thus distracting the power of
Turkey, to regain more easily the much coveted fortress of Kaminiec, and
the remnant of Podolia. He had, indeed, sworn solemnly to maintain a
treaty, which the Turks religiously observed; but the Pope was ready to
absolve him from the oath, and this the morality of the age thought
quite sufficient. For a time his views were frustrated, both at home and
abroad; but as the political storm which was collecting grew darker and
darker, both Pope and Emperor entered more heartily into the scheme, and
an offensive and defensive treaty was concluded between Austria and
Poland.