Of all manner of minstrales,
And gestours that tellen tales
Both of weeping and of game.
Just such a gestour, or narrative poet, was Chaucer himself; for, as
Warton has remarked, he excelled alike in the pathetic and the gay, and,
if he was more admirable in one than in the other, his "tales of
weeping" were superior to his "tales of game." None of our poets, except
Shakespeare, can compete with him in versatility of genius. His numerous
characters are conceived with equal truth and distinctness; his dialogue
is lively and natural; his humour is sometimes broad, sometimes subtle,
and always racy; his tenderness is unrivalled in its mingled depth,
simplicity and refinement; his descriptions, whether serious or comic,
have never been surpassed in ease and vividness. His pre-eminence
appears the more conspicuous when we contrast his living strains with
the feeble diffuse monotony of his successors and predecessors. He may
be compared, says Thomas Warton, to a premature summer's day in an
English spring. The autobiographical passages in his works afford a
glimpse of the varied tastes and pursuits which rendered him one of the
most comprehensive writers in the world. His keen observation of mankind
was blended with the plodding of a student. He tells us that he lived
the life of a hermit, and was entirely ignorant of what was passing
among the neighbours who "dwelt almost at his door." His custom when the
duties of the day were over was to withdraw to his house, and sit down
"as dumb as any stone" to his books, till he was "dazed" with reading.
His love of nature could alone compete in intensity with his love of
literature. The single thing which had power to entice him from the
studies he held "in reverence" was the singing of birds and the blooming
of flowers. The month of May had a peculiar fascination for him. "Then,"
he exclaims, "farewell my book," and transported by the opening beauties
of the year he gave himself up to the exhilarating effects of renovated
nature. The "flower of flowers," in his eyes, was the daisy, and there
was never a morning that he was not out at dawn in the meadows, kneeling
on the "soft, sweet grass," and watching his little favourite unclose
its petals to the sun. In the evening he returned to see the daisies "go
to rest," and no sooner were they shut up than he hastened home to bed,
that he might be awake in time to witness the renewal of the scene. The
sight was to him so "blissful" that it "softened all his sorrow," nor
did the commonness of the occurrence abate the charm. He protests that
he still feels within him the fire which impelled him to rise with glad
devotion before break of day that he might behold the resurrection of
his cherished flower, and do it reverence; for the friendly daisy was--
Ever alike fair and fresh of hue,
And I love it, and ever alike new,
And ever shall till that mine hearte die.
These traits present a charming picture of the man, and they are
enhanced by the modesty which accompanied his greatness. He always
speaks of his writings with unaffected humility, as those of a person
who from taste was a diligent cultivator of poetry without possessing
the faculty to become a worthy poet.
The House of Fame cannot be ranked with Chaucer's best productions. The
incidents are supposed to pass in a dream, which was his ordinary plan
for avoiding the infringement of probability when he exchanged
terrestrial realities for the visions of fancy. He repeatedly in his
works does homage to the happy influence of love. He maintained that it
was the parent of the choicest qualities among mankind, though he
sometimes adulterates his loftier sentiments by intermingling voluptuous
passion with the pure affections of the heart,--a defect which was usual
with the mediaeval "gestours." He reverts in the House of Fame to his
favourite theme, and the first book is taken up with a description of
the temple of Venus. The entire edifice was of glass that was radiant
with paintings representing subjects from Ovid and Virgil. Chaucer
flourished in the finest period of Gothic architecture, when the
"storied windows richly dight" were the delight of the age, and his
detailed enumeration of the pictured incidents were not, to his
contemporaries, the dry catalogue they may appear to us. After examining
the marvellous gallery, he walks out of the building to seek for some
one to inform him in what country he may be. He finds that the
surrounding district is a desert as far as the eye can reach, without
house, tree, herbage, or living creature, till gazing upwards he beholds
an eagle aloft in the sky.
It was of gold, and shone so bright
That never saw men such a sight,
But if the heaven had ywon
All new of God another sun.
The book concludes with the announcement that the gorgeous eagle began
somewhat to descend, and this is followed in the second book by the bird
catching sight of Chaucer, and stooping upon him with the rapidity of
lightning. In an instant it catches him up in its claws, and "as lightly
as if he was a lark" soars with him into the clouds. He swoons with
fright, and is restored to consciousness by the eagle calling him by
name, and rebuking him for his fears. Having calmed him, the bird
informs him why he has been sent to fetch him, and bear him aloft into
the skies. Chaucer more than once confesses that he was not framed to
win affection. He says he did "not dare to love for his unlikeliness,"
and that he might "go in the dance" with those whom it had not been
Cupid's pleasure to prosper. Yet his quick and glowing sympathies had
led him to employ his genius in celebrating a blessing of which he had
tasted so sparingly, and he is now told that his disinterested service
to Venus and Cupid, in devoting the hours of night to composing poems on
the histories of lovers till his head aches, has attracted the notice of
Jupiter, who intends to reward him by admitting him to a view of the
palace of Fame. The eagle continues rising upwards with his burthen, and
expounds to Chaucer as they go the situation of the building, and the
means by which everything said and done on earth is known in the distant
sanctuary of the goddess. Arrived there, the winged messenger of Jupiter
sets the poet down, and bidding him farewell, expresses a hope that the
God of heaven will send him grace to learn some good from the scenes
which are about to be unveiled to him. The third book contains the
account of the House of Fame, and the House of Rumour, and despite the
previous announcement of the extraordinary disclosures which await him,
Chaucer has copied several of his leading ideas from Ovid and Virgil. In
the House of Fame he witnesses the caprice with which the goddess
dispenses reputation and disgrace; and in the House of Rumour he learns
that nothing can exceed the lying and deception which are practised by
mercenary ecclesiastics for the sake of lucre. His honest nature and
penetrating understanding repudiated the impostures of the Romish
church, and it was the main lesson which he seemed to wish to inculcate
in his poem.
It is stated by Pope in his prefatory advertisement that the House of
Fame had only supplied him with the "hint" for the Temple of Fame, that
"the design was entirely altered," and that "the descriptions, and most
of the particular thoughts, were his own." Bowles says that "Pope seems
unwilling to confess all he owes to Chaucer," and that his language
would "lead us to conclude that the chief merit of the arrangement and
imagination belonged to himself," whereas he is indebted to his
predecessor for "what is most poetical in the whole composition." Pope
cannot be accused of concealing his obligations to the House of Fame,
for he has fairly specified them in his notes, but he extremely
underrated the extent to which he borrowed from it when he fancied that
his general outline was different, and "most of the particular thoughts
entirely new." The fertility of invention ascribed to him by Roscoe, and
which he, in some degree, challenges for himself, is the last praise he
can claim. Every portion of the conception which has a touch of creative
power is found in Chaucer, together with the largest part of what is
good in the filling up. High authorities differ as to the effect of
Pope's additions and variations. Thomas Warton pronounced that "the
character of the poem was marred," and Bowles endorsed the criticism.
Johnson, on the other hand, asserts that "the original vision was never
denied to be much improved," and he had Joseph Warton, Roscoe, and
Campbell on his side. "Much of Chaucer's fantastic matter," says
Campbell, "has been judiciously omitted by Pope, who at the same time
has clothed the best ideas of the old poem in spirited numbers and
expression. Chaucer supposes himself to be snatched up to heaven by a
large eagle, who addresses him in the name of St. James and the Virgin
Mary. In Pope, the philosophy of fame comes with much more propriety
from the poet himself than from the beak of a talkative eagle."[5] The
introduction of the majestic eagle, its tremendous swoop when it pounces
on the lonely wanderer, the terror produced by the first stage of the
flight, and the animated dialogue in the second stage, is the most
striking portion of Chaucer's vision. The philosophic discourse of the
bird is not inconsistent with the wild imaginings of a dream. "Fantastic
matter" is here the most natural, and keeps up an illusion which
disappears in the formal composition of Pope. The advantage of modern
language and versification would have rendered it easy for a man less
gifted than him to improve on isolated passages, but the free fancy and
picturesqueness of Chaucer are wanting. The romance which constitutes
the truth and charm of the original dream is replaced by a scene of
frigid tameness; and Johnson, while declaring that every part of the
remodelled piece was splendid, is compelled to admit that it is turned
silently over and takes no hold on the mind. Dullness is a fatal
innovation which is poorly compensated by the greater polish of the
style, and harmony of the verse.
The Temple of Fame suffered from a cause which deteriorated much of
Pope's early poetry,--the notion that the noblest exercise of mind was
to magnify the ancients, and reproduce their ideas. The epic poem he
commenced at thirteen was naturally a school-boy's "slavish imitation"
of Greek and Latin authors.[6] A magnificent modern literature, marked
by the strongest lines of native vigour and masculine independence,
might have been expected, as he grew acquainted with it, to expand his
taste. This effect did not ensue. Led astray by the false conventional
canons of hacknied criticism, he clung to his early prejudices, and,
regardless of the splendid names which gave the lie to his theory, he
could say, at the age of thirty, in the preface to his works, "All that
is left us is to recommend our productions by the imitation of the
ancients." He told Spence that he should certainly have tried his hand
upon a second epic if he had not translated the Iliad, and this epic, in
its main characteristics, would not have differed much from his
translation. "I should have sat down to it," he said, "with this
advantage, that I had been nursed up in Homer and Virgil."[7] He once
intended to take the Corinthian Timoleon for his hero; and scene,
manners, personages, machinery, and sentiments would all have been as
Greek as they could be made by an imitator who had not entered deeply
into the spirit of classic writers and times. The everlasting interest
attached to the Iliad,--to a poem original and national, reflecting the
institutions, customs, feelings, and beliefs of its era,--would, he
thought, be extended to a modern duplicate, in which every one of these
qualities would have been reversed. "The less we copy the ancients,"
said Dr. Young, "we shall resemble them the more." The undue exaltation
of antiquity is complete in the Temple of Fame. No English king,
warrior, statesman, or patriot; no Christian martyr or evangeliser; no
poet or philosopher was deemed worthy to be ranked with the men of old.
The fictitious phantoms of heathen mythology, the heroes of decayed
empires, and the authors whose works are in dead languages, are the sole
immortals of Pope. Within the limits of his narrow world several of his
names appear to have been selected at random, and others are applauded
upon mistaken principles. He extols the virtue of Brutus, whose chief
glory was to have plotted the death of his preserver, patron, and
friend. Nations do not need, and virtue disowns the patriotism which
manifests itself in ingratitude, treachery, and murder. Pope's
admiration of tyrannicides even led him to celebrate Timoleon for
killing his brother, notwithstanding that Timoleon had forfeited his
claim to the panegyric by bitterly repenting his crime. To consecrate
political assassinations is to put the lives of rulers at the mercy of
any individual who conceives their policy to be mischievous. In short,
the portion of the Temple of Fame which was not directly borrowed from
Chaucer is merely a school-boy's theme in verse. The manner in which
Pope sets forth his worthies is not, for him, felicitous. His portraits
are nearly all faint and feeble sketches, without distinctness of
outline, individuality of feature, or brilliancy of colouring.
The contemporary literature of the middle ages could not compete with
the classical masterpieces, and Chaucer might have been justified in
peopling his House of Fame with ancients alone. But he does not believe
that genius and grandeur expired with the Romans. He has faith in
authors whose light has long since been dimmed or extinguished, and
confidently ranks such writers as Guido de Columpnis and Geoffrey of
Monmouth with the loftiest Greek and Latin names. The statues of
minstrel bards, musicians, and professors of magic adorn the exterior of
the palace; the wall within is crowded with heralds, and on their coats
are embroidered the armorial ensigns of all the persons who had been
famous in Europe, Asia, and Africa since chivalry began. Everywhere we
have the true reflection of the world in which Chaucer lived. His
narrative represents the fourteenth century, its actual pursuits and
genuine tastes, while the modernised version of Pope is stripped of
circumstantial realities, and exhibits only an impassive, artificial
pedantry.
The architecture of Pope's Temple and Chaucer's House presents the same
difference which distinguishes the respective poems throughout. The
House is in the magnificent Gothic of the time, with its multiplied
buttresses, niches, images, pinnacles, and traceried windows. The Temple
is a building which resembles nothing that ever existed. One face is
Grecian architecture, a second Eastern, a third Egyptian, and a fourth
Northern. Warton, in a note to the poem, says that Pope's "knowledge and
taste in the fine arts were unquestionable." Had he possessed the
crudest ideas of architecture he could not have affirmed that so
hideous, and indeed so impossible a combination, surpassed in beauty
whatever had been "beheld in proud Rome, or artful Greece, or elder
Babylon." The details are worthy of the general conception. The northern
side is said to be "of Gothic structure,"--not the glorious style which
commonly bears the name, a style for which Pope had no eyes, since with
Chaucer's description before him he ignores the mediaeval Gothic
altogether, but a structure lustrous as glass, and "overwrought with
ornaments of barbarous pride." "Huge colosses rise" upon its face, and
around the statues are "engraved Runic characters." This part of the
design appears to be an importation from the south. In the Egyptian
temples colossal figures are often attached to the piers, and at the
top, bottom, and sides of the piers there is a border of hieroglyphics.
With his statues Pope has conjoined "rude iron columns smeared with
blood" upon which stand the "horrid forms of Scythian heroes," and in a
note he gravely asserts that this medley "is agreeable to the
architecture of the northern part of the world." In the text he has
ventured upon the no less extraordinary statement that all the facades
were of "equal grace" or in other words that his barbarous and
chimerical northern side was of equal grace with the architecture of
Greece.
Johnson remarks that the learning and observation exhibited in the
Temple of Fame were uncommon for a youth of twenty-two. The authority
for Pope's age was an expression in his letter to Steele, Nov. 16, 1712,
where he says of his work, "I was so diffident of it as to let it lie by
me these two years just as you now see it;" and he adds in a note,
"hence it appears this poem was writ before the author was twenty-two
years old." With the discrepancy usual with him when the dates of his
compositions were in question, he stated on the title-page of the
various reprints of the Temple of Fame, that it was "written in the year
1711," the first day of which found him nearer twenty-three than
twenty-two. He did not publish it till 1715, and between his
twenty-fifth year when he showed it to Steele, and his twenty-seventh
year when it appeared, he subjected the poem to an extensive revision.
"I have read over your Temple of Fame twice," wrote Steele, Nov. 12,
1712, "and cannot find anything amiss of weight enough to call a fault,
but see in it a thousand, thousand beauties." "Since you say," Pope
replied, "you see nothing that may be called a fault, can you not think
it so that I have confined the attendance of guardian spirits to
heaven's favourites only?" He remedied the defect by getting rid of the
guardian spirits; and with his own testimony to the changes which the
plan underwent, the learning can only be considered as displaying the
compass of his knowledge when he was upwards of twenty-six. It is
surprising that Johnson should have thought that a very small amount of
classical mythology, and an acquaintance with the broad characteristics
of a few celebrities of antiquity, was an unusual acquisition even for a
man of twenty-two. Warton has pointed out that the narrow range of
Pope's reading was more remarkable than its extent. He has not alluded
to the Greek tragedians, and had probably never looked into a single
play of AEschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides. The observation of life,
which Johnson thought as precocious as the learning, is not of the
recondite kind, and belongs exclusively to Chaucer. In whatever light we
view the Temple of Fame it must be ranked at best with the secondary
class of Pope's productions, and the indifference with which it was
regarded up to Johnson's time has continued unabated up to ours. The
eight lines on the rocks of Zembla are fine, and there is an occasional
good line in other portions of the piece, but the poem seldom rises
above a cold, and somewhat languid elegance, and like the "pale suns"
which the author describes, it "rolls away unfelt."