was in writing his "Canterbury Tales," on which his fame chiefly
rests; written not for money, but because he was impelled to write
it, as all true poets write and all great artists paint,--ex
animo,--because they cannot help writing and painting, as the
solace and enjoyment of life. For his day these tales were a great
work of art, evidently written with great care. They are also
stamped with the inspiration of genius, although the stories
themselves were copied in the main from the French and Italian,
even as the French and Italians copied from Oriental writers, whose
works were translated into the languages of Europe so that the
romances of the Middle Ages were originally produced in India,
Persia, and Arabia. Absolute creation is very rare. Even
Shakspeare, the most original of poets, was indebted to French and
Italian writers for the plots of many of his best dramas. Who can
tell the remote sources of human invention; who knows the then
popular songs which Homer probably incorporated in his epics; who
can trace the fountains of those streams which have fertilized the
literary world?--and hence, how shallow the criticism which would
detract from literary genius because it is indebted, more or less,
to the men who have lived ages ago. It is the way of putting
things which constitutes the merit of men of genius. What has
Voltaire or Hume or Froude told the world, essentially, that it did
not know before? Read, for instance, half-a-dozen historians on
Joan of Arc: they all relate substantially the same facts. Genius
and originality are seen in the reflections and deductions and
grand sentiments prompted by the narrative. Let half-a-dozen
distinguished and learned theologians write sermons on Abraham or
Moses or David: they will all be different, yet the main facts will
be common to all.
The "Canterbury Tales" are great creations, from the humor, the
wit, the naturalness, the vividness of description, and the beauty
of the sentiments displayed in them, although sullied by occasional
vulgarities and impurities, which, however, in all their coarseness
do not corrupt the mind. Byron complained of their coarseness, but
Byron's poetry is far more demoralizing. The age was coarse, not
the mind of the author. And after five hundred years, with all the
obscurity of language and obsolete modes of spelling, they still
give pleasure to the true lovers of poetry when they have once
mastered the language, which is not, after all, very difficult. It
is true that most people prefer to read the great masters of
poetry, in later times; but the "Canterbury Tales" are interesting
and instructive to those who study the history of language and
literature. They are links in the civilization of England. They
paint the age more vividly and accurately than any known history.
The men and women of the fourteenth century, of all ranks, stand
out to us in fresh and living colors. We see them in their dress,
their feasts, their dwellings, their language, their habits, and
their manners. Amid all the changes in human thought and in social
institutions the characters appeal to our common humanity,
essentially the same under all human conditions. The men and women
of the fourteenth century love and hate, eat and drink, laugh and
talk, as they do in the nineteenth. They delight, as we do, in the
varieties of dress, of parade, and luxurious feasts. Although the
form of these has changed, they are alive to the same sentiments
which move us. They like fun and jokes and amusement as much as
we. They abhor the same class of defects which disgust us,--
hypocrisies, shams, lies. The inner circle of their friendship is
the same as ours to-day, based on sincerity and admiration. There
is the same infinite variety in character, and yet the same
uniformity. The human heart beats to the same sentiments that it
does under all civilizations and conditions of life. No people can
live without friendship and sympathy and love; and these are
ultimate sentiments of the soul, which are as eternal as the ideas
of Plato. Why do the Psalms of David. written for an Oriental
people four thousand years ago, excite the same emotions in the
minds of the people of England or France or America that they did
among the Jews? It is because they appeal to our common humanity,
which never changes,--the same to-day as it was in the beginning,
and will be to the end. It is only form and fashion which change;
men remain the same. The men and women of the Bible talked nearly
the same as we do, and seem to have had as great light on the
primal principles of wisdom and truth and virtue. Who can improve
on the sagacity and worldly wisdom of the Proverbs of Solomon?
They have a perennial freshness, and appeal to universal
experience. It is this fidelity to nature which is one of the
great charms of Shakspeare. We quote his brief sayings as
expressive of what we feel and know of the certitudes of our moral
and intellectual life. They will last forever, under every variety
of government, of social institutions, of races, and of languages.
And they will last because these every-day sentiments are put in
such pithy, compressed, unique, and novel form, like the Proverbs
of Solomon or the sayings of Epictetus. All nations and ages alike
recognize the moral wisdom in the sayings of those immortal sages
whose writings have delighted and enlightened the world, because
they appeal to consciousness or experience.
Now it must be confessed that the Poetry of Chaucer does not abound
in the moral wisdom and spiritual insight and profound reflections
on the great mysteries of human life which stand out so
conspicuously in the writings of Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, Goethe,
and other first-class poets. He does not describe the inner life,
but the outward habits and condition of the people of his times.
He is not serious enough, nor learned enough, to enter upon the
discussion of those high themes which agitated the schools and
universities, as Dante did one hundred years before. He tells us
how monks and friars lived, not how they dreamed and speculated.
Nor are his sarcasms scorching and bitter, but rather humorous and
laughable. He shows himself to be a genial and loving companion,
not an austere teacher of disagreeable truths. He is not solemn
and intense, like Dante; he does not give wings to his fancy, like
Spenser; he has not the divine insight of Shakspeare; he is not
learned, like Milton; he is not sarcastic, like Pope; he does not
rouse the passions, like Byron; he is not meditative, like
Wordsworth,--but he paints nature with great accuracy and delicacy,
as also the men and women of his age, as they appeared in their
outward life. He describes the passion of love with great
tenderness and simplicity. In all his poems, love is his greatest
theme,--which he bases, not on physical charms, but the moral
beauty of the soul. In his earlier life he does not seem to have
done full justice to women, whom he ridicules, but does not
despise; in whom he indeed sees the graces of chivalry, but not the
intellectual attraction of cultivated life. But later in life,
when his experiences are broader and more profound, he makes amends
for his former mistakes. In his "Legend of Good Women," which he
wrote at the command of Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II., he
eulogizes the sex and paints the most exalted sentiments of the
heart. He not only had great vividness in the description of his
characters, but doubtless great dramatic talent, which his age did
not call out. His descriptions of nature are very fresh and
beautiful, indicating a great love of nature,--flowers, trees,
birds, lawns, gardens, waterfalls, falcons, dogs, horses, with whom
he almost talked. He had a great sense of the ridiculous; hence
his humor and fun and droll descriptions, which will ever interest
because they are so fresh and vivid. And as a poet he continually
improved as he advanced in life. His last works are his best,
showing the care and labor he bestowed, as well as his fidelity to
nature. I am amazed, considering his time, that he was so great an
artist without having a knowledge of the principles of art as
taught by the great masters of composition.
But, as has been already said, his distinguishing excellence is
vivid and natural description of the life and habits, not the
opinions, of the people of the fourteenth century, described
without exaggeration or effort for effect. He paints his age as
Moliere paints the times of Louis XIV., and Homer the heroic
periods of Grecian history. This fidelity to nature and
inexhaustible humor and living freshness and perpetual variety are
the eternal charms of the "Canterbury Tales." They bring before
the eye the varied professions and trades and habits and customs of
the fourteenth century. We see how our ancestors dressed and
talked and ate; what pleasures delighted them, what animosities
moved them, what sentiments elevated them, and what follies made
them ridiculous. The same naturalness and humor which marked "Don
Quixote" and the "Decameron" also are seen in the "Canterbury
Tales." Chaucer freed himself from all the affectations and
extravagances and artificiality which characterized the poetry of
the Middle Ages. With him began a new style in writing. He and
Wyclif are the creators of English literature. They did not create
a language, but they formed and polished it.
The various persons who figure in the "Canterbury Tales" are too
well known for me to enlarge upon. Who can add anything to the
Prologue in which Chaucer himself describes the varied characters
and habits and appearance of the pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas
Becket at Canterbury? There are thirty of these pilgrims including
the poet himself, embracing nearly all the professions and trades
then known, except the higher dignitaries of Church and State, who
are not supposed to mix freely in ordinary intercourse, and whom it
would be unwise to paint in their marked peculiarities. The most
prominent person, as to social standing, is probably the knight.
He is not a nobleman, but he has fought in many battles, and has
travelled extensively. His cassock is soiled, and his horse is
strong but not gay,--a very respectable man, courteous and gallant,
a soldier corresponding to a modern colonel or captain. His son,
the esquire, is a youth of twenty, with curled locks and
embroidered dress, shining in various colors like the flowers of
May, gay as a bird, active as a deer, and gentle as a maiden. The
yeoman who attends them both is clad in green like a forester, with
arrows and feathers, bearing the heavy sword and buckler of his
master. The prioress is another respectable person, coy and
simple, with dainty fingers, small mouth, and clean attire,--a
refined sort of a woman for that age, ornamented with corals and
brooch, so stately as to be held in reverence, yet so sentimental
as to weep for a mouse caught in a trap: all characteristic of a
respectable, kind-hearted lady who has lived in seclusion. A monk,
of course, in the fourteenth century was everywhere to be seen; and
a monk we have among the pilgrims, riding a "dainty" horse,
accompanied with greyhounds, loving fur trimmings on his
Benedictine habit and a fat swan to roast. The friar, too, we
see,--a mendicant, yet merry and full of dalliances, beloved by the
common women, to whom he gave easy absolution; a jolly vagabond,
who knew all the taverns, and who carried on his portly person pins
and songs and relics to sell or to give away. And there was the
merchant, with forked beard and Flemish beaver hat and neatly
clasped boots, bragging of his gains and selling French crowns, but
on the whole a worthy man. The Oxford clerk or scholar is one of
the company, silent and sententious, as lean as the horse on which
he rode, with threadbare coat, and books of Aristotle and his
philosophy which he valued more than gold, of which indeed he could
boast but little,--a man anxious to learn, and still more to teach.
The sergeant of the law is another prominent figure, wary and wise,
discreet and dignified, bustling and busy, yet not so busy as he
seemed to be, wearing a coat of divers colors, and riding very
badly. A franklin, or country gentleman, mixes with the company,
with a white beard and red complexion; one of Epicurus's own sons,
who held that ale and wheaten bread and fish and dainty flesh,
partridge fat, were pure felicity; evidently a man given to
hospitality,--
"His table dormant in his hall alway
Stood ready covered all the longe day."
He was a sheriff, also, to enforce the law, and to be present at
all the county sessions. The doctor, of course, could not be left
out of the company,--a man who knew the cause of every malady,
versed in magic as well as physic, and grounded also in astronomy;
who held that gold is the best of cordials, and knew how to keep
what he gained; not luxurious in his diet, but careful what he ate
and drank. The village miller is not forgotten in this motley
crowd,--rough, brutal, drunken, big and brawn, with a red beard and
a wart on his nose, and a mouth as wide as a furnace, a reveller
and a jangler, accustomed to take toll thrice, and given to all the
sins that then abounded. He is the most repulsive figure in the
crowd, both vulgar and wicked. In contrast with him is the reve,
or steward, of a lordly house,--a slender, choleric man, feared by
servants and gamekeepers, yet in favor with his lord, since he
always had money to lend, although it belonged to his master; an
adroit agent and manager, who so complicated his accounts that no
auditor could unravel them or any person bring him in arrears. He
rode a fine dappled-gray stallion, wore a long blue overcoat, and
carried a rusty sword,--evidently a proud and prosperous man. With
a monk and friar, the picture would be incomplete without a
pardoner, or seller of indulgences, with yellow hair and smooth
face, loaded with a pillow-case of relics and pieces of the true
cross, of which there were probably cartloads in every country in
Europe, and of which there was an inexhaustible supply. This sleek
and gentle pedler of indulgences rode side by side with a repulsive
officer of the Church, with a fiery red face, of whom children were
afraid, fond of garlic and onions and strong wine, and speaking
only Latin law-terms when he was drunk, but withal a good fellow,
abating his lewdness and drunkenness. In contrast with the
pardoner and "sompnour" we see the poor parson, full of goodness,
charity, and love,--a true shepherd and no mercenary, who waited
upon no pomp and sought no worldly gains, happy only in the virtues
which he both taught and lived. Some think that Chaucer had in
view the learned Wyclif when he described the most interesting
character of the whole group. With him was a ploughman, his
brother, as good and pious as he, living in peace with all the
world, paying tithes cheerfully, laborious and conscientious, the
forerunner of the Puritan yeoman.
Of this motley company of pilgrims, I have already spoken of the
prioress,--a woman of high position. In contrast with her is the
wife of Bath, who has travelled extensively, even to Jerusalem and
Rome; charitable, kind-hearted, jolly, and talkative, but bold and
masculine and coarse, with a red face and red stockings, and a hat
as big as a shield, and sharp spurs on her feet, indicating that
she sat on her ambler like a man.
There are other characters which I cannot stop to mention,--the
sailor, browned by the seas and sun, and full of stolen Bordeaux
wine; the haberdasher; the carpenter; the weaver; the dyer; the
tapestry-worker; the cook, to boil the chickens and the marrow-
bones, and bake the pies and tarts,--mostly people from the middle
and lower ranks of society, whose clothes are gaudy, manners rough,
and language coarse. But all classes and trades and professions
seem to be represented, except nobles, bishops, and abbots,--
dignitaries whom, perhaps, Chaucer is reluctant to describe and
caricature.
To beguile the time on the journey to Canterbury, all these various
pilgrims are required to tell some story peculiar to their separate
walks of life; and it is these stories which afford the best
description we have of the manners and customs of the fourteenth
century, as well as of its leading sentiments and ideas.
The knight was required to tell his story first, and it naturally
was one of love and adventure. Although the scene of it was laid
in ancient Greece, it delineates the institution of chivalry and
the manners and sentiments it produced. No writer of that age,
except perhaps Froissart, paints the connection of chivalry with
the graces of the soul and the moral beauty which poetry associates
with the female sex as Chaucer does. The aristocratic woman of
chivalry, while delighting in martial sports, and hence masculine
and haughty, is also condescending, tender, and gracious. The
heroic and dignified self-respect with which chivalry invested
woman exalted the passion of love. Allied with reverence for woman
was loyalty to the prince. The rough warrior again becomes a
gentleman, and has access to the best society. Whatever may have
been the degrees of rank, the haughtiest nobleman associated with
the penniless knight, if only he were a gentleman and well born, on
terms of social equality, since chivalry, while it created
distinctions, also levelled those which wealth and power naturally
created among the higher class. Yet chivalry did not exalt woman
outside of noble ranks. The plebeian woman neither has the graces
of the high-born lady, nor does she excite that reverence for the
sex which marked her condition in the feudal castle. "Tournaments
and courts of love were not framed for village churls, but for
high-born dames and mighty earls."
Chaucer in his description of women in ordinary life does not seem
to have a very high regard for them. They are weak or coarse or
sensual, though attentive to their domestic duties, and generally
virtuous. An exception is made of Virginia, in the doctor's tale,
who is represented as beautiful and modest, radiant in simplicity,
discreet and true. But the wife of Bath is disgusting from her
coarse talk and coarser manners. Her tale is to show what a woman
likes best, which, according to her, is to bear rule over her
husband and household. The prioress is conventional and weak,
aping courtly manners. The wife of the host of the Tabard inn is a
vixen and shrew, who calls her husband a milk-sop, and is so
formidable with both her tongue and her hands that he is glad to
make his escape from her whenever he can. The pretty wife of the
carpenter, gentle and slender, with her white apron and open dress,
is anything but intellectual,--a mere sensual beauty. Most of
these women are innocent of toothbrushes, and give and receive
thrashings, and sing songs without a fastidious taste, and beat
their servants and nag their husbands. But they are good cooks,
and understand the arts of brewing and baking and roasting and
preserving and pickling, as well as of spinning and knitting and
embroidering. They are supreme in their households; they keep the
keys and lock up the wine. They are gossiping, and love to receive
their female visitors. They do not do much shopping, for shops
were very primitive, with but few things to sell. Their knowledge
is very limited, and confined to domestic matters. They are on the
whole modest, but are the victims of friars and pedlers. They have
more liberty than we should naturally suppose, but have not yet
learned to discriminate between duties and rights. There are few
disputed questions between them and their husbands, but the duty of
obedience seems to have been recognized. But if oppressed, they
always are free with their tongues; they give good advice, and do
not spare reproaches in language which in our times we should not
call particularly choice. They are all fond of dress, and wear gay
colors, without much regard to artistic effect.
In regard to the sports and amusements of the people, we learn much
from Chaucer. In one sense the England of his day was merry; that
is, the people were noisy and rough in their enjoyments. There was
frequent ringing of the bells; there were the horn of the huntsman
and the excitements of the chase; there was boisterous mirth in the
village ale-house; there were frequent holidays, and dances around
May-poles covered with ribbons and flowers and flags; there were
wandering minstrels and jesters and jugglers, and cock-fightings
and foot-ball and games at archery; there were wrestling matches
and morris-dancing and bear-baiting. But the exhilaration of the
people was abnormal, like the merriment of negroes on a Southern
plantation,--a sort of rebound from misery and burdens, which found
a vent in noise and practical jokes when the ordinary restraint was
removed. The uproarious joy was a sort of defiance of the semi-
slavery to which workmen were doomed; for when they could be
impressed by the king's architect and paid whatever he chose to
give them, there could not have been much real contentment, which
is generally placid and calm. There is one thing in which all
classes delighted in the fourteenth century, and that was a garden,
in which flowers bloomed,--things of beauty which were as highly
valued as the useful. Moreover, there was a zest in rural sports
now seldom seen, especially among the upper classes who could
afford to hunt and fish. There was no excitement more delightful
to gentlemen and ladies than that of hawking, and it infinitely
surpassed in interest any rural sport whatever in our day, under
any circumstances. Hawks trained to do the work of fowling-pieces
were therefore greater pets than any dogs that now are the company
of sportsmen. A lady without a falcon on her wrist, when mounted
on her richly caparisoned steed for a morning's sport, was very
rare indeed.
An instructive feature of the "Canterbury Tales" is the view which
Chaucer gives us of the food and houses and dresses of the people.
"In the Nonne's Prestes' Tale we see the cottage and manner of life
of a poor widow." She has three daughters, three pigs, three oxen,
and a sheep. Her house had only two rooms,--an eating-room, which
also served for a kitchen and sitting-room, and a bower or
bedchamber,--both without a chimney, with holes pierced to let in
the light. The table was a board put upon trestles, to be removed
when the meal of black bread and milk, and perchance an egg with
bacon, was over. The three slept without sheets or blankets on a
rude bed, covered only with their ordinary day-clothes. Their
kitchen utensils were a brass pot or two for boiling, a few wooden
platters, an iron candlestick, and a knife or two; while the
furniture was composed of two or three chairs and stools, with a
frame in the wall, with shelves, for clothes and utensils. The
manciple and the cook of the company seem to indicate that living
among the well-to-do classes was a very generous and a very serious
part of life, on which a high estimate was placed, since food in
any variety, though plentiful at times, was not always to be had,
and therefore precarious. "Guests at table were paired, and ate,
every pair, out of the same plate or off the same trencher." But
the bill of fare at a franklin's feast would be deemed anything but
poor, even in our times,--"bacon and pea-soup, oysters, fish,
stewed beef, chickens, capons, roast goose, pig, veal, lamb, kid,
pigeon, with custard, apples and pears, cheese and spiced cakes."
All these with abundance of wine and ale.
The "Canterbury Tales" remind us of the vast preponderance of the
country over town and city life. Chaucer, like Shakspeare, revels
in the simple glories of nature, which he describes like a man
feeling it to be a joy to be near to "Mother Earth," with her rich
bounties. The birds that usher in the day, the flowers which
beautify the lawn, the green hills and vales, with ever-changing
hues like the clouds and the skies, yet fruitful in wheat and
grass; the domestic animals, so mute and patient, the bracing air
of approaching winter, the genial breezes of the spring,--of all
these does the poet sing with charming simplicity and grace, yea,
in melodious numbers; for nothing is more marvellous than the music
and rhythm of his lines, although they are not enriched with
learned allusions or much moral wisdom, and do not march in the
stately and majestic measure of Shakspeare or of Milton.