In the chronology of our poetical collectors, GOWER takes precedence of
CHAUCER unjustly, for Chaucer had composed many of his works in the only
language which he has written before the elder claimed the honours of an
English vernacular poet, and, probably, then only emulating the success
of him who first set the glorious example. Nor less in the rank of
poetry must Chaucer hold the precedence. The first true English poet is
Chaucer; and notwithstanding that the rhythmical cadences of his unequal
metre are now lost for us, Chaucer is the first modeller of the heroic
couplet and other varieties of English versification. By the felicity of
his poetic character, Chaucer was not only the parent, but the master,
of those two schools of poetry which still divide its votaries by an
idle rivalry, and which have been traced, like our architecture, the one
to a Gothic origin, and the other to a classical model.
The personal history of CHAUCER, poetical and political, might have been
susceptible of considerable development had the poet himself written it,
for his biographers had no life to record. Speght, one of the early
editors, in the good method of that day, having set down a variety of
heads, including all that we might wish to know of any man, when this
methodiser of commonplaces came to fill up these well-planned divisions
concerning Chaucer, he could only disprove what was accepted, and supply
only what is uncertain. The "Life of Chaucer" by Godwin is a theoretical
life, and, as much as relates to Chaucer himself, a single fatal fact,
when all was finished, dispersed the baseless vision.[1] The whole
rested on the unauthenticated and contradictory statements of Leland,
who, writing a century after the times of Chaucer, hastily collected
unsubstantial traditions, and, what was less pardonable in Leland, fell
into some anachronisms.
This defective chronology in the life of the poet has involved the more
important subject of the chronology of his works. Posterity may be
little concerned in the dates of his birth and his burial--his unknown
parentage--his descriptive name--and, above all, his suspicious shield,
which the heralds opined must have been blazoned out of the
twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth propositions of the first book of
Euclid, from the poet's love of geometry, or, more obviously, from
having no coat-of-arms to show of "far more ancient antiquity." But
posterity would have been interested in the history of the genius of
Chaucer, who having long paced in a lengthened circuit of verbal version
and servile imitation, passed through some remarkable transitions,
kindling the cold ashes of translation into the fire of invention; from
cloudy allegory breaking forth into the sunshine of the loveliest
landscape-painting; and from the amatory romance gliding into that vein
of humour and satire which in his old age poured forth a new creation.
All this he might himself have told, or Gower might have revealed, had
the elder bard who lauded the lays and "ditties" of the youth of "the
Clerk of Venus" loved him as well in his old age. But elegant
literature, as distinguished from scholastic, was then without price or
reward. The few men of genius who have written at this early period are
only known to us by their writings, and probably were more known to
their contemporaries by the station which they may have occupied, than
by that which they maintain with posterity.
By royal patents and grants to the poet, we trace his early life at
court, his various appointments, and his honourable missions to Genoa
and to France--we must not add as confidently his visit to Petrarch.
Chaucer, in his political life, was bound up with the party of John of
Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and, by a congenial spirit, with the novel
doctrines of his friend, Dr. Wickliffe. The sister of his lady finally
became the third Duchess of Lancaster, and the family alliance
strengthened the political bond. How the Lancastrian exploded in the
poet, something we know, but little we comprehend; and those who have
attempted to lift the veil have not congratulated themselves on their
success. The poet himself has not entrusted his secret to posterity,
except, as is usual with poets, by eloquent lamentations. The exposition
of a political transaction is never without some valued results; and
though deprived of names and dates, we are not without some dim lights:
the palpable truth may not be obvious, but it may happen that we may
stumble on it.
Chaucer himself has stated, "In _my youth_ I was drawn in to be
assenting to certain _conjurations_ and other _great matters of ruling
of citizens_, and those things have been my _drawers in and exciters_ in
the matters _so painted and coloured_, that _first_ to me seemed then
_noble and glorious for all the people_."
Here the tale is plain, for this is the language of one who early in
life had engaged in some popular scheme, and these early indications of
the temper of the Wickliffite or the Lancastrian, or both, had
subsequently led to some more perilous attempts. They were, like all
reforms, something "noble and glorious for the people," and as sometimes
happens among reformers, what _at first_ appeared to promise so well,
ended in disappointment and "penance in a dark prison."
The locality of this patriotic act was the city of London. He alludes to
"free elections by great clamours of much people," for great disease of
misgovernment in the hands of "_torcentious citizens_." When the fatal
day arrived that he openly joined with a party for "the people," against
those citizens whom he has so awfully denounced, it is evident, though
we have no means to discriminate factions in an age of factions,[2]
that he and his "conjurors" discovered that "all the people" were not of
one mind. This votary or this victim of reform suddenly flings his
contempt at "the hatred of the mighty senators of London or of its
commonalty," and closes with a painful remembrance of "the janglings of
THE SHEEPY PEOPLE!" The style of Chaucer bears the stamp of passionate
emotions; words of dimension, or of poignant sarcasm. The "torcentious
citizens" is an awful bolt, and "the sheepy people" is sufficiently
picturesque.
In dismay the whole party took flight. Chaucer, in Zealand, exhausted
his means to supply the wants of his political associates, till he
himself found that even the partnership of common misery does not always
preserve men from ingratitude. Returning home, potent persecutors cast
him into a dungeon. Was the Duke of Lancaster absent, or the Duke of
Gloucester in power? Let us observe that in all these dark events the
loyalty of the poet is never impeached, for Chaucer enjoyed without
interruption the favour of both his sovereigns, Edward III. and Richard
II.; and we discover that once when dismissed from office, Richard
allowed him to serve by deputy, which was evidence that Chaucer had
never been dismissed by the king himself. The whole transaction,
whatever it was, was a political movement between two factions. Chaucer
indeed pleads that whatever he had done was under the control of others,
himself being but "the servant of his sovereign." At that period the
factions in the state were more potent than the monarch. In the
convulsive administration of a youthful prince, they who oppose the
court are not necessarily opposing the sovereign.
It was behind the bars of a gloomy window in the Tower, where "every
hour appeared to be a hundred winters," that Chaucer, recent from exile,
and sore from persecution, was reminded of a work popular in those days,
and which had been composed in a dungeon--"The Consolations of
Philosophy," by Boethius--and which he himself had formerly translated.
He composed his "TESTAMENT OF LOVE," substituting for the severity of an
abstract being the more genial inspiration of love itself. But the
fiction was a reality, and the griefs were deeper than the fancies. In
this chronicle of the heart the poet mourns over "the delicious hours he
was wont to enjoy," of his "richesse," and now of his destitution--the
vain regret of his abused confidence--the treachery of all that
"summer-brood" who never approach the lost friend in "the winter hour"
of an iron solitude. The poet energetically describes his condition;
there he sate "witless, thoughtful; and sightless, looking." This work
the poet has composed in prose; but in the leisure of a prison the
diction became more poetical in thoughts and in words than the language
at that time had yet attained to, and for those who read the black
letter it still retains its impressive eloquence.
But this apology which Chaucer has left of his conduct in this political
transaction has incurred a fatal censure. "Never," observes Mr.
Campbell, "was an obscure affair conveyed in a more obscure apology."
His political integrity has been freely suspected. Chaucer has even been
struck by the brilliant arrow of the Viscount de Chateaubriand.
"Courtisan, Lancastrien, Wickliffist, infidele a ses convictions,
traitre a son parti, tantot banni, tantot voyageur, tantot en faveur,
tantot en disgrace." No, thou eloquent Gaul! Chaucer never was out of
favour, however he may have been more than once dismissed from his
office; nor can we know whether the poet was ever "infidele a ses
convictions."
Obscure must ever remain the tale of justification in a political
transaction which terminated on the part of the apologist by revealing
"disclosures for the peace of the kingdom," denied by those whom they
implicated, though their truth was offered to be maintained by the
accuser, in the custom of the times, by single combat; and by
confessions which acknowledge errors of judgment, but not of intention;
and by penitence, which, if the patriot designed what was "glorious to
all the people," he should never have repented of.
This obscure apology conceals the agony of conflicting
emotions--indignation at ungrateful associates, and a base desertion of
ancient friends, who were plotting against him. Whether Chaucer was
desirous of burying in obscurity a story of torturous details, or one
too involved in confused motives for any man to tell with the precision
of a simple statement, we know of no evidence which can enable us to
decide with any certainty on an affair which no one pretends to
understand. Chaucer might have been the scapegoat of the sovereign, or
the champion of the people. We can rather decide on his calamity than
his conduct. Many are the causes which may dissolve the bonds of
faithless "conjurations;" and it is not always he who abandons a party
who is to be criminated by political tergiversation.
The circumstances of Chaucer's life had combined with his versatile
powers. He had mingled with the world's affairs both at home and abroad:
accomplished in manners, and intimately connected with a splendid court,
Chaucer was at once the philosopher who had surveyed mankind in their
widest sphere, the poet who haunted the solitudes of nature, and the
elegant courtier whose opulent tastes are often discovered in the
graceful pomp of his descriptions. It was no inferior combination of
observation and sympathy which could bring together into one company the
many-coloured conditions and professions of society, delineated with
pictorial force, and dramatised by poetic conception, reflecting
themselves in the tale which seemed most congruous to their humours. The
perfect identity of these assembled characters, after the lapse of near
five centuries, make us familiar with the domestic habits and modes of
thinking of a most interesting period in our country, not inspected by
the narrow details of the antiquarian microscope, but in the broad
mirror reflecting that truth or satire which alone could have
discriminated the passions, the pursuits, and the foibles of society.
Thus the painter of nature, who caught the glow of her skies and her
earth in his landscape, was also the miniature portrayer of human
likenesses. When Chaucer wrote, the classics of antiquity were
imperfectly known in this country--the Grecian muse had never reached
our shores; this was, probably, favourable to the native freedom of
Chaucer. The English poet might have lost his raciness by a cold
imitation of the Latin masters; among the Italians, Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio, Chaucer found only models to emulate or to surpass. Hence the
English bard indulged that more congenial abundance of thoughts and
images which owns no other rule than the pleasure it yields in the
profusion of nature and fancy. A great poet may not be the less Homeric
because he has never read Homer.
Nature in her distinct forms lies open before this poet-painter; his
creative eye pursued her through all her mutability, but in his details
he was a close copier. In his rural scenery there is a freshness in its
luxuriance; for his impressions were stamped by their locality. This
locality is so remarkable, that Pope had a notion, which he said no one
else had observed, that Chaucer always described real places to
compliment the owners of particular gardens and fine buildings. Let us
join him in his walks--
When that the misty vapour was agone,
And clear and fair was the morning,
The dews, like silver, shining
Upon the leaves.
The flowers sparkle in "their divers hues"--he sometimes counts their
colours--"white, blue, yellow, and red"--on their stalks, spreading
their leaves in breadth against the sun, gold-burned. His grass is "so
small, so thick, so fresh of hue." The poet goes by a river whose water
is "clear as beryl or crystal;" turning into "a little way" towards a
park in compass round, and by a small gate.
Whoso that would freely might gone (go)
Into this Park walled with green stone.
The owner of that park, probably, was startled when he came to "the
little way," and to "the small gate." This was either the park of some
great personage, or possibly Woodstock Park, where stood a stone lodge,
so long known by the name of "Chaucer's House," that in the days of
Elizabeth it was still described as such in the royal grant. If poets
have rarely built houses, at least their names have consecrated many.