The poetry of Chaucer; a guide to its study and appreciation

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THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

A GUIDE TO ITS STUDY AND
APPRECIATION

BY

ROBERT KILBURN ROOT

Professor of English in Princeton University

REVISED EDITION

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO

COPYRIGHT, 1922,

By Robert Kilburn Root

Copyright, 1906, by Robert Kilburn Root

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

T£be SRtotrsftie Jlrcss

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
fRlNTED IN THE U . S . A

PREFACE

DURING the last twenty years, the poetry of Chaucer
has been attaining an ever increasing popularity. Not
only in our colleges and universities, but among the
lovers of good literature at large, the discovery has
been made that the difficulty of Chaucer's language is
by no means so great as at first appears, and that what-
ever difficulty there may be is richly compensated by
the delights which his poetry has to offer. Meanwhile
the scholars of Europe and America have been busy
at the task of explaining what needs explanation, of
investigating the problems of Chaucer's sources, and
of determining the order in which his works were com-
posed. It is the purpose of the present volume to ren-
der accessible to readers of Chaucer the fruits of these
investigations, in so far as they conduce to a fuller
appreciation of the poet and his work. For the benefit
of those who wish to go more deeply into the subject,
rather copious bibliographical references are given in
the footnotes. Of Chaucer's biography we know little
that is really significant ; and that little has been fre-
quently retold. It has, therefore, seemed better to omit
any connected account of Chaucer's life, and to give in
the discussion of the individual poems such biographi-
cal details as serve to illuminate them.

From the very nature of his task, the author's obli-
gations are manifold. From Tyrwhitt down, there is
hardly a Chaucerian scholar by whose labors he has
not profited, as a glance at the footnotes will show.
To Professor Ten Brink, to Professor Lounsbury, to

vi PREFACE

Professor Skeat, and to Dr. Furnivall and his collabo-
rators in the work of the Chaucer Society, his debt is
particularly large. In making quotations and citations,
Skeat's Student's Chaucer has been used ; and the
order in which the several works of the poet are taken
up is, with one slight exception, that in which they are
there printed. This has seemed, on the whole, the most
convenient order ; but the reader may take the chap-
ters in any order he pleases. To my friends, Professor
Albert S. Cook of Yale University and Professor
Charles G. Osgood of Princeton University, I am
indebted for much valuable criticism.

E. K. R.

PBINCKTON UNIVERSITY
May 25, 1906.

PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION

IT is now fifteen years since this book was first published,
and these years have been extraordinarily fruitful of
Chaucerian study. Important contributions have been
made to our knowledge of Chaucer and of his relations
to the literature and prevalent ideas of the Middle Ages,
contributions which, it is pleasant to note, have been in
large measure the work of American scholars. To Profes-
sor Kittredge and Professor Lowes of Harvard and to
Professor Tatlock of Leland Stanford the debt of Chau-
cer-lovers is, and will remain, a large one. In some cases
this new knowledge has led to a considerable revision of
our earlier understanding of the essential purport of
Chaucer's poetry. This is particularly true of the work
of Chaucer's middle period — the House of Fame, Troi-
lus, the Legend of Good Women, the translation of Boe-
thius.

It was the original purpose of this book to render ac-
cessible to readers of Chaucer the fruits of scholarly
investigation in so far as they conduce to a fuller ap-
preciation of the poet and his work. If it is to continue
to render this service, a thorough revision is now neces-
sary. Such a revision is presented in the present volume.
Where the new information is so fundamental that it
essentially alters an earlier interpretation of the facts,
the passage concerned has been rewritten, and new pages
substituted for the old; where it is rather in the nature
of additional light, which clarifies but does not alter,
the new information is given in an appendix of 'Notes
and Revisions' at the end of the volume. Chapters VI

viii PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION

and VII, which deal with Troilus and the House of Fame,
have been rewritten in their entirety. In addition, the
pages numbered ix, x, 18, 40, 84, 85, 140-144, 167, 168,
184, 238-240, 291, 292 have been rewritten and substi-
tuted for the original pages. These changes have made
necessary a new index; but the pagination of the volume
has been so little disturbed that most references to the
original edition will apply also to this. More than one
quarter of the present volume is, therefore, new. It is
hoped that with these revisions the book may continue
to fill the place which has been accorded to it in the past.
With it and with Skeat's Student's Chaucer, or better
with Professor F. N. Robinson's edition soon to be pub-
lished in the Cambridge Poets Series, the student or the
general reader will have in his possession all that is essen-
tial to an understanding and appreciation of Chaucer's
poetry.

It is a pleasure to record my gratitude to my friend,
Professor Gordon Hall Gerould, for his help and counsel
in the preparation of this edition.

R. K. R.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY,
October, 1921.

WORKS

A CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY OP
CHAUCER'S LIFE AND WORKS

(The few significant facts of Chaucer's life given below rest on documen-
tary evidence, and may, therefore, be regarded as certain. The chronology
of his works is far from certain; but the dates here given may be regarded aa
approximately correct.)

LIFE

1340 Chaucer born in London.
His father, John Chaucer,
was a vintner, and was in
some way connected with
the court of Edward III.
(The date, 1340, is conjec-
tural.)

1357 Attached, as a page (?), to
the household of Elizabeth,
Duchess of Clarence.

1359 Serves in the English army
in France, and taken pris-
oner by the French.

1367 Granted a life pension for
his services as valet in the
king's household.

1372-73 First diplomatic mission
to Italy.

1374 Appointed Comptroller of
the customs and subsidy of
wools, skins, and leather for
the port of London. (We
know that in this year the
poet was already married.)
Leased a dwelling over the
gate of Aldgate in London.

1377 Diplomatic missions in
Flanders and France.

1378 Second journey to Italy in
the king's service.

1382 Appointed Comptroller of
the petty customs. (This
office he held in addition to
his earlier office in the cus-
toms.)

To this general period may be
assigned the Romaunt of the
Rose, and the ' balades, roundels,
virelayes,' referred to in the Pro-
logue to the Legend of Good Wo-

1369 The Book of the Duchest.

To the period from 1374 to 1379
may probably be assigned the
House of Fame, and the poems
later utilized as the Monk's Tale
and the Second Nun's Tale of
St. Cecilia.

In the six years from 1380 to
1385 we may place the transla-
tion of Boethius, Troilus and
Criseyde (not earlier than 1381),
the Parliament of Fowls (1382?)
and the story of Palamon and
Arcite, known as the Knight's
Tale, (shortly before 1385?).

A CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY

1385 Granted permission to exer-
cise his office as comptroller
through a permanent dep-
uty.

Appointed Justice of Peace
for the county of Kent.

1386 Member of Parliament for
Kent. Gives up his London
house (and resides at Green-
wich?). Deprived (by a hos-
tile faction at court?) of his
offices in the customs.

1387 Death of Chaucer's wife.

1389 Appointed Clerk of the
King's Works at Westmin-
ster.

1390 Clerk of the King's Works
at Windsor, and member of
a commission to repair the
banks of the Thames be-
tween Woolwich and Green-
wich.

1394 Granted an additional pen-
sion of 20 I. a year. (The
poet seems, however, to
have been in financial diffi-
culty.)

1399 On the accession of Henry
IV, Chaucer's pension again
increased. He leases a
house in Westminster.

1400 Chaucer's death.

1385-86 The Legend of Good Wo-
men.

Soon after 1386 were begun the
Canterbury Tales, on which the
poet probably worked intermit-
tently till his death. Groups D,
E, and F, which contain the
discussion of marriage, seem to
have been written later than
1393.

1391 Treatise on the Astrolabe.
1393 Envoy to Scogan.

1394-95 Revised form ('A' text)
of Prologue to Legend of
Good Women.

1396-97 Envoy to Bukton.
1399 To his Empty Purse.

CONTENTS

I. CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 1

II. CHAUCER 14

III. THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 45

IV. THE MINOR POEMS 67

V. BOETHIUS AND THE ASTROLABE . . . .80

VI. TROILUS AND CRISEYDE ... * • 87

VII. THE HOUSE OF FAME 128

VIII. THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN .... 136

IX. THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUP A ... 161

X. THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUP B . . .181

XI. THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUPS C AND D . 219

XII. THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUPS E, F, G, H, I . 263

APPENDIX. THE STUDY OF CHAUCEB . . . 291

NOTES AND REVISIONS . . • • 'y . . 294

INDEX . 301

THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

CHAPTER I
CHAUCER'S ENGLAND

IT is five hundred years and more since Geoffrey
Chaucer was ' nayled in his cheste,' and laid in what
is now known as the Poets' Corner of Westminster
Abbey. Many things have happened since that day :
a new half -world has been discovered ; mighty nations
have had their birth ; there have been wars and revolu-
tions ; the great world of science has been opened up,
changing deeply our thoughts and beliefs, altering rad-
ically the conditions of our industrial and social life ;
one poet greater than Chaucer has arisen to grace our
English tongue. Chaucer would have been intensely
interested in all these things, could he have known
them ; but for him they did not exist. If we are to
enter into the spirit of his poetry, we must forget for
the time being the present-day world, and all that has
happened in five hundred years, and live again in a
day long dead. We must, with William Morris, —

Forget six counties overhung with smoke,
Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke,
Forget the spreading of the hideous town ;
Think rather of the pack-horse on the down,
And dream of London, small, and white, and clean,
The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.

When this leap into the dark backward and abysm
of time has been accomplished, many of the comforts

2 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

and luxuries of modern life will be found missing:
houses are less comfortable ; traveling is a slow and
dangerous process ; there are no newspapers, no tele-
phones, no tea, coffee, or tobacco. Yet I fancy that
these things are not so indispensable as our modern
world thinks. For those of artistic tastes there is rich
compensation in the external beauty of the life around.
Nearly all the buildings of modern 'London which are
really works of art were standing in Chaucer's day ;
many buildings of equal beauty were standing then
which have since perished. In place of the dingy,
ugly, monotonous buildings which now line the streets
of London town, stood picturesque houses of half-tim-
ber, decorated in bright colors. The throngs of people
passing through the streets must have been a constant
source of interest and pleasure ; men did not then try
to efface themselves by sober suits of black or gray.
My lord passes by resplendent in bright colored silks
and velvets, his retainers clothed in their distinguish-
ing livery ; every trade has its peculiar costume. There
are processions and pageants, with banners and waving
plumes. Inside the houses one finds quaintly carved
furniture and splendid pictured tapestries. There is
a darker side to this picture, which we must also see
before we are done ; but on the surface it is a gay and
beautiful life that we have entered. This is indeed
* merry England.'

There are many intellectual interests as well. The
right of the people to govern themselves in Parliament
is being fought out. The English Church is trying to
limit the usurpations of the papal power ; Wiclif and
his poor preachers are sowing the seeds of the English
Reformation. English commerce is extending itself.
There is exciting news of the war with France.

Interesting from many varied aspects, the fourteenth

CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 3

century is of particular significance to the student of
literature and culture, because in it the movement of
the Renaissance first assumed definite form, and our
modern world began. But if the modern world had
begun to assert itself, the mediaeval world had by no
means passed away. Side by side they stood, the old
and the new, essentially hostile to each other, yet
blended and intermingled through the whole range of
society, often in most incongruous fashion. Because
of their coexistence it is easy to compare and contrast
them.

Any attempt at an inclusive definition of mediaeval-
ism and of the Renaissance is a perilous, perhaps an
impossible, undertaking; but it is not so difficult to
differentiate the two in their main characteristics and
tendencies, always remembering that we have to do not
so much with two periods of history as with two oppos-
ing attitudes of mind, two habits of thought, which
have always existed side by side, with now one, now the
other, in the ascendant. The fundamental distinction,
I think, lies in the fact that the mediaeval mind has its
gaze fixed primarily on the spiritual and abstract, that
of the Renaissance on the sensuous and concrete. ' Me-
diaevalism proclaims that the eternal things of the spirit
are alone worth while ; the Renaissance declares that
a man's life consists, if not in the abundance of the
things he possesses, at any rate in the abundance and
variety of the sensations he enjoys.' Though it is a char-
acteristic of the greatest minds that they belong to no
party, Dante and Shakespeare may be taken to repre-
sent, in their dominant tendencies, the two habits of
thought. In their power of poetic insight and obser-
vation the two poets are nearly equal ; but Dante,
following the natural bent of his spirit, portrayed the
world in terms of the abstract, through the language of

4 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

symbols ; his great poem is a vision, and the person-
ages of his drama are disembodied souls dwelling in a
realm of spirit ; while Shakespeare shows us men and
women as concrete individuals, living and moving in an
actual, material world.

As a direct result of this basic distinction, we pass
to another which is of almost equal significance. In its
dealings with society and with humanity in general,
the mediaeval tends towards communism, the Renais-
sance towards individualism ; for the individual is a
concrete fact, the community is an abstract ideal. To
the mediaeval mind, man is a member of a great spir-
itual family, the body of Christ, the Church catholic
and universal. His true happiness, temporal and eter-
nal, is inseparable from the welfare of humanity as a
whole. * For none of us liveth to himself, and no man
dieth to himself.' Thus Dante, in contrasting spiritual
and material benefits, explains that with material things
the larger the number who share in a benefit, the
smaller is the share of each ; while with spiritual bless-
ings, in particular the joys of Paradise, the larger the
number of souls who share, the greater is the portion
of each. To the mind of the Renaissance, then, bent 011
the sensuous and material, the individual man, his per-
sonal strivings and accomplishment, becomes the main
interest. We have the thirst for personal fame, as
exemplified in the vanity of a Petrarch, replacing the
anonymous zeal of the cathedral-builders. We have
the national tendency, the idea of patriotism, as opposed
to the mediaeval conception of a united Christendom,
a Holy Roman Empire. We have a splitting up of the
social body into small groups of individuals, but slightly
interested in one another's welfare. And as the con-
sciousness of the whole community begins to fade, art
and literature become limited in their appeal, no longer

CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 5

speaking to the whole people, but becoming the exclu-
sive possession of the educated favored classes, a tend-
ency which is clearly evident in Petrarch's scorn for
compositions in the vernacular.

In the realm of thought, a precisely similar develop-
ment takes place : the age of faith gives way to the age
of reason. * Faith is the evidence of things not seen,'
that is, of the invisible world, the spiritual. Reason,
of necessity, confines itself mainly to things which can
be seen and handled; in a word, to the sensuous and
material. Or, again, to relate this development to
that suggested in the preceding paragraph, faith, or
authority, rests on a communistic basis. A belief in the
benevolence of God, or in the immortality of the soul, is
based, apart from any supernatural revelation, on the
universality of man's instinct that these facts are so.
This universal instinct gains definiteness in the body
of dogma held and taught consistently by the Church,
an essentially communistic organization. According to
the mediaeval idea, the individual man has literally no
right to think for himself ; the right of private judg-
ment, which lies at the very foundation of Protestant-
ism, is nothing but a corollary of the individualism of
the Renaissance.

In the domain of religion and conduct this ' right
of private judgment ' has had a curious twofold devel-
opment. Among the more austere races of the north
it gave rise to the Protestant Reformation, and, car-
ried out to its logical conclusion, to that ' Protestantism
of the Protestant religion ' which we call Puritanism.
Protestantism is essentially the religion of the individ-
ual. This may be proved first of all by its tendency
to break up into sects ; it is in its very nature centri-
fugal. The Protestant, again, is largely concerned with
what he calls the salvation of his own soul, and in the

6 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

process of achieving this he feels no need of priestly
mediation ; he insists, rather, on his direct and personal
relation to the Deity. It is individualism in religion.
The Protestant proceeds to create for himself, and with
delightful inconsistency attempts to force upon oth-
ers, a moral code of his own, harsh and unlovely, of
which the Puritan observance of the Sabbath is a good
example. At the opposite extreme from Puritanism is
the other development of the Renaissance spirit, most
conspicuous among the more passionate peoples of the
south, in which men used their right of private judg-
ment to overthrow all religion and morality. Morality
conveniently divides itself into duty towards God and
duty towards one's neighbor. If one doubts the exist-
ence of God, he disposes easily of one half of his duty ;
if he exalts his individual well-being at the expense of
the common good of society, his duty towards his neigh-
bor troubles him but little. And so we find in the
Italian Renaissance a strong tendency towards irreligion
and immorality, which may express itself in the moral
laxity and religious indifference of a Boccaccio, or in the
diabolic malignity of a Caesar Borgia or a Catherine de
Medici.

If, now, we try to balance up the profit and loss to civ-
ilization and culture which have ensued on the triumph
of that Renaissance spirit, which is still dominant at
the present day, we shall find the account a complicated
one. To the heightened interest in material and sen-
suous things, and to the activity of the individual mind,
we owe, of course, the whole of our modern science ; to
the same causes we owe a great part of our noblest
literature and art, our Michael Angelo and our Shake-
speare. This is no mean debt. Yet we must remem-
ber that this very art which we prize is a possession of
only the few ; the ' plain man ' has no portion in it. Of

CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 7

what sort are the books and pictures which we produce
for him ? Art has been divorced from daily life. If we
have greater poems and finer pictures than the Middle
Ages knew, what of our carpets, our hangings, our fur-
niture, our buildings, the dishes from which we eat?
Then, too, we have to charge up against the Renais-
sance our complexity of life, our unsettled doubts, our
ambitions and discontents. And, lastly, there is the
hideous fact that our boasted civilization is largely
a civilization of materialism, of selfishness and legal-
ized greed. After studying the past and studying the
present, we must strive to see both the benefits and
the limitations which these two great world-tendencies
have to offer, and, holding narrowly to neither, must so
adjust and balance the two that we may attain to that
golden mean which shall usher in the golden world.

In the light of these distinctions between mediaevalism
and the Renaissance, it will be well to pass in hasty
review the great movements of the fourteenth century,
political, social, religious, and literary, in order to see
more clearly in what sort of a world Chaucer lived
and worked.

Politically, the most significant movement, in Eng-
land at least, is the trend towards national consciousness.
Henry II, on his accession to the throne of England
in 1154, controlled more than half of what is now
France. Normandy he inherited from the Conqueror,
Anjou from his father, Geoffrey; Aquitaine was his
through the right of Eleanor his queen. Normandy and
Anjou had been lost in the reign of King John (1199—
1216) ; but Aquitaine was still a possession of the
English crown when Edward III came to the throne
in 1327. The national tendency, asserting itself in
France, led the French king to the endeavor to bring
all Frenchmen under his own control; and this was

8 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

the ultimate cause of the Hundred Years' War, which
began in 1337. The long continued war served to
strengthen immeasurably in each country the bud-
ding instinct of patriotism. Men began to feel that
they were Englishmen or Frenchmen; and the idea
of a Holy Roman Empire faded gradually from their
thoughts.

The battle of Crecy (1346) and of Poitiers (1356)
had not only fanned the flame of patriotism, but, won
as they were by the archery of English yeomen, they
increased immensely the importance of the middle
classes, and hastened the fall of feudalism. With this
increased importance of the commoners went a corre-
sponding increase in the power of Parliament, which
reached its flood tide in the ' Good Parliament ' of 1376.
It is in this period that we first find clearly asserted
the right of Parliament to vote taxes, on which as a
corner-stone has since been built the edifice of English
liberty.

This democratic tendency in English politics is even
more plainly marked in the social and industrial de-
velopment of the fourteenth century. With the rapid
growth of commerce and manufacture, and the conse-
quently increased importance of the towns, there arose
a large and prosperous bourgeois class, which, being
as it was entirely without the pale of the feudal sys-
tem, hastened its disintegration. For a discontented
serf could become a freeman by establishing a legal
residence in one of the towns ; and the vassal of higher
station found himself overtopped in wealth, and conse-
quently in influence, by the prosperous burgher. The
emancipation of the laboring class from the bonds of
serfdom was furthered by the great plague which swept
over England, as over the rest of Europe, in 1348 and
1349. With half the population wiped out, the landown-

CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 9

ers found themselves with only half the former supply
of labor, and only half the demand for their products.
The price of labor rose, and the price of bread fell.
The old feudal obligation of the serf to labor a certain
number of days on his master's land had already, in
large measure, been commuted into a money rent, and
the laborers were not slow to take advantage of the
opportunity to demand higher wages for their labor.
The attempts to control the price of labor by legislation
had little effect save to irritate the laborers, an irrita-
tion which reached its climax in the peasants' revolt of
1381. This revolt, suppressed by the courage and good
judgment of the boy king, Richard II, though barren
of any direct and immediate results, exerted a lasting
influence on the temper of the lower classes, fostering
in them a spirit of independence which made them
no longer a negligible quantity in the life of the nation.
They ceased to be merely a part of the social organism,
and became, with their betters, individuals conscious of
their individuality.

The new-born spirit of nationality, which was per-
vading all of English life, found striking expression
in the relations of England with the Papacy. Eng-
land had been formerly, of all nations, most loyal in
its allegiance to the Pope ; but when in 1309 the seat
of the Papacy was removed to Avignon, and the holy
father himself became a creature of the French king,
loyalty to the Pope came into conflict with hatred of
France, and the new sentiment of national patriotism
proved the stronger. Though the popes of the ' Baby*
Ionian captivity ' seem not to have been wicked men,
they were, at any rate, weak men ; and the papal court
became a centre of luxury and vice. To support this
luxury it became necessary to sell the Church's pre-
ferment; and England, where the Church owned in

10 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

landed property alone more than one third of the soil
of the realm, and received in dues and offerings an
income amounting to twice the king's revenue, was
a particularly -rich field for papal simony. When for-
eigners, French and Italian, were preferred to the rich-
est livings in England, and proceeded to spend their
incomes abroad, the national pride, if not the national
conscience, was aroused ; and when a French pope, as
the last court of appeal in matters of the canon law,
set aside the decisions of English courts, the injury
to English pride was still deeper. In 1351 was passed
the Statute of Provisors, which aimed to stop the first
of these abuses, and two years later the Statute of
Prcemunire was directed against the second.

This anti-papal agitation, though purely political in
character, could not fail to shake also the religious
authority of the Church. A pope who was a French-
man, and therefore an enemy of England, could not
command the full religious loyalty of Englishmen,
especially when his court was notorious for its extrav-
agance and profligacy. Not unnaturally the corruption
at the head spread through the whole body ; and we
are unfortunately compelled to believe that the picture
of clerical avarice drawn by Chaucer and his contem-
poraries is but little exaggerated. Though the Church
has always taught that the unworthiness of the minis-
ter does not vitiate the efficacy of his spiritual minis-
trations, it was inevitable that even the untutored mind
should question the value of an absolution bought with
a price from a grasping and unscrupulous priest, and
that questioning this, it should question further. If
this was not enough, what must have been the conster-
nation of the devout when, in 1378, the great schism
of the west began, and Europe beheld two rival popes,
each hurling anathemas at the other and at the other's

CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 11

supporters ! Whichever pope you recognized, you
were excommunicated by the other ; and how was one
to tell ? England, of course, gave official recognition
to Urban VI, the Pope of Rome, while France recog-
nized Clement VII at Avignon ; but the prestige of
the papal name, and the authority of the Church as a
whole, received a crushing blow. The more worldly,
like Chaucer, laughed at the whole thing; the more
devout either bewailed impotently, like Gower and
Langland, the corruption they could not cure, or were
driven, like Wiclif, into an open revolt, which was to
be the precursor of the Protestant Reformation.

The corruption in the Church and its attendant
moral laxity led to corruption in the whole social body.
* If gold rust, what shall iron do ? ' Chaucer's Pro-
logue shows us a world in which avarice and deceit
are all but universal, and the Prologue to the Vision
of Piers Plowman bears witness only less vigorously
to the same facts. The world, as Langland sees it, is
indeed a ' fair field ; ' but the laborers are unworthy.
His men are wandering in a maze, and everything is
going wrong. Here are men at the plow, working hard,
playing but seldom. What is the result of their work ?
They are winning what wasters destroy with gluttony.
Pilgrims and palmers go on their journeys ; and with
what result ? They have leave to lie all the rest of their
lives. Friars, whose business it is to preach the gospel,
gloze it to their own profit. Parsons and parish priests
are forsaking their charges to go up to London and
sing in chantries at Paul's. Bishops neglect their spir-
itual duties to take office under the King and count his
silver. Gower, too, in the Prologue to his Confessio
Amantis, reviews the condition of Church and State,
and, less vigorously but no less clearly, portrays the
same state of things : —

12 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Lo, thus tobroke is Cristes folde,
Wherof the flock withoute guide
Devoured is on every side,
In lacke of hem that ben unware
Schepherdes, whiche her wit beware
Upon the world in other halve.
The sharpe pricke instede of salve
Thei usen now, wherof the hele
Thei hurte of that they scholden hele ;
And what schep that is full of wulle,
Upon his back, thei toose and pulle.

But if the world of fourteenth-century England was
sadly out of joint, it was far from being stagnant. In
its intellectual ferment the age had much the same
character as the age of great Elizabeth. There was the
same glow of patriotism and national consciousness
consequent upon a series of brilliant victories against a
foreign foe ; there was the same spirit of revolt against
a foreign church ; and, though the forms of mediseval-
ism still survived, there was at work the same leaven
of new ideas and of a new conception of life, reinforced
by a new interest in the works of classical antiquity,
coming over-seas from Italy ; literature and art was
breaking away from the conventional, and, under the
influence of new models, was drinking again at the
fountain-head of nature. For such periods of restless-
ness and change have often given birth to great crea-
tive literature.

Among a throng of lesser writers who contributed
to the literature of fourteenth-century England, five
stand out preeminent. There is the nameless author
of /Sir Gawayne and the Pearl, who, thoroughly medi-
aeval in his sympathies, infused new life into the old
forms of the romance and the vision. There is Lang-
land, who, though a mediaeval in his habits of thought,
had an independence of judgment, a vigor of expression,

CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 13

and a strong tinge of democracy, even of socialism,
withal, which are essentially modern. There is Gower,
at whom it is the fashion nowadays to laugh as ponder-
ous and dull, but who has, nevertheless, a command of
language, a mastery of metre, above all a faculty of
simple, straightforward story -telling, which are far from
contemptible, and which make his Confessio Amantis,
when taken in small doses, at times really charming.
There is the vigorous prose of Wiclif in his sermons
and in his translation of the Bible, which is informed
with the spirit of modern Protestantism, though tem-
pered, to be sure, with some of the sweetness of medi-
aeval Catholicism. If none of these is an author of the
first importance, it is none the less true that nearly two
hundred years were to elapse before any other English
authors should arise to equal any one of them. Finally,
there is Chaucer, the most perfect exponent of his age,
who blended in himself both the old and the new, the
mediaeval and the modern, who not only represents his
age, but, transcending its limitations, has become one
of the foremost English poets for all time.

CHAUCER

IF the critic is to pass beyond the study of individual
poems, and seek after a comprehensive estimate of a
poet's whole work, or if he would wring from a series
of writings the secret of the writer's soul, and strive to
learn what manner of man he was and by what stages
he became what he became, it is a question of the
first importance to discover in what order his works
were composed, and to determine, whenever possible, at
least an approximate date for the composition of each.
In the case of more modern authors, in general of those
who lived after the invention of printing, the problem
is usually solved by a mere inspection of the dates on
the title-pages or in the prefaces of their volumes ; but
with authors like Shakespeare, who avoided publication
by printing, and still more with authors like Chaucer,
who never heard of the printing-press, the problem is
more serious. The investigator must, as in any similar
historical inquiry, collect and sift all the obtainable
evidence of whatever sort. At times the evidence will
consist of references in other books to the work in
question ; sometimes of allusions in the work itself
to historical events of known date ; oftener, and evi-
dence of this third sort is least conclusive, and must
be used with greatest caution, the argument must be
based on the aesthetic qualities of the work itself, on
metre, style, and general handling of the theme, which
may indicate youth or maturity or decline of the poet's
power.

CHAUCER 15

For a few of Chaucer's writings, as, for example,
the Book of the Duchess, the Parliament of Fowls, the
Legend of Good Women, it is possible to assign approx-
imate dates with a good deal of certainty. From the list
of his own works given by Chaucer in the Prologue to
the Legend of Good Women, we learn that the writings
there mentioned were composed at some time earlier
than the Legend. For the rest we are forced to piece
together every available shred of evidence, and construct
hypotheses which shall be as plausible as may be. In
the succeeding chapters of this book, where Chaucer's
writings are considered separately, such evidence and
plausible hypotheses as we possess regarding the dates
of the several works are considered in detail. The reader
will discover that the evidence is often of the flimsiest.
It is only necessary here to sum up in the mass what
may be determined of the orderly development of Chau-
cer's art on the basis of the information, more or less
trustworthy, which we actually possess.1

When it is remembered that the date of Chaucer's
birth cannot be later than 1340, and that the earliest
of his works for which we can assign a date, the Book
of the Duchess, was not written till 1369, we are at
once impressed with the fact that Chaucer's art was
very late in coming to maturity. For the Book of the
Duchess, though by no means a contemptible work,
bears evident marks of youth and immaturity. What
was Chaucer doing between 1360 and 1369 ? To this
period it has been customary to assign the Romaunt
of the Rose, or so much of it as may be considered

1 The best general study of Chaucerian chronology is the essay by
J. Koch, The Chronology of Chaucer's Writings, published by the Chau-
cer Society, London, 1890. Earlier, and therefore less trustworthy, is
Ten Brink's Chaucer : Studien zur Geschichte seiner Entwicklung und zur
Chronologic seiner Schriften, Munster, 1870. Ten Brink's later views on
the subject may be found in two articles Zur Chronologic von Chaucer1 a

16 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Chaucer's work ; and though this assignment has been
questioned,1 the present writer is inclined to accept it
as probable. In this period, too, we may assume, were
written those * balades, roundels, virelayes,' in praise of
love, to which Chaucer refers in the Legend of Good
Women, most of which have doubtless perished. To
this general period belongs the A. B. (7., and possibly
also The Book of the Lion and Origines upon the
Maudeleyne, lost works to which Chaucer refers at the
end of the Parson's Tale and in the Legend of Good
Women respectively. During this, the earliest period
of his activity, the poet's models were for the most
part French. The literary world in which he lived was
a world of dream and lovely shadows, of abstractions
and graceful conventions, through which his guide was
Guillaume de Lorris. The Book of the Duchess is a
pleasing and charming piece, but not a great poem ;
excellent as is its poetic execution, there is little to
suggest the Chaucer that was to be. Critics have been
accustomed to call this period the period of French
influence. Like most generalizations, the term is con-
venient but dangerous. If we keep to the term, and
for convenience' sake it is perhaps well that we should,
we must be careful to remember that the French
influence upon Chaucer does not cease with the close
of the so-called French period. The Prologue to the
Legend of Good Women is thoroughly in the school
of Guillaume de Lorris ; and in the Canterbury Tales
the influence of the satirical method of Jean de Meuu,
the second of the two authors of the Roman de la Rose,
is evident at every turn. It is the overwhelming pre-

Sckriften, in Englische Studien, 17. 1-22, 189-200 (1892). The opinions
advocated by these earlier students of the subject have been consider-
ably modified by later investigations as to the date of particular poems.
1 Cf. below, p. 56.

CHAUCER 17

dominance of French influence in this early period
which makes the term, appropriate.

In 1373 and again in 1378 Chaucer was sent on
diplomatic missions to Italy, and came for the first
time into vital contact with the great intellectual move-
ment of the early Renaissance. He felt the power of
Dante's divine poem ; he breathed the atmosphere of
humanism which emanated from Petrarch and his cir-
cle ; he found in Boccaccio a great • kindred spirit, an
author of keen artistic susceptibility, who in character
and temperament had much in common with himself.
He found in Italy not only a new set of models, supe-
rior in art and in depth of thought to those of France ;
he received as well a new and powerful intellectual
stimulus, which set him to thinking more deeply on the
problems of philosophy, and gave him a keener inter-
est in the intricacies of human character. It follows
naturally enough that the decade from 1375 to 1385
was one of unwearied literary production. Despite his
somewhat arduous duties as an office-holder in the
civil service, he found time to produce a series of
works which would alone assure him a permanent place
in English literature. In the domain of philosophy he
made his translation of Boethius on the Consolation
of Philosophy, one of the half-dozen most popular
books during the whole of the Middle Ages, and one
which entered very deeply into Chaucer's philosophy
of life. Though he was already familiar with the
doctrines of Boethius as they are represented in the
Roman de la Rose, it is hardly to be questioned that
the spur to work of this more serious character came to
him from his Italian voyages. His newly found inter-
est in human beings as individuals, in the more com-
plex problems of character, bore fruit in his best
sustained and most perfect work, Troilus and Criseyde.

18 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

To this decade, most probably to the earlier years of it,
belongs the House of Fame, a poem written in the octo-
syllabic couplets of Chaucer's French models, and in its
form a dream- vision of the same type as the Book of the
Duchess, but thoroughly permeated with memories of
Dante. Here and in the Parliament of Fowls, written in
1381 or 1382, Chaucer's artistic power has reached
something very near to full maturity. In each of these
poems an essentially slight theme is developed with the
utmost wealth of wit and fancy; through each Chaucer's
characteristic humor plays most deliciously. To the
earlier years of this decade, also, will probably be as-
signed the legend of St. Cecilia, which was later to be-
come the Second Nun's Tale, and possibly also the series
of 'tragedies,' modelled on the De Casibus Virorum et
Feminarum Illustrium of Boccaccio, later utilized as the
tale of the Canterbury Monk. To the later years of the
decade belong the Parliament of Fowls and Troilus; and
at its very close, I believe, the story of Palamon and
Arcite, which we know as the Knight's Tale. It is in
these poems that the influence of Boccaccio is supreme.
As the first period of the poet's activity has been called
the period of French influence, so this second period has
been called that of Italian influence. With the same
proviso as before, that a great influence once felt never
ceases to operate, this term also maybe allowed to stand.
Chaucer has not forgotten his French models; but the
influence of Italy is predominant.

To the final period of Chaucer's art belong his great-
est work, the Canterbury Tales, begun soon after 1386,
and, on the borderland of the period, the unfinished
work which may be thought of as a sort of propaedeutic
to this, the Legend of Good Women, a collection of tales
introduced by the most charming of dream-vision allego-
ries, which may safely be dated 1385 or 1386. If we speak

CHAUCER 19

of this as the period of Chaucer's originality, we must
carefully define what we mean by the term original.
For nearly every tale in the Legend and in the Book
of Canterbury a definite original may be found ; nor is
the idea of either collection essentially Chaucer's own.
Chaucer, like Shakespeare, seldom troubled himself to
invent a plot. For a majority, perhaps, of the ideas to
be found in these works Chaucer is indebted to ' olde
bokes.' The striking difference between this period
and the two which preceded is that no single influence
is predominant, no single influence save that of the
poet's own personality. From the Roman de la Rose,
from Boethius, from Italy, from ancient Rome, Chaucer
borrows at will ; but he has ceased to be a pupil, and
has become a master. In a sense he is no longer influ-
enced from without ; he has absorbed and assimilated
and made his own. Thoughts which were once the
thoughts of Boethius or Jean de Meun or Boccaccio
are now his thoughts. He has included and tran-
scended.

Among the individual authors from whom Chaucer
drew the material which he thus took up into himself,
four stand out preeminent. They are Boethius, Jean de
Meun, Boccaccio, and Ovid. From Boethius he drew
the major part of his philosophy, his insistence on a
stoical superiority to Fortune and her whims, his in-
terest in the problem of foreknowledge and free-will,
his platonic belief that true nobility springs only from
greatness of soul. Wherever Chaucer moralizes or phi-
losophizes, the chances are strong that a similar passage
may be found in the Consolation of Philosophy.1 To

1 It must be remembered that the doctrines of Boethius are largely
reproduced in the Roman de la Rose, and that consequently it is often
impossible to determine whether Chaucer is borrowing at first or at
second hand. Since Chaucer was intimately acquainted with both
works, the question is one of little moment ; for he cannot have failed

20 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Jean de Meun, Chaucer's debt is manifold. From him
he learned the highly effective satirical method which
he uses in the General Prologue to the Canterbury
Tales and in the prologues of the Pardoner and the
Wife of Bath, from him he borrowed many of his
ideas, in particular those which are tinged with radi-
calism or skepticism ; still more important, he seems
to have acquired from Jean de Meun that attitude of
mind, that habit of thought, which became an integral
part of his nature — the habit of looking at life from
the standpoint of comedy, that curious blending of easy
tolerance and biting sarcasm, which is saved only by the
evident kindliness of his soul from the charge of down-
right cynicism. From Boccaccio and the Italian Renais-
sance Chaucer received, as we have already seen, an
interest in individual humanity, a new and higher stand-
ard of artistic form, and a great intellectual stimulus,
not to mention the plots of two of his most important
compositions. To Ovid, to whose work the philosophical
eagle in the House of Fame refers as Chaucer's ' owne
book,' Chaucer was indebted largely and continuously.
* Altogether,' says Professor Louusbury, ' Ovid may be
called the favorite author of Chaucer in respect to
the extent to which the material taken from him was
embodied in productions of his own, written at long
intervals of time apart, and upon subjects essentially
different.' 1 Though Chaucer knew Virgil, and was not
unacquainted with other Latin literature, classical an-
tiquity appealed to him most strongly in the pages of
Ovid. While drawing from him stories and allusions,

to recognize Boethius as the original source. He was probably not
aware of the fact that the work of Boethius is little more than a com-
pendium of the doctrines of earlier philosophers.

1 Studies in Chaucer, 2. 251, 252. The quotation is from the chapter
on ' The Learning of Chaucer,' a chapter of which the serious student
of Chaucer cannot afford to be ignorant.

CHAUCER 21

Chaucer must have learned also some of Ovid's ease
and grace, his power of vivid description, his rich sen-
suousness of color and form.

Recognizing how great is Chaucer's debt to the work
of those who went before him, one is tempted to ask
what is left to Chaucer as his own. In one sense, little,
in another sense, all. If originality be taken to imply
newness, what was never known nor thought before, ori-
ginal minds have been very rare in the world's history,
and have seldom expressed themselves in literature and
art. The artist is not properly an investigator, a dis-
coverer of truth ; his function is rather to select and
assimilate, and by new combination of ideas or by new
and higher expression, to present the truth with greater
cogency and to commend it to the emotions of his audi-
ence. He is, however, no mere purveyor of the truth ;
he, too, must be an original thinker, but original in
the sense that he carries back the truth which he has
learned to its origin, its fountain-head, in nature itself.
Novelty is possible to very few ; originality is possible
to many. It is not necessary that we should drink
from a new river of truth, but that we should drink its
waters at the fountain-head, the origo, unmixed and
unsullied. When Chaucer retells Boccaccio's story of
Troilus and his faithless love, he does not merely trans-
late ; neither does he paraphrase and adapt. Accepting
the plot of the Filostrato, he creates the characters
anew from his own independent knowledge of human
nature, giving to them new sentiments, new motives,
impelling them often to new actions, and consequently
to new situations. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and
Pandarus are as original, perhaps more original, than
their prototypes in Boccaccio. So is it when he bor-
rows a thought from Boethius or Jean de Meun. In
this sense Chaucer is a great original poet; in this

22 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

sense, and in this sense alone, may we assert the ori-
ginality of Shakespeare. If Chaucer's indebtedness
seems greater than Shakespeare's, it is first because
the range of his intellect is less universal, and secondly
because he drew from a smaller number of sources.
We of to-day draw our ideas from such a multitude of
writers that our resultant philosophies are mosaics,
wherein it is all but impossible to distinguish the origin
of this bit and of that; Chaucer had relatively few
sources from which to draw, and his indebtedness to
each of these is consequently much larger.

Having seen the principal sources whence the poet's
ideas were drawn, and the process by which these
ideas were made his own, it will not be very difficult to
frame some general notion of his ideals and beliefs, of
his attitude toward the world about him, of what may
be called his philosophy of life. Not that Chaucer ever
fashioned for himself a complete and consistent 'sys-
tem ' of philosophy ; he was as far as possible removed
from any purpose of deliberate didacticism ; he was
conscious of no burning 'message' to be delivered
through the medium of his art ; but it is none the less
possible to gather from his works a fairly definite idea
of his intellectual and spiritual constitution.

If the distinction be indeed legitimate, Chaucer's
mind is remarkable rather for its breadth than for its
depth, for the extent of its interests rather than for
the intensity of its convictions. If Chaucer is not a
profound thinker, he is at any rate marked by an eager
intellectual curiosity, an openness to ideas, which is
evident at all periods of his life. In the domain of
science one notices first of all his interest in astronomy
and the related pseudo-science of astrology. His works
abound in allusions astronomical and astrological. Like
Dante and Milton, he prefers to tell his times and

CHAUCER 23

seasons by the great clock of the starry heavens and
by the calendar of the zodiac. So minute and definite
are these allusions in the majority of cases that we
must depend on the professed student of astronomy for
their elucidation. From such elucidations we learn that
the allusions are not only definite but accurate. The
crowning proof of the poet's astronomical attainments
is furnished by his Treatise on the Astrolabe, written
in his later years for the use of ' litel Lowis my sone.'
Though his acquaintance with physical science was less
extensive, the discourse of the eagle in the House of
Fame includes an admirable exposition of the theory
of the transmission of sound ; and a similar perception
of scientific principles, though with humorous applica-
tion, is shown in the concluding episode of the Sum-
moneys Tale. That Chaucer had delved somewhat
deeply into the mysteries of alchemy is shown by the
tale of the Canon's Yeoman. Still another topic, on
the borderland of science, in which he betrays a lively
interest is the cause and significance of dreams.1

In the realm of philosophy and metaphysic there was
one problem which had for Chaucer a powerful fasci-
nation, the problem of God's foreknowledge and the
freedom of man's will. On this topic the disappointed
Troilus argues with himself at weary length ; on this
topic, and on the related topic of man's inability to
choose for himself, Arcite discourses in the KnighCs
Tale (A. 1251-1274) ; to the same topic the Knight's
Tale reverts near its close in a long speech by Theseus.
Some years later Chaucer opened the question again,
this time in playful mood, in the tale of the Nun's

1 This interest, which Chaucer shares with many of his contem-
poraries, is to be traced to the popularity of Macrobius's commentary
on the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero. For an account of this work, see
below, p. 65.

24 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Priest. Somewhat closely allied with this problem of
foreknowledge and predestination is the equally insol-
uble problem of the existence of evil in a world gov-
erned by an all-powerful and benevolent God. It is
this problem which troubles the faithful Dorigen in the
Franklin's Tale, when she contemplates ' thise grisly
feendly rokkes blake ' which line the coast of Brittany,
and threaten shipwreck to her husband returning from
over-seas (F. 865-893). With more of bitterness and
less of faith, the woeful prisoner, Palamon, vexes the
same baffling question in the KnigMs Tale (A. 1303-
1333) : —

Th' answere of this I lete to divynis,

But wel I woot, that in this world gret pyne is.

Chaucer does not solve these questions — who indeed
shall solve them ? — neither does he in his discussion
of them pass much beyond his master Boethius. What
is significant for our purpose is not his answers, for
Chaucer is not primarily a philosopher, but the evi-
dence which these discussions bear to his eager intel-
lectual curiosity.

In the poet's attitude towards these various interests
of science and metaphysic, in his attitude towards all
the interests of life, one plainly discerns a tendency
towards skepticism. It is easy to exaggerate this tend-
ency; and some of Chaucer's critics, among them Pro-
fessor Lounsbury, have laid upon this trait an emphasis
which seems to me undue. Nevertheless, the point is
not one to be neglected. Interested as he is in astro-
nomy, Chaucer had learned, at least at the time when
he wrote the Franldiris Tale, to distrust utterly the
claims of astrologers and magicians. The magician of
the story had a book, —

Which book spak muchel of the operaciouns,
Touchinge the eighte aud twenty mansiouns

CHAUCER 25

That longen to the mone, and sunchfotye,
As in our dayes is nat worth aflye.1

That Chaucer did not take very seriously the claims of
the alchemists, the Canon's Yeoman's Tale may bear
witness. It must be remembered that the majority even
of the more intelligent of Chaucer's contemporaries,
and of his successors for several generations to come,
believed firmly in both of these so-called sciences. Of
the supernatural in myth and story, Chaucer makes, of
course, large use in his works ; and usually he is artist
enough to give to the supernatural the air of verisimili-
tude ; but once, at least, when telling in the Legend
of Dido of the supernatural mist by which JEneas was
made invisible on his entrance into Carthage, he feels
called upon to screen himself from any charge of undue
credulity : —

I can nat seyn if that it be possible,

But Venus hadde him inaked invisible, —

Thus seith the book, withouten any lees.2

That Chaucer was capable of questioning some of the
tenets even of orthodox Christianity, we shall see a little
later on.

Coupled with this tendency to skepticism is a notice-
able tinge of radicalism. This, again, must not be exag-
gerated ; Chaucer was no revolutionist ; he had no desire
to subvert the existing order of things, either civil or
ecclesiastical. But the speech of the transformed hag
at the close of the Wife of Bathes Tale, and the balade
of Gentilesse, betray a strong leaven of democracy,
which is further evident in the lively and sympathetic
interest in the lower classes shown not infrequently
in the Canterbury Tales. Even more radical in its

1 Chaucer expresses a similar opinion in his Treatise on the Astrolabe,
2, 4. 58-61 : ' Natheles, thise ben observauncez of judicial matiere and
rytes of payens. in which my spirit ne hath no feith.'

8 Legend, 1020-1022.

26 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

tendency is the discussion of celibacy, that cherished
ideal of mediseval Catholicism, found in the Wife of
Bath's Prologue, and touched on again in the Monk's
Prologue and in the Epilogue to the Nun's Priest's
Tale.

Though it has been a comparatively easy matter to
discover Chaucer's attitude towards many of the inter-
ests of his day, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to
determine with any exactness his attitude towards Chris-
tianity and the Catholic Church ; for of his inmost con-
victions and hopes Chaucer, like other modest men,
speaks but seldom, and with reserve. We must not be
misled, as were the reformers of Henry VIII's time, by
the bitterness of Chaucer's attacks on the corruptions
of the Church, into classing him with Wiclif as one of
the forerunners of the Reformation. A contemporary
writer of unquestioned orthodoxy, John Gower, ful-
minates with equal bitterness, if with less effectiveness,
against precisely the same abuses ; and Langland, who
in his treatment of the clergy is at one with Chaucer and
Gower, is always a faithful son of the Church. From
a great mass of independent testimony, we are compelled
to the belief that Chaucer's picture of wholesale cor-
ruption is but little overdrawn. It is entirely conceiv-
able that Chaucer, like Gower, should, while remaining
loyal to the Church, deplore its abuses. If Chaucer has
shown us unworthy churchmen, has he not also painted,
with all apparent sympathy, the portrait of an ideal
pastor, the ' povre persoun of a toun ' ? As regards the
vital doctrines of Christianity, Chaucer maintains a
discreet silence, from which nothing can be inferred
one way or the other. Professor Lounsbury has made
much 1 of the opening lines of the Prologue to the
Legend of Good Women : —

1 Studies in Chaucer, 2. 612. The whole of the section entitled ' Chan-

CHAUCER 27

A thousand tymes have I herd men telle,

That ther is joye in heven, and peyne ill belle ;

And I acorde wel that bit is so;

But natheles, yit wot I wel also,

That ther nis noon dwelling in this contree,

That either hath in heven or belle ybe,

Ne may of hit non other weyes witen,

But as be hath herd seyd, or founde hit writen.

This Professor Lounsbury considers a skeptical utter-
ance. But taken in the light of its context, the passage
is capable of an interpretation directly the opposite.
Chaucer is arguing that we must give ' feyth and ful
credence ' to books, even when they relate things be-
yond the pale of our personal experience, just as we
believe in the joys of heaven and the pains of hell,
though no man living has ever tasted of either. Equally
inconsequent is any argument drawn from the lines
in the KnigM 's Tale which have to do with Arcite's
death (A. 2808-2814) : —

His spirit chaunged hous, and wente ther,

As I cam never, I can nat tellen wber.

Therfor I stinte, I nam no divinistre ;

Of soules finde I nat in this registre,

Ne me ne list thilke opiniouns to telle

Of hem, though that they wryten wber they dwelle.

Chaucer may surely decline to accompany his person-
ages ' through the strait and dreadful pass of death '
without being accused of infidelity as to the life beyond.
A somewhat stronger case may be made out for Chau-
cer's doubt as to the efficacy of the absolution granted
by the corrupt clergy of his day. After his merciless
exposure of the methods of the Summoner in the Gen-
eral Prologue, he says : —

cer's Relations to Religion ' deserves careful reading. To the present
writer Professor Lounsbury seems to have laid undue emphasis on
Chaucer's chance remarks.

28 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Of cursing oghte ech gilty man him drede —
For curs wol slee, right as assoilling saveth.

This is unquestionably an ironical utterance ; but one
satirical remark must not be allowed to weigh too
heavily, until it has been proved that Chaucer did not
write the Parson's Tale. The doctrine of transub-
stantiation, openly combated during Chaucer's lifetime
by the reformer Wiclif, the poet nowhere questions.

That Chaucer's mind betrays a tendency towards
skepticism, or at least towards criticism, no one will
doubt. His restless intellectual curiosity led him to
question many things in heaven and earth ; and under
the influence of the new spirit of the Renaissance, he
began no doubt to exercise the ' right of private judg-
ment.' But that he was and remained, in his beliefs
and hopes, in all essentials, a Christian and a loyal
Catholic, there is no reason to deny and no adequate
reason to doubt. Of the essentially religious nature of
his character such works as the Boethius translation,
the Parson's Tale, the Lawyer's tale of Constance,
and the Prioress's story of the 'litel clergeon ' furnish
sufficient proof. The essential Tightness of his moral
judgment no one familiar with his work can seriously
doubt. Some of his work, dealing as it does with fla-
grant immorality, is of questionable propriety; but with
one or two exceptions, there is no attempt to show sin in
other than its true light. Even these exceptions are to
be explained as due to an excess of the spirit of comedy,
rather than to a perverted moral judgment. In the
little that we know of Chaucer's life, there is nothing
that is inconsistent with the high virtues of ' trouthe
and honour, fredom and curteisye,' or with the essen-
tially Christian virtue, humility of heart.

Right as are his moral judgments, quick as he is to
perceive evil, Chaucer is never touched by the spirit

CHAUCER 29

of the reformer. He was capable, doubtless, of sympa-
thizing with a Langland or a Wiclif, but he never set
himself consciously to further their work. He sees the
corruption of the Church, and clearly recognizes the
evil of it ; but who is he to set the crooked straight ?
There has been always, since the close of the Golden Age,
evil in the world ; in one form or another evil will al-
ways exist. It is so, apparently, that God made the world.
If there is always evil, there is always also good ; the
worst hypocrites in the Canterbury Tales have in them
somewhat of good, something even lovable. The good
is always admirable ; and the evil, though deplorable,
is so very amusing. If this is not the best possible
world, it is at least the best actual world, the world at
any rate in which we must spend our threescore years
and ten. Let us cleave to what is good, and laugh good-
naturedly at what is evil. Above all, let us keep our
hearts kind and tender, lacerated by no sceva indigna-
tio at what we cannot cure. In this spirit of kindly tol-
erance Chaucer looked at the world about him. To the
ardent reformer such an attitude as this seems merely
base and pusillanimous ; but in Chaucer it springs
neither from weakness nor indifference, but from quiet
conviction. The reformer is necessarily a protestant, a
dissenter ; Chaucer is essentially a Catholic, his spirit
is the Catholic spirit — perhaps it may be shown to be
essentially the spirit of Christianity. To the man of
truly humble spirit his own importance in the universe
seems but small, his own exertions of slight avail. He
will live his own life in the world as well as he can.
Sedulously removing the beams from his own eyes, he
will give to the world whatever of good he can, and
see to it that his own small influence be an influence
towards righteousness ; for the rest, he will leave the sal-
vation of the world in the competent hands of the God

30 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

who has created it. Chaucer has said all this himself
in what is one of his noblest utterances, the Balade de
Bon Conseyl, to which has been given the title Truth.

Tempest thee noght al croked to redresse,
In trust of bir that turneth as a bal:
Gret reste stant in litel besinesse;
And eek be war to sporne ageyn an al;
Stryve noght, as doth the crokke with the wal.
Daunte thyself, that dauntest otheres dede;
And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

That thee is sent, receyve in buxumnesse,

The wrastling for this worlde axeth a f al.

Her nis non boom, her nis but wildernesse;

Forth, pilgrim, forth ! Forth, beste, out of thy stal 1

Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al;

Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede ;

And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

l"hat is the Catholic spirit ; that is the spirit that actu-
ated Chaucer's life. Reformers may rail at this spirit
as they please, but they cannot prove that it is weak
or base.

One other line from the balade entitled Truth, not
included in the two stanzas given above, must be quoted
for the light which it throws on Chaucer's temper. It
is the line with which the poem opens : —

Flee fro the prees, and dwelle with sotbfastnesse.
In the Prologue to Sir TJiopas, it will be remem-
bered, when the Host calls upon Chaucer to tell his tale,
he accuses him of riding ever with his eyes upon the
ground, and urges him to approach nearer and look up
merrily : —

' He scmeth elvish by his contenaunce,
For unto no wight dooth he daliaunce.'

Again, in the House of Fame, the eagle says to Chau-
cer:—

CHAUCER 31

1 And noght only fro fer contree,
That ther no tyding conith to thee,
But of thy verray neyghebores,
That dwellen almost at thy dores,
Thou herest neither that ne this.'

The trait to which these passages all point is one highly
characteristic of Chaucer's nature, a certain aloofness
from the world of men and things. Though keenly in-
terested, he never seems to have felt himself a part of
it. To the great peasants' revolt of 1381, the dramatic
denouement of which in the streets of London he may
well have witnessed with his own eyes, he refers but
once, and then only playfully in three lines.1 Though
the battle of Poitiers was fought in Chaucer's lifetime,
and though he himself had seen service in the fields of
France, he never sings the glory of the English arms.
Closely attached as he was to the royal court, he never
speaks of the great diplomatic struggle which was being
fought out between England and the Pope. Chaucer was
living the while in another realm, the realm of fantasy.
Not that he felt it necessary, like Wordsworth, to retire
to the solitude of some Dove Cottage ; fond as he was
of wandering in the fields of a May morning, Chaucer
would have been quite miserable in Dove Cottage. He
lived the major part of his life in London, and held
important offices under the Crown. We have every
reason to believe that he discharged the duties of these
offices faithfully and efficiently. Neither did he close
his eyes to things about him ; few English poets have
observed the ways of men so minutely and so accurately
as he. He could be a practical man of affairs, when that
was necessary ; he was doubtless the most charming of
companions over a glass of canary or old sack. But by
temperament and choice he held aloof, not an actor but
1 B. 4584-4586.

32 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

a spectator, sympathizing but not sharing in the inter-
ests of the world. He was in the world, but not of it ;
and for this very reason, perhaps, he continues to live
when the more active and conspicuous men of his age
have become but a shadow and a name.

The intellectual curiosity and openness of mind
which mark Chaucer's attitude towards the world in
general are equally evident in his more exclusively lit-
erary activity. Never a profound scholar,1 even when
measured by the standards of his own day, he was,
none the less, an omnivorous reader, and dipped more
or less deeply into a great variety of books on widely
diverse subjects. Professor Lounsbury has noticed the
significant fact that a large number of his citations and
allusions are drawn from the earlier pages of a work.
In his reading, as in his writing, his curiosity was ever
leading him into new courses ; after the first flush of
interest was spent, he found it hard to hold himself
down to the completion of a work begun with all enthu-
siasm. In his mastery of foreign languages, too, the
same trait is discoverable. Though he read Latin,
French, and Italian fluently, he is often guilty, when
held down to the stricter work of translation, of rather
serious blunders. It is but fair to remember, however,
that in the absence of adequate lexicons and gram-
mars, strict verbal accuracy was not easy of attain-
ment. Similarly, when we catch him at error in an
allusion, it must be remembered that books were not
then, as now, readily accessible, and that even a pains-
taking scholar, which Chaucer certainly was not, was
obliged to trust to memory much more than was al-
ways safe. Boccaccio, who made much greater preten-
sions to scholarship than Chaucer, was capable of such

1 See Professor Lonnsbury's chapter on ' The Learning of Chau-
cer,' Studies in Chaucer, 2. 169-426.

CHAUCER 33

a hybrid coinage as Filostrato, the title of his Troi-
lus romance, which he took to mean 'laid low by love;*
and the ponderously learned Gower was not aware that
Tullius and 'Cithero' were one and the same per-
son.1 In view of this last slip, it may surely be for-
given to Chaucer if he similarly fails to recognize the
identity of lulus and Ascanius.2 Chaucer's works
abound, indeed, with inaccuracies and with shocking
anachronisms ; but so, for that matter, do the works of
Shakespeare. Unfortunately, however, Chaucer has a
thoroughly mediaeval love of parading his learning.
It is one of the few serious blemishes in his art that
he cannot refrain from long scholastic digressions, in
which he heaps up authority on authority, and even
suffers his personages to interrupt a passionate speech
with an explanation of some obscure term needlessly
introduced.3

But if Chaucer, despite his parade of learning, did
not read with scholarly thoroughness, he read with the
fine discrimination of the literary critic. Nothing can
be more untrue to Chaucer than to speak of him, as was
long the fashion, as an untutored genius, * warbling
his native wood-notes wild,' attaining his artistic effects
by mere happy blunder or lucky intuition. He was a
conscious critic of his own work and of the work of
others. There is good reason to believe that he began
the series of ' tragedies ' known to us as the Montis
Tale, in all good faith as a serious work of art ; but
later, when he incorporated the unfinished series into
the Canterbury Tales, he had already recognized its
essential literary badness, and through the mouths of
the Host and the Knight conveys his own just criti-

1 Confessio Amantis, 4. 2648 ; 7. 1588-1698.

2 House of Fame, 177-178.

8 Troilus and Criseyde, 5. 897-899.

34 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

cism of the work. Similarly, he was not long in dis-
covering the inherent flaw in the scheme of the Legend
of Good Women, and abandoning it as a mistaken
experiment.1 The exquisite burlesque of Sir Thopas
and the Host's common-sense criticism thereon show
that he had accurately discerned the literary extrava-
gances of the widely popular romance of chivalry.
Still higher proof of his fine literary taste is furnished
by the process of selection and rejection, alteration and
addition, with which he utilizes the works which serve
him as sources for his compositions.

The eclectic character of Chaucer's artistic procedure
is strikingly shown in the variety of his experiments
in versification. Metrically, to be sure, his range is
very limited ; he employs normally only the iambic
rhythm ; and, save in Sir Thopas,2 his measure is
always either tetrameter or pentameter, though ample
variety is attained by skillful handling of the pauses,
by not infrequent substitutions of trochee or dactyl for
the normal iambus, by large use of the feminine ending,
and by various drawing out of the sense from one verse
into another. It is in stanza form that Chaucer experi-
mented widely. Nine tenths or more of his verse com-
position is in one of three stanzas, — the octosyllabic
couplet, characteristic of his earliest or French period,
though reappearing in the House of Fame ; the rime
royal, or seven-line stanza of Troilus and Criseyde,
which belongs in general to the second or Italian period ;
and the heroic couplet, in which was written his matur-
est work. The last two of these stanzas, of which the
first continued to be widely employed until Shake-
speare's youth, and the second is rivaled only by blank

1 Cf. below, p. 145.

a Further exception should, perhaps, be made of two stanzas in
Anelida and Arcite (lines 272-280, 333-341), where the pentameter is
broken up by internal rimes.

CHAUCER 35

verse in use and popularity, Chaucer was the first to
introduce into English literature. In his mastery of all
three he has never been surpassed. The minor poems
display several other stanzas. If the rimes of the seven-
line stanza are repeated through three or four succes-
sive stanzas, we get the balade form used by Chaucer
so effectively in Truth, in Gentilesse, and in Lack of
Steadfastness. In the A. B. C. and in the Monk's
Tale appears an eight-line stanza, with rime-scheme
ababbcbc, which Chaucer apparently abandoned as less
pliable than the seven-line stanza of the rime royal.
This stanza, with the addition of a final alexandrine
riming c, becomes the famous Spenserian stanza of
the Faerie Queene. The Complaint to His Lady is
little more than an exercise in versification. The poem
begins with two stanzas of the rime royal ; then shifts
into the terza rima of Dante, employed here for the
first time in English verse, and ends in a ten-line
stanza with rime-scheme aabaabcddc. The complaint
inserted into Anelida and Arcite is a highly artificial
arrangement of varying stanzas, with strophe and
answering antistrophe. Still another artificial form
borrowed from France is the triple roundel entitled
Merciles JBeaute, with which should be grouped the
charming roundel introduced into the Parliament of
Fowls. When it is remembered that in some of these
artificial verse-forms it is necessary to find twelve
words riming with the same sound, and that in a few
instances the number is yet greater, Chaucer's mastery
of the art of riming is apparent ; for seldom are we
conscious of any constraint due to the exigencies of
rime.

No less remarkable is the breadth and variety of
Chaucer's range, when his work is looked at from the
standpoint of its content. Preeminently, of course, his

36 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

fame rests on his power as a narrator, the power to tell
an interesting story supremely well. His narrative
method is characterized by straightforward directness
and simplicity. Ordinarily, his stories have a single
plot, one main thread of interest, which is taken up at
the beginning and followed without interruption to the
end. This is the method of Boccaccio and of medieval
story-telling in general ; it is the method which Wil-
liam Morris adopted in his Earthly Paradise. The
method of the modern writer of short stories is quite
different from this, since his purpose is usually not so
much to narrate a series of happenings as to create a
single strong impression. His story will not begin at
the beginning, and will seldom be conducted to its logi-
cal end ; it will consist of a series of striking situations,
presented not necessarily in their chronological order,
with just so much of narrative as may be necessary to
bind these situations together and make them under-
standable. To this modern method Chaucer approxi-
mates in the Pardoner's Tale, and in lesser measure
in the Knight's Tale,1 from which the reader carries
away not so much the recollection of a narrative as the
vivid memory of a few important scenes. Even when
Chaucer clings more closely to the mediaeval method of
direct narration, he achieves a somewhat similar effect
by a subtle shifting of emphasis. If one compares his
stories of Virginia and of Constance with their originals,
it may be seen how, by the addition of a few skillful
touches, the interest of narrative has been subordinated
to the strong impression of a noble character. With
what admirable skill Chaucer could handle a more com-
plicated plot, in which two independent intrigues are
made to furnish each the catastrophe for the other,
may be seen in the conduct of the JMiller's Tale.
1 Cf. what is said of these tales below, pp. 172, 227-230.

CHAUCER 37

No less brilliant is Chaucer's art in description.
From the merry May morning, gay with singing of
birds and sounding of the huntsman's horn, in the
Book of the Duchess to the matchless series of por-
traits in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the
vividness and variety of Chaucer's pictures are un-
surpassed. It were idle to enumerate them, for the
reader's memory will call up a score of unforgettable
scenes. What is the Knight's Tale but a splendidly
pictured tapestry, full of color and motion ? Particu-
larly remarkable in these descriptions is their scope
and breadth. There is much more of definiteness than
of vagueness in Chaucer's descriptive method ; yet the
mind is seldom wearied with a confusing catalogue of
details. A few significant details give exactness to the
picture, while suggesting a whole realm of things be-
yond. It is as though a veil were suddenly withdrawn,
letting the scene burst instantly into view. Lowell has
called attention to this quality of suggestiveness in the
description at the beginning of the Clertis Tale : —

Ther is, at the west syde of Itaille,

Doun at the rote of Vesulus the colde,

A lusty playne, habundant of vitaille,

Wher many a tour and toun thou mayst biholde,

That founded were in tyrae of fadres olde,

And many another delitable sighte,

And Saluces this noble contree highte.

Though not primarily a reflective poet, Chaucer is
no less a master in this division of his art. Illustra-
tions may be drawn from among his minor poems,
and even more from among the moralizing passages
of Troilus and the Canterbury Tales. The House of
Fame, too, is essentially a work of reflection, though
clothed in the form of an allegorical narrative.

Unfortunately, Chaucer never wrote a drama; but

38 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

that he might have been, had the dramatic form been
developed in his time, one of the foremost of English
dramatists, there can be no manner of doubt. A master
of the art of characterization, skillful in his handling
of dialogue, delighting in action, and keenly alive to
the value of effective situation and climax, above al]
a master of constructive art, he is a dramatist in
all but the fact. Evident in many of the Canterbury
Tales, and still more manifest in the story of the
pilgrimage itself, this dramatic power reaches its full-
est expression in Troilus and Criseyde, a work which
is better dramatically than Shakespeare's play on the
same theme. The five books into which the poem is
disposed correspond accurately to the five acts of the
drama ; the action rises to a climax in the third book,
and falls to a catastrophe in the fifth. The poem con-
sists of a series of dramatic scenes ; and the story is
carried forward almost entirely by means of dialogue.
The characterization of Criseyde is as subtle as any-
thing in Shakespeare; and Pandarus is hardly less
remarkable. In virtue of this work alone, Chaucer
has an unquestionable right to be considered as the
forerunner of the great dramatic literature of Eliza-
beth and James.

After considering the range of Chaucer's power in
narrative and dramatic art, it is surprising to find how
limited is his power as a lyrist. Though in the Pri-
oress's Tale, in the Lawyer's tale of Constance, and
in the Book of the Duchess there is a distinctly lyrical
note, Chaucer seldom enters the domain of the lyric
proper. The best of his short poems, such as Truth,
Gentilesse, and The Former Age, are reflective rather
than lyrical, while the love poems, though charming
in their way, are too conventional and artificial to
touch us deeply. Almost alone in its fresh spontane-

CHAUCER 39

ity, its authentically lyric quality, stands the roundel
sung by the choir of birds at the end of the Parlia*
ment of Fowls. Why this absence of lyric power, it
is hard to say. In the age of Elizabeth dramatic and
lyric went hand in hand. The fact must merely be
recorded as one of the limitations in Chaucer's genius.

The variety and breadth of Chaucer's art shows
itself again in his wide register of tone. For illustra-
tion one need not go beyond the limits of the Canter-
bury Tales. There is the romantic idealism of the
KnighCs Tale and the high religious idealism of
the Prioress's Tale side by side with the Zolaesque
realism of the Miller and the Reeve. The Wife of
Bath's prologue is brutally frank in its realism ; her
tale is a graceful tale of faerie. The delightful extrava-
ganza of Chanticleer and Partlet is introduced by a
realistic genre painting of the poor widow's cottage,
worthy of Teniers or Gerard Dou. In both of these
manners Chaucer seems equally at home. The doini^
nant tone in the Canterbury Tales, as in Chaucer's
work as a whole, is that of humor; but Chaucer's
humor is as protean in its variety as any other of his
qualities. It ranges from broad farce and boisterous
horse-play in the tales of the Miller and the Summoner
to the sly insinuations of the Knight's Tale and the
infinitely graceful burlesque of Sir Thopas. Every in-
termediate stage between these extremes is represented,
the most characteristic mean between the two being
found, perhaps, in the tale of the Nun's Priest. The
only constant element in Chaucer's humor is its kind-
liness, its healthiness, its spontaneous freshness.

With a keen sense of humor is usually joined, as in
Thackeray and Dickens, a deep susceptibility to the
pathetic, and Chaucer is no exception to the rule ; but,
unlike Dickens and Thackeray, he knows the delicate

40 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

line which separates pathos from sentimentality, and
over this line he never steps. Troilus as he eagerly
watches for the returning form of Cressid, Arcite taking
his last leave of his kinsman and his love, Dorigen as she
goes to keep her terrible tryst, Constance comforting
her little son, Virginius dooming his daughter to the death
that shall vindicate her honor, Griselda preparing for the
wedding feast of the rival who is to supplant her, above
all the matchless story of the murdered schoolboy singing
his Alma Redemptoris — these show the touch of pathos
in its purest form, and the list might be indefinitely
extended. In any one of these instances a lesser poet
would have become sentimental.

To the sublimer heights of tragedy Chaucer rarely
ascends. Though the Pardoner's Tale moves us to tragic
pity and fear, it does this rather by its accessories —
the dreadful plague, the mysterious veiled figure, the
suddenness of its catastrophe — than by any working
out of inevitable moral law. Its effect is not so much
that of tragedy as of superb melodrama. Chaucer called
his Troilus and Criseyde a 'tragedie,' and he has handled
his theme in the spirit of tragedy as the Middle Ages
understood the term. The story moves forward relent-
lessly to an ever impending doom. But the poem has not
the intensity of great tragedy. Its effect is rather a
blending of pathos and tragic irony. Troilus has sought
and achieved a great happiness which turns in his grasp
to the bitterness of ashes. So it must ever be, Chaucer
declares, with the 'false felicity' of temporal joy. It is
Chaucer's constant sense of the irony of life, of the mock-
ery which our ultimate achievement casts on rosy expec-
tation, that dominates his more serious thought. This
irony is most often a comic irony; but at times, as in
Troilus or the Pardoner's Tale, it becomes essentially
tragic.

CHAUCER 41

What is this world ? what asketh men to have ?
Now with his love, now in his colde grave
Allone, withouten any companye.

The author of these lines was surely capable of being
serious ; there are few lines in our literature more preg-
nant with the tragedy of life. But this note is never
long sustained ; where possible, it is avoided altogether.
Capable of seriousness, Chaucer has deliberately chosen
to portray the world through the medium of comedy.

I woot myself best how I stonde,

are Chaucer's words when he refuses to compete for
the favors of Lady Fame. I, for one, am ready to
believe that Chaucer knew his own powers best, and
am unwilling to quarrel with him for his choice of the
comic spirit; for comedy such as his constitutes a
' criticism of life ' as true within its limits as that of
* high seriousness ' and the ' grand style.'

Of Chaucer's style it will not do to talk at great
length, for its quality can be felt much better than
it can be analyzed. It is so delicate, indeed, that any
elaborate analysis seems in the nature of an imperti-
nence. It is characterized preeminently by its simpli-
city. Though for his metre's sake the poet affects a
slight archaism in the preservation of the final e, which
was already beginning to disappear, his words are the
words of e very-day life. His sentences are short and
loose, simple in their structure, free from awkward in-
versions and from any studied balance or antithesis. As
his diction is simple, so is his thought. In his later
work, at least, there is an almost complete absence of
the strained conceits, the far-fetched metaphors, and
elaborate puns, which mar much of Shakespeare's
work ; and this is the more remarkable when one
remembers Chaucer's reverence for the authority of

42 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Petrarch. Once in the Franklin's Tale, he finds him-
self betrayed into an overwrought metaphor : —
For th'orisonte hath reft the sonne his light.

Instead of canceling the line, he lets it stand, and
adds : —

This is as nmclie to seye as it was night.

To read Chaucer is to listen to the charming, gracious
conversation of a cultured gentleman who is also a
poet. At times his language is as terse and pregnant as
any in Shakespeare. Such is the line in the Knight's
Tale which shows us

The smyler with the knyf under the cloke.

But ordinarily he has leisure to give his thought full
expression. He has ' the power of diffusion without
being diffuse.' His stories tell themselves away with-
out apparent effort, even without apparent art, without
hurry, but without delay.

A povre widwe, somdel stope in age,
Was whylom dwelling in a narwe cotage,
Bisyde a grove, stonding in a dale.
This widwe, of which I telle you my tale —

There is nothing remarkable in these lines ; but they
are the very essence of literature, and no one can resist
their charm.

If Chaucer's style is marked by naturalness and
simplicity, let no one suppose that it is a careless style.
Artless as his lines seem, they are full of that high-
est art which effaces itself. In his perfect finish, his
unassuming elegance, Chaucer is essentially Gallic,
one may almost say Hellenic. With all his simplicity,
there is a quiet energy, a sureness of touch, a delicacy
of perception, which betray the master mind. Above
all, there is in Chaucer's style, as in the man himself,

CHAUCER 43

a sanity and poise, a calm equanimity, which render it
peculiarly grateful to the ears of our modern world,
wearied with much wild talking.

No one will pretend, I suppose, that Chaucer is a poet
of the first rank. He is not a great prophet like Dante,
with a burning message which he must deliver ; only
rarely does he move one's whole emotional and moral
nature as does Shakespeare. Though sharing in the
fresh spontaneity which makes the Homeric poems a
perpetual solace, he has not Homer's majesty ; nor does
he attain to the dignity and elegance of Virgil. As
a comedian he will hardly rank with Cervantes and
Moliere. In intellect and in art he is inferior to all
these ; but among poets of the second rank his posi-
tion is high. In the list of English poets other than
Shakespeare, Milton is the only one who may be held
to surpass him ; and between two men so dissimilar in
their powers one will hesitate to determine the preem-
inence.

The qualities which make for Chaucer's greatness
have already been reviewed in the preceding pages, and
will be considered again in more detail as they mani-
fest themselves in individual works, in the chapters
which follow ; but the quality which distinguishes him
preeminently is his sanity and poise. With the possible
exception of Shakespeare, there is no English poet of
power even commensurate with Chaucer's, who is so
eminently sane. We are living in an age which is rest-
less, in many respects unhealthy, insane. On one side
of us is the dull sway of materialism, commercialism,
money-getting ; on the other side we still hear the fran-
tic protests of a Carlyle and a Ruskin, the revolution-
ary rhapsodies of a Byron or a Shelley, we listen to the
persistent self-analyses of a Wordsworth or a Coleridge,
or to the beautiful but morbid imaginings of a Keats ;

44 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

or, coming nearer to the present day, we hearken to the
strange dreamings of a Maeterlinck or the unsparing
iconoclasnis of an Ibsen. I would not for a moment
be thought insensible to the greatness of these men ;
I insist merely that with all their varied greatness
there is infused a strain which is morbid and unhealthy.
The eighteenth century had sanity without poetry ; the
nineteenth had poetry without sanity ; Chaucer, like
the great Greeks, combined both.

We turn to Chaucer not primarily for moral guid-
ance and spiritual sustenance, nor yet that our emotions
may be deeply and powerfully moved ; we turn to him
rather for refreshment, that our eyes and ears may
be opened anew to the varied interest and beauty of
the world around us, that we may come again into
healthy living contact with the smiling green earth
and with the hearts of men, that we may shake off
for a while 'the burthen of the mystery of all this
unintelligible world,' and share in the kindly laughter
of the gods, that we may breathe the pure, serene
air of equanimity.

CHAPTER III
THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE

IT is thoroughly in accord with what we know of Chau-
cer's innate modesty that his first serious undertaking
in literature should have been a translation rather than
an original work ; and surely no better exercise than
that of translation could have been found to develop
a technical mastery of poetic form. The poem which
Chaucer chose to translate was the widely popular
Roman de la Rose, a work which offered a broad and
varied scope to the young poet's powers of expression,
and was, moreover, thoroughly congenial to his tastes
and sympathies.

Though the Chaucerian Romaunt of the, Rose ex-
tends to the no mean length of 7698 lines, it reproduces
less than a third of its French original, for T^ French
the Roman de la Rose contains in Meon's Poem-
edition 22,047 lines of octosyllabic couplets. Of these,
lines 1-5169 and 10716-12564 alone are translated.
But if the English translation is only a fragment of its
original, Chaucer's familiarity with the whole poem, and
the influence which it exerted upon him, are so great,
that the poem in its entirety is of the first importance
to the student of Chaucer's work.

The Roman de la Rose is the work not of a single
author, but of two authors, of two successive genera-
tions, utterly unlike in their ideals and temperaments.
Of the first of these, Guillaume de Lorris, whose work
extends to line 4068, we know very little ; and for that
little we are indebted to the second poet, Jean de Meun,

46 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

who continued his work. From the statements of the
younger author we are able to calculate that Guillaume
must have been born about the year 1200, and that
the composition of the poem must have fallen between
the years 1225 and 1230. His work is supposed to
have been terminated by his early death. Of the place
of his birth and of his residence we do not know. The
little town of Lorris is a few miles east of Orleans;
and Guillaume's name may indicate that as his birth-
place ; but we cannot be sure. If, as seems probable,
he was a clerk, his education may have been received
either at Orleans or at Paris. His dialect shows that
he lived in the north of France ; but in the absence
of any critical edition of the Roman, it is impossible
to be more exact.

Of Jean de Meun, who forty years after Guillaume's
death undertook the continuation of his unfinished work,
we know somewhat more. Jean Clopinel was born at
Meun-sur-Loire, and died before November 6, 1305, on
which date his comfortable house in Paris was deeded
to the Dominicans of the rue St. Jacques. Since it can
be shown from internal evidence that his continuation
of the Roman was written between 1268 and 1277, M.
Langlois fixes on the year 1240 as the approximate date
of his birth. From his own statement in another work
we learn that his life was an honorable and prosperous
one, and that it had been his fortune to serve * les plus
granz genz de France.' He was an excellent scholar,
widely read in Latin and French, and the author of
several works, among which may be mentioned a trans-
lation of the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius,
a book to which he is deeply indebted in the Roman
de la Rose.

Two men more dissimilar in character than the
authors of the Roman it would be hard to find.

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 47

Gnillaume is essentially an idealist, a purist, cherishing
the fair ideal of Middle Age chivalry, living in a world
of dream and shadows. To him love is the great in-
fluence which ennobles and purifies the human heart,
woman is a superior, well-nigh perfect being, little
short of the divine, in whose service man may well
expend all in him that is best and highest. His poem
is a love story and a courtly treatise on the art of love.
Five years and more ago, he tells us, as he lay on his
bed one May morning, he dreamed a wondrous dream.
In this dream he wandered out through the flowering
fields, with the birds singing all about him, and came
at last to a great garden all walled about, the garden
of love. In the midst of the garden, hard by the foun-
tain of Narcissus, stands a goodly rose tree, on which
grows a bud which the poet longs earnestly to pluck.
This is the allegorical device by which the poet shadows
forth his love for the lady of his desire. The porter
at the gate of the garden is Idleness. The dramatis
persona are, save the poet himself, such abstractions
as Largesse, Fair- Welcome, Evil-Tongue, Jealousy,
and Danger, or haughtiness. When allegory is but a
literary device, it is always dangerous ; but Guillaume
thought in terms of allegory, and his allegorical per-
sonages, if shadowy, are none the less true and effec-
tive. Guillaume de Lorris is not a great poet ; but he
is a good poet, and one can hardly fail to enjoy the
quiet loveliness of his work.

Jean de Meun is of quite a different stamp, so differ-
ent, indeed, that it seems a mere caprice that he should
have undertaken the continuation of such a poem as
the Roman de la Rose. If Guillaume de Lorris is a
conservative and an idealist, Jean de Meun is a realist
and a revolutionist. To him the chivalric ideal is mere
nonsense. In his democratic creed noble birth is but an

48 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

accident ; personal worth is the only patent of true no-
bility. Woman is a vain and fickle creature, a snare for
men's feet. Love is but a game played for the prize of
sensual gratification. In crossing the line which divides
the work of the two authors, the reader plunges into a
totally different atmosphere. Jean de Meun has kept to
the machinery of Guillaume's poem; the same allegori-
cal personages pass before us ; the quest of the rose still
remains the ostensible theme of the poem ; but the poet
uses the framework merely as a device for the introduc-
tion of his own ideas. There are long digressions on
various topics, philosophical and theological, wearisome
because of their prolixity, but excellent in their rea-
soning, and terse and effective in their diction. There
are bitter tirades against the frailty of woman, and
merciless attacks against the corruption of the clergy.
Jean de Meun's method in his satirical passages is of pe-
culiar interest to the student of Chaucer; for it is the
very method so effectively employed in the Canterbury
Tales. In the person of False-Seeming, one of the most
masterful of Jean de Meun's characterizations and the
prototype of Chaucer's Friar and Pardoner, a friar
himself is made to expose, proudly and boastfully, the
iniquities of his order ; while in the person of the Du-
enna, who becomes in Chaucer's hands the genial Wife
of Bath, is exhibited all the sensuality and cunning
craft which constitutes Jean de Meun's idea of woman.
In Guillaume de Lorris one is conscious of a sweet
and noble personality, coupled with a fairly true sense
of artistic form and poetical expression. One cannot
read a thousand lines of Jean Clopinel without realiz-
ing that he has to do with a masterful intellect. His
personality is not lovable, but commanding. Unques-
tionably inferior to Guillaume in artistic form, — for
his work seems often a mere hodge-podge of ideas, — he

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 49

as unquestionably surpasses him in range and in intel-
lectual scope. For the graceful delicacy of Guillaume's
diction, Jean de Meun offers a nervous, incisive, yet
polished style, which is as superior to that of Guil-
laurae as is Shakespeare to Spenser.

This strange composite poem exerted in its own cen-
tury, and in the two centuries following, an enormous
influence on the literature of Northern Europe, and no
inconsiderable influence south of the Alps. Its wide
circulation is attested by the fact that nearly two hun-
dred manuscript copies have survived to the present
day, many of which are found in England and in
Germany. It was early translated into Flemish and
into Italian, while somewhat later appeared the Eng-
lish version which is the subject of this chapter. In
France it was kept before the public eye by its bitter
antagonists no less than by its enthusiastic admirers.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that for two hun-
dred years no important French author escaped its
influence. In England its vogue was little less exten-
sive. Without its suggestion Chaucer would not have
been Chaucer, and English literature would have fol-
lowed a different channel.

The reasons for this widespread popularity and far-
reaching influence are not hard to fathom. The Ro-
man is not, as is sometimes asserted, a great original
creation. Guillaume did not invent the dream-vision
form nor the use of allegory, any more than Petrarch
invented the sonnet ; the revolutionary doctrines of
Jean de Meun did not spring unbegotten from his
own brain. Those who will take the trouble to read M.
Ernest Langlois's monograph1 on the subject will find
that every significant feature of the poem is pai*alleled
in earlier works. The great achievement of Guillaume
* Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose, Paris, 1890.

50 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

de Lorris and Jean de Meun is that they assimilated
and then crystallized into masterful poetic expression
a literary form and a set of ideas which were already
current and popular. Without Petrarch the sonnet
might still have survived as a literary form; but it
could hardly have achieved the great vogue which it
attained through his authority. It is a general law in
literature that widespread and long-continued popu-
larity is possible only when an idea already popular
receives permanent expression at the hands of a master.
The Roman de la Rose was immediately recognized
as such a masterpiece, and became the medium through
which was effectively transmitted an influence which
might otherwise have spent itself ineffectually in a
couple of generations. Another source of its wide ap-
peal may be found in the fact of its dual and diverse
authorship. The poem took its rise just before the
dawn of the Renaissance. During the centuries which
immediately followed, two tendencies, the medieval and
the modern, were existing side by side. To those who
clung to the old ideals, Guillaume de Lorris made a
strong appeal ; while the free-thinkers of the Renais-
sance could not but recognize a kindred soul in Jean
de Meun. The poem was wide enough in its scope to
appeal to all. Chaucer, for example, who exhibits in
his own development the transition from the medi-
seval to the modern, was first attracted by Guillaume
de Lorris, and only later felt the full influence of Jean
de Meun.

The chief interest of the Roman de la Rose for the
modern student lies in this its historical significance as
an expression of the varying ideals of the later Middle
Ages ; but it has its absolute interest as well. Any one
who will read the poem through, either in the French
original or in the excellent English translation by Mr-

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 51

F. S. Ellis,1 will find many passages of vivid and charm-
ing description, of keen analysis, of telling satire, of
much vital human interest, and of true literary power,
to repay him for the many hours which even a hurried
reading will demand.2

The English translation of the Roman de la jRone,
which is preserved in a single manuscript The English
in the Hunterian collection at Glasgow, was Version.
first included among Chaucer's works in Thynne's edi-
tion of 1532,3 and was until 1870 universally accepted
as a genuine work of Chaucer. Since that date the
question of its authenticity has been one of the most
vexed problems of Chaucerian scholarship ; and even
to-day scholars are not in full accord as to the solution.

That Chaucer made a translation of some portion at
least of the Roman, we know on Chaucer's own author-
ity. In the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women
(JB version, 328-331), the god of love says to Chaucer : —

For in pleyn text, withouten nede of glose,
Thou hast translated the Romaunce of the Rose,
That is an heresye ageyns my lawe,
And makest wyse folk fro me withdrawe.4

1 London, 1900. (The Temple Classics Series, J. M. Dent & Co. 3
vols.)

2 The best editions of the French text are those of M. Me'on, Paris,
1814, and F. Michel, Paris, 1864. A new edition, which will doubtless
supersede these, is promised by M. Ernest Langlois. The best literary
study of the Roman is that by M. Langlois in the second volume of
Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature franqaise, published under the
direction of M. Petit de Julleville, Paris, 1896. Shorter and less de-
tailed, but highly suggestive, is the chapter devoted to the Roman in
La Litterature franqaise au Moyen Age, by Gaston Paris, Paris, 1890.
Reference has been made in a previous note to M. Langlois's Origines
et Sources du Roman de la Rose, Paris, 1890.

8 Thynne printed from a manuscript now lost, which, though some-
what more accurate than the Hunterian MS., does not differ markedly
from it.

4 Lydgate, moreover, in the Fall of Princes, mentions the translation
among other works of Chaucer : —

62 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Two questions at once suggest themselves : Did Chau-
cer ever complete his translation ? Is the fragmentary
translation which we possess the work of Chaucer ? The
first of these questions may be pretty safely answered in
the negative. In the first place, the translation of so
long a poem is a laborious and tedious task ; and Chau-
cer, as we well know, was only too likely to weary of an
undertaking before it was half completed. In the second
place, had so popular a poet as Chaucer completed a
translation of so popular a poem as the Roman de la
Rose, it is highly improbable that the work would
have been allowed to perish.1

The first scholar to raise the second question, that
as to Chaucer's authorship of the existing English ver-
sion, was the late Professor F. J. Child of Harvard,
in a communication to the At/ienceum for December 3,
1870 : ' I may add, that it will take a great deal more
than the fact that the Romaunt of the Rose is printed
in old editions, to make me believe that it is Chaucer's.
The rhymes are not his, and the style is not his, unless
he changed both extraordinarily as he got on in life.
The translation is often in a high degree slovenly. The
part after the break, from v. 5814 on, seemed to me, on
a recent comparison with the French, better done than
the middle ; and as the Bialacoil of the earlier portion
is here called Fair-welcomyng, perhaps this part belongs
to a different version.'

Professor Child did not pursue the question any fur-
ther ; and it was several years before any detailed argu-

And notably [he] did his businesse
By great auise his wittes to dispose,
To translate the Homaynt of the Rose.

Quoted by Skeat, 1. 23.

1 It is, perhaps, worthy of remark that the Romaunt of the Rose is not
mentioned in the list of works of evil tendency which Chaucer repents of
having written in the ' retractation ' at the end of the Parson's Tale.

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 53

ment against the Chaucerian authorship appeared in
print. It was nearly twenty years before the impor-
tant hint contained in his last sentence received fur-
ther elaboration. The first important document in the
controversy appeared from the pen of Skeat in 1880,1
in which the argument against Chaucer's authorship
of the translation is based mainly on three grounds :
(1) The presence in the translation of imperfect rimes,
particularly the riming of words ending in -y with
words ending in -ye, such as do not appear in the poet's
unquestioned works ; (2) the occurrence of words which
belong distinctly to a dialect more northern than that
of Chaucer ; (3) differences in the vocabulary of the
translation from the vocabulary of Chaucer.2

Though the argument against Chaucer's authorship
of the translation did not pass unchallenged,3 nothing
more of importance appeared till 1888, when it was
clearly proved that Child had been right in suspecting
that the portion of the translation which follows the
break at line 5810 is not by the author of the earlier
portion.4

1 Chaucer's Prioress's Tale, etc., third edition, Oxford, 1880. The
essay is reprinted in the Chaucer Society's volume of Essays on Chau-
cer, pp. 439-451. That the question had already been discussed is shown
by Thomas Arnold's communication to The Academy, July 20, 1878,
pp. 66, 67, and Skeat's answer, The Academy, August 10, 1878, p. 143.

2 Of these arguments, the third is least sound. Cf . an article by Pro-
fessor Cook in Modern Language Notes, 2. 143-146 (1887).

8 The most important dissenting voice was that of Fick in Englische
Studien, 9. 161-167 (1886), who argued that the impure rimes and
northern forms were to be explained on the ground that the translation
was a work of Chaucer's youth.

* F.Lindner in Englische Studien, 11. 163-173. The argument is based
on rime, on the change from Bialacoil to Fair-welcomyng, noticed by
Child, and on a number of false translations in the second part. Lind-
ner is not ready to attribute either section to Chaucer, but favors the
first rather than the second. His article is in many particulars invali-
dated by the more thorough investigations of Kaluza. (See below.) In
a review of Kaluza's work in Englische Studien, 18. 104-105, Lindner

54 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

In the years 1892 and 1893 the controversy reached
its culmination. In his Studies in Chaucer,1 pub-
lished in 1892, Professor Lounsbury combated stoutly
and at great length the arguments against Chaucer's
authorship of the whole translation ; and in the same
year he was ably answered by Professor Kittredge.2 In
the year following, 1893, the whole question was put
upon a new footing, and all preceding arguments were
in a measure invalidated by Professor Kaluza.3 It is
unnecessary to reproduce here in detail Kaluza's argu-
ments, which a serious student of the question will read
for himself ; his conclusions alone need detain us. He
has shown conclusively that the existing Romaunt of
the Rose consists, not, as Child guessed and Lindner
proved, of two dissimilar fragments, but of three. The
first (Fragment A), including lines 1-1705, contains
nothing in rime, dialect, or vocabulary to prevent ita
attribution to Chaucer. The second (Fragment B),
lines 1705-5810, is much less faithful in its following
of the French text, and includes within its limits nearly
all of the false rimes and northern forms which had
led earlier scholars to reject the whole translation.
Fragment C, lines 5811 to end, returns in method of
translation and in style to the manner of Fragment A,

gracefully admits his errors, and assents fully to Kaluza's position.
See Skeat's communication to The Academy for September 8, 1888,
pp. 153, 154.

1 Vol. ii, pp. 3-166. Professor Lounsbury has never retreated from
the position here maintained. He is, as far as the present writer knows,
the only scholar who still asserts the Chaucerian authorship of the
whole translation.

2 Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Liter attire, 1. 1-65. See
also Skeat in The Academy for February 27, 1892, pp. 206, 207.

8 Chaucer und der Rosenroman, Berlin, 1893. Kaluza had previously
communicated his discoveries to Furnivall, who in turn communicated
them to The Academy for July 5, 1890, p. 11. See also Skeat's commu-
nications to the same paper for July 19, 1890 (pp. 51, 52), and August
15, 1891 (p. 137).

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 55

and contains only a small number of questionable rimes
and forms. Dr. Kaluza reaches the conclusion that
Fragments A and C are the work of Chaucer, and that
Fragment B is the work of an unknown poet of north-
ern dialect, who, imitating as well as he could the man-
ner of Chaucer, set himself to complete Chaucer's
unfinished work.1 The main contentions of Kaluza's
study have been pretty generally accepted ; and most
scholars now agree that Fragment A is by Chaucer, and
that Fragment B certainly is not. About Fragment C
there is still much dispute, Professor Skeat declining to
accept it as Chaucer's.2 The present writer is inclined
to agree with Kaluza in thinking it genuine.8

It may be held as fairly certain, then, that, intimate
as was Chaucer's acquaintance with the whole of the
Roman de la Rose, and great as was the influence it
exerted upon him, he executed but a small part of his
projected translation of the work, and that his unfin-
ished version was later continued by some poet of
Chaucer's school.

It remains to ask at what period of his career Chau-
cer's fragmentary translation was made. While the
whole of the existing translation was held as Chaucer's
work, its imperfect rimes led students to attribute it

1 In Essays on Chaucer, published by the Chaucer Society, pp. 675-683,
Skeat assigns the dialect of Fragment B to ' some county not far from
the Humber, as Lancashire, Yorkshire, or Lincolnshire.' The date of
the fragment he thinks to be later than 1400 and earlier than 1440. It
has recently been urged by J. H. Lange in Englische Studien, 29. 397-
405 (1901), that the author of Fragment B is Chaucer's disciple Lyd-
gate. The argument is plausible, but not conclusive. Skeat has shown
( Athenceum, June 6, 1896, p. 747) that Lydgate was acquainted with
Fragment A.

2 Oxford Chaucer, 1. 1-20.

8 The latest attempt to prove Chaucer's authorship for the whole
translation is that of Miss Louise Pound in Modern Language Notes, 11.
92-102 (1896). The argument, which is based on the sentence-length
in Chaucer's genuine poems and in the Itomaunt, is hardly convincing.

56 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

to the earliest period of the poet's activity. When, on
the other hand, the whole work was considered spuri-
ous, this argument ceased to operate, and the fact that
the Romaunt is mentioned in the Prologue to the
Legend of Good Women in close association with
the Troilus led Ten Brink to the conclusion that
Chaucer's supposedly lost translation belonged to a
period only slightly earlier than his Troilus.1 To
this conclusion Kaluza also assents.2 Though the ques-
tion probably is not capable of final proof, the present
writer is inclined to hold to the earlier view, that Chau-
cer's translation belongs to the period of his youth.
Though the portions of the work which may be attrib-
uted to Chaucer are of a high degree of excellence,
easy and spirited,3 they have not the power of his
maturer work. The translation is a good one, but not
a great one. There are, moreover, in Fragment C at
least, a number of imperfect rimes that can be accepted
as Chaucer's only on the assumption that the work is
immature. Finally, it seems inherently more probable
that an undertaking of this character should belong to
the period of the poet's apprenticeship rather than to
that of his developed art.4 The association of the work
with Troilus may be sufficiently explained as due to
the similarity in the spirit of the two works.5

1 History of English Literature (Eng. trans.), 2. 76, 77 ; and Eng-
lische Studien, 17. 9, 10.

8 Chaucer und der Rosenroman, 1, 2.

8 The first 1678 lines of the French poem are reprinted from Moon's
edition in Skeat's Oxford Chaucer, 1. 93-164, parallel with Chaucer's
version. The student is thus enabled to make his own comparisons
between original and translation. The English version is but 27 lines
longer than the French.

* Skeat, apparently, continues to regard the Romaunt as an early
work. Cf. the Oxford Chaucer, 1. 11.

6 For the date of the Romaunt, see also Koch's The Chronology of
Chaucer's Writings (Chaucer Society), pp. 12-15.

CHAPTER IV
THE MINOR POEMS

THOUGH among the Minor Poems of Chaucer are num-
bered many of his latest as well as of his earliest pro-
ductions, it is convenient to treat of them together in
a single chapter. Nor is the departure from the chro-
nological method which such treatment involves with-
out its compensating advantages ; for in their variety
of theme and tone, and even more in their wide metri-
cal range, they constitute an excellent introduction to
Chaucer's longer and more sustained compositions. In
the following pages the Minor Poems are considered
severally in the approximately chronological order
adopted in Professor Skeat's edition.

I. AN A. B. C.

Chaucer's A. B. (7., a 'song according to the order
of the letters of the alphabet,' is merely a translation,
as literal as the exigencies of rime and rhythm would
permit, of a hymn to the Virgin included in La, Pele-
rinage de la Vie Humaine of Guillaume de Deguille-
ville, ' a Cistercian monk in the royal abbey of Chalis,'
written about the year 1330. Of the date of Chaucer's
translation we have no certain knowledge ; but from
the choice of subject and the manner of execution, it
is safe to infer that it is among the poet's earliest
works. It is merely a meritorious essay in verse compo-
sition. The introductory statement in Speght's Chau-
cer of 1602, where the A. B. (7. was first printed,
to the effect that it was made, ' as some say, at the

58 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Request of Blanch, Duchesse of Lancaster, as a praier
for her priuat vse, being a woman in her religion very
deuout,' is not supported by any other evidence. The
verse is iambic pentameter ; the stanza contains eight
lines, with the rime-scheme ababbcbc. The stanza of
Chaucer's original contains twelve lines of octosyllabic
verse, with only two rimes.

II. THE COMPLAINT TO PITY

The love-lorn squire, Aurelius, in the Franklin's
Tale, tried to ease his heart by making ' manye layes,
songes, compleintes, roundels, virelayes ; ' and, appar-
ently, in his younger days, Chaucer had done the same.
Whether the unhappy love expressed in the 'com-
plaint' and described again at the beginning of the
Book of the Duchess was a real and deep passion
or not, we have no way of knowing. Don Quixote,
when he would make himself a knight-errant complete,
provided himself with a Dulcinea del Toboso whom
he might serve as lady-love; and it is quite possible
that when Chaucer would launch himself as a courtly
poet, he found it expedient to do the same. Still we
must not assume the truth of such a hypothesis merely
because the expression of this love is clothed in arti-
ficial and conventional forms. Personally, I find the
idea of a hopeless love, protracted through eight long
years, out of harmony with the eminent sanity of
Chaucer's nature. But who shall say ?

We do not know the date of the Complaint to
Pity, nor do we know whether or not it was original
with Chaucer.1 It is a conventional love poem on the
French model, and is in all probability one of Chau-
cer's earliest extant works. It is interesting chiefly as

1 Professor Skeat's attempt to find a parallel for tke personification
of Pity in the Thebais of Statiua seems unnecessary.

THE MINOR POEMS 59

being probably the earliest appearance in English verse
of the seven-line stanza, with rime-scheme dbafobcc,
known as the rime-royal, which was later used in
Troilus and Criseyde.

HI. THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS

The Book of the Duchess, or the ' Deeth of Blaunche
the Duchesse,' as it is called in the Prologue to the
Legend of Good Women, is the first of Date and
Chaucer's poems to which a definite date Sources-
can be assigned. In September, 1369, died the Lady
Blanche, daughter of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, and
first wife of Chaucer's patron, John of Gaunt ; and soon
after her death, we may suppose, was written the poem
which celebrates her virtue and bewails her loss. John
of Gaunt and his lady were both twenty-nine years old ;
and if we accept the year 1340 as the approximate date
of Chaucer's birth, this also was the age of the poet.
Twenty-nine he was at least, perhaps older, so that if
this be his first original work of any length, — and its
immaturity lends credence to the belief, — Chaucer's
genius was slow in its development. Keats, we remem-
ber, was but twenty-six when death took him away.

Chaucer's literary apprenticeship was worked out in
the school of the Roman de la Rose, his translation
of the poem being very likely his first serious venture
into the field of letters ; and the Book of the Duchess,
like other work of his earliest period, is strongly under
the influence of the allegorical love poetry of France.
From that source, directly or indirectly, comes the
whole machinery of the poem, its dream and vision,
its singing birds, its flowery meads ; from the same
source are drawn some of the ideas also. Were not
the walls of the chamber in which the poet dreamed
that he awoke

60 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Peynted, bothe text and glose,
Of al the Romaunce of the Rose ?

Of the same school of poetry is the Frenchman, Guil-
laume de Machault (13007-1377), and from him, too,
Chaucer has borrowed here and there.1 Machault's
Dit de la Fontaine Amoureuse, which Chaucer cer-
tainly knew, contains a long paraphrase of the story
of Ceyx and Alcyone; and it has been asserted that
this suggested the Proem of the Boole of the Duchess?
It is quite likely that Chaucer did consult Machault's
version of the story; but it is clearly demonstrable
that he also went directly to Ovid, and that he is more
indebted to the Latin than to the French. Though
the general spirit of the Book of the Duchess is of
the French school, its plot, if it may be said to have
a plot, is Chaucer's own. Of its 1334 lines, not more
than a hundred have been traced to a definite French
original.3

It is possible that the story of Ceyx and Alcyone
was originally an independent work. In the Prologue
of the Man of Law's Tale, at any rate, we read that

In youtlic he made of Ceys and Alcion;

but this may very well refer to the Boole of the
Duchess, which, as we know, was made in Chaucer's
youth.

It is as a work of the poet's youth, a mark from which
one may measure his subsequent literary development,
Literary that the Book of the Duchess deserves at*
Art> tention. Intrinsically its value is but slight.

It is not lacking in beautiful and effective passages ;

1 See Sandras, Etude sur G. Chaucer, 291-294.

2 The significant portions of the Dit de la Fontaine Amoureuse are
given by Ten Brink, Studien, 197-205. Ovid's version is found in Meta-
morphoses, 11. 410-748.

8 Cf. Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer, 2. 212.

THE MINOR POEMS 61

but, taken as a whole, it furnishes but weary reading.
Distinctly graceful and pleasing is the story of Ceyx
and Alcyone, when judged purely on its own merits as
an imitation of Ovid; but so slight is its connection
with the main theme of the poem, that it constitutes
a serious breach of artistic unity. By far the most
charming passage of the whole work is the account
of the poet's supposed awakening, with the merry sing-
ing of the birds without the pictured windows of his
chamber broken by the sudden blast of the huntsman's
horn, all the varied life and motion of the hunt, the
flowers and trees and wild beasts of the greenwood.
It is not till the lonely knight begins to speak that
the poem sinks to its true level of mediocrity. Not
only are his speeches intolerably long, they are also
essentially artificial. If he may be forgiven his con-
ventional diatribe against malicious fortune, and his
strange conceit of the game of chess, features bor-
rowed from Machault, it is hard to overlook his unin-
termitted pedantry. He ransacks the treasure-house of
classical antiquity, and the Bible as well, to furnish
forth fit comparisons for his loss, and, not content with
this, stops now and then to explain a more recondite
allusion. He tells how he had made many songs to win
his lady's love : —

Althogh 1 coude not make so wel
Songes, ne knowe the art al,
As coude Lamekes sone Tubal,
That fond out first the art of songe;
For, as his brothers hamers ronge
Upon his anvelt up and doun,
Therof he took the firste soun;
But Grekes seyn, Pictagoras,
That he the firste finder was
Of the art; Aurora telleth so,
But therof no furs, of hem two.

62 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

It is Chaucer, of course, and not the bereaved knight,
who is thus jealous of his reputation for philological
accuracy. ' But therof no fors, of hem two ;' it is in
either case a serious lapse from literary taste. Lapses
of this sort Chaucer never wholly outgrew.

In passing judgment so harshly on the long speeches
of the knight, some exception must be made for the pas-
sage in which he describes the charms, spiritual as well
as physical, of the ' gode faire Whyte.' Of this Lowell
has spoken as ' one of the most beautiful portraits of
a woman that was ever drawn.' ' Full of life it is,' he
continues, * and of graceful health, with no romantic
hectic or sentimental languish. It is such a figure as you
would never look for in a ballroom, but might expect
to meet in the dewy woods, just after sunrise, when you
were hunting for late violets.' * But even here one is
tempted to cry out on the score of prolixity.

Some attempt is made to create a sort of suspense by
withholding till the very end the fact that the knight's
loss of his lady is the irreparable loss of death; and
after the long-drawn-out speeches of the poem, a dis-
tinctly striking effect is produced by the abruptness of
the end, with its utter restraint : —

• She is deed ! ' « Nay ! ' ' Yis, by my trouthe ! '
' Is that your los ? by God, hit is routhe ! '

I cannot agree with the majority of critics who see in
this ending proof that Chaucer tired of his work and
ended the poem hastily ; it seems to me rather a stroke
of deliberate art.

In its lack of good proportion and its frequent lapses
in taste, in the occasional roughness of metre which sug-
gests the earlier alliterative line, in its lack of humor and
delicate irony, — for which, to be sure, there is little
opportunity, — we see that the Book of the Duchess
1 Conversations on some of the Old Poets, p. 98.

THE MINOR POEMS 63

stands at the beginning of Chaucer's development. In
its graceful treatment of nature, its well-managed tran-
sitions, its skillful use of dialogue, in its portrait of noble
womanhood and its occasional pathos, it gives promise
of the splendid development to come.

IV. THE COMPLAINT OP MARS

The Complaint of Mars is a conventional poem,
supposed to be sung by a bird on St. Valentine's Day,
in which mythology and astronomy are curiously blent
together to the greater glory of illicit love. There is
nothing to indicate the date of its composition, nor
have we any certain knowledge whether or not it was
intended to celebrate an actual intrigue ; though the
old copyist, Shirley, appended to his manuscript copy
of the piece the statement that some men say that it
was made about my Lady of York, daughter to the
King of Spain, and my Lord Huntingdon, sometime
Duke of Exeter. The lady named was sister-in-law to
Chaucer's patron, John of Gaunt, while my Lord Hunt-
ingdon afterwards married John of Gaunt's daughter,
Elizabeth. Shirley further assures us in his heading to
the poem that it was made at John of Gaunt's com-
mand. The Complaint has little claim to attention save
for the fact that a somewhat difficult nine-line stanza
is handled with a good deal of skill.

V. THE PARLIAMENT OP FOWLS
On the twentieth day after Christmas, in January,
1382, King Richard was married in the chapel of the
palace at Westminster to the Lady Anne of
Bohemia, a daughter of the Emperor Charles
IV and a sister of Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia, * who
at this period had taken the title of Emperor of Rome.'
Richard was but fifteen years old, and his bride was

64 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

but a few months his senior. For upwards of a year,
Froissart tells us, Richard had been in treaty with
King Wenceslaus, and the Lady Anne had been pre-
viously contracted to two German princes ; so that the
course of this diplomatic courtship had not been a very
smooth one.

Though we cannot assert the fact with positive as-
surance, it seems very probable that it is the events of
this royal courtship which Chaucer celebrates allegori-
cally in his Parliament of Fowls. The * forinel egle,'
which Nature holds on her hand, —

Of shap the gentileste
That ever she among fair werkes fonde,
The most benigne and the goodlieste, —

would then represent the Lady Anne. The 'tercel
egle,' ' the foul royal,' who declares his love for her,
would stand for Richard, while the other two eagles,
4 of lower kinde,' would be the two earlier suitors. The
year of respite which Dame Nature grants, in which
the * formel egle ' is to choose between her suitors,
corresponds with the period over which the diplomatic
negotiations were protracted. Chaucer is evidently cele-
brating a courtship in high life, and no other court-
ship of the period so well accords with the incidents
of the poem. The maturity of Chaucer's literary art
in the poem, furthermore, agrees very well with a date
as late as 1382. That it cannot have been written
later than 1385 is proved by the mention of it in the
Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. It is not
at all impossible that the delicate flattery of the Par-
liament of Fowls may have been directly responsible
for the favor which Queen Anne showed to Chaucer
three years later.1

Though its general form as a poem of the dream-
i Cf. p. 141.

THE MINOR POEMS 65

vision type associates the Parliament of Fowls with
the essentially mediaeval, French models of
Chaucer's earlier period, such as the Ro-
maunt of the Rose, and though the conception of
an assembly of fowls is probably of French origin,1 the
poem shows overwhelming proof of the influence of
the new culture which came to Chaucer as a result of
his Italian journeys of 1373 and 1378.

After four introductory stanzas, Chaucer devotes fifty-
six lines to a synopsis of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis,
which he was reading before he fell asleep and dreamed
his dream. This work, a part of the De Republica,
was not known to Chaucer and to his contemporaries
in its original setting, for the De Republica was not
recovered till a later date, but was preserved as an ex-
tract in a copious commentary of Macrobius, a gram-
marian and philosopher of the fifth century. This book
was a very popular one with Chaucer and with the
Middle Ages in general, and exerted no small influence
on the Divine Comedy of Dante. The extract from
Cicero, if not the laborious commentary of Macrobius,
is fully worthy of the popularity it achieved.

In the section which follows on the synopsis of the
Somnium Scipionis, the predominant influence is that
of Dante, from whom the inscription over the gate
to the garden of love is freely adapted ; though one
stanza, beginning with the line, —

The wery hunter, slepinge in his bed, —

is translated from the late Latin poet Claudian. For
the description of the garden and its delights (lines 176-
294) Chaucer is closely indebted to the Teseide of
Boccaccio. It was at about this time, apparently, that

1 As Skeat has noticed, one of the fables of Marie de France is en-
titled ' Li parlemens des Oiseax por faire Roi.' Oxford Chaucer, 1. 75.

66 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Chaucer wrote his Palamon and Arctic, known to us
as the Knight's Tale ; and finding that the stanzas
of the Teseide here utilized were not necessary for his
longer work, he thriftily turned them to account in the
Parliament of Fowls.

The description of the Goddess Nature surrounded
by all the birds of the air is adapted, as Chaucer him-
self tells us, from the De Planctu Natures, of Alanus
de Insulis, a Latin poet and divine of the twelfth cen-
tury. In Alanus, however, the birds are merely depicted
on the robe which Nature wears. As for the parlia-
ment itself, with its long debate, which constitutes the
real substance of the poem, that is, so far as we know,
Chaucer's own original production.

As the sources of the poem show a twofold influence,
that of the departing Middle Age and that of the new
Italian culture, so too in its literary workmanship one
Literary may detect the transition from the more con-
Art ventional poetry of Chaucer's earlier period

to the work of his maturer genius. Structurally consid-
ered, the work is far from perfect ; for the real action
of the piece does not begin till nearly three hundred
lines have rolled melodiously by. Beautiful as is the
description of the garden of love, its length is both
relatively and absolutely extravagant. Quite unne-
cessary to the action is the synopsis of the Somnium
Scipionis with which the poem begins, an unfortu-
nate bit of introductory machinery which Chaucer also
employs, at greater length, in his earlier Book of the
Duchess.

It is not till Chaucer has finished his introductions,
and has left his authors well behind him, that the con-
ventional gives place to the natural, and the poet's
genius plays freely. The graceful and charming conceit
of Dame Nature on her hill of flowers, with all the birds

THE MINOR POEMS 67

about her come to choose their mates, is well executed
and well sustained. If we fail to enter with much
enthusiasm into the emotions of the three rival eagles
as they plead their amorous causes, we are at any rate
highly entertained by the varying counsels of the four
estates in this feathered parliament.

The birds of prey, who constitute the peers of the
realm, take the matter quite seriously. If necessary,
they are willing to see in the dispute fit cause for war.
The fowls of lower degree, the bourgeois birds who feed
on worms, the mercantile birds who occupy their busi-
ness in the water, those of agricultural pursuit who feed
on seeds, care more for their own well-being and for
the expeditious transaction of business than for any
punctilio of honor.

But she wol love him, lat him love another !

cries the unsentimental goose, as spokesman for the
water-fowl, while the cuckoo, of the worm-eating estate,
goes even further : —

' So I,' quod he, « may have my make in pees,
I recche not how longe that ye stryve ;
Lat ech of hem be soleyn al hir ly vc.'

From these radical views the turtle dove, representing
the more poetical class of those who feed on seeds, is
inclined to dissent : —

Yet let him serve hir ever, til he be deed,

an opinion which the duck considers merely laughable.
Though characterized quite humanly, Chaucer does
not suffer us to forget that the parliament is only one
of fowls, and the sudden ' Kek, kek ! kukkow, quek,
quek' which breaks upon us serves as a delicious bit
of humorous realism, after the passionate speeches of
the three tercel eagles. As in its general structure the

68 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Parliament of Fowls leads us to comparisons with the
Book of the Duchess which preceded it, so in its treat-
ment of birds who speak like men it leads us forward
to the more finished art of the Nun's Priest's Tale.

VI. A COMPLAINT TO HIS LADY

Chaucer's Complaint to his Lady is apparently no
more than a series of experiments in verse form. Be-
ginning with two stanzas of seven lines, it shifts into
the terza rima of Dante, and thence into a complex
stanza of ten lines, with rime-scheme aabaabcddc. This
is the first appearance of the terza rima in English
verse, and probably its only appearance until English
literature was again Italianized in the days of Wyatt
and Surrey. As Mr. Heath suggests, the poem should
not be taken too seriously.1 It may have been written
shortly after Chaucer's Italian journey of 1373.

VII. ANELIDA AND ARCITE

The fragment of Anelida and Arcite consists of a
Proem of three stanzas, twenty-seven stanzas of seven
lines each of the * Story,' followed by a Complaint in
fourteen stanzas of very elaborate metrical construction.
After the Complaint, the ' Story ' is resumed, but is
broken off after a single stanza. Probably the work
was never completed.

In line 21 Chaucer gives as his sources ' Stace, and
after him Corinne.' Stanzas 4-7 are indeed from the
Thebais of Statius ; but who ' Corinne ' may be, we do
not know, — very likely the name is one of Chaucer's
sheer inventions, — nor do we know any source for the
story. But for six stanzas of the poem (1-3, 8-10)
a source is easily discoverable. They are taken from
the first and second books of Boccaccio's Teseide, the

1 Gttobe Chaucer, p. xxxvii.

THE MINOR POEMS 69

poem which served as the foundation of the Knight's
Tale. Since stanzas from the Teseide are also found
in the Parliament of Fowls and in Troilus, it is nat-
ural to infer that these three poems were written at
about the same time, when Chaucer was busy with
his Palamon and Arcite, later known as the Knight's
Tale ; that is, soon after the year 1380.

Since the poem is a mere fragment, it is not possible
to say much of its literary qualities, save to call atten-
tion to the metrical skill and pleasing effect of the
Complaint which is incorporated into it. Neither can
we, while in ignorance of its source, venture to guess
how the story would have been concluded. Though also
a Theban at the court of Theseus, the Arcite of this
poem has nothing to do with the Arcite of the Knight's
Tale. It is not impossible that Chaucer may have
intended to celebrate some love story of the English
court, and that being busy with the Teseide, he chose
to shadow forth his real personages under names bor-
rowed from the court of Theseus, inventing the name
Corinne to increase the obscurity of his allegory. Frag-
ment as it is, the piece gives unquestioned proof of
Chaucer's power.

vm. CHAUCER'S WORDS UNTO ADAM
I know no better way to illustrate Chaucer's half -seri-
ous, half -playful address to his copyist, than by quoting
the words of Petrarch to a friend to whom he wished
to send a copy of his own work on the Life of Soli-
tude: ' I have tried ten times and more to have it copied
in such a way that, even if the style should not please
either the ears or the mind, the eyes might yet be grati-
fied by the form of the letters. But the faithfulness
and industry of the copyists, of whom I am constantly
complaining and with which you are familiar, have, in

70 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

spite of all my earnest efforts, frustrated my wishes.
These fellows are verily the plague of noble minds.
What I have just said must seem incredible. A work
written in a few months cannot be copied in so many
years ! The trouble and discouragement involved in
the case of more important books is obvious. . . . Such
is the ignorance, laziness, or arrogance of these fel-
lows, that, strange as it may seem, they do not repro-
duce what you give them, but write out something quite
different.' 1

One may assume that the poem was written soon
after Troilus and Boece, which it mentions in the
second line. It is written in the seven-line stanza of
Troilus.

IX. THE FORMER AGE

Poets have always been ready to sing the praises of
long ago, and to Chaucer, living in an age of continual
warfare, of corruption and oppression, the * blisful lyf,
paisible and swete, led by the peples in the former age,'
may well have appealed very strongly. Doubtless he
was wise enough and practical enough to see the fal-
lacies of a general ' return to nature,' and to recognize
that civilization has brought its blessings as well as its
curses ; but he was also philosopher enough to see that
* covetyse ' was really at the bottom of all the most
serious evils of his day, as it is of our own. The poem
is founded on the fifth metre of the second book of
Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, and may pro-
fitably be compared with Chaucer's prose translation
of the same passage. About twenty lines of The For-
mer Age are directly taken from Boethius, while the
remainder are Chaucer's own expansion of the theme.
There is nothing to indicate the date of its composition.

1 Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man
of Letters, New York, 1899, pp. 27, 2&

THE MINOR POEMS 71

The stanza consists of eight lines, with rime-scheme
ababbcbc.

X. FORTUNE

Because the poem called Fortune, like The Former
Age, is little more than a restatement of the teachings
of Boethius,1 it must not be inferred that it is a mere
literary tour de force. Indirectly at first through the
Roman de la Rose, and later from the Consolation
of Philosophy itself, Chaucer assimilated the philo-
sophy of Boethius into his own soul, and made it the
guiding principle of his life. Trite though they be, the
thoughts expressed in Fortune are noble thoughts;
and they are nobly spoken forth, not only with art, but
with conviction. Fortune may govern all things with
her fickleness, but ' man is man and master of his
fate.' Not only may a true man defy Fortune, he may
learn from her frowns which of his friends are friends
indeed, which things in life are really enduring. Before
the poem closes, its stoicism becomes a Christian stoi-
cism. The very uncertainty of things terrestrial, which
we, 'ful of lewednesse,' call Fortune, is but part of
the scheme of righteous Providence : —

The heveue hath propretee of sikernesse,
This world hath ever resteles travayle;
Thy laste day is end of myn intresse:
In general, this reule may nat fayle.

Whether the poem was called forth by some partic-
ular reverse of fortune or not cannot be known ; but
the definiteness of the refrain, —

And eek thou hast thy beste frend alyve, —

and of the appeal to certain princes in the envoy, seems
to suggest that this may have been the case. But who

1 Cf. Boethius, Book II, Proses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and Metre 1. Here
and there the influence of Boethius seems to be at second hand through
the Roman de la Rose. See Skeat's notes, Oxford Chaucer, 1. 542-547.

72 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

the friend may be, and what the occasion, it were idle
to inquire.

Apart from the nobility of its thought and the ele-
vation of its language, the poem is remarkable for the
metrical skill which it betrays. The poem consists of
three balades and an envoy. Each of the balades has
three stanzas of eight lines each, with the rime-scheme
ababbcbc, and the rimes are identical in each of the
three stanzas ; so that the rime * b ' is repeated twelve
times, while the rimes ' a ' and * c ' appear six times
each ; yet there is scarcely a line in which one is con-
scious of any conflict between versification and thought.

XI. MERCILESS BEAUTY

In the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, it
is said that Chaucer made many a hymn for love's holi-
days, —

That Lighten Balades, Roundels, Virelaye8.

The roundel is a highly elaborate verse form, borrowed
from France. The stanza contains thirteen lines, with
rime-scheme abbabababbabb, in which lines one and
two are repeated as lines six and seven, and are again
repeated with line three to form the last three lines
of the stanza. The three roundels of this poem and the
one near the end of the Parliament of Fowls are the
only roundels of Chaucer preserved to us. Merciless
Beauty is a charmingly graceful, but entirely conven-
tional, love poem, after the French school, and perhaps
imitated from a French original.1

XII. TO ROSEMOUNDE

The balade To Rosemounde was discovered by Pro-
fessor Skeat in 1891, appended to a manuscript of
Troilus and Criseyde in the Bodleian Library. This
1 See Skeat, Oxford Chaucer, 1. 548.

THE MINOR POEMS 73

may indicate that it was written at the same time as
the longer poem ; but whenever written, it breathes
the same spirit of mingled seriousness and irony. It is
thoroughly characteristic of Chaucer's developed art.
There are three stanzas of eight lines each, with rime-
scheme ababbcbc, the rimes of the first stanza being
repeated in the second and third.

XIII. TEUTH

The balade of Truth is the best answer one may
give to the charge that Chaucer was incapable of * high
seriousness.' Though suggested in part by Boethius,
the poem is essentially original, and expresses, I think,
the substance of Chaucer's criticism of life. Like Lang-
land and Wiclif, Chaucer was fully conscious of the
evils of his time; nor was he, as one might hastily infer
from the humorous treatment of these evils in the
Canterbury Tales, indifferent to their gravity. When
Jacques invites Orlando to sit down and ' rail against
our mistress the world, and all our misery,' Orlando
answers: 4I will chide no breather in the world but
myself, against whom I know most faults.' Orlando's
attitude seems to have been Shakespeare's attitude, as
it was certainly Chaucer's. ' Werk wel thyself, that
other folk canst rede.' The world is bad, but who am
I, to set it right ? the poet asks. Shall I not merely
fill my own soul with storm and tempest, and all the
while be striving ' as doth the crokke with the wal ' ?
The poet is gifted with a delicate and sensitive soul,
which, kept untainted, can give forth life and beauty
to his own age and to the ages in store. To spend it
all in mad protest against a wicked world — what shall
it profit? Fleeing from the press, renouncing the
* strenuous life ' to dwell with truth, Chaucer showed
his age its true likeness, its good and evil. The world

74 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

might listen or not, as it pleased. After all there is a
power stronger than we, making for righteousness : —

Daunte thyself, that dauntest otheres dede ;
And trouihe shal deliver e, hit is no drede.

But beyond all this, what is this world that we should
struggle so to set it straight ?

Her nis non boom, her nis but wilderness^:
Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stal I
Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al;
Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede;
And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

The poem consists of three stanzas and an envoy, all
in the seven-line stanza, with the same rimes reappear-
ing in each stanza and in the envoy.1

XIV. GENTILESSE

Though borrowed in its general conception, like
Truth, from Boethius, and in part also from the
Roman de la Rose, the balade of Gentilesse ex-
presses Chaucer's own conviction as to true gentility,
a conviction which is expressed again in the Wife of
Bath's Tale. Trite enough in a democratic age like the
present, these thoughts were more novel in the day of
Chaucer, particularly when they came from one who
dwelt near the court, that great centre of all the ' sol-
emn plausibilities ' of life. There are three seven-line
stanzas, with rimes repeated throughout.

XV. LACK OF STEADFASTNESS

If the philosophy of ' Flee fro the prees ' be accepted
as representing Chaucer's true conviction, it is not sur-
prising to find that he very seldom assumes the prophet's
mantle, and attempts to scourge, save with the lash of
comedy, the evils and abuses of his time. One of the
1 For further remarks on this poem, cf. above, pp. 29, 30.

THE MINOR POEMS 75

few exceptions to this rule is the vigorous balade, with
its envoy to King Richard, entitled Lack of Stead-
fastness. Covetise and the love of meed, the ' lust that
folk have in dissensioun,' the decay of virtue and of
mercy — these are the evils which are bringing the
world to naught ; and in this opinion Chaucer is at one
with Langland, with Wiclif, and with Gower.

To assign even an approximate date for the composi-
tion of the poem is very difficult. In the Tanner manu-
script of the minor poems it is headed with the words :
' Balade Royal made by oure laureal poete of Albyon
in hees laste yeeres.' Following this hint, Chaucerian
scholars have generally assigned it to the years between
1393 and 1399, during which Richard succeeded in
alienating the loyalty and affection of most of his sub-
jects. Mr. Pollard, however, suggests, with a good deal
of reason, that from a dependent of the court such
advice to his sovereign would have been prudent only
at an earlier period, in 1389 perhaps, ' when the young
Richard was taking the government into his own hands,
and throwing over the tutelage of his guardian uncles
with the support of all his people's hopes.' 1

Professor Skeat asserts that the general idea of the
poem was taken from Boethius, Book II, Metre 8 ; but
the indebtedness, if any, was very slight. The poem is
essentially original. The metre is the same as that of
Truth.

XVI. ENVOY TO SCOGAN

The date of the playful Envoy to Scogan may,
perhaps, be determined by the allusion in the sec-
ond stanza to ' this deluge of pestilence,' which has
been interpreted as a reference to the unusually heavy
rains which, according to Stowe's Annales, fell in the
autumn of 1393. ' Such abundance of water fell in

1 Preface to the Globe Edition, p. xlix.

76 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

October, that at Bury in Suffolke the church was full
of water, and at Newmarket it bare downe walles of
houses, so that men and women hardly escaped drown-
ing.' * This deluge, Chaucer suggests, was due to the
tears of Venus shed over Scogan's impiety in love. The
date 1393 would agree, moreover, with the closing
stanza, in which Chaucer speaks of himself ' in solitarie
wilderness' at the mouth of the Thames, that is at
Greenwich, whither he had been dispatched in 1390 on
a commission to repair the banks of the river. That
the poem was written in Chaucer's later years is evi-
dent from his humorous mention of those ' that ben
Lore and rounde of shape,' in the number of whom he
includes himself.

Of Scogan we know little. He is probably the
Henry Scogan, Squire, who was later tutor to the sons
of Henry IV. In a balade of his own, written, Professor
Skeat thinks, 'not many years before 1413,' Scogan
refers to Chaucer as ' my maistre Chaucier,' and pro-
ceeds to quote entire Chaucer's balade of Gentilesse.
There are six stanzas and an envoy, all in the seven-
line stanza. The rimes in each stanza are different.

XVII. ENVOY TO BUKTON

The date of the thoroughly characteristic Envoy
to BuTcton is determined by the allusion in line 23
to the undesirability of being taken prisoner in Fries-
land, whither a company of English was dispatched in
August, 1396, to the aid of William of Hainault.2 A
late date is further indicated by the reference to the
Wife of Bath. Of Bukton we know only that a Peter
de Buketon was the king's escheator for the County of

1 Oxford Chaucer, 1. 557.

2 See Froissart's Chronicles, Book IV, chap. 78. In the preceding
chapter we read that ' The Frieslanders are a people void of honor
and understanding, and show mercy to none who fall in their way.'

THE MINOR POEMS 77

York in 1397. Apparently, Bukton was meditating a
second marriage. Chaucer's sound advice on the sub-
ject, which seems to be at least half serious, need not
be taken as proof that his own marriage had been par-
ticularly unhappy. It is clear, however, that Chaucer,
now a widower, had no intention of falling again into
* swich dotage ' if he could help it. There are three
stanzas and an envoy of eight lines each, with rime-
scheme ababbcbc.

XVIII. THE COMPLAINT OF VENUS

The Complaint of Venus consists of three bal-
ades, loosely joined together, and supplemented by an
envoy. As Chaucer himself tells us in the envoy, the
balades are translated from the French of Sir Otes de
Graunsoun, a poet of Savoy, contemporary with Chau-
cer. As may be learned from a comparison with the
French text, which is printed in Skeat's Oxford Chau-
cer,1 the translation does not * f olowe word by word,'
but is rather free. Since this complaint is associated
in many copies with the Complaint of Mars, it has
been assumed that the princess addressed in the envoy
is the Princess Isabel of Spain and Duchess of York,
whose love is celebrated in the earlier piece. If this
be true, the date of composition will fall between 1390
and 1394 ; for in the latter year Princess Isabel died,
and in the envoy Chaucer speaks of himself as already
dulled by old age. The poem, which is of the conven-
tional type, is chiefly interesting for its elaborate rime-
scheme, admirably handled. Each of the three balades
consists of three eight-line stanzas, riming ababbccb,
with repeated rimes. The envoy has ten lines, riming
aabaabbaab.

1 1. 400-404. See also the articles on Grannsoun by Dr. A. Piaget,
•who first discovered the French originals, in Romania, 19. 237-259, 403-
448.

78 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

XIX. THE COMPLAINT OF CHAUCER TO HIS EMPTY
PURSE

This delightful poem, which with delicate humor
applies the conventional language of amorous poetry
to an empty purse, is probably among Chaucer's latest
compositions. The envoy, at any rate, addressed to
Henry IV as * conquerour of Brutes Albioun,' cannot
have been written earlier than September 30, 1399,
when Parliament formally acknowledged, by ' free elec-
cioun,' Henry's right to the throne. It is, of course,
possible that the preceding stanzas had been written at
an earlier time. It is pleasant to know that this deli-
cate appeal for help met with almost immediate reply.
On October 3 Chaucer received an additional pension
grant of forty marks from the royal treasury. There are
three seven-line stanzas, with repeated rimes, and an
envoy of five lines, riming aabba.

XX. PROVERBS

The two Proverbs attributed to Chaucer by the man-
uscripts are not of sufficient value to merit any discus-
sion. Each proverb contains four octosyllabic lines,
riming dbdb.

XXI. AGAINST WOMEN UNCONSTANT

Though there is no sufficient external evidence to
prove this poem one of Chaucer's, it is so thoroughly
Chaucerian in manner, and withal so charming and
graceful, that one is strongly inclined to think that the
manuscripts and the early editions are right in asso-
ciating it with his genuine work. The idea of the poem
and its refrain are from the French of Machault, an
author with whom Chaucer was thoroughly familiar.
The metre is Chaucer's favorite seven-line stanza, with
repeated rimes.

THE MINOR POEMS 79

XXII. AN AMOROUS COMPLAINT

As in the case of the preceding poem, there is no
satisfactory evidence that An Amorous Complaint is
by Chaucer, though it is certainly in his manner. The
poem has not sufficient excellence to make the question
an important one. The seven-line stanza is employed.

XXIII. A BALADE OF COMPLAINT
This poem, like the preceding, is of the conventional
erotic type. It occurs in but one manuscript, and is not
there attributed to Chaucer. Though superior to An
Amorous Complaint in art, it is not a poem which we
need consider very seriously. There are three seven-
line stanzas, without repetition of rime. The acciden-
tal recurrence of the c rime of the first stanza as the
a rime of the second is a metrical blemish which
may be taken as an argument against its Chaucerian
authorship.

XXIV. WOMANLY NOBLESSE

This poem, which is found in a single manuscript,
was first printed by Professor Skeat in The Athenceum
for June 9, 1894. If not deserving of the high praise
bestowed upon it by Professor Skeat in the first flush
of discovery, it is yet a charming and graceful bit of
conventional love poetry. The rime-scheme is highly
elaborate, but three rimes appearing in the entire
piece. There are three stanzas of nine lines each, rim-
ing aabaabbaa, with repeated rimes, and an envoy of
six lines riming dbdbaa, in which the same rimes again
appear. The a rime is therefore repeated twenty-two
times. It should be noticed, however, that Chaucer
has prudently chosen very easy rimes.

CHAPTER V

BOETHIUS AND THE ASTROLABE
BOETHIUS DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIE

DUEING the whole extent of the Middle Ages there
was no single work, save the Bible itself, which ex-
The erted so wide and continuous an influence on

original. ^he thought of Europe as the dialogue of
Boethius on the Consolation of Philosophy. In
England its influence may be traced from the very
dawn of our literature; for the moralizing interpola-
tions in Beowulf are in several instances to be traced
to this source, and the De Consolatione was among
the works which the great Alfred gave to his country-
men, translated into their own speech. Chaucer, as has
already been seen, was permeated through and through
with the teachings of Boethius, and his contemporaries
felt this influence as strongly. What is true of Eng-
land is true also of France and Italy and Germany.
The direct influence of Boethius, moreover, was supple-
mented by an indirect influence, exerting itself through
the channels of other books, notably of the Roman
de la Rose. Through this channel, not improbably,
Chaucer first met the doctrines of Boethius ; and it is
not impossible that the idea of Chaucer's translation
was first suggested by a couplet of the Roman : —

'T would redound

Greatly to that man's praise who should
Translate that book with masterhood.1

1 Ellis's translation, 11. 5344-5346.

BOETHIUS AND THE ASTROLABE 81

Jean de Meun, at any rate, followed his own advice,
and made a translation of the book into French.

The work fully deserved the popularity it attained,
both in virtue of its inherent excellence and charm,
and in virtue of the fascinatingly romantic life of its
author. Additional authority was given to it by the
tradition, now strongly questioned but never satisfacto-
rily refuted, that its author was a Christian, and by
the erroneous belief that he gave his life, a martyr for
the true faith. Two or three centuries after his death,
he was canonized as St. Severinus.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born be-
tween the years 475 and 483 A. D., probably later than
480, and died in 524, his life falling in the exciting days
of Odoacer and Theodoric. His family was one of high
standing, which had for six centuries held office in the
public service ; his father, who died in the philosopher's
boyhood, had been prefect of the city, praetorian pre-
fect, and consul. Boethius married the daughter of his
kinsman and guardian, Symmachus, a senator, and him-
self sat in the Senate. In the year 510 he was elected
sole consul through the favor of Theodoric. In 522
the philosopher's two sons were made consuls together.

Though participating in affairs of state, Boethius's
highest efforts were given to his books. His educa-
tion was of the best, and his wide attainments included
a knowledge of Greek. 'He translated the works
of Pythagoras on music, of Ptolemy on astromomy, of
Nichomachus on arithmetic, of Euclid on geometry, of
Archimedes on mechanics. Finally, he sought to bring
the whole of Greek speculative science within the range
of Roman readers ; and though he did not live to see
the attainment of his ambition, he managed to give to
the world in something less than twenty years, of which
several were absorbed in the discharge of public duties,

82 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

more than thirty books of commentary on, and trans-
lation of, Aristotle.' 1

From this life of distinguished service, Boethius was
snatched by a sudden tragic catastrophe. The Senate
was suspected by Theodoric of a treasonable intent
to restore the ancient liberties of Rome ; and Boethius
was chosen as the one to bear the full brunt of the royal
displeasure. Out of the mouths of notorious false wit-
nesses, as Boethius insists, he was convicted of treason,
was imprisoned at Pa via, and, after a long imprisonment,
was put to death. It was during this period of impris-
onment that he wrote the Consolation of Philosophy.

This, the latest and greatest of Boethius's writings,
is a dialogue between the author and the goodly lady
Philosophy, in alternating sections of prose and verse,
wherein are discussed those great problems of human
life which were brought vividly to the author's con-
sciousness by his sudden and overwhelming misfortune,
coming as it did close on the heels of his highest pros-
perity. In briefest outline, the argument runs as
follows : As Boethius bewails in prison the wretched-
ness that has come upon him, suddenly appears to him
the majestic figure of Philosophy. 'When all the
universe is ordered by God,' the prisoner asks, 'why
should man alone wander at will?' Philosophy, in her
reply, asserts the absolute omnipotence of God (Book I).
It is not right to blame Fortune for our woes, for none
of the gifts of Fortune are really valuable. Fortune
really benefits man only when she frowns upon him,
thus teaching him what is the true good (Book II).
What, then, is this true good ? It must include within
itself all the partial goods for which various men strive ;

1 H. F. Stewart, Boethius, an Essay, Edinburgh and London, 1891,
p. 26. This volume of 270 pages may be most enthusiastically recom-
mended to any one who wishes to know more of Boethius and of hia
philosophy.

BOETHIUS AND THE ASTROLABE 83

and this absolute and perfect good, the sum of all par-
tial goods, is God himself. Since all men instinctively
seek happiness, and since happiness consists only in the
true good, all men naturally seek God (Book III).
But if God is the supreme good and is omnipotent, why
do the wicked flourish ? To this world-old question Phi-
losophy answers in the spirit of Plato, that the wicked
are not really powerful, that properly they do not even
exist at all. They are no part of God, and God alone
really exists. God, in his omnipotence, rules the world
by his providence, Fate being merely his minister, the
actual working out of his providence. Chance does not
exist at all (Book IV). But if God's providence rules
all things, what room is left for the free will of man?
To God, who is the only eternal, superior to the acci-
dent of time, all things, past, present, and future, lie
open in an 'everlasting now;' and all these things,
being patent to his foreknowledge, have been ordered
by him into a divine harmony. But to man, living
under the condition of time, seeing only the past and
present, blind to the future, there is at the moment a
real freedom of choice. God foresees, but does not pre-
destine ; yet, since his foreknowledge is infallible, he
overrules, not the choice, but the consequences of the
choice. Thus the freedom of man's will is not inconsis-
tent with God's overruling government (Book V).

The philosophy of the Consolation, though not
untouched by Christian influence, is essentially pagan,
an eclectic blending of Plato (and the Neo-Platonists)
with Aristotle and the Stoics. Boethius is indeed the
' last of the Romans.' Noble and exalted as is the
spirit which informs the dialogue, the consolation sought
and received is not the consolation of the Christian ; it
is not a matter of faith, but of reason. It is curious
that the subtle theological intellect of the Middle Ages

84 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

should have accepted it with whole-hearted approval.1
To Chaucer the Consolation of Philosophy became the
dominant influence in all his more speculative thought.
Under its guidance he philosophized the story of Troilus
and that of Palamon and Arcite; it is the thought of
Boethius which he revitalizes in such balades as Truth
and Fortune and The Former Age.2

There is no evidence which determines precisely the
date of Chaucer's translation. It is included in the list
The Trans- of the poet's works given in the Prologue to
lation. the Legend of Good Women, and must there-
fore be earlier than 1386. Because of the very great
Boethian influence on Troilus, and because of the fact
that Chaucer mentions Troilus and his ' Boece ' together
in the lines addressed to Adam, his scrivener, it has been
thought that the two works were executed at about the
same time, i.e. shortly after 1380.

Chaucer used for his translation not only the Latin
original, but also a French version, probably the work
of Jean de Meun, which is preserved in two manuscripts
of the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. As only a few
excerpts from this translation have been printed, the
precise extent of Chaucer's dependence on it has not
been determined; but his debt seems to have been con-
siderable.8 Some of Chaucer's many glosses are taken

1 The Latin text of the Consolatio, together with a seventeenth-
century translation by ' I. T.' has been published in the Loeb Classical
Library (1918), under the editorship of H. F. Stewart and E. K.
Rand.

* For a most illuminating account of Chaucer's use of the Consola-
tion, and for a discussion of his translation of the work, see B. L.
Jefferson, Chaucer and the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethivx,
Princeton University Press, 1917.

1 See M. H. Liddell's article in Academy, 1895, II. 227, and his
notes in the Globe Chaucer. See also the discussion by B. L. Jeffer-
son, op. cif. pp. 1-9. Dr. Jefferson's conclusions were independently
corroborated by J. L. Lowes in Romanic Review, 8.383-400 (1917).

BOETHIUS AND THE ASTROLABE 85

over from the French version; others are apparently
from the commentary of Nicholas Trivet.1

Chaucer's translation is not free from blunders. For
some of these the corruptions of his Latin text may be
responsible; in the case of others he was certainly misled
by the French version. But on the whole he has given
a faithful and able rendering. The prose style of the
translation, cumbersome and at times confused, and for
our modern taste much too rhetorical, is in striking con-
trast with the directness and simplicity, the clearness
and grace, of Chaucer's verse. Mr. Stewart says of it : 2
'It is certainly not in prose that Chaucer's genius
shows to best advantage. The restrictions of metre were
indeed to him as silken fetters, while the freedom of
prose only served to embarrass him.' Perhaps it would
be better to say that for Chaucer and for his contem-
poraries prose offered not untrammeled freedom, but
the intricacies of a literary medium not yet mastered.
For the prose of Chaucer's translation, if not always
felicitous, is anything but artless. It employs intricate
alliteration, balance and antithesis, varied cadence of
clause, and other 'colours of rethoryk.' At his best,
Chaucer attains to a dignity and eloquence that suggest
the perfection, three centuries later, of this same tradi-
tion of rhetorical prose in the hands of John Milton.

A TREATISE ON THE ASTROLABE

An astrolabe is 'an obsolete astronomical instru-
ment of different forms, used for taking the altitude of
the sun or stars, and for the solution of other problems
in astronomy.' Chaucer's Treatise is an attempt to
expound 'under ful lighte rewles and naked wordes in

1 See the article by Miss K. O. Petersen, 'Chaucer and Trivet'
Publications of the Modern Language Association, 18. 173-193 (1903).
1 Boethius, an Essay, p. 227. "

86 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

English,' the uses of the instrument and the elements
of astronomy and astrology, for the benefit of ' litel
Lowis my sone,' who had attained the * tendre age of
ten yeer.' As outlined in the Prologue, the work was to
have consisted of five parts ; but of these only the first
and part of the second were completed. As the ' yeer of
cure lord 1391, the 12 day of March ' is twice used l as
an example in the ' conclusions ' of Part II, it is reason-
able to assume that the year 1391 is the date of com-
position. Chaucer makes no claim to originality in his
work : * I ne usurpe nat to have founde this werk of my
labour or of myn engyn. I nam but a lewd compilatour
of the labour of olde Astrologiens, and have hit trans-
lated in myn English only for thy doctrine ; and with
this swerd shal I sleen envye.' Professor Skeat has
shown that the * old astrologien ' from whom Chaucer
has drawn the great bulk of his material is a Latin
translation of a treatise by Messahala, an Arabian
astronomer who flourished towards the end of the eighth
century, entitled Compositioet Operatic Astroldbie. As
the tables were to be calculated ' aftur the latitude of
Oxenford,' it has been assumed that little Lewis was
a student in the Oxford schools ; beyond this we know
nothing whatever about him, and it is not unlikely
that he may have died before reaching manhood. Since
the work has no literary value save that of clear expo-
sition, and since the modern reader is little likely to
attempt its perusal, it is not necessary to discuss it
further, except to call attention to the charming char-
acter of the introductory sentences addressed by the
author to his little son.2

1 2. 1. 6 and 2. 3. 18.

2 The treatise has been edited by Mr. A. E. Brae, London, 1870, and
again in 1872 by Professor Skeat for the Chancer Society. Skeat's
observations are repeated, in condensed form, in the Oxford Chaucer,
3. Ivii-lxxx.

CHAPTER VI
TROILUS AND CRISEYDE

OF all the poems of Chaucer, not excepting the Can-
terbury Tales, none is more characteristic of his genius
than is Troilus and Criseyde. In some ways it is his
supreme masterpiece; for it is the only work of large di-
mensions, requiring a sustained effort of the poetical
imagination, which he brought to completion. In mas-
tery of constructive art, in perfect finish of execu-
tion, in portrayal of character and easy flow of action,
above all in its dramatic objectiveness and vivid
actuality, it will bear comparison with any narrative
poem in the language.

Hitherto Chaucer had written, gracefully and wittily,
in the school of French allegory and dream- vision.
With Troilus he becomes the poet of living humanity.
Though ostensibly a tale of Troy long ago, it makes but
the scantest attempt to suggest the world of classical
antiquity. Only the names are ancient; the characters,
the manners, are modern and contemporary. Troy is
but mediaeval London, besieged as it might have been
by the French. The parliament which King Priam con-
venes is an English parliament. Troilus might as well
be son to Edward III. Its spirit and temper is that of
the modern novel rather than of the mediaeval romance.
Were it written in prose, it would be called the first
English novel.

To the taste of the modern reader, particularly at a
first reading, it may seem in places tediously prolix; for
considering its length there is comparatively little ac-

88 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

tion. Its interest lies not in rapid action, but in a keen,
minute, almost Richardsonian portrayal of character
and situation. Its appeal grows with a second reading
or a third. One ceases to be impatient at the slowness of
progress, and looks eagerly in every stanza for subtle
revelations of character and motive, for flashes of that
ironical humor with which Chaucer has enlivened his
essentially tragic theme, for lines of haunting poetic
beauty. Perhaps the poem would be more effective still
if it were somewhat condensed; but it is none the less
true that from beginning to end there is not a stanza
which is really irrelevant.

That Troilus and Criseyde was written and already
known to English readers before 1386 we know from the
Date of references to it in the Prologue to the Legend
Composi- of Good Women. There is, further, a pre-
tion. sumption amounting to virtual certainty

that Chaucer was not acquainted with Boccaccio's
Filostrato, his primary source for Troilus, earlier than
his first Italian journey of 1373. Within this period of a
dozen years the poem cannot be dated with absolute
certainty; but a variety of considerations points strongly
to a date not earlier than 1382. For a date earlier than
that the only important evidence is found in a passage
of Gower's long French poem, the Miroir de VOmme,
where mention is made of 'la geste de Troylus et de la
belle Creseide.' If Gower is alluding to Chaucer's poem,
we must date Troilus before 1377; but it seems probable
that Gower is thinking of some earlier version of the
famous story, despite the fact that the sole surviving
manuscript of the Miroir gives the name of the lady as
'Creseide' instead of 'Briseide,' the name under which
she appears in Benoit and Guido. The most definite
evidence for a later date is found in the plausible inter-
pretation which sees a veiled.compliment to the young

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 89

Queen Anne in a passage near the beginning of Troilus
which describes Criseyde's beauty: —

Right as our firste lettre is now an A,
In beautee first so stood she, makelees.

Professor J. L. Lowes * was the first to suggest that
this curious alphabetic simile, otherwise rather inept,
refers to the use of Queen Anne's initial 'A' intertwined
with the initial 'R' of her royal husband as a decorative
device on courtly robes and tapestries. If this interpre-
tation is correct — and it is supported by documentary
evidence that the queen's initial was actually so used —
the passage in question cannot have been written earlier
than January 14, 1382, the date of Richard's marriage.
A date between 1382 and 1384 is so thoroughly in accord
with all the probabilities that it is accepted with a good
deal of confidence.2

If written between 1382 and 1384, Troilus is a work of
the poet's full maturity of mind and art; and its philo-
sophic seriousness and superb mastery of exe- _. . .

. . >_., . Revision,
cution corroborate the supposition. There is

abundant testimony that Chaucer wrought out his mas-
terpiece with painstaking care, and jealously sought
to maintain its artistic integrity. Near its close he prays
that the poem may escape the corruption of careless
copyists: —

And for ther is so greet diversitee
In English and in wryting of our tonge,
So preye I god that noon miswryte thee,
Ne thee mismetre for defaute of tonge;

and in the lines addressed to Adam his own scrivener,

1 'The Date of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde,' Publications of the
Modern Language Association, 23. 285-306 (1908).

1 See Professor Kittredge's Chaucer Society volume, The Date of
Chaucer's Troilus, 1908. For the argument in favor of an early date,
Bee Professor Tatlock's Development and Chronology, pp. 15-34-

90 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

he represents himself as * rubbing and scraping* the
manuscripts of Troilus written by the careless scribe to
correct their errors and bring them into textual conform-
ity with his own 'making.' Nor was he content merely
to correct scribal errors. The manuscripts of the poem
which have survived to us show that even after its pub-
lication Chaucer continued to work over it, rewriting
lines, substituting a more felicitous word, changing here
and there the order of the stanzas. Most significant of
these revisions is the addition of three new passages de-
signed to heighten the philosophical tone of the poem.
These are Troilus's hymn to love as the perpetual bond
of' all things in heaven and earth (3. 1744-1771), which
is closely paraphrased from one of the metres of Boe-
thius; the long soliloquy of Troilus on the conflict
between divine foreknowledge and human freedom
(4. 953-1085), which is also adapted from Boethius; and
the three stanzas (5. 1807-1827) near the close of the
poem, borrowed from Boccaccio's Teseide, which de-
scribe the flight to heaven of the soul of Troilus.

There is no evidence to determine the date of these
revisions, which were certainly not all made at one time.
The added passages seem to have been written at an
early period; that on free will is referred to by Thomas
Usk in his Testament of Love written about 1387. The
manuscripts on which Skeat's text of the poem is based
contain the greater part, but not all, of Chaucer's re-
visions.1

Of the many sources from which the Middle Age sat-
The Troy isfied its thirst for stories, three stand out pre-
Story. eminent. There is first the ' matter of France '
with its heroic tales of Charlemagne and Roland;

1 For a full account of the problem of revision, see the present
writer's Chaucer Society volume, The Textual Tradition of Chaucer's
Troilus, 1916.

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 91

there is again the 'matter of Brittany* with its ro-
mances of the Table Round; and lastly, the source
with which we are immediately concerned, 'the mat-
ter of Rome the Great.' By this last phrase we are to
understand, of course, not merely Rome, but the
whole field of classical antiquity, — the wars of Alexan-
der, the tale of Thebes, and above all, the 'tale of Troy
divine.'

A modern author who should wish to write of Troy
would turn first of all to Homer; but in the Middle Ages
Homer was little more than a name. There must always
have been a few scholars here and there who had some
knowledge of Greek, picked up perhaps on journeys to
the Levant; but for the vast majority of those who read
at all, Homer was accessible only in the Epitome Iliados
Homericce of Pindarus Thebanus (first century), where
the events of the Iliad are condensed into 1100 lines of
Latin hexameter. But even if Homer had been more
easily accessible, it is doubtful whether he would have
satisfied the mediaeval historian. To begin with, he
lived long after the events he undertakes to describe;
and then, too, his work bears the marks of evident false-
hood, for who can believe that the gods came down to
earth and warred with men? Fortunately there was a
better authority than that of Homer, the authority of an
eyewitness, who himself took part in the expedition
against Troy. This important document is the Ephem-
eris Belli Trojani of Dictys the Cretan.

Dictys Cretensis was, so the preface of the Ephemeris
tells us, a dweller in Cnossus, who with Idomeneus and
Merion took arms against Troy. Realizing with rare
insight that the events which were passing by unheeded
of most would be of deep interest to the generations to
follow, Dictys kept a journal written in Phoenician char-
acters. On the author's death, the six books of his chron-

92 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

icle were buried with him in a tin case, where they rested
undisturbed until the thirteenth year of the reign of
Nero, when they were fortunately exposed by an earth-
quake. A Greek, named Eupraxis, carried the manu-
script to Rome, where, at the command of Nero, it was
transliterated into Greek characters, and from the Greek
version a Latin translation was made by one Septimius
Romanus. It is hardly necessary to suggest that this
story must not be taken too seriously. Whether the
work is really a translation from the Greek, or whether
the forgery was first launched in its present form, we
cannot say with certainty; but scholars are now inclined
to believe that the former is the case. The translation,
if translation it be, occupies 113 pages of Teubner text,
while the period covered begins with the birth of Paris,
and ends with the death of Ulysses. The prose style of
the author is fairly good, being to a great extent an
imitation of that of Sallust. The date of composition is
probably the fourth century A. D. The following passage
taken from chapter ix, describing the death of Troilus,
will give a fair idea of what the book is like : —

At post paucos dies Grseci instructi armis processere in
campum lacessentes, si auderent, ad bellandum Trojanos.
Quis dux Alexander cum reliquis fratribus militem ordinat
atque adversum pergit. Sed priusquam ferire inter se acies,
aut jaci tela ccepere, barbari desolatis ordinibus fugam faciunt:
caesique eorum plurimi, aut in flumen prseceps dati, cum hinc
atque inde ingrueret hostis atque undique adempta fuga esset.
Capti etiam Lycaon et Troilus Priamidse, quos in medium
perductos Achilles jugulari jubet indignatus nondum sibi a
Priamo super his, quse secum tractaverat, mandatum.

Dictys was greatly preferred to Homer, because he
was more trustworthy, being, as we have seen, an eye-
witness, and excluding all traces of the supernatural;

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 93

but there was one particular in which he was not per-
fectly satisfactory : he was a Greek, and, as such, preju-
diced against the Trojans, who were our ancestors. It is
not necessary, however, to trust to the narrative of a
single prejudiced historian; by good fortune there was
also an historian within the walls of Troy. The De Ex-
cidio TrojcB Historia of Dares the Phrygian gives us an
authentic account of the war from the standpoint of the
defeated Trojans.

Homer mentions (Iliad, 5. 9) one Dares, a rich man
and blameless, a priest of Hephaestus. To him antiquity
ascribed an Iliad older than Homer's. Of this lost work,
probably the work of a sophist, the Latin version pur-
ports to be a translation made by Cornelius Nepos. A
recently discovered papyrus proves that a Greek original
really existed, of which the Latin version is a condensa-
tion; but the condensation was certainly not made by
Nepos. Professor Constans, the editor of Benoit, char-
acterizes the Historia as * un assemblage disproportion^
de maigres details ecrit en un latin barbare et horrible-
ment monotone.' It cannot have been composed earlier
than the sixth century A. D. That Constans has not been
too hard on Dares may be shown by the following selec-
tion (chapter xxix) : —

Posters die Trojani alacres in aciem prodeunt. Agamem-
non exercitum contra educit. Proslio commisso uterque exer-
citus inter se pugnat. Postquam major pars diei transiit,
prodit in primo Troilus, csedit devastat, Argivos in castra
fugat. Postera die exercitum Trojani educunt: contra Aga-
memnon. Fit maxima csedes, uterque exercitus inter se pug-
nat acriter. Multos duces Argivorum Troilus interficit.
Pugnatur continuis diebus VII. Agamemnon indutias petit
in duo menses.

Fifty-two pages of Teubner text are filled with such

94 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

wretched stuff as this! But despite its inferiority, Dares
seems to have been more popular with the Middle Ages
than Dictys. He was a Trojan, and therefore a country-
man; he was at any rate mercifully brief; perhaps, as
Ten Brink suggests, the very fact that the work is but
an epitome made it all the more available for the expan-
sion and adornment which the Troy story was to receive
at the hands of Benoit de Sainte-More.1

In the latter half of the twelfth century, according to
Constans between 1155 and 1160, appeared a work
which lies at the foundation of the whole later develop-
ment of the legend of Troy; this is the Roman de Troie
of Benoit de Sainte-More. Of Benoit, as of so many
authors of the Middle Ages, we know nothing with cer-
tainty; but his book is a very substantial, and to the
student a rather appalling, fact of 30,316 lines of octo-
syllabic couplets. Using as his basis the brief epitome of
Dares,2 and supplementing the matter there found from
Dictys and Ovid, and perhaps other authors still, Benoit
has given us a detailed history, which begins with the
Argonautic expedition, describes the rape of Helen, the
gathering of the Greek hosts, and, after telling the events
of the siege and fall of Troy, devotes 5000 lines to the
return of the Greek warriors to their homes, ending with
the death of Ulysses. One would not like to be compelled
to read the Roman through from cover to cover; but
taken in moderate doses, Benoit has a good deal of
poetic charm. Compared with Dictys and Dares, Benoit
is great literature.

A little more than a century after the appearance of
the Roman de Troie, in 1287, an Italian named Guido

1 There is some reason to believe that a much longer Latin version
of Dares may have been extant in the Middle Ages, of which the exist-
ing Historia is a condensation.

* Or perhaps a longer version of Dares, now lost.

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 95

delle Colonne produced in turgid Latin prose a para-
phrase of Benoit's French poem. Guido, who was care-
ful to say nothing about his indebtedness to Benoit, not
only succeeded in passing off his Historia Trojana as an
original composition; but was until after the middle of
the nineteenth century actually believed to be the origi-
nal from whom Benoit drew the material of his Roman.
Guido added little to the substance of the tradition; but
because his work was in the universal language of Eu-
rope, it attained a wide circulation, was translated into
many languages, and became the basis for several Mid-
dle English 'Troy Books,' of which Lydgate's is, per-
haps, the most important.

Before considering the Filostrato of Boccaccio, the
immediate source of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, it
will be necessary to look back once more over the ground
already traversed, and notice the degree of prominence
given by earlier authors to the figures of Chaucer's pair
of lovers. Homer merely mentions in a single passage
(Iliad, 24. 257) the chariot-fighter Troilus as one of the
sons of Priam whom Ares has destroyed. Virgil devotes
a few lines to an account of his death (Mneid, 1. 474-
478) . Criseyde, or Briseida as Benoit calls her, probably
represents two Homeric personages: Briseis, the slave
of Achilles, whose name appears in the accusative Bri-
seida in Iliad, 1. 184, and Chryseis, daughter of the seer
Chryses, who is taken from Agamemnon at the com-
mand of Apollo. The accusative of her name, Chry-
seida, occurs in Iliad, 1. 182. As the professor of leger-
demain will take two thin rabbits, and, rubbing them
together in his hands, present u,s with one particularly
fat rabbit, so these two unimportant characters have
combined to form the heroine of the mediaeval tale of
Troy. In Dictys and Dares, Troilus has become a more
important figure among the sons of Priam, and Briseida

96 THE POETRY OF CHAUCEE

is accorded some prominence; but there is no hint of any
relationship between them.

It is to Benoit de Sainte-More, so far as we can de-
termine, that must be given the credit of inventing the
story of the faithful love of Troilus and the faithlessness
of Criseyde. One must not suppose, however, that the
story furnishes the central theme of his voluminous
work. It is merely an episode, which, during about a
third of his work, serves to relieve the annals of blood-
shed. We first meet the episode at line 13065, when a
parliament is held to decide upon the return of Briseida
to the Grecian camp; the death of Troilus occurs a
thousand lines before the end of the poem.1 In the main
the events recorded agree with those described in the
latter half of the poems of Boccaccio and Chaucer.
Though a King Pandarus is mentioned by Benoit
as one of the councilors in the Trojan parliament,
he bears no part in the determination of the fortunes
of Troilus and his love.

It was the genius of Boccaccio which first recognized
in the Troilus and Briseida episode of Benoit the mate-
rial for a single and unified love story. ' Boccaccio seems
to have known both Guido and Benoit; Italian transla-
tions of both were then in existence; and on their basis
he built up one of his most charming works, the most
perfect of his epic poems. . . . The story lay before him
finished, as part of a richly organized whole, and his
only creative work was that specially suited to the poet,

1 Benoit's poem is available in the admirable edition of Leopold
Constans, published in six volumes by the Societfi des Anciens Textes
Francais, Paris, 1904-1912. The last volume of this edition contains
a very useful discussion not only of Benoit, but of the development of
the Troy story as a whole. A summary of those parts of the poem
which deal with Troilus and Briseide may be found in Professor
Kittredge's Chaucer Society volume, The Date of Chaucer's Troilus,
pp. 62-65.

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 97

viz., the exercise of selection, of spiritual penetration, of
deepening the characterization, and of glorifying all by
a poetic presentation. . . . This tender, sentimental tale
(for the poet passes quickly over the conclusion, and all
the warlike scenes) is presented by Boccaccio with great
psychological discernment, and with the most personal
participation, though here and there with a slight tinge
of irony. A truly creative spirit is revealed by the way
in which the details are worked out, and by the thousand
little touches that make us interested in his characters.
But all these touches converge to one point, all have
the same tendency.' 1

Benoit's episode, as we have seen, begins with the
departure of the heroine for the Greek camp; and in
consequence the main interest of the tale centers about
her intrigue with Diomede, the Troilus story serving as
little more than an introduction. All the earlier scenes
of the Filostrato are Boccaccio's invention. To serve as
motive force for this earlier part of the story, the poet
has invented the character of Pandarus. The Panda-
rus of Boccaccio, to be sure, is a character in many
ways different from the Pandarus whom we know from
Chaucer; he is a young and sprightly Florentine gen-
tleman, an intimate companion of Troilus, and a cousin
to Criseida.

In the preceding section of this chapter we have
traced the development of the Troy myth as a whole,
and have seen how the genius of Boccaccio, Boccaccio,
seizing on a single episode of Benoit's Ro- andshake-
man, has made a new and independent ro- speare.
mance, not of battles long ago, but of lovers and their
love. This new creation has become one of the great
world-stories, both in virtue of its intrinsic interest and
because of its use by three great world-poets : Boccaccio,

i Ten Brink, History of English Literature (Eng. trans.), 2. 88-90,

98 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Chaucer, and Shakespeare. It is in the highest degree
interesting to see how these three poets have altered or
modified the theme, each in accordance with his own
character and underlying literary purpose. Boccaccio is
a thoroughgoing sentimentalist, and he has told the
story, accordingly, with full sympathy. Troilo is a por-
trait of the poet himself, generous, high-spirited, enthu-
siastic, sentimental. He has been in love before; but on
beholding Criseida in the temple, as Boccaccio first be-
held Fiammetta, he loves her with all his soul. Pandaro
is a gay, light-hearted, loose-principled gallant, such as
Boccaccio may have known at the Neapolitan court.
Criseida is a fickle beauty, and little more. Troilo is the
central figure of the poem, and with his love longings in
the earlier part of the tale, and still more with his later
sorrow, the reader is asked to sympathize in fullest

measure.1

When Chaucer approached the story, he was no longer
young. Though he professes himself the servant of the
servants of love, he dares not hope success in love him-
self, 'for myn unlyklinesse.' If he identifies himself with
any of the persons of his story, it is with the ironist Pan-
dar, rather than with the sentimental Troilus. He tells
the story with more detachment than does Boccaccio.
Into its fundamental tragedy he breathes a spirit of
ironical humor, which is all but totally foreign to the
Italian poem. Even as he recounts the idealism of Tro-
ilus and presents the inexhaustible charm of Criseyde,
he is conscious of the bitter mockery of both which is to
be provided by Criseyde's ultimate treachery. That
such angelic beauty and womanly charm should reside
in a nature so essentially shallow and unstable, that the

1 An English translation of the pertinent parts of the Filostrato by
W. M. Rossetti has been published by the Chaucer Society: Chaucer's
Troilus and Criseyde (from the Harl. MS. 3943) compared with
Boccaccio's Filostrato, translated by W. M, Rossetti, London, 1873. '

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 99

youthful ardor and utter loyalty of Troilus should be
expended on a woman capable of Criseyde's baseness,
that is part of the mystery and mockery of human life.
And so, if Chaucer's poem has much more humor than
Boccaccio's, it has also a much higher seriousness, a
seriousness which becomes at the end a philosophic in-
terpretation of the action, and through it of the ultimate
values of life. Criseyde's falsehood becomes a type of
the fallacy of all earthly happiness. But if life is certain
to deceive, it is none the less very interesting, very amus-
ing; and Chaucer dwells with the subtle analysis of great
comedy on the complications of his tragic plot, the inter-
play of motive, above all on the psychological problems
of Criseyde's character. The result is a poem which is
neither tragedy nor comedy, but a masterpiece of irony.

Though in a very different spirit, Chaucer has in gen-
eral followed the outline of Boccaccio's poem. At times,
for many stanzas together, he is content to follow its
very words. But he has very appreciably expanded his
original; Filostrato contains 5512 lines, Troilus has 8239.
The greater part of Chaucer's additions are found in the
second and third books. The whole episode of the meet-
ing of the lovers at the house of Deiphebus has no coun-
terpart in Filostrato; wholly original also is the elaborate
stratagem by which Pandarus brings the lovers to-
gether at his own house.1

If Chaucer has transformed the spirit of the story
from pathetic sentimentality to half-ironical humor,

1 For the relation of Troilus to its sources see Professor Karl
Young's Chaucer Society volume, Origin and Development of the
Story of Troilus and Criseyde, 1908, and H. M. Cummings, The In-
debtedness of Chaucer's Works to the Italian Works of Boccaccio,
Princeton dissertation, 1916. Professor Young has argued that the
episode of the first night of his lovers was suggested to Chaucer by an
episode in the Filocolo, a prose romance of Boccaccio. Dr. Cumminga
has, I think with justice, thrown grave doubt on the probability of
such indebtedness.

100 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Shakespeare, in his Troilus and Cressida, has approached
it in a spirit of bitter cynicism and blackest pessimism.1
The love story, which is after all subordinate to the
intrigues of the Grecian camp, has neither the romance
of Boccaccio nor the humor of Chaucer; it is merely dis-
gusting. Troilus remains much what he is in Chaucer;
but Cressida has flung away every pretense of virtue,
and is merely a confessed wanton. Pandarus has lost all
his geniality and humor, and is merely repulsive. To
crown all, the final worthlessness of Cressida, and the
breaking heart of Troilus, are interpreted to us by the
scrofulous mind of Thersites, whose whole function in
the play is to defile with the foulness of his own imagina-
tion all that humanity holds high and sacred.2

Chaucer's main source for Troilus is the Filostrato of
Boccaccio; it is, indeed, no exaggeration to say that the

English poem is a free reworking of the Ital-
'Lollius.' . ™ u u -xu XL-

lan. Chaucer has, to be sure, with something

of the scholar's instinct, gone back of his immediate
original, and consulted for a point here and there the
works of Benoit and of Guido. Though there is no proof
that he used the prose Dares, he did use for the portraits
of the dramatis persona which he draws in the fifth book
the twelfth-century paraphrase of Dares in Latin hex-
ameters by the Englishman, Joseph of Exeter.3 With
the artist's instinct, he has reshaped his characters, and

1 For the reasons which may have actuated Shakespeare's treat-
ment of the story, see the essay by W. W. Lawrence in the Columbia
University Press volume of Shaksperian Studies (New York, 1916),
pp. 187-211.

2 Those who wish to pursue the theme still further in English liter-
ature may read Dryden's version of Troilus and Cressida, in which the
character of the heroine is vitally altered by a new interpretation put
vipon her relations with Diomed.

3 See the article by R. K. Root, ' Chaucer's Dares,' Modern Phi-
lolofjy, 15. 1-22 (1917). Chaucer seems to have known Dictys only by
name.

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 101

added two important episodes to the plot; but his debt
to Boccaccio remains preponderant.

Nowhere, however, does he so much as mention Boc-
caccio's name. Instead, he professes to follow with strict
fidelity ' myn autour called Lollius.' Twice, once nearjthe
beginning of the poem and again near its end, he men-
tions 'Lollius' by name; and he appeals to him by im-
plication as ' myn autour ' in half a dozen other passages.
The identification of this mysterious 'Lollius' is a prob-
lem which has hitherto baffled the critics; for, though
one can find actual authors who bear the name of Lol-
lius, or something resembling it, none of them has writ-
ten the tale of Troy. Our most probable guess is that
the notion that some one named Lollius had written of
the Trojan war is to be traced to a misreading of the
opening lines of one of the epistles of Horace, the second
epistle of Book I : —

Troiani belli scriptorem, maxime Lolli,
Dum tu declamas Romae, Praeneste relegi.

It seems clear that Chaucer did not invent 'Lollius' out
of whole cloth, that he really believed that some 'Tro-
iani belli scriptor maximus ' named Lollius, a Latin poet
of long ago, had actually existed; for he mentions him
also in the House of Fame, along with Homer, Dares,
Dictys, and Guido delle Colonne, as one who bears up
the fame of Troy. Perhaps he thought that the Latin
work of 'Lollius,' which he had never seen, was the im-
mediate source of the Italian Filostrato, that in following
Filostrato he was but following Lollius at second hand.
At any rate, Chaucer chose to cite as his chief authority
the work of 'Lollius,' a Latin poet of long ago, instead
of a contemporary work written in the vernacular of
Italy.1 He could thus lend to his story an air of greater

1 It is not at all impossible that Chaucer did not know who was the
author of Filostrato.

102 THE POETEY OF CHAUCER

credibility, as though it were in all essentials authentic
history. Nor was there anything in the literary ethics of
the Middle Ages which demanded of Chaucer an ac-
knowledgment of his actual debt. Every good story was
regarded as common property. A mediaeval author ad-
duced authority whenever by so doing he could add
credit to his own work, never in recognition of an obliga-
tion.1

In the proem to Book II, Chaucer warns his readers
that there is more than one way to make love : —

Eek for to winne love in sondry ages,
In sondry londes, sondry been usages.

If it was necessary for the poet to forestall the possible
criticism of fourteenth-century lovers to whom the
Courtly speech and doings of his hero might seem
Love. 'wonder nyce and straunge,' it is much more
necessary to forestall similar criticism from the modern
reader. The art of love has, like every other art, its
conventions; but these conventions change greatly in
sundry ages and in sundry lands. The love of Troilus
and Criseyde is told in accordance with the code of
courtly love, the code which is assumed in the French
romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in
Chretien de Troves and Marie de France, the code which
is allegorically presented in the Roman de la Rose.

One of the central features of this code is that ideal
love is seldom if ever compatible with marriage. Mod-
ern readers of Troilus are sure to ask why Troilus did not
marry Criseyde. If Troilus is a prince royal, Criseyde is
at least a lady of excellent social standing, and appar-
ently of wealth. There could have been no serious bar to

1 For the latest discussion of the Lollius problem and for a review
of earlier discussions, see G. L. Kittredge, 'Chaucer's Lollius,' Har-
vard Studies in Classical Philology, 28. 47-133 (1917). The interpreta-
tion given above is in essentials that of Professor Kittredge.

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 103

a marriage, had the lovers so wished. But the idea of
marriage is never once suggested. In the code of courtly
love marriage is an arrangement of convenience quite
outside the region of romantic love. Marriage implies,
theoretically at least, the subjection of wife to husband;
and in the love of the romances the lady rules supreme,
her lightest whim a law. A twelfth-century writer on the
art of love, Andreas Capellanus, reports a decision of the
Countess Marie of Champagne that love cannot exist
between husband and wife, 'amorem non posse suas
inter duos iugales extendere vires.' 1

But courtly love is in no sense platonic. Far removed
as it is from grossness and mere sensuality by its elabo-
rate idealization, it seeks final consummation in the
complete surrender of the lady. When Crispyde-accepts
Troilus as her lover, she grants by implication the be-
stowal of her ultimate favors. Nor does such a bestowal
incur from the courtly poet the slightest hint of blame.
The relation established is an ideal relation, with all the
sanctity which modern feeling casts about an ideal mar-
riage. Chaucer repeatedly tells us that the influence on
Troilus of his love, both in the period of his despairing
adoration and that of his final possession, was an enno-
bling one. In the field of battle against the Greeks he was
a very lion; and among his friends in Troy his manner
became so goodly and gracious 'that ech him lovede
that loked on his face.' When Criseyde takes her fare-
well of Troilus just before she sets out for the Grecian
camp, she tells him that it was not his rank and riches,
nor yet his martial prowess, which first won her love,
'but moral vertue grounded upon trouthe.' 2

1 Andrese Capellani de Amore libri tres, ed. Trojel (1892) p. 153.
For a useful summary of the code of courtly love and a detailed study
of its exemplification in the works of Chaucer, see W. G. Dodd,
Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower, Boston, 1913.

* See Troilus, 1, 1075-1082; 3. 1802-1806; 4. 1667-1673.

104 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

We are to accept the love of Troilus and Criseyde,
then, as something pure and ideal like the love of Romeo
and Juliet, even though it lack the sanction of wedlock.
And yet this noble and ennobling union must be kept
inviolably secret. Were it avowed and known, the lady's
reputation would be irreparably soiled. Pandarus re-
peatedly warns Troilus that he must not blab; and when,
after the Trojan parliament has decreed Criseyde's re-
turn to her father, Troilus urges that they flee together
to some far land, Criseyde pleads her reputation against
it: —

And also thenketh on myn honestee,
That floureth yet, how foule I sholde it shende.
And with what filthe it spotted sholde be,
If in this forme I sholde with yow wende.

So at all costs the union must be kept secret, and the
meetings of the lovers must be clandestine. This ir-
reconcilable conflict of standards, that a love which is
regarded as not only right and proper but ideally noble
should if known become the height of dishonor, marks
the essential artificiality of the whole code of courtly
love. But artificial or not, we must accept its postulates
if we are to understand the fundamental problem of
Troilus. We must not consider the clandestine and il-
licit love of Troilus as in any sense a derogation of his
noble character; nor must we regard Criseyde's accept-
ance of his love, scrupulously concealed as it is from all
eyes, as any reflection on her honor. Criseyde's sin is not
that she becomes the mistress of Troilus, but that hav-
ing pledged her love she becomes unfaithful. For in
courtly love, as in the whole system of chivalric ethics,
the greatest of the virtues is truth and loyalty, and the
blackest crime is that of faithlessness. As Dante reserves
the lowest pit of his Inferno for the treachery of Brutus
and Cassius and Judas Iscariot, so the deepest condem-

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 105

nation of the courtly lover is visited on the faithless
Criseyde, the renegade of true love.

It is in the light of these conventions of courtly love
that one must analyze the character of Chaucer's hero-
ine. In Book I we see Criseyde only at a dis-

* . , Cnseyde.

tance; but even so we are captivated at first

sight, as Troilus is, by her beauty and charm. We are
touched, too, with pity for her in the trying situation in
which she is placed, and with admiration for the fine
dignity with which she meets it. Her father, Calchas,
knowing by his magic art that Troy is doomed to de-
struction, has basely gone over to the enemy, and left
his daughter to bear alone and unprotected the anger
which the Trojan populace is ready to visit on all his kin.
She is a widow, also, recently bereaved. And so, alone
and in great peril, she throws herself on the protection of
Hector, who chivalrously promises her full immunity.
She is living, then, in strict retirement in her own stately
house with three young nieces to bear her company, and
so 'keeps her estate' that she wins the full respect and
love of every one. But who could help loving a lady of
such exquisite beauty?

So aungellyk was hir natyf beautee,
That lyk a thing inmortal semed she,
As doth an hevenish parfit creature,
That doun were sent in scorning of nature.

Not only is she beautiful, there is a queenly dignity and
grandeur in her port.

April comes and with it the great feast of Palladion,
the Trojan Easter day, when every one goes to church
in his best clothes; and Criseyde in her simple widow's
black goes too. Ever conscious of her father's shame,
she takes an inconspicuous station near the door; but
having yielded so much to her sense of disgrace, her

106 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

proud spirit never falters. She has a 'ful assured loking
and manere,' with just a touch of defiance in it. It is
while she stands thus in the temple that Troilus sees her
from afar, and is struck to the heart by her beauty and
dignity.

This is all that we see of Criseyde in Book I; though
her presence, to be sure, fills all the long scene of Troi-
lus's feverish love-longing.

Book II may be called the book of Criseyde. An over-
whelming proportion of its lines is directly dedicated to
the unfolding of her character, and to the subtle analysis
of her heart as the figure of Troilus gradually establishes
itself there. On a May morning Pandarus goes on his
embassy to Criseyde's house. He finds her in a 'paved
parlour' with two other ladies, listening to the 'geste of
the Sege of Thebes,' quite undisturbed by the fact that
its author, Statius, was not to be born till near the mid-
dle of the first century A.D. He playfully asks if it is a
book of love she is reading, and is laughingly answered
by an allusion to his own unrequited love. No small part
of Criseyde's charm is conveyed through these scenes
with her uncle, scenes of playful badinage, in which her
wit is quite the equal of his. Uncle and niece meet on
the most gracious terms of long established affection and
understanding, with free give and take of kindly banter.

In answer to Pandar's suggestion that she put away
her book and rise up and dance, she reminds him that
she is a widow: —

It sete me wel bet ay in a cave

To bidde, and rede on holy seyntes lyves;

Lat maydens gon to daunce, and yonge wyves.

This protestation is hardly to be taken with full serious-
ness; and yet it suggests, I think, something of the truth.
Criseyde has come to regard herself, in the life of quiet

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 107

seclusion which follows on her widowhood and her fa-
ther's shameful treachery, as forever cut off from the
brighter things of life. It is a state of mind by no means
unfavorable to the discovery that she has won the love
of Troilus, when once she has had time to make the
necessary adjustments. Pandarus pays no attention to
her words, but immediately begins to play on her wo-
man's curiosity by hinting at a great piece of news that
he could tell her if he would. He plays with his secret
through a dozen stanzas, insinuating into his speech the
praise of Troilus, the friendliest of princes, second only
to Hector in prowess. Then at last, after much teasing,
he tells her the news, giving her no chance to reply till he
has spoken ten stanzas of appeal and argument.

Was the news a complete surprise to Criseyde, or had
she during the month which had elapsed since the feast of
Palladion suspected the truth? We cannot say. Chau-
cer himself raises the question, but professes his uncer-
tainty as to the answer. In any case she receives the
news calmly: —

Criseyde which that herde him in this wyse,
Thoughte, ' I shal fele what he meneth, ywis.'
' Now, eem,' quod she, ' what wolde ye devyse,
What is your reed I sholde doon of this?'/ .

But when Pandar has given his advice that she return
love for love, this cool deliberation melts into a passion-
ate burst of tears and reproaches, that he, her uncle and
her best friend, should counsel her to love. These tears
are the natural reaction which follows on the first clear
recognition of the terrifying possibility that she, the
widow and the recluse, may begin again to live passion-
ately. Her resentment is short-lived, and she listens
trembling to Pandar's threat that her hard heart will be
the death not only of Troilus but of himself as well. Is

108 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

there after all any evil in her uncle's advice that she
smile on Troilus, when she has the solemn assurance
that he means no 'harm or vilanye'?

And if this man slee here himself, alias!
In my presence, it wol be no solas.
What men wolde of hit deme I can nat seye;
It nedeth me ful sleyly for to pleye.

Criseyde has recovered her self-control. In the lines
just quoted, and even more in the long soliloquy in
which she weighs the pro's and con's of love, one realizes
how complete this self-control is. There is in these
speeches a tone of cool calculation which to many readers
may seem unpleasant, a trait of character which appears
again in the fourth book when she builds her hope for a
speedy return to Troy on the avarice of her aged father.
In appraising these speeches, it must be remembered
that Criseyde is not a young girl, with the impulsive
idealism of her maidenhood. Just how old she is we do
not know, — Chaucer himself professes that he does not
know either — ; but one feels that she is, in experience
at least, older than Troilus. She has been married and is
now a widow. 'I am,' she says, 'myn owene woman, wel
at ese.' Though love of Troilus has already found lodg-
ment in her heart, it does not sweep her off her feet. She
does not so much fall in love as drift into love; but she
drifts with her eyes open.

Pandarus takes his leave, too shrewd in his knowledge
of Criseyde's character to press her to a decision. But he
has made his effect, and the effect is powerfully height-
ened by the circumstances which follow. By great good
fortune, Troilus himself is presented to her view, Troilus
the mighty warrior returning from battle on his wounded
charger. Here is a living argument. Criseyde considers
his excellent prowess, his wit, his shape, his courtesy,

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 109

and above all his love for her. Would it not be a pity to
cause the death of such an one as he? And last of all her
niece, Antigone, sings her song in praise of love, every
word of which imprints itself on Criseyde's heart. 'And
ay gan love hir lasse for to agaste than it dide erst.'

On the next day Pandarus returns to the attack with
a letter from Troilus, which Criseyde at first refuses to
receive, but at last consents to answer. Once more, this
time by Pandar's appointment, the knightly Troilus
rides by her window. Though she will write to her lover,
she offers him only a sister's regard. She will not agree
to speak to him : —

it were eek to sone
To graunten him so greet a libertee.
For playnly hir entente, as seyde she,
Was for to love him unwist, if she mighte,
And guerdon him with nothing but with sighte.

It is a prime article in the code of courtly love, as in
our modern conventions of love-making, that the lady
must not let herself be too easily won. Troilus and
Pandar have every reason to be satisfied with the result
of these two days of wooing; for the lady has at least
acquiesced in the courtship, and her words 'eek to sone'
and ' if she mighte ' suggest the promise of more to come.

Up to this point Chaucer's story follows essentially,
though with greater elaboration of detail, that of his
Italian model. But here Boccaccio's heroine consents,
with merely formal protest, to receive her lover as soon
as time and place shall serve, provided only that due
secrecy be maintained; and the joy of the lovers is
shortly consummated. For the character of Criseyde as
Chaucer has conceived it, such a course of action would
have been much too direct. It would have required a
definite decision instead of a genial drifting with circum-
stance. It is a striking fact that Criseyde, with all her

110 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

native self-assurance, never takes a single step of her
own volition. And so, that she may seem to herself to
have been ensnared rather than to have capitulated,
Pandarus gives full play to his love of cunning stratagem.
It is a most ingenious stratagem, plausible in its devis-
ing, and skillfully controlled by the master strategist
down to the smallest detail, which brings Criseyde to
the feigned sick-bed of the truly love-sick Troilus at the
house of Deiphebus, where Troilus first has the chance
to plead his own cause. This meeting proves to be the
decisive moment of the story; for Criseyde, though
unable to make a decision, accepts completely a decision
which has been made for her by the logic of events, or
by the scheming of her uncle. She would very likely
have refused to grant Troilus a private meeting; but
here is the meeting devised without her consent. It is
Troilus, not Criseyde, who is panic-stricken. She listens
to his passionate declarations, quietly asks him to tell
her 'the fyn of his entente,' and after listening to his
reply, says slowly and deliberately: —

1 1 shal trewely, with al my might,
Your bittre tornen al into swetnesse;
If I be she that may yow do gladnesse,
For every wo ye shal recovere a blisse';
And him in armes took, and gan him kisse.

This is complete surrender, and Pandarus recognizes it
as such. Criseyde has, to be sure, stipulated that her
honor must not be compromised; but she acquiesces by
her silence in Pandar's promise that he will shortly de-
vise a secret meeting of the lovers at his own house,
where they shall have full leisure 'to speke of love
aright.'

It is in fulfillment of this promise that Pandarus in-
vites Criseyde to supper at his house, and after refusing
to let her return home in the downpour of rain, brings

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 111

Troilus to her bed. This scene is another masterpiece
of Pandar's strategy; but it is a plot in which the ap-
parent victim is at least an acquiescent accomplice. At
an openly avowed meeting and consummation of her
love, such as the Italian Criseida herself arranges, Chau-
cer's heroine would probably have balked. Her woman's
modesty, or at least her shrinking from an irrevocable
decision, is still to be overcome. The act must seem to
her inevitable, not of her own choosing; and yet there
can be no doubt that she accepted her uncle's invitation
knowing well that Troilus was to meet her. Pandar's
denial of her suspicion is a virtual acknowledgment of
its truth. As to her acceptance of this denial, Chaucer
himself professes ignorance : —

Nought list myn auctor fully to declare
What that she thoughte whan he seyde so,
That Troilus was out of town yfare,
As if he seyde therof sooth or no.

When we remember that Chaucer's 'auctor' does not
relate this episode of the supper-party at all, it is not
strange that he does not 'fully declare' the heroine's
motives. Chaucer's assumed ignorance is only his char-
acteristic way of hinting rather than asserting his own
interpretation. Criseyde herself settles the question
beyond any doubt. When Troilus clasps her in his arms
and begs her to yield, she replies: —

'Ne hadde I er now, my swete herte dere,
Ben yolde, ywis, I were now not here. '

Again Criseyde accepts with full frankness the accom-
plished fact. The events of this first night have been so
devised by Pandarus that they seem inevitable as a
decree of fate; but now irrevocably in her lover's arms,
Criseyde avows that not fate nor fortune, but her own

112 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

love has brought her there. It is a very subtle touch in
Chaucer's portrayal of the woman's heart. To herself
she must seem to have yielded only to inevitable fate;
but to her lover she wished to be not a helpless victim
but an offering of free love.

The last barriers of womanly reluctance have been
overcome; and Criseyde loves Troilus as passionately
and unreservedly as he loves her. Judged by the stand-
ards of courtly love, the relation now established be-
tween the lovers is an ideal and noble one. As Criseyde
says, it is a love —

ayeins the which that no man may,
Ne oughte eek goodly maken resistance.

The relation must be kept secret, or her honor will be
gone. That is one of the conditions of courtly love.
But, save for a half-hearted reproach to Pandarus for
his share in the matter, Criseyde has no regrets; nor
does Troilus ever suggest that there is anything shame-
ful in this clandestine love. Two or three years pass in
unbroken happiness, until the August day when the
Trojan parliament decrees that Criseyde be delivered
over to her father, and all the lovers' weal is turned to
woe. Up to this point, Criseyde's behavior has been
above reproach. With scrupulous observance of all the
conventions of courtly love, she has accepted as her
lover a knight who in worth and chivalric prowess is
second only to Hector; and she has loved him not
sensually, but nobly and purely, won not by 'veyn
delyt' but by his 'moral vertue grounded upon trouthe.'
But this lady whose loveliness and charm have capti-
vated not only Troilus, but Chaucer and his readers as
well, must in the sequel become a hissing and reproach,
the shame of all her sex. She is false to Troilus and to
her solemnly plighted word; she allows herself to be

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 113

wooed and won with most indecent haste by the master-
ful but cynical Diomede. By the slightest turn of for-
tune, this catastrophe might have been averted, and
the story given a pathetic but heroic end. In her grief
at the prospect of leaving Troilus, a grief the sincerity
of which we may not doubt, Criseyde falls into a death-
like swoon; and Troilus, believing her to be really dead,
draws his sword and is on the point of ending his own
life. Had he done so, Criseyde would, she tells us, have
slain herself with the same sword. Had events taken
this course, we should have had an ending like that of
Pyramus and Thisbe, or of Romeo and Juliet. Or a dif-
ferent woman in Criseyde's place might have accepted
Troilus's urgent proposal that they defy all, and in de-
spite of Priam and his parliament flee to some foreign
land. Had Troilus taken things boldly into his own
hands and resolutely carried her off, she would prob-
ably have acquiesced; but he humbly leaves the judg-
ment to her. It is one of those irrevocable decisions
which Criseyde is incapable of making. She thinks too
precisely on the event — the injury to her own reputa-
tion and to that of Troilus should he desert his be-
leaguered city in its need, the life of wandering exile
which would lie ahead for both of them. It is so much
easier to accept the circumstances which fate and for-
tune have shaped. And so she departs for the Grecian
camp with solemnly reiterated promises to return by
the tenth day, 'but if that deeth me assayle.'

But once in her father's tent, she finds that return
is not easy. Once more she thinks upon the event —
she may be taken as a spy, she may fall into the hands
of lawless men. She lacks the resolution necessary for
so bold a step. She still purposes to return — but not
to-day, nor yet to-morrow. And there is Diomede, the
sudden Diomede, who boldly begins his courtship be-

114 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

fore they reach the Grecian camp. He is no idealizing
courtly lover, but a somewhat cynical man of the world,
a mediaeval Lovelace, whose motto is: —

He is a fool that wo! foryete himselve.

Diomede does not lose his heart; he merely improves a
good opportunity to win a lady's. All the greater will
be his conquest if, as he suspects, she has a lover in
Troy. He needs no intriguing Pandarus to help him; he
spends no sleepless nights. With a man of such force
and resolute will, the hesitating Criseyde is helpless.
At first she neither accepts nor rejects his courtship.
Once more she prefers to drift with circumstance. She
does not cease to care for Troilus; but in her loneliness
the company of Diomede is very pleasant. How, after
all, shall she return to Troy; and is not the fate of the
city, as Diomede tells her, certain destruction? On the
very day of her promised return, when faithful Troilus
is feverishly watching from the city walls for a first
sight of her, she is listening not unwilling to the love-
making of Diomede; and both Troilus and Troy town
are slipping ' knotless ' through her heart. In less than
two months she has accepted completely the new inevi-
table.

Over the details of Diomede's courtship and Cri-
seyde's infamy, her gift to him of the bay steed and of the
brooch which had belonged to Troilus, Chaucer passes
hurriedly, with continual appeal to the authority of
'the story* and of 'myn auctor.' With utmost reluc-
tance, and of sheer compulsion, he narrates the shame
of Criseyde as it stands recorded in his old books. Her
indecision, her irresolute tendency to drift with circum-
stance, the trait of character which Chaucer sums up in
the phrase, 'slydinge of corage,' have brought her to the
depths of ignominy. Criseyde's damnation is complete.

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 115

Though Chaucer's chief interest in the story would
seem to lie in the personality of Criseyde, it is none
the less true that Troilus remains its central Troilus
figure. He is at least titular hero. When
Criseyde's unfaithfulness is accomplished, she fades
from the story; the fortunes of Troilus are followed till
his death, and with his death the poem ends. The sub-
ject of the poem, as set forth in its opening line, is the
'double sorrow of Troilus.' Its concluding moral is
pointed as his soul, mounting the heavens, looks back
and despises this wretched world that 'passeth sone as
floures fayre.'

Boccaccio drew the character of Troilo as the type
of his own passionate love for Fiammetta; and Chaucer
has left it in all essentials unchanged, though appre-
ciably ennobled. Troilus is the ideal lover of chivalric
love, utterly faithful, utterly humble in his self-effacing
subjection to his lady. So completely is he the lover
that one is in danger of forgetting that he is also the
intrepid warrior, 'hardy as lyoun,' 'save Ector, most
ydrad of any wight.' To the shouting multitudes who
acclaimed him as he passed through the streets on his
way home from battle, he was not the sighing lover,
but 'our loye, and next his brother holdere up of Troye.'
And it is this Troilus, 'al armed save his heed,' mounted
on his bay steed, whose image sank into the heart of
Criseyde.

With Troilus the warrior the modern reader finds
himself in immediate sympathy; but with Troilus the
lover he is in danger of losing patience, unless he un-
derstand clearly what sort of a character Chaucer is
portraying, unless he realize how the courtly lover of
mediaeval romance is expected to behave. His utter
faithfulness to Criseyde, his unwillingness to doubt her
good faith long after the shrewder Pandarus sees

116 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

clearly that she will not return, needs no apology. It is
a point in which the mediaeval code of love is in full
accord with the conventions of modern romance. It is
the utter humility of Troilus, his complete subjection to
his lady, his conviction of his own unworthiness, which
may seem to the modern reader unnatural. And yet
here also the mediaeval and the modern code are not so
far apart. Modern convention demands that the lover
proclaim himself ' not nearly good enough ' for his lady,
and declare that he is 'the luckiest of men' to win her.
If the friends of the modern lover are tempted to smile
at him, so does Pandarus more than once smile at the
extravagances of Troilus. Nor does Chaucer take Tro-
ilus quite seriously; he tells us that the first letter of
Troilus was filled with 'thise othere termes alle that in
swich cas these loveres alle seche'; and a few lines later
he reports: —

And after that he seyde, and ley fid loude,
Himself was litel worth, and lesse he coude.

These protestations of unworthiness, however sincerely
uttered, are actually nothing but lies. Troilus himself
had once jested at the woes of hapless lovers.

Thoroughly in accord with the mediaeval depiction of
love are the pallor and sleeplessness and loss of appetite
which afflict Troilus, his sighs and tears and the tremors
which seize him when he is about to speak to Criseyde
for the first time. They are the recognized symptoms
of the lover's malady,1 symptoms not wholly unknown
in modern love-stories. Before we accuse this second
Hector of unmanliness in the luxuriance of his grief,
we must remember that he indulges in these sighs and
tears only when alone or in the sympathetic company

1 See J. L. Lowes, 'The Loveres Maladye of Hereos,' Modern
Philology, 11. 491-546 (1914).

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 117

of his closest friend. From all others his woes are jeal-
ously guarded; nor did the Greeks discover any lack of
manliness on the battle-field.

But even so, Troilus does luxuriate in his sorrow,
which is only another way of saying that he is a good
deal of a sentimentalist. With him emotion and desire
become an end in themselves rather than a spur to ac-
tion. Without the aid of Pandarus he would perhaps
never have let Criseyde know. It is in his helplessness
to further his own cause that Troilus ceases to be
merely the typical lover and becomes individualized.
This tendency to luxuriate in his own sorrow is the
trait of character which, in league with fate, brings
about his tragedy. In the first sorrow of his double
portion he is supplied by Pandarus with the active
force which he lacks. Through the tireless energy and
devotion of his friend he breaks down Criseyde's reluc-
tance to harbor love, and all is well. But in his second
sorrow, when Criseyde must leave him, Pandarus can
give no help beyond patient sympathy. It is no time
for intrigue and skillful manipulation; if there was any
way out for Troilus, it was through quick decision and
resolute action. Of such action the sentimental Troilus
is not capable. He defers the decision to Criseyde, who
characteristically follows the path of least resistance.
For himself, he can only withdraw to a temple and bit-
terly debate with himself the question of God's provi-
dence and man's free will. This long Boethian soliloquy
has been regarded as a digression and an artistic blem-
ish in the poem. Prolonged beyond its due proportion
it may be; but it is no more a digression than are the
soliloquies of Hamlet. It is thoroughly in accord with
the character of Troilus as Chaucer conceived him.1

1 See the article by Dr. H. R. Patch on ' Troilus on Predestination,'
Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 17. 399-422 (1918).

118 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

For Troilus in his love for Criseyde there is no such
thing as free choice. It was his destiny that he should
love Criseyde; and from the moment that he confides
in Pandarus, his destiny is in the hands of his friend.

It is with a mingling of pathos and irony that Chaucer
depicts the closing scenes of Troilus's story. While
Criseyde is receiving the advances of Diomede, Troilus
is sadly revisiting the scenes of his former happiness,
looking with the eyes of tender sentiment at the barred
windows of her empty house. The tenth day comes,
and we witness the feverish watching of Troilus. Pan-
darus encourages his hopes, but in his own heart he
knows better. The evidences of Criseyde's faithless-
ness are at last too clear for even Troilus's credulity.
His fair dream is shattered; the lady whom he has
idealized in joy and sorrow has proved false. Nothing
remains but his own integrity. His only hope is to seek
release from the emptiness of a deceitful world by speedy
death in battle. And so Troilus 'repeyreth hoom from
worldly vanitee.' He has anticipated by a little the
doom which hangs over his city and all his kin. He is
the tragic victim of Fortune and of his own character.

The dominating personage of the poem is neither Cri-
seyde nor Troilus, but Pandarus, prime mover of the

plot during hah* the story and the hero's
Pandarus. ,., . , .

conndant throughout. It is his character, gay

and genial, shrewd and ironic, which gives the poem its
prevailing tone, the tone of humorous irony which all
but overshadows the essential tragedy.

This masterly figure, perhaps the finest example of
Chaucer's art in portraiture, is almost wholly the Eng-
lish poet's original creation. The Pandaro of Boccaccio
is a young man, the cousin of Criseida (and of Troilo
also), a high-spirited gallant, not much differentiated,
save in his fortunes, from the hero, Troilo. He acts

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 119

as messenger and go-between for the lovers; but the
much readier susceptibility of the Italian heroine
makes unnecessary any elaborate scheming and artifice.
And Pandaro is quite devoid of the humor which is so
salient a quality of his English counterpart.

Though Chaucer has depicted the character of his
Pandarus in minute detail, he has nowhere described
his personal appearance; nor has he given any certain
indication of his age. But the impression we receive
is of a man distinctly older than either of the lovers.
He is Criseyde's uncle, a relationship which suggests —
though it does not necessarily imply — that he is some
years her senior. The terms of charming intimacy and
playful banter on which they meet, the trust and con-
fidence which Criseyde reposes in him, again suggest
the older man and the younger woman. But the differ-
ence in their ages need not be more than ten or a dozen
years; for Pandarus is not old, hardly even middle-aged.
He is at any rate not too old to play the courtly lover.
He has loved 'gon sithen longe whyle' a lady whose
heart pity for him has never softened. He, like Troilus,
has times of sleeplessness and pallor, when he feels
'his part of loves shottes kene'; but for the most part
he bears his sorrow easily. Criseyde rallies him about
it; and Pandarus himself jokes about his 'jolly woe'
and ' lusty sorrow ' which will not let him sleep of a May
morning, and humorously describes himself as hop-
ping lamely behind in the dance of love. And yet we
must not doubt that Pandarus is genuinely the unsuc-
cessful lover; it is one of the ironies of his character
that he can win a lady for his friend but not for him-
self.

He is young enough, also, to be the friend and in-
separable companion of Troilus. He has, he tells us,
loved Troilus 'in wrong and right' all his life. It is a

120 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

strong and loyal friendship, with no faintest suspicion
of self-seeking. To his friendship he sacrifices rest and
honor.

For from the mediaeval point of view as well as from
the modern, the role which Pandar plays is one of in-
famy and dishonor; and he clearly recognizes that were
his actions to be known he would be regarded as guilty
of 'the worste trecherye' to his niece. She also regards
his advocacy of Troilus's love as a breach of faith.1
The conventions of courtly love hold Troilus free of
blame, and Criseyde so long as she remains true, but
not so her uncle, whom circumstance has placed in
the position of a father to her, or an elder brother, and
who betrays his trust. Had he been merely the friend
of Troilus, acting as confidant and messenger, it would
have been different; but as Criseyde's uncle, he should
have been her jealous guardian. His only defense is
that he acts from motives of pure friendship. Professor
Kittredge has put very clearly the tragic conflict of
duties which confronts Pandarus as the friend of Troilus
and the uncle of Criseyde. 'This double relation is the
sum and substance of his tragedy, for it involves him
in an action that sullies his honor to no purpose. Since
Cressida is faithless, he not only labors in vain, but
ruins his friend by the very success that his plans
achieve. This humorous worldly enthusiast has two
ideals, friendship and faith in love. To friendship he
sacrifices his honor, only, it seems, to make possible
the tragic infidelity of Cressida, which destroys his
friend.2

Though Pandar sacrifices all to the ideal of friend-
ship, he is not like Troilus an idealist. He does not
sentimentalize his friendship, nor yet his own unre-

x i See Troilus, 3. 271-279; 2. 410-413. Cf. Filostrato, 3. 8.
« Chaucer and his Poetry, pp. 139, 140.

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 121

quited love. It is one of his outstanding traits of char-
acter that he clearly faces the facts, that he sees things
as they are; if he deceives others, he never deceives
himself. His love for Troilus does not blind him to his
friend's foolish extravagance in love; he can laugh at
Troilus as he can laugh at his own hapless love-story.
Even while he is comforting Troilus through his ten
days' waiting for Criseyde's return, he sees clearly that
the hope of Troilus is vain: —

But in his herte he thoughte, and softe lough.
And to himself ful sobrely he seyde:
'From hasel-wode, ther loly Robin pleyde,
Shal come al that that thou abydest here;
Ye, farewel al the snow of feme yere.'

Pandar 'softe lough.' He is always laughing, at himself,
at others, at the irony of life which he so clearly sees —
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? — ; and yet his laughter
does not preclude sympathy. More than once we see
him weep at the woes of others. In his blending of
ironical humor, clear vision, unfailing sympathy, he
has much in common with the poet who created him.

If there is much about him which is worldly, he is
also in the better sense of the word a man of the world.
Nothing could exceed the grace and charm of his man-
ners and his conversation, playful, witty, full of shrewd
observation. He handles Troilus and Criseyde with
equal tact; he is easy master of every situation. Best
of all, he is never dull.

Troilus and Criseyde is a masterpiece not only in its
keen analysis of character, but in the skill with which
its plot is conceived and developed; its art Narrative
is in the highest sense of the word dramatic. Ali"
Troilus first sees Criseyde on a morning in April;
Criseyde departs for the Grecian camp on an August

122 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

morning two years later.1 But if the story extends
over some three years, the actions narrated are con-
fined to a few days, several of which are recorded
in full detail, almost hour by hour. Three quarters of
the lines of Book I are devoted to the events of two
days — the day when Troilus first sees Criseyde in the
temple and the day when he confides his secret to
Pandarus. Beginning with Book II, nearly 5000 lines
of the 8239 which constitute the poem are devoted to
the events of eight days, presented in sets of two, a day
and its morrow. These four groups of two center
respectively on Pandar's first visit to Criseyde in his
friend's behalf,2 on the dinner party at the house of
Deiphebus, on the stormy night when the lovers meet
at the house of Pandarus, on Criseyde's departure from
Troy. Over 900 lines are given to the nine days which
follow Criseyde's departure from Troy. The great
bulk of the poem is thus devoted to a few significant
episodes, and the intervening intervals are dismissed
with concise summary.

Each of these major episodes is transacted largely
by means of dialogue in a series of essentially dramatic
scenes. It will sufficiently illustrate Chaucer's method
if we analyze one of them, the episode of Criseyde's
departure, which fills the fourth book and the begin-
ning of the fifth. It is divided into six scenes. The
first is a brief scene at the Grecian camp, in which Cal-
chas obtains the promise that Antenor shall be ex-
changed for Criseyde (4. 64-140). The scene then shifts
to Troy, where a parliament is held to consider the ex-

1 We are told, 5. 8-14, that there have been three spring seasons
since Troilus began to love Criseyde. If one counts as one of the three
the spring in which the story begins, the total lapse of time is two and
a half years; if one counts exclusively of the first spring, another year
must be added.

* Chaucer dates this visit as on 'Mayes day the thridde,' 2. 56.

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 123

change, and Criseyde's departure is decreed while Tro-
ilus listens in helpless silence (4. 141-217). There fol-
lows a long scene in which Troilus in his own chamber,
first alone and later with Pandarus, bewails his evil
fortune (218-658). This is balanced by a scene at
Criseyde's house in which the heroine laments the fatal
decree. During this scene she receives the farewell
visit of her lady friends, and with breaking heart listens
to their idle chatter, at what Professor Price has called
'a Trojan afternoon tea'1 — an interlude which is a
most subtle blending of comedy and pathos. Later in
the scene she is joined by Pandarus. This scene extends
from line 659 to 945. It is followed by the scene in the
temple, where Troilus has withdrawn to meditate on
the problem of God's providence and man's freedom;
he is interrupted by Pandarus who brings the plan for
a farewell meeting at his house (946-1123). The book
closes with the long scene (1124-1701) of the lovers'
last night together, a scene which extends till dawn of
the following day. The final scene of the episode, Cri-
seyde's actual departure from the city, is transacted in
the opening lines of Book V. More than 1800 lines are
devoted to the events of these two days.2

Boccaccio dedicated his Filostrato to Fiammetta, the
lady of his passionate heart; Chaucer dedicates his own
retelling of the story to 'moral Gower' and 'the philo-

1 See his illuminating article, "Troilus and Criseyde, a study in
Chaucer's Method of Narrative Construction,' Publications of the
Modern Language Association, 11. 307-322 (1896). Professor Price
finds that the action of the poem is arranged into fifty scenes, skill-
fully contrasted in emotional tone, of which thirty-two are conducted
by means of dialogue, nine are soliloquy or monologue, two are trio
scenes, while seven introduce a larger group of speakers.

* The student will find it interesting to make a similar analysis of
the other episodes, particularly that of the dinner party at the house
of Deiphebus.

124 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

sophical Strode.' Chaucer's friend, John Gower, had
not yet written Confessio Amantis, his great
' collection of moralized tales; but his early
works, the French Miroir de VOmme and the Latin Vox
Clamantis, are even more pronouncedly didactic. They
constitute an ethical analysis of the individual and
of society as a whole which amply justifies Chaucer in
characterizing their author as preeminently a moralist.
Chaucer's other friend, Ralph Strode, was a fellow of
Merton College, Oxford, a scholastic of some distinc-
tion, and the author of voluminous treatises on logic
and dialectic.

Chaucer directs his book, then, to a great moralist
and a learned professor of philosophy, begging them
'ther nede is to corecte'; and he leaves us in no doubt
as to the moral he would have us draw from it, or the
philosophy of life which permeates it. Boccaccio is
content to warn young lovers not to put trust too
lightly in every fair lady, many of whom are, alas, like
Criseida, 'unstable as leaf in the wind.' One must be
cautious, and 'choose a mistress who will be firm and
constant. Very different is Chaucer's moral: —

O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she,
In which that love upgroweth with your age,
Repeyreth boom from worldly vanitee,
And of your herte upcasteth the visage
To thilke god that after his image
Yow made, and thinketh al nis but a fayre
This world, that passeth sone as floures fayre.

Let us flee the vanities of the world, and set our love
on Him who in the fullness of His love died for us on
the cross, 'for he nil falsen no wight, dar I seye.' This
moral is reiterated in the passage where the slain
Troilus, as his soul mounts the heavens, looks back at
Uhis litel spot of erthe' and —

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 125

fully gan despyse

This wrecched world, and held al vanitee
To respect of the pleyn felicitee
That is in hevene above.

The noble stanzas which follow heavenward the soul of
Troilus have no counterpart in Filostrato," Chaucer has
appropriated them from another poem of Boccaccio, the
Teseide, his principal source for the Knight's Tale. Nor
were the stanzas present in the first edition of Troilus;
they constitute a deliberate addition made at the time
when Chaucer revised his finished work.

It is plain that Chaucer has done his utmost to make
the poem end, unlike the consistently worldly Filostrato,
with full emphasis on its moral and philosophical signifi-
cance. The contrast with Boccaccio, which is so marked
in the conclusion of the poem, is also present, though
less strikingly, throughout Troilus and Criseyde. The
whole story is interpreted at every stage in accordance
with the philosophy of Boethius, a philosophy which
Chaucer seems to have adopted as his own — a pro-
found sense of the transitoriness of all earthly happiness,
of the capriciousness of Fortune, that incalculable
power to whom is entrusted the working out of divinely
ordained destiny.

Chaucer calls his poem a tragedy; and tragedy ac-
cording to the mediaeval conception is, as the Monk of
the Canterbury Tales makes clear, the story of a man
cast down by Fortune from great prosperity and high
estate into misery and wretchedness. But in the Bo-
ethian philosophy Fortune is but executrix of destiny.
Professor Kittredge has pointed out how strongly Chau-
cer has emphasized the idea that his characters are in-
volved in the mesh of inexorable fate. It is 'through
his destiny ' that Troilus first falls in love with Criseyde.
It is destiny again which sends him riding 'an esy pas'

126 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

below Criseyde's window at the very moment when
Pandarus has disposed the lady's thoughts to answer
love by love: —

For which, men say, may nought disturbed be
That shal bityden of necessitee.

And Troilus and Criseyde are Trojans, citizens of a
doomed city, marked by the gods for destruction. Cal-
chas has already fled from the doom to come; and it is
to save his daughter from a share in it that he secures
her extradition from the city, and so precipitates the
tragedy. Troilus, when the Trojan parliament issues its
decree, sees the hand of destiny at work: —

For al that comth, comth by necessitee;
Thus to be lorn, it is my destinee.

And so he debates, through a long passage which Chau-
cer added in his recension of the poem, the question of
man's freedom and God's foreknowledge, inclining in
his argument towards the side of predestination.

If stern necessity rules supreme, if men are but the
playthings of Fortune, then earthly happiness is but
delusion.

*O god!' quod she, 'so worldly selinesse,

Which clerkes callen fals felicitee,

Ymedled is with many a bitternesse!

Ful anguisshous than is, god woot,' quod she,

• Condicioun of veyn prosperitee.

For either joyes comen nought yfere,

Or elles no wight hath hem alwey here.

Wherfore I wol deffyne in this matere,

That trewely, for ought I can espye,

Ther is no verray wele in this world here.' *

It is Criseyde who in these lines, closely modeled on
N; » 3. 813-836.

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 127

Boethius,1 sets forth the doctrine of false felicity; Cri-
seyde, who by her subsequent falseness points this same
moral at the end of the poem, the moral that the world
is but Vanity Fair and its pleasures merely transitory,
that true felicity is to be found only 'in hevene above.'

Not only in its concluding stanzas, but throughout
its course, Chaucer has moralized his song of courtly
love in terms of the stoic philosophy of Boethius, and
justified his dedication of the poem to 'moral Gower'
and 'the philosophical Strode.' He has given to his
story of what is, after all, an illicit love a high level of
moral elevation, a level which is essentially maintained
throughout the poem. This element of its art contrib-
utes in no small measure to our feeling that Troilus and
Criseyde is a very great poem.2

1 Book II, Prose iv. For a full discussion of the Boethian element
in Troilus, see B. L. Jefferson, Chaucer and the Consolation of Philos-
ophy of Boethius, pp. 120-130.

• See Professor Tatlock's article, ' The Epilog of Chaucer's Troilus,'
Modern Philology, 18. 625-659 (1921).

CHAPTER VII
THE HOUSE OF FAME

THERE is no evidence which enables us to assign a pre-
cise date to the House of Fame. Since it is named among
the poet's works in the Prologue to the Leg- Date and
end of Good Women, it must have been writ- Sources.
ten before 1386. The use made in it of the Divine
Comedy indicates a date later than Chaucer's Ital-
ian journey of 1373. Within this range of a dozen
years, the date may, though less certainly, be further
limited to the period from June, 1374, to February,
1385, the period of Chaucer's active administration of
his comptrollership of customs. It would seem to be to
these exacting duties at the customs house that the
eagle refers in the lines: —

For whan thy labour doon al is,
And hast ymaad thy rekeninges,
In stede of reste and newe thinges,
Thou gost hoom to thy hous anoon;
And, also domb as any stoon,
Thou sittest at another boke,
Til fully daswed is thy loke.

In default of a more exact date, one would be glad to
know whether the poem was written earlier or later
than Chaucer's masterpiece of the so-called Italian
period, the Book of Troilus. Even here, no certain con-
clusion is possible; and the evidence, such as it is, is too
complicated to summarize in such a book as this. But
the weight of scholarly opinion now inclines towards
the belief that the House of Fame was written before

THE HOUSE OF FAME 129

Troilus.1 If so, it cannot have been written later than
1380.

Such leisure as was left to the poet from his reckon-
ings at the customs house must have been diligently
spent in poring over old books; for the House of Fame
displays a very considerable and varied reading. It is a
much more 'learned' poem than is the Book of the Duch-
ess, written in 1369. It shows, first of all, a thorough
acquaintance with Dante, from whom apparently came
the suggestion of Chaucer's flight heavenwards in the
talons of an eagle, as well as echoes from all three sec-
tions of the Divine Comedy. Even greater is the influence
of Virgil. The main events of the Mneid, are digested in
the description of the carvings on the temple of Venus
in Book I; and the description of Lady Fame in Book
III is indebted to JEneid, 4. 173-183. To Ovid, Metamor-
phoses, 12. 39-63, is due the general conception of a
House of Fame. The Somnium Scipionis of Cicero,
with the commentary of Macrobius, supplied the intro-
ductory discussion of the nature of dreams. Other works
the influence of which may be traced are the Anticlaudi-
anus of Alanus de Insulis, and the De Nuptiis Philolo-
gies et Mercurii of Martianus Capella. There is no evi-
dence that Chaucer knew the Trionfo della Fama of
Petrarch.

No single source for the poem as a whole has been
discovered, nor is it likely that any will be found. But
in general form and structure it belongs clearly in the
category of the dream-vision literature of mediaeval
France, and has much in common with the Roman de la
Rose, the Paradys d' Amours of Froissart, and Chaucer's
own Book of the Duchess; though its marked differences
from any known poems of the type are very striking.
There is no reason to doubt that Chaucer alone is re-

1 See G. L. Kittredge, Date of Chaucer's Troilus, pp. 53-60.

130 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

sponsible for the central conception of his plot and for
its development, even though he has cast it in the
mould of the vision-poems of love-allegory, and has
enriched it from his varied reading.1

Despite its debt in form and substance to 'olde bokes,'
the poem impresses one first of all by its spontaneity,
its ease of movement, its boundless energy
ory' of invention. It excels in that quality which
eighteenth-century critics designated as ' wit,' which we
to-day are more likely to call ingenious fancy. It mod-
estly disclaims any pretense to poetic art: —

Nat that I wilne, for maistrye,
Here art poetical be shewed;
But, for the rym is light and lewed,
Yit make hit sumwhat agreable,
Though som vers faile in a sillable.

It will merely recount to us a most marvelous dream
which the poet dreamed on the tenth day of last Decem-
ber. And so, half playfully, half seriously, Chaucer
discusses in his first fifty lines the nature of dreams.
Are they warnings of things to come, or the mere result
of bodily disorders? It is a question which Chaucer was
fond of raising. With what amused interest he would
have investigated 'present-day methods of 'psychoan-
alysis' through interpretation of dreams! But though
Chaucer raises the question, he leaves its determination
to 'grete clerkes.' If dreams are really warnings, they
warn 'to derkly' to be of much use. So he merely re-
counts his dream without attempting an interpretation
of it.

Unmindful of Chaucer's caution, scholars have tried
to read into his dream an elaborate allegorical meaning,

1 See W. O. Sypherd, Studies in Chaucer's House of Fame, Chaucer
Society, 1907.

THE HOUSE OF FAME 131

a revelation of his own intellectual experiences and
aspirations; but the trend of critical opinion to-day is
to discredit these interpretations as over-ingenious, and
to accept the poem at its face value as merely a wonder-
ful dream. At most, one may take as revealing Chau-
cer's own more serious conviction his account of Lady
Fame and her abode.

The word 'fame' is used in the poem with double
meaning. One meaning is rumor, general report, the
mysterious dissemination of tidings. Upon the basis of
this general report, some strange power distributes to
men their meed of glory or reputation; and this is the
second meaning of the word 'fame.' It is with the first
of these meanings in view that the magisterial eagle
gives his scientific explanation of how all reports tend
by their own nature to fly upwards to a single center
set in the midst of heaven and earth and sea. But in the
third book we see first the dwelling-place of the goddess
of reputation or glory. The poetic imagery is easy of
interpretation. The mount of ice is slippery of ascent,
and in its nature so little permanent that the names
upon it melt easily away. Only on the northern side,
the direction of hardship and adversity, were there any
names of endurance. The lady Fame herself is a won-
drous 'feminyne creature,' semper mutabile, who, like
Virgil's Fama, is of such varying stature that one mo-
ment she seems less than a cubit in height, and the next
she touches the heavens. Mutable in her outward form,
the lady is equally capricious in the bestowal of her
favor. Perhaps the most brilliant touch of poetical
fancy in the poem is the scene where the various com-
panies of men, the deserving and the desertless, come to
ask their boons of glory or oblivion, and are answered
with no rule or reason, but merely as the whim of the
moment may dictate.

132 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

The significance of all this is plain enough. Uncertain
and evanescent in itself, fame or reputation is bestowed
in so unreasonable a way that a man of reason and self-
respect cannot but despise it. As Chaucer stood marvel-
ing at all this gear, some one addressed him: —

And seyde: 'Frend, what is thy name?
Artow come hider to han fame? '
'Nay, forsothe, frend!' quod I;
' I cam noght hider, graunt mercy!
For no swich cause, by my heed!
Suffyceth me, as I were deed,
That no wight have my name in honde.
I woot myself best how I stonde;
For what I drye or what I thinke,
I wol myselven al hit drinke.'

Chaucer deliberately repudiates all desire for glory;
but for fame in the sense of tidings he has the keenest
relish; and this desire is satisfied in the house of Rumor,
the domus Dedali, to which he is now conducted. Here
are tidings in abundance, false and true, of all sorts of
happenings under heaven. Here are shipmen and pil-
grims, pardoners and messengers, —

With scrippes bret-ful of lesinges,
Entremedled with tydinges.

The poem breaks off abruptly — either because
Chaucer never finished it, or because a final leaf got
lost from the original manuscript — leaving the poet
in the house of Rumor; and there we find him again some
ten years later, as he rides with a company of shipmen
and pilgrims and pardoners, an unassuming but keenly
interested spectator and auditor, on the road to Canter-
bury.

The first phase of this wondrous dream transacts
itself in a marvelous temple of glass, on the walls of

THE HOUSE OF FAME 133

which are pictured in true mediaeval fashion all the
story of /Eneas. The poet recognizes that it is the
temple of Venus —

for, in portreyture,
I saw anoon right hir figure
Naked fletinge in a see.

It is because of the poet's devotion to love that Jupiter
sends down his great eagle to bear him aloft to the land
of Fame, where he can hear tidings of lovers and their
ways.

The second book is concerned with Chaucer's skyward
journey. The eagle who bears him none too securely in
his talons is no mere piece of narrative machinery, but
quite the most delightful personage of the poem. He
is a very learned eagle, and not in the least niggardly
about imparting his learning. With his helpless audi-
ence of one gripped in his two claws, he lectures most
academically on the theory of sound, and then inquires
with fine condescension : —

Have I not preved thus simply,
Withouten any subtiltee
Of speche, or gret prolixitee
Of termes of philosophye?

To this question Chaucer, taking the part of wisdom,
discreetly answers 'Yis.'

'A ha!' quod he, 'lo, so I can
Lewedly to a lewed man
Speke, and shewe him swiche skiles,
That he may shake hem by the biles.
So palpable they shulden be.'

Though the eagle speak with the tongue of men and
schoolmasters, the poet does not forget that he is a bird,
and reminds his readers of the fact by the delicious con-
ceit — 'shake hem by the biles.'

134 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Having lectured to his own great satisfaction on the
wave-theory of sound, he is ready, nay eager, to dis-
course on the stars; but his audience rebels: —

'Wilt them lere of sterres aught?'
'Nay, certeinly,' quod I, 'right naught;

And why? for I am now to old.'
' Kilos I wolde thee have told,'

Quod he, '.the sterres names, lo.

And al the hevenes signes to,

And which they been.'

Every reader of poetry, he insists, should have at least
an elementary course in astronomy, and what time so
favorable as this when we are in the very midst of the
constellations? It is only when his hearer urges that his
eyes will not bear to look upon the stars in their blazing
proximity, that the eagle reluctantly bridles his peda-
gogic zeal.

It would be idle to point out all the humorous touches
of this aerial colloquy. If the reader cannot see them
for himself, as Matthew Arnold would have said, mori-
etur in peccatis suis. Not even in the Nun's Priest's Tale
is Chaucer's humor more irresistible.

CHAPTER VIII
THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN

THE Legend of Good Women marks the beginning of
what is ordinarily called Chaucer's third period, the
period which reaches full flower in the Canterbury
Tales. Itself a collection of tales bound together by
community of theme and by a common prologue, it
may in deed be thought of as a direct precursor of the
greater collection which follows. Chaucer has ceased to
feel the overmastering influence of Italian models; and
though the intellectual stimulus received from Italy
was not to spend itself until his death, he is feeling
about for a form of literary expression which shall
be essentially his own. That the Legend was in some
sort an experimental venture is suggested by the fact
that it was left unfinished, crowded from its place in
his attention by the vastly superior conception of the
Canterbury Tales. But experiment though it be, it
is far from being a failure. The nine legends which
Chaucer wrote are good pieces of narrative, told with
the poet's peculiar grace and charm ; while the Prologue
is, in its beauty of imagery, its buoyant freshness of
an English Maytide, in its general conception and
execution, one of Chaucer's most successful and most
beautiful productions.

The Legend consists of a series of tales, drawn from
the storehouse of classical antiquity, recounting the
fortunes of noble women, true in love, intro-
duced by a prologue poem of the dream-
vision type so popular in the allegorical literature of

136 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

the Middle Ages. In the case of such a work, one
need not look for any single source ; one will ask rather
what models Chaucer may have had before him, or
what earlier works may have suggested the scheme of
his poem. Two such works immediately suggest them-
selves : the Heroides of Ovid, a series of imaginary
letters sent by heroines of mythology to their faithless
lovers, and, nearer to Chaucer's own time, the De
Claris Mulieribus l of Boccaccio, a collection of sto-
ries in Latin prose, wherein are epitomized the fortunes
of famous women. The first of these works Chaucer
certainly knew ; and there is every probability that he
was acquainted with the other.

In compiling materials for the individual legends,
Chaucer seems to have done what any modern author
would do under similar circumstances : he read all the
accounts of his heroines which were readily accessible
to him, and selected, adapted, and combined, as his
literary taste impelled him. In the case of the first
legend, that of Cleopatra, it is not very clear just what
versions of the story Chaucer used. Perhaps a Latin
translation of Plutarch's life of Antony was accessi-
ble to him ; perhaps, too, he consulted the Historia
adversum Paganos of Orosius (fifth century A. D.)
and the De Claris Mulieribus of Boccaccio. Pretty
certainly he was acquainted with the Epitome Rerum
Itomanarum of Florus, a Roman historian of the reign
of Hadrian. The legend of Thisbe was drawn entirely
from Ovid's account of the lady in Metamorphoses, 4.
55-166, though the source was used by Chaucer with
characteristic freedom. The story of Dido is taken,
of course, from Virgil, though a few lines (1355-1365)

1 Similar in character, though wider in its scope, is the De Casibus
Virorum et Feminarum Illustrium of the same author, used by Chaucer
as the model for his Monk's Tale.

THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 137

are from Ovid's H&roidea, 7. 1-8. For the stories of
Hypsipyle and Medea Chaucer went, naturally enough,
to Ovid ; 1 but he seems to have made even greater use
of the account given in the Historia Trojana of Guido
delle Colon ne.2 For the story of Lucretia Chaucer
himself refers us to Livy and to Ovid,3 the latter of
whom is his principal source. The remaining legends
are based chiefly on Ovid, whose influence is the domi-
nant one in the whole collection. Other works which
Chaucer may well have consulted are the fables of
Hyginus, the two works of Boccaccio mentioned above,
and the compendium of classical mythology by the
same author entitled De Genealogia Deorum.4 Most
of the stories of the Legend of Good Women are also
told by Gower in the Confessio Amantis ; so that one
may, if he pleases, see how a less gifted contemporary
uses the same material.5

For the Prologue the problem of sources is much less
clear. It seems to have been composed under the gen-
eral influence of a school, rather than of any particular
models. This school is that of the French love-alle-
gory, with its familiar devices of a dream-vision and
a court of love, and its unfailing accompaniments of
May-morning, singing birds, and springing flowers, of
which the Roman de la Rose is the great exemplar.6
From among the vast throng of French love-allegories
of this type, it is possible to segregate a small group

1 Metamorphoses, 7. 1-296 ; Heroides, 6 and 12.

2 Cf. above, p. 98.
8 Fasti, 3. 461-516.

* Chaucer's indebtedness to the De Genealogia has been convincinglj
proved by C. G. Child in Modern Language Notes, 11. 238-245.

5 For a discussion of the sources of the Legend and of the relation
of Chaucer's work to Gower' s, see the excellent article by M. Bech in
Anglia, 5. 313-382.

6 For a very thorough account of this poetry, see Professor W. A.
Neilson's The Origins and Sources of the Court of Love, Boston, 1899.

138 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

which exerted a more particular influence on the Pro-
logue.

Some twenty years before the probable date of
Chaucer's Legend, the French poet Guillaume de
Machault wrote a Dit de la Marguerite, wherein a lady
named Marguerite, very likely a mistress of Machault's
patron Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus, is praised
under the figure of the flower whose name she bears.
The cult of the daisy was immediately taken up by
Machault's literary disciples, Froissart and Deschamps.
Froissart in his Dittie de la Flour de la Marguerite and
his Paradys d" Amours uses the same symbolism, with
extravagant praise of the daisy, in honor of another
Marguerite; and Deschamps carries the same device
even farther in his Lay de Franchise, and in several of
his balades. As the fashion gained vogue, this symbol-
ism of the daisy was applied even to ladies whose name
did not happen to be Marguerite. So that one need not
be surprised to find in the Prologue to Chaucer's
Legend that the daisy is used to symbolize Alcestis,
and, through her, Chaucer's patroness, Queen Anne.1

With the work of all three of these poets Chaucer,
we know, was familiar ; with Deschamps he had per-
sonal relations of peculiar interest ; for a balade of
Deschamps is addressed to the * grant translateur, noble
Geffroy Chaucier.' 2 From the balade itself we learn that
it was to be sent to Chaucer, together with other of
Deschamps's poems, by the hands of Sir Lewis Clifford.'
It is entirely possible that the Lay de Franchise, with

1 For a discussion of the marguerite poems and their influence on
Chaucer, see the article by J. L. Lowes on the Legend of Good Wo-
men, in Publications of the Modern Language Association, 19. 593-683
(1904).

3 The balade is reprinted entire in the Oxford Chaucer, 1. Ivi, Ivii.

8 For an account of Clifford, see the article by Professor Kittredge
on 'Chaucer and some of his Friends,' in Modern Philology, 1. 1-18.

THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 139

its praise of the marguerite, was one of the poems thus
transmitted from the poet over-seas. However it
reached him, we can be all but sure that the Lay de
Franchise, and Froissart's Paradys d1 Amours, and
perhaps other of the marguerite poems, were in Chau-
cer's mind when he composed his Prologue.1 It is to
this group of marguerite poets, then, and to the still
larger group of their countrymen who had written
courtly allegories of love, that Chaucer is speaking in
the familiar lines near the beginning of his poem : —

Ye lovers, that can make of sentement;

In this cas ogbte ye be diligent

To forthren me somwhat in my labour,

Whether ye ben with the leef or with the flour.

For wel I wot, that ye ban herbiforn

Of making ropen, and lad awey the corn ;

And I come after, glening here and there,

And am f ul glad if I may finde an ere

Of any goodly word that ye ban left.

One need only say that Chaucer's gleaning was indeed
rich.

In the Patent Rolls for the eighth year of the reign
of .Richard II, under date of February 17 [1385], there
is a writ by which the king grants ' by special Date and
grace to our beloved Geoffrey Chaucer, comp- circum-

11 £ J u -J- xif stances

troiler or our customs and subsidies in the ofcompo-
port of our city of London,' the privilege of 81tion>
appointing a permanent deputy to conduct the business
which he had before been commanded to transact with
his own hand. With what delicious sense of untram-
meled freedom must Chaucer have closed his books of
reckonings, and taken farewell of his not too congenial
associates at the custom-house on Thames-bank. No

1 Despite the contention of Dr. Lowes in the article cited above,
these poems seem to me to have served as suggestions, rather than as
definite sources.

140 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

longer need he crowd his study and his writing into the
evening hours, after a day's work was already done.

Chaucer was at this time a man of forty-five or
thereabouts, and already the most famous poet in Eng-
land. He was the * grant translateur ' of the Roman de la
Rose; he had celebrated the marriage of Richard and
Queen Anne in the Parliament of Fowls; he had shown
the free play of his wit and fancy in the House of Fame;
above all he had published but a few years ago his great
narrative poem, Troilus. We can imagine that Troilus
had created no small sensation in courtly circles. Never
before had Chaucer's readers seen in English, nor in
French, a story of courtly love told with such vivid and
convincing realism; and in this vivid story the heroine,
Criseyde, becomes in the end a type of all that a lady
should not be. It is likely enough that many a noble
lady of the court reproached the poet, betwixt play and
earnest, for drawing so unflattering a portrait of woman-
kind.

In the Prologue to the Legend, King Cupid bitterly
upbraids the poet for having translated the Romance of
the Rose, 'that is an heresye ageyns my lawe,' and for
having written disparagingly of Criseyde — 'that mak-
eth men to wommen lasse triste.' Queen Alcestis, su-
preme type of womanly fidelity in love, pleads Chaucer's
cause. Perhaps, since Chaucer is but a foolish poet at
best, he has sinned by sheer inadvertence, 'gessing no
malyce.' At any rate, he has written many other poems
in praising of Love's name. She promises that he will
never err again; and proposes that as penance he shall
now write ' of wommen trewe in lovinge al hir ly ve.'

These proceedings at the court of King Cupid are,
of course, a literary device for introducing the series of
legends which is to follow; and Chaucer has warned us
that the whole scene is but a dream. One must be on

THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 141

one's guard against reading into scenes of poetic fiction
a record of supposedly actual happenings; yet in this
instance there is reason to believe that the events of the
dream- vision reflect something of reality, that the task
of writing a legend of good women was imposed on
Chaucer by Queen Anne, as in the poem it is enjoined
on him by Queen Alcestis.

That the poem was, at any rate, to be dedicated to
Queen Anne is made clear in Alceste's command: —

And whan this book is maad, yive hit the quene
On my behalfe, at Eltham, or at Shene.

Chaucer's disciple, Lydgate, writing a generation later,
asserts in the Prologue to his Falls of Princes that the
Legend was made 'at the request of the quene.' Perhaps
Lydgate is reporting authentic tradition; perhaps his
statement rests only on his own interpretation of Chau-
cer's Prologue. Even on this latter hypothesis the evi-
dence is significant. The modern critic would be less
diffident of seeing in the poem a meaning found also
by a nearly contemporary poet thoroughly conversant
with the conventions of mediaeval poetry.

It seems probable, also, that Chaucer's reverence for
Queen Alcestis, and his passionate devotion to the daisy
which is associated with her, were intended as a compli-
ment to Queen Anne. In the lines which sing the praises
of the daisy, Chaucer has echoed the language of the
French poets who, under the type of the marguerite,
have complimented living ladies. But Chaucer surpasses
his French originals in the fervor of his devotion. He
says of the daisy: —

She is the clernesse and the verrey light
That in this derke worlde me wynt and ledeth;
The herte inwith my sorowful brest yow dredeth,
And loveth so sore, that ye ben verrayly
The maistresse of my wit, and nothing I ...

142 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Be ye my gyde and lady sovereyne;
As to myn erthly god, to yow I calle,
Bothe in this werke and in my sorwes alle.

These lines, as Professor Lowes has pointed out, are
closely modeled on a passage of fervent devotion in the
Proem to Filostrato, where Boccaccio is addressing not
a flower, but his lady Fiammetta.

It would be absurd to suppose that this extravagant
devotion of Chaucer is bestowed on a mere flower of
the field. It seems hardly less unreasonable to suppose
that it is lavished upon the mythical person of Queen
Alcestis. What 's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that
he should weep for her?

To the present writer the conclusion seems inevitable
that under the twofold type of the daisy and of Alcestis
the poet is praising some living lady. If so, it is highly
probable that the lady is none other than Queen Anne,
to whom, as we know from Chaucer's own words, the
book was to be formally presented 'at Eltham or at
Shene.' From this conclusion it need not follow that
Alcestis is at all points to be equated with Anne, nor
that had Chaucer carried out his intention to devote
one of the legends to the story of Alcestis: —

She that for hir husbonde chees to dye,
And eek to goon to helle, rather than he —

he would have made her life in any way an allegory of
the life of the queen. Alcestis is not an invariable sym-
bol for Queen Anne, but rather a type of noble woman-
hood and wifely devotion which, Chaucer suggests, is
again embodied in his youthful queen.1 The daisy, then,

1 The view that Alcestis typifies Queen Anne is supported by Tat-
lock, Development and Chronology of Chaucer's Works, pp. 102-120,
and by B. L. Jefferson in Journal of English and Germanic Philology,
13. 434-443. It is opposed by Lowes in the article already cited, and
by Kittredge in Modern Philology, 6. 435-439. A middle position
is taken by Samuel Moore in Modern Language Review, 7. 488-493.

THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 143

plays a double role. It is immediately the type of Queen
Alcestis who is to appear in person later in the poem;
but more subtly it also shadows forth the poet's royal
patroness.

The Prologue to the Legend of Good Women has come
down to us in two versions which present very consider-
able variations from one another. Hitherto The Two
this discussion has confined itself to the Verflons
longer version, which modern editors have Prologue,
designated by the letter 'B' to distinguish it from the
shorter 'A' version, found in a single manuscript (Cam-
bridge University Library, Gg4. 27).1 That both of these
versions are from Chaucer's own hand, no one has
doubted; but the question as to the relative priority of
the two versions was long in dispute. The 'A* version
contains 90 lines not found in ' B,' lacks 124 lines which
'B ' contains, presents transpositions of several important
passages, and numerous slight alterations in individual
lines. Particularly notable is the fact that 'A* omits
entirely the couplet quoted above in which the poem is
expressly dedicated to Queen Anne, and that the passage
in which the poet expresses his devotion to the daisy
is greatly modified, with complete suppression of many
of its most ardent lines. Had this version alone sur-
vived, we should have had no grounds for seeing in the
poem any special compliment to the queen. The daisy
would have seemed to typify Alcestis and only Alcestis.

It is impossible to enter here into all the intricacies
of the argument. It must suffice to say that virtually
all scholars are now agreed that the so-called ' B ' version
is the earlier, and that it was written in 1385 or 1386,

1 Recent critics sometimes designate the ' A ' version by the symbol
'G' or 'Gg,' and the so-called 'B' version, the text of which is best
preserved in MS. Faifax 16 of the Bodleian Library, by the symbol
•F.'

144 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

probably in the latter year. Deschamps's Lay de Fran-
chise, which seems to have contributed to Chaucer's
praises of the marguerite, was composed for May -day,
1385. This sets an early limit for the date of the 'B'
Prologue. It was certainly written before the death of
Queen Anne in 1394. By 1387, or shortly after, Chaucer
was apparently engaged on the Canterbury Tales, and
would have been most unwilling to undertake, even at
royal request, another collection of tales based on a
plan artistically so inferior.

When Queen Anne died in 1394, her royal husband
tore down the palace at Shene, where she had died, and
avoided everything which should remind him of his loss.
It would seem that the so-called 'A' version of the Pro-
logue, which suppresses the dedication to the queen
and obliterates the compliment paid to her in the earlier
version, was called forth by this event and by the king's
attitude towards it. As the Legend was not completed,
it had probably never been presented to the queen,
never formally 'published.' The queen's death made
the dedication no longer appropriate; and the king's
attitude made unacceptable to him a poem designed to
do her honor. To adapt his still unfinished work to
these new conditions would seem to have been Chaucer's
motive for revision. If so, the date of the 'A' version
must be shortly after 1394, a date which is corroborated
by other considerations.1

By the command of Queen Alcestis, Chaucer is to
write ' a glorious Legende of Gode Wommen, maidenes
Plan of and wy ves ' who were saints and martyrs in
the Poem, the cause of true love. Cupid adds a further
command that the legends shall conclude with the life
of Alcestis.

1 For a fuller discussion of the problem see Tatlock's chapter on
the Legend in Development and Chronology of Chaucer's Works.

THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 145

The finished poem, then, was to have consisted of
the Prologue, followed by the legends of the nineteen
ladies who form Alcestis's train, and concluded by the
story of Alcestis herself. But Chaucer had a sad habit
not unknown to us moderns, of undertaking a large
task with boundless enthusiasm, and of tiring of it
before the task was half performed. He wrote nine
legends (the last unfinished), praising the virtue of ten
of the noble ladies, and then the new and the better
idea of the Canterbury pilgrimage took possession of
his mind. With the intellectual impatience so char-
acteristic of him, he started on the fresher task ; and
though intending to finish the Legend, as shown by
his reference to it in the Prologue to the Man of
Law's Tale, he laid it one side to wait for the more
convenient day which never came. It is easy to see why
the work was put aside. Charming as the Prologue is
in its kind, it is after all only a dream, and forever
inferior to the human reality and broad sweep of the
Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Moreover, since
the tales were all to be told by the poet himself, there
was no opportunity for the dramatic variety offered by
the Canterbury pilgrimage. Lastly, and most impor-
tant, the very nature of the plan involved inevitable
monotony — all the stories were to be of true women,
faithful though abandoned in love, and all were to be
drawn from the realm of classical antiquity.

As Professor Lounsbury has pointed out, one can
trace in the successive sections of the work the poet's
growing tedium. Even as he wrote the last lines of
the Prologue, he began to be oppressed with the mag-
nitude of his undertaking. The god of love warns
him: —

' I wot wel that thou mayst nat al hit ryrne,
That swiche lovers diden in hir tyme;

146 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

It were to long to reden and to here;
Suffyceth me, thou make in this manere,
That thou reherce of al hir lyf the grete,
After thise olde auctours listen to trete.
For whoso shal so many a storie telle,
Sey shortly, or he shal to longe dwelle.'

A similar note recurs in the first of the legends : —

The wedding and the feste to devyse,
To me, that have ytake swiche empryse
Of so many a storie for to make,
Hit were to long, lest that I sholde slake
Of thing that bereth more effect and charge:
For men may overlade a ship or barge ;
And forthy to th' effect than wol I skippe,
And al the remeuant, I wol lete hit slippe.

Other hints of weariness may be found frequently in
the legends ; 1 but quite unmistakable are the following
lines from the Legend of Phyllis : —

But for I am agroted heerbiforn
To wryte of hem that been in love forsworn,
And eek to haste me in my legende,
Which to performe god me grace sende,
Therfor I passe shortly in this wyse.

With such a warning, one is not surprised to find the
next legend broken off abruptly in the middle of a
sentence. One curious slip on the poet's part gives
further proof that his heart was not in the work. In
the Legend of Ariadne, at line 2075, we are told that
Theseus was but twenty years and three of age ; only
twenty lines farther on Ariadne suggests that her sister
be wedded to Theseus's son.

On the basis of the lists of heroines given in the
balade introduced into the Prologue, and in the Pro-
logue to the Man of Law's Tale, Professor Skeat sur-

1 See 11. 1002-1003, 1552-1553, 1565, 1679, 1692-1693, 1921, 2257-
2258, 2470-2471, 2490-2491, 2513-2515.

THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 147

mises that the remaining legends were to have dealt with
Penelope, Helen, Hero, Laodamia, Lavinia, Polyxena,
Deianira, Hermione, and Briseis: but since the two
lists are not in accord, we may well believe that Chau-
cer's mind was never clearly made up on the matter.

The peculiar charm of the Prologue to the Legend
of Good Women is in part the charm of spring-time
and out-of-doors, in part the charm of noble The Pro-
womanhood as figured in the fair Alceste, and logue>
even more the buoyant joyfulness of new-won freedom,
as of an Ariel set free. First we see the poet, Chau-
cer, himself in his daily life — in the study and in the
fields. Though he is no deep scholar, he modestly
confesses, it is his surpassing delight to read books, —

And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence,
And in myn herte have hem in reverence
So hertely, that ther is game noon
That fro my bokes maketh me to goon,
But hit be seldom, on the holyday.

Though a book-lover, Chaucer is no book-worm. There
is one attraction more potent than that of * olde bokes '
— the beauty of nature in the fair spring-time.1 But
when we speak of Chaucer's love of nature, we must
be careful not to confuse this with the love of nature
which marks more modern poets. Nowhere in his works
is there any suggestion that he cared for the wilder
beauty of mountains and rocks and surging sea. We
never hear that he spent a summer in Wales, or Corn-
wall, or the Scottish Highlands. In his journeys to
Italy he must surely have caught a glimpse of the Alps ;
but never does he sing of cloud-capped peak or snowy

1 Chaucer's picture of Maytide is, of course, largely influenced by
the conventionalities of the French love-allegories : but his poetry is so
spontaneous in its enthusiasm that we may safely assume that the con-
vention chimed with his own natural feeling.

148 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

summit. In the Franklin's Tale the story demands a
description of the rocky coast of Brittany; but the
rocks are thought of as terrible and destructive rather
than as beautiful. They even cause Dorigen to doubt
the benevolence of their Creator : —

Eterne god, that thurgh thy purveyaunce
Ledest the world by certain governaunce,
In ydel, as men seyn, ye nothing make ;
But, lord, thise grisly feendly rokkes blake,
That semen rather a foul confusioun
Of werk than any fair creacioun
Of swich a parfit wys god and a stable,
Why han ye wroght this werk unresonable ? *

Once only does Chaucer give a sweeping view from

hill or mountain-side : —

Ther is, at the west syde of Itaille,

Doun at the rote of Yesulus the colde,

A lusty plaync, habundant of vitaille,

Wher many a tour and toun thou mayst biholde,

That founded were in tyme of fadres olde,

And many another delitable sighte,

And Saluces this noble contree highte.3

What appeals to Chaucer in the view is the fertility of
the plain, and the evidence of prosperous human life
furnished by * many a tour and toun.' As for Mt. Ve-
sulus itself, he dismisses it with the single epithet
* colde.' The tale of Constance offers abundant oppor-
tunity for describing the beauty and grandeur of the
sea ; but the opportunity is not improved. It is merely
the * wilde see,' or the * salte see,' thought of as dan-
gerous and cruelly malignant. What Chaucer, and the
men of the Middle Ages in general, loved in nature
was the peaceful and gentle, the beneficent to human
life. The beauty of a May dawning, the song of birds,
the fairness of the daisy, the gentle sweep of a green
meadow, the long avenues of a well-kept forest — these
1 F 865-872. 2 E 57-63.

THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 149

were the charms which could lure Chaucer from his
books and make him happy for a long summer's day.
It is hard for us, bred and born in the atmosphere
of romanticism, to sympathize with such a choice, to
understand why one of the most beautiful of Alpine
passes should have received the name of Mala Via,
the 4 bad road ; ' and yet who shall say that love of the
kindly and beneficent is not as sane and reasonable as
romantic enthusiasm for the desolate and destructive?
Following on the description of Chaucer's daily life
comes the dream-vision itself. In this charming vision
one may notice the skill with which the poet paints a
wide and crowded scene without any confusion or dis-
traction of attention from its central figures. Though
the long description of the beauty of a May meadow
belongs to Chaucer's waking experience and not to the
dream,1 the memory of it is so fresh in the reader's
mind that no further painting of background is neces-
sary ; and the dream begins at once with the entrance
of the god of love, and of the queen whom he is
leading by the hand. They, as the central figures of
the scene, are described with all beauty of detail, the
noble womanhood of Alcestis dominating all about
her. Then, after the balade has been sung, our atten-
tion is diverted to a definite number of attendants,
the nineteen ladies. They are in * royal habit,' but
beyond this single touch they are not described. From,
them we turn to a vast company without number, and
the whole scene is filled with beauty and goodness. But
suddenly the whole throng ceases its motion ; all kneel
and sing with one voice : —

' Hele and honour

To trouthe of womanhede, and to this flour
That berth our alder prys in figuringe 1 '

1 We are speaking of the B version.

150 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Once more our whole attention is brought back to the
object of this adoration, and the action of the dream
proceeds uninterrupted to the end.

Beyond all this beauty of nature and of fair vision,
there is the spirit of health and free-hearted joy per-
vading the whole poem, which is too subtle for analy-
sis, and fortunately needs no service of the critic.

Into the Prologue Chaucer threw all the enthusiasm
of his art ; but the legends which it introduces were
The Nine written, as we have seen, half-heartedly.
Legends. Though the tales are well and gracefully
told, and much more than mere imitations of classical
authors, many readers, I think, will fail to read them
through. We are conscious of a 'hidden want,' the
want of Chaucer's own participant enthusiasm. Any-
thing which has been hastily and reluctantly written
will be hastily and reluctantly read. There are a few
passages of fine description, such as the highly ani-
mated account of the sea-fight at Actium in the Legend
of Cleopatra (a description which suggests the tour-
nament scene in the l&iight's Tale), or the description
of the hunt and ensuing thunder-storm in the Legend
of Dido ; there is true pathos in the story of Lucre-
tia, and real lyric passion in the lament of forsaken
Ariadne ; and yet we feel that the legends are in
the main creditable productions rather than inspired
poems. Perhaps the Legend of Thisbe comes nearest
to being real poetry.

CHAPTER IX
THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUP A

EXCELLENT as is the quality of Chaucer's earlier work,
— rich in characterization, in humor, in pathos, in
essential poetry, — it is in the Canterbury Tales, and
in them alone, that we find the full measure of Chau-
cer's greatness. In their endless variety of beauty and
charm they themselves are Chaucer. To attempt any
critical appreciation of the Canterbury Tales as a
whole is to discuss the literary art of Chaucer, and
that has already been attempted in an earlier chapter.
Detailed estimates of the individual tales will be found
in the pages which follow. All that remains for con-
sideration here is the happy device by which the sev-
eral tales are bound together into an artistic whole.

All the world loves a good story ; and long before
the days of Chaucer, collections of short tales in prose
or verse were popular in Europe and in the .^
Orient. Very often, too, an attempt was made Frame-
to give to such compilations a sort of collec-
tive unity, either by community of theme, as in the
Legend of Good Women and the Monies Tale, or
better by some framework story, as in the great col-
lection known as the Arabian Nights. The Confessio
Amantis of Gower is merely a vast treasure-house of
stories bound together somewhat clumsily by the device
of a lover's confession to the priest of Venus, the sto-
ries being told by the confessor as examples and ad-
monitions to his penitent. Early in the fourteenth
century we have in English a collection of fifteen tales

152 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

unified by an enveloping plot in the Proces of the
Sevyn Sages. Most famous, perhaps, of such collections
of stories is the Decameron of Boccaccio ; and though,
in all probability, Chaucer was unacquainted with this
work, it is interesting to compare the way in which the
two foremost of fourteenth century story-tellers gave
unity to their work. In Boccaccio a company of ten
young men and women of high social standing flee from
plague-stricken Florence to a country estate, the pro-
perty of one of them, and pass their days in telling
stories. On each of ten days a story is told by each
of the company, the stories of each day dealing with the
same general theme. Connecting links describe the
other diversions with which the days are filled.

Chaucer's device of a springtime pilgrimage to
Canterbury has several advantages over that of Boc-
caccio. In the democracy of travel it was possible to
bring together quite naturally persons of varied occu-
pations and of diverse social rank, from the Knight
to the Plowman, and in consequence to give to the
stories a greater variety in theme and manner than
is possible in the Decameron. Moreover, the motley
complexion of the company and the adventures of a
journey give rise to many humorous encounters, which
add greatly to the realism of the whole. With constant
change of scene, and with wide range of human char-
acters, tedium is impossible ; and the reader enters at
once into the exhilarating spirit of travel and holiday.

Had Chaucer carried out his original plan for the
Canterbury Tales, the Prologue describing the gath-
cring at the Tabard Inn would have been

Groups of followed by sixty tales, two by each of

the pilgrims including Chaucer himself, each

introduced by its own prologue. The connecting links

between the tales would have kept us informed of the

THE CANTERBURY TALES 153

progress of the journey, where the nights were spent,
where dinner was taken, of all the little happenings of
the way. Then would have followed an account of the
arrival in Canterbury and of the doings of the com-
pany while there. Sixty more tales, with their connect-
ing links, would have brought us back to Southwark;
and a concluding section would have described the
supper given to him who should be judged the best ra-
conteur. Of this grand scheme Chaucer completed less
than a quarter. The plan was modified in the course
of execution to one tale from each pilgrim on the way to
Canterbury, and one on the return ; but in the work as
we have it, many of the pilgrims are never called upon,
and the company never reaches Canterbury, though it
gets within sight of its towers. Even the stories which
we possess do not form an orderly sequence. We have
the first tale told, the Knight's, and the last, the Parson's ;
but between the beginning and the end there are eight
gaps which should have been filled with tales, or with
connecting links ; so that we have not a fragment of the
whole, but nine separate fragments, the longest of which
contains seven connected tales, and the shortest but one.
These fragments are usually spoken of as groups, and
are for convenience designated by the letters of the al-
phabet from A to I. Further confusion is caused by the
fact that in the various manuscripts of the Canterbury
Tales the order of the tales is different, even the integ-
rity of the several groups or fragments not being always
preserved. But the references in the link-poems enable
us to constitute the groups ; while the geographical
references to the towns through which the pilgrims
pass make it possible to determine with certainty the
relative position of all but one of the nine groups. The
group, of the position of which we are not certain, has
been assigned by Mr. Furnivall to the third place in

154 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

the series, and has therefore been denominated Group
C. Its assignment to this position, though based on the
slightest evidence, has been generally accepted as a
convenient practical disposition of the case.

Fragmentary as is the work, we are none the less able
to piece out its allusions to places and time with what
The Jour- we know independently of the usual proced-
Canter- ure °^ pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas,
bury- and thus to reconstruct with some degree of

probability the route followed by Chaucer's pilgrims,
and the time taken by them upon their journey.

Though it was possible, when demanded by urgent
business, to make the journey in much less time, it was
the usual custom for pilgrims to spend four days in
going from London to Canterbury, the recognized
stopping-places for the night being Dartford, Roches-
ter, and Ospringe, thus dividing the journey into three
easy stages of about fifteen miles each, with a short
stint of ten miles for the last day. Roads were rough
and heavy, so bad that wheeled vehicles were usually
impracticable ; and progress was necessarily slow and
fatiguing. In the case of the pilgrimage which Chaucer
describes, there were many reasons why the ordinary
rate of travel should not be exceeded. There were three
women in the company, and several of the pilgrims, not-
ably the Clerk and the Shipman, were but ill mounted ;
April, * with his shoures sote,' had made the roads
heavy with mud, as we know from the Host's assertion
(B 3988) that he was so bored by the tale of the Monk
that, save for the clinking of the bells on the Monk's
bridle, he would certainly have fallen down for sleep,

Although the slough had never been so depe ;

lastly, the journey was being taken mainly for pleasure,
and half the fun of a vacation is to take your time.

THE CANTERBURY TALES 155

At the beginning of Group B, which, as we shall see,
occupies the second day of the pilgrimage, we are told
that the date is April 18. It is on the evening of April
16, then, that Chaucer enters the spacious hostelry of
the Tabard, and finds the nine-and4wenty who are to
be his fellow- voyagers. Allowing for the change in the
calendar, April 16 corresponds to April 24 in our reck-
oning, and at that date, in southern England, the sun
rises about quarter of five, and sets about quarter past
seven. Early on the morning of April 17, at break of
day, the Host awoke his guests, and gathering them
into a flock, led them forth at an easy jog, ' a litel more
than pas,' the Miller playing his bagpipes the while, till
they came to the little brook which crossed the Canter-
bury way, called St. Thomas-a- Watering. Here the cuts
are drawn, and the Knight begins his tale. By the time
his tale is ended, the musical Miller is so drunk that
* unnethe upon his hors he sat.' South wark ale, we are
told, is responsible for his condition. He is not too
drunk, however, to tell his churl's tale, at the conclu-
sion of which the company has nearly reached Green-
wich, and the hour is half past seven (half-way pry me).
The Reeve's Tale next follows, and after that the frag-
ment of the Cook's Tale, of which ' tale maked Chaucer
na more.' Here ends Group A ; and the rest of the
tales of the first day are silence. The night is probably
spent at Dartford, fifteen miles from London.

Either the start next day is delayed, or the story-
telling postponed ; for it is already ten o'clock of April
18, when the Host reminds his friends that a fourth
part of the day is gone, and that they are wasting time.
Group B is the longest consecutive series of tales, and
since near the end of it, in the Monk's Prologue, the
Host says, ' Lo ! Rouchestre stant heer f aste by ! ' and
since Ifachester was probably the stopping-place for the

156 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

second night, it may be that we have the full stint of
tales for the second day. Rochester is thirty miles from
London.

There is nothing to determine the place of Group C.
Mr. Furnivall thinks the Pardoner's desire for cakes
and ale more appropriate to the morning, and hence
assigns it conjecturally to the morning of the third day.

It was usual for pilgrims to dine on the third day at
Sittingbourne, ten miles from Rochester ; and since in
the Wife of Battis Prologue the Summoner promises
to tell two or three tales about Friars before they come
to Sittingbourne, and at the end of his story says,
* My tale is doon, we been almost at toune,' it is reason-
able to assign Group D to the morning of the third day.
Group E, which contains a playful allusion to the Wife
of Bath, is probably to be assigned to the afternoon of
the same day, during which the party rides six miles
to Ospringe, where the next night is spent.

Near the beginning of the Squire's Tale, which with
the Franklin's constitutes Group F, the Squire says
(F73): —

' I wol nat tarien yow, for it is pryme.'

Since, then, the time of day is nine of the morning, this
group has been assigned to the morning of the fourth
day. The position of Group G is clearly determined
by the opening lines of the Canon's Yeoman's Pro-
logue : —

Whan ended was the lyf of seint Cecyle,
Er we had riden fully fyve myle,
At Boghton under Blee us gan atake
A man, that clothed was in clothes blake.

A little farther on we are told that the Yeoman had
seen the jolly company ride out of their hostelry in the
morning, and that he and his master had ridden fast
to overtake them. Measuring back five miles from the

THE CANTERBURY TALES 157

little village of Boughton-under-Blean, we get Ospringe
a3 the town from which they had set out in the morning.
From Boughton the road leads through the Forest of
Blean, a favorable place for robbers, and unwillingness
to ride through so dangerous a place alone may account
for the Canon's desire to join the larger company.
It is at a little town, —

Which that ycleped is Bob-up-and-doun, —

that Group H begins. Antiquarians are not agreed in
their identification of this village with the picturesque
name ; but the village of Harbledown, just out of Can-
terbury, seems best to answer the requirements. It is
not yet noon, for the Cook, too drunk to tell the tale
demanded of him, is reproached for sleeping ' by the
morwe.' The Manciple offers himself as a substitute ;
and it is his tale which constitutes Group H.

The Parson's Tale apparently follows immediately
on the Manciple's, for in the first lines of the Parson's
Prologue we read : —

By that the maunciple hadde his tale al ended,
The sonne fro the south lyne was descended
So lowe, that he was nat, to ray sighte,
Degrees nyne and twenty as in highte.
Foure of the clokke it was tho, as I gesse.

The difficulty, however, resides in the lapse of time. If
it was still morning when the Manciple began his tale,
how explain the fact that it is four o'clock at its con-
clusion? Because of this inconsistency in time, the
Parson's Tale has been separated from the Manciple's
and labeled Group I. When one remembers, though,
the way time is made to gallop in Shakespeare at the
demand of dramatic effectiveness, one wonders whether
the inconsistency may not have been deliberately
planned, so that the pilgrimage might end appropri-

158 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

ately as the shadows begin to lengthen. Personally I
see no sufficient reason for making the division which
Mr. Furnivall thinks necessary.1

What Chaucer would have done with his pilgrims
after their arrival in Canterbury we shall never know ;
The Tale but a monk of Canterbury, nearly contempo-
ofBeryn. rary with Chaucer, has given us a Tale of
Beryn, supposed to be the first tale of the journey back
to London, told by the Merchant, the Prologue to which
consists of a spirited account of the happenings in the
cathedral town. This tale was first printed by Urry
in his Chaucer edition of 1721, and has since been
reprinted in 1876 by the Chaucer Society from a man-
uscript belonging to the Duke of Northumberland.

On their arrival in Canterbury, the pilgrims go to
the * Cheker of the Hope ' Inn, where the Pardoner
at once makes friends with Kit the tapster, who gives
him false hopes of her favor. The cathedral is, of
course, the first attraction ; and thither the company
goes to make its offerings at the shrine. The gentles,
after being sprinkled with holy water, pass directly to
the shrine back of the high altar ; but the Pardoner,
the Miller, and other of the lewder sort, stare at the
painted windows, and try to guess out the figures de-
picted in them, and to interpret the armorial bearings.
One of them sees a man with a spear, which he takes for
a rake. After kneeling at the shrine, praying, and hear-
ing service, all proceed to buy pilgrim's tokens to set
in their caps ; but the Miller and Pardoner manage to
steal some Canterbury brooches for themselves. Dinner
passes by with much merry talk, and in the afternoon

1 For the account of the journey to Canterbury and the time occu-
pied therein, I have drawn on Furnivall's Temporary Preface to the Six-
Text edition of the Canterbury Tales, § 3, and on Littlehale's Some Notes
on the Road from London to Canterbury in the Middle Ages, Chaucer
Society, 1898.

THE CANTERBURY TALES 159

each follows his inclinations ; the Monk takes the
Parson and Friar to call on one of his friends; the
Knight and the Squire inspect the walls and forti-
fications ; the Wife of Bath and the Prioress walk in
the garden (one wonders what common interests they
found to talk about) ; the Pardoner once more seeks
out the tapster Kit.

Supper is eaten in grand style, the gentles treating
the rest to wine, after which the more respectable go
to bed, while the Miller and the Cook sit up to drink.
Again the Pardoner makes advances to Kit, which
develop into a broad farce, of which the Pardoner is
the unhappy dupe. At daybreak the company starts
on its journey home, and the Merchant is called on for
the first tale.

This, of course, is not Chaucer; but it is written
in Chaucer's spirit, and is interesting as the work of
one who, living in Canterbury, knew well how pilgrims
usually disported themselves.1

For a work so composite in its character as the Can-
terbury Tales it is impossible to set any definite dates.
Several of the tales now incorporated in the Date of
collection, we know positively, had been writ- ^bury
ten by Chaucer before the great work was Tales,
planned ; and the same may be true of other tales of
which we have no definite information. The Legend
of Good Women was pretty certainly begun in 1385 or
1386, and was probably left unfinished because of the
poet's greater interest in his larger work. It is safe
to say, then, that the idea of the Canterbury Tales was
conceived not much before 1387, and that Chaucer
continued to work at its execution intermittently until
the time of his death. In the year 1387, April 16 fell on a

1 Chaucer's disciple Lydgate also wrote a tale for the journey back,
which is entitled The Tale of Thebes.

160 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Tuesday, which would bring the pilgrims to Canterbury
on Saturday, and since no mention is made of Sunday
on the pilgrimage, it has been argued that Chaucer had
the year 1387 in mind. But surely this is holding the
poet down rather closely to the actual. If, however, we
must have a precise date, 1387 has more in its favor
than any other.

THE PROLOGUE

If we set aside the wonderful felicity of phrase and
the sparkling humor which are common to nearly all of
Chaucer's maturer compositions, the peculiar greatness
of the Prologue may be said to reside in the vividness
of its individual portraiture, and in the representative
character of the whole series of portraits as a true pic-
ture of English life in the fourteenth century.

To the uncritical mind the value of a portrait depends
on its likeness to the original, the fidelity with which it
reproduces the peculiar traits of some individual man.
Here, as in most things, the opinion of the man in the
street is not to be lightly set at nought ; if the portrait
lacks fidelity to its original, it ceases to be a portrait at
all. On the other hand, if it does no more than repro-
duce the individual, it falls short of true art. A photo-
graph may be a perfect likeness, and at the same time
supremely uninteresting to all but the friends of the
sitter ; the portraiture of a true artist is interesting to
all people and to all ages. We look at Rembrandt's
portrait of Dr. Tulp, and are immediately convinced
of its lifelikeness. Though we never have seen the
original, the marked individuality of the portrait, the
peculiarities of feature and expression, convince us of
its truth. But there is more in the portrait than the
individual anatomist of long ago. The eager passion
to learn and teach, the quick play of intelligence, the

THE PROLOGUE 161

unassuming authority of pose and gesture, betray the
scientist. We behold not only the individual, but the
type; the abstract type is made visible and real as
embodied in the individual. This, the end and aim of
true portrait-painting, is true in its measure of all high
art. The true ideal is to be sought in and through the
actual. However high we may tower into the region
of the universal, we must plant our feet firmly on the
actual ; and the actual is of necessity individual.

It is by their successful blending of the individual
with the typical that the portraits of Chaucer's Prologue
attain to so high a degree of effectiveness. The Wife
of Bath is typical of certain of the primary instincts of
woman, but she is given local habitation 'bisyde Bathe,'
a definite occupation of cloth-making, and is still further
individualized by her partial deafness and the peculiar
setting of her teeth. A wholly different type of woman-
hood, the conventional as opposed to the natural, is fur-
nished by the Prioress. The description of the gentle
lady abounds in minute personal, individual character-
istics, physical and moral ; yet all these individualizing
traits are at the same time suggestive of that type which
finds fullest realization in the head of a young lady's
school, who fulfills in our modern life precisely the func-
tion of the prioress of the Middle Ages. What is true
of these two is true of all the personages of the Pro-
logue. The details enumerated nearly always suggest
at once the individual and the type, as in the splendid
line about the Shipman : —

With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake.

It is the individual character of the several portraits
which gives to the Canterbury Tales its dramatic real-
ism and lifelikeness. Their universal character makes
the Prologue, and indeed the whole body of the work,

162 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

a compendium of human life as it passed before the eyes
of Geoffrey Chaucer. It is as a representative assembly,
a parliament of social and industrial England, that we
may regard this Canterbury pilgrimage. Save for the
very highest stratum of society, the lords of the realm,
who are after all but the golden fringe of the garment,
every important phase of life is represented. We do
not, to be sure, see the artisan at his bench, the sailor
on his ship, the lawyer pleading his case ; that is, of
course, dramatically impossible ; but more than that,
it is artistically less desirable. Chaucer has shown his
personages away from their daily tasks, on a vacation ;
and, though the marks of the profession are still plainly
discernible, it is their essential humanity which is
emphasized ; each is measured by the absolute stand-
ards of manhood.

The life of the Middle Ages lent itself particularly
well to such a process of portraiture. Though the dawn-
ing of the Renaissance was beginning its emphasis of
the individual, society was still organized on a com-
munistic basis ; life was less complex. Members of
the various crafts were banded together in guilds and
mysteries, each with its peculiar livery. Each member
of a guild was conscious of himself as one of a body,
its representative and type. To-day things are very dif-
ferent. In the so-called learned professions, perhaps,
something of the old esprit de corps has survived. In
the essentially communistic life of our universities,
again, there may be found a strong, essentially medi-
aeval feeling for the whole, and an approximation to
a common type, so that one may speak of a typical
Oxonian, a typical Yale undergraduate. But with the
majority of us, the typical is lost in the individual as
far as character goes, while in costume we dress, as far
as possible, alike.

THE KNIGHT'S TALE 163

Chaucer's west-country contemporary, in the Pro-
logue to Piers Plowman, has also painted a wide pic-
ture of human life. In his fair field full of folk, all
sorts and conditions are seen side by side, the mean and
the rich, * working and wandering as the world asketh.'
It is instructive to compare this picture, which some
have thought responsible for suggesting Chaucer's, with
the picture furnished by the Prologue to the Canter-
bury Tales. Langland, with his allegorical imagery
of the heaven and hell which bound our little life on
this side and on that, gains much in grandeur and im-
pressiveness. Chaucer, with his individualized types,
gains infinitely in reality and in human sympathy.

THE KNIGHT'S TALE

Early on the morning of April 17, * whan that day
bigan to springe,' the Host calls his company together,
and at an easy gait they ride out of Southwark to the
music of the Miller's bagpipes. When two miles have
been traveled, and St. Thomas-a- Watering has been
reached, the Host suddenly stops his horse, and reminds
his guests of the agreement made overnight : —
If even-song and morwe-song acorde,
Lat see now who shal telle the firste tale.

The cuts are drawn ; and, either by fortune or over-
ruling providence, or perhaps by the manipulation of
the Host, the lot falls to the Knight, whom every
one feels should be the first to tell his story; and the
Canterbury Tales begin with a high-wrought tale of
chivalry and old romance.

Though Chaucer is here and there indebted to the
Thebais of Statius for a bit of description, his great
obligation for the KnigliCs Tale is to the
Teseide of Boccaccio, from which he drew
the whole outline of the story. Here, as in the case

164 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

of Troilus, he has as his model a highly artistic
poem by one of the foremost authors of Italy ; so that
it becomes peculiarly interesting to see to what ex-
tent, and in what spirit, he has departed from his
original.

Comparing Chaucer's version of the story with that
of Boccaccio, the most striking fact is their disparity
in length. Exclusive of the rimed argomenti which pre-
cede each of the twelve books, the Teseide comprises
9896 lines, or 1237 stanzas of ottava rima, while the
Knights Tale contains but 2250 lines — little more
than a fifth the bulk of its original. Besides this ruth-
less use of the pruning-knife, one notices the abandon-
ment by Chaucer of the division into twelve books, and
with it of the conventional invocations of the Muses,
of much of the mythological machinery, and, in short,
of all the conventional ear-marks of the Virgilian epic.
But more significant than these external changes are the
modifications and omissions which Chaucer has made
in the story itself. These can be best shown by giving
a brief synopsis of Boccaccio's poem as it unfolds itself
book by book.

Book I narrates in 1104 lines what Chaucer sum-
marizes in a dozen : —

How wonnen was the regne of Femenye
By Theseus, and by his chivalrye.

Book II devotes 792 lines to the home-coming of The-
seus, and to his expedition against Thebes, which re-
sults in the capture of Palemone and Arcita, and their
condemnation to lifelong imprisonment. In the third
book the real action of the story begins. After a year
of imprisonment, the two kinsmen catch fatal sight of
Emilia as she walks in her garden, but with Boccaccio
it is Arcita who sees her first, not Palemone ; while
the Emilia of the Italian is not, like Chaucer's Emily,

THE KNIGHT'S TALE 166

so wholly unconscious that she has won the attention
of the Theban captives. As Arcita, after his release,
rides away from Athens, Emilia stands on a balcony
and receives his impassioned farewell.

The whole of Book IV is devoted to Arcita, his love-
longing in exile, his return to Theseus's court under
the assumed name of Penteo. The sorrows of the love-
lorn knight, which Chaucer passes over half humor-
ously, are detailed by Boccaccio with all his native
sentiment. Very characteristic is stanza 32, in which
Arcita, who has come in his wanderings to -3Dgina,
stands on the seashore all alone, and is comforted by
the breeze which blows from Athens, the breeze which
has been very near to Emilia. Book V, which brings
the action up to the point of Theseus's intervention and
the ordaining of the tournament, differs only slightly
from Chaucer's story, save that the escape of Palemone
is narrated in detail. In the following book the two
kinsmen collect their champions ; but instead of the
two vivid descriptions of Emetrius and Lygurge, Boc-
caccio devotes four hundred lines to a catalogue of the
heroes who take part on the two sides. Book VII is
given up to the prayers of Arcita, Palemone, and
Emilia, and to the description of the amphitheatre.
In the description of the tournament, which fills Book
VIII, Chaucer's superiority to his original is again
evident. Instead of his brief but vigorous picture of
the melee, the Italian furnishes a series of single com-
bats between the champions of the two sides, warriors
in whom the reader has no direct interest whatever.
Meanwhile Emilia looks on, and feels her love go out
now to the one kinsman, now to the other, according as
the fortunes of the battle sway now this way, now that.
In Book IX the victor Arcita is hurt to death through
the device of Venus and her hell-sent fury. In place

166 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

of the brief, deeply pathetic speech in which Chaucer's
Arcite takes leave of friend and loved one, Boccaccio,
in Book X, draws a long death-bed scene, less effec-
tive because of its greater length. The 728 verses of
Book XI are devoted to the funeral of Arcita, which
is celebrated with elaborate games after Virgilian
model. In the closing book, after an interval of only a
few weeks, is solemnized the wedding of Palemone and
Emilia.1

The Teseide is by no means a contemptible compo-
sition ; but, considering the slightness of its plot, it is
surely much too long. Nor is the essentially romantic,
sentimental character of the tale in keeping with its
elaborate epic machinery. In his great condensation,
in his simplification, in all his changes of detail, Chau-
cer's superior literary discernment is plainly evident.
What Chaucer has borrowed is the outline of the tale ;
the execution is mainly his own. Mr. Henry Ward has
shown 2 that of Chaucer's 2250 lines, 270 are directly
translated from Boccaccio, 374 are somewhat closely
imitated, leaving three quarters of Chaucer's lines for
which no parallel is found in Boccaccio.

The source of the Teseide has never been discov-
ered. Boccaccio took many suggestions from the The-
bais of Statius ; but these are of minor importance.
Scholars are inclined to believe that the ultimate
source was a Greek prose romance of the Byzantine
period, which may have reached Boccaccio in a Latin
translation.

1 In preparing this brief synopsis, I have made frequent use of the
full outline of the poem given by Koerting in Boccaccio's Leben und
Werke, pp. 594-615. The best edition of the Teseide is that given in
vol. ix of Opere Volgari di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Moutier, Firenze,
1831.

2 Temporary Preface to the Six-Text edition of the Canterbury Tales^
p. 104.

THE KNIGHT'S TALE 167

That Chaucer had already written the story of Pala-
mon and Arcite not later than 1386, we know from the
passage in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Date of
Women where Queen Alcestis recites in Composi-
Chaucer's defense a list of the poet's works tlon*
in which he had spoken nobly of woman and of love: —

And al the love of Palamon and Arcyte
Of Thebes, thogh the story is knowen lyte.

These lines can only refer to the story which we know
as the Knight's Tale.1 If we can confidently date the
tale not later than 1386, we can also be pretty cer-
tain that it was not written earlier than 1382. Among
the ills visited upon the human race by power of Saturn
is mentioned (A 2459) 'the cherles rebelling.' This
seems to be an allusion to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
Similarly, the tempest at the home-coming of Queen
Hippolyta (A 884) was probably, as Professor Lowes
has pointed out, suggested by the violent disturbance
of the sea which took place just after Richard's young
queen, Lady Anne of Bohemia, had first set foot in Eng-
land in December, 1381. Neither of these details is
foujid in the Teseide.2

The composition of the Knight's Tale falls, then, in
the same period as that of Trcrilus and Criseyde; and

•> More recent investigations have rendered utterly improbable the
conjecture elaborated by Ten Brink (Chaucer Studien, pp. 39-70)
and Koch (Englische Studien, 1. 249-293, English translation in
Essays on Chaucer, pp. 357-415) and accepted by Skeat, that the ref-
erence is to an earlier 'Palamon and Arcite,' written in seven-line
stanzas and a close paraphrase of Teseide, and that Chaucer later
worked over this poem in a greatly abridged form for the Knight's
Tale. It is now believed that the poem referred to in the Legend was
in metre and in scope essentially what we know as the Knight's Tale.
See F. J. Mather in Furnivall Miscellany, pp. 301-313, and Tatlock,
Development and Chronology, pp. 45-70.

J On the date of the Knight's Tale see Tatlock, op. cit., pp. 70-83.

168 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

the two poems have much in common. Each is a re-
working of one of Boccaccio's youthful epics; in each we
find the same blending of pathos and ironical humor;
in each a tale of courtly love is philosophized by a
copious infusion of Boethius, and made to point the
moral that earthly felicity is transient and deceitful.1
Which of the two was written first? The question can-
not be answered finally; but the evidence points
strongly, I think, to the conclusion that the Knight's Tale
is later than Troilus.2 In the Prologue to the Legend of
Good Women it is clearly implied that Troilus is widely
known, that it is notorious as a 'heresy* against the
law of Dan Cupid; whereas it is explicitly stated that
the story of Palamon and Arcite is 'knowen lyte' — it
has exerted but narrow influence as a counteragent to
the poison of Troilus and Criseyde. This suggests that
it had only recently been finished, or at any rate that
its circulation had not been wide. If composed as an in-
dependent poem earlier than Troilus, it is hard to see
why the work should be ' little known.' It seems prob-
able, then, that the poem was written about 1385. If so,
it may, perhaps, have been intended from the first as one
of the Canterbury Tales.

The Knight has wandered far and wide,3 and has seen
The many cities of men, in Russia, in Asia, in

Knight's Africa; but he has lived and traveled and
Tale* fought in the fair dream of chivalry, —

1 See Dr. B. L. Jefferson's dissertation, Chaucer and the Consola-
tion of Philosophy of Boethius (Princeton, 1917), pp. 120-132.

1 Professor Lowes argues for the priority of ' Palamon ' in Publica-
tions of the Modern Language Association, 20. 841-854.

8 See A. S. Cook on 'The Historical Background of Chaucer's
Knight," Transactions of the Connecticut Academy, 20. 161-240, and
on 'Beginning the Board in Prussia,' Journal of English and Germanic
Philology, 14. 375-388; and S. Robertson on 'Elements of Realism in
the Knight's Tale,' ibid. 14. 226-255. J

THE KNIGHT'S TALE 169

Trout he and honour, fredom and curteisye ;
he is as unworldly as his squire-son. As with Tenny-
son's Sir Percivale, —

All men, to one so bound by such a TOW,
And women were as phantoms.

He tells no tale of his own wanderings, his own expe-
rience ; he hardly deals with real men and women at
all. His tale is of chivalrous ideals, of knightly en-
counters long ago, of men and women living as he has
lived, in dream and fancy. Even these shadow dreams
are hardly more than moving pictures in the rich and
varied pageantry which constitutes the world of the
knight-errant. The opening words of the tale, —

Whylom, as olde stories tellen us, —

carry us far away from present-day realities, far from
the Tabard Inn and its varied company, into the land
of story and of long ago. It is to ancient Athens and
the days of Theseus that we are bidden go, but to
an Athens which the student of classical archseology
will hardly recognize. Though, in its simplicity and
restraint, the story is by no means un-Hellenic, the
manners and customs are for the most part those of
medieval chivalry ; and we had best forget forthwith
all we know of ancient Greece. Neither Chaucer nor
his knight knew much, or recked much, of antiquarian
lore.

If we are to read the KnighCs Tale in the spirit
in which Chaucer conceived it, we must give ourselves
up to the spirit of romance ; we must not look for
subtle characterization, nor for strict probability of
action ; we must delight in the fair shows of things,
and not ask too many questions. Chaucer can be real-
istic enough when he so elects ; but here he has chosen
otherwise.

170 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Four characters only are brought before us with
any prominence : Palamon, Arcite, Emily, and Theseus.
Though not characterized subtly, as Troilus and Pan-
darus are characterized, Palamon and Arcite are more
than mere lay-figures of the piece. Of necessity, the
two kinsmen have much in common. They are sisters'
sons ; they bear identical armor ; their lives have been
spent in closest fellowship ; they have sworn a knightly
vow of perpetual brotherhood. It is not until the fair
ideal of friendship is shattered by the stern reality of
love that they realize their disparity. Then it is clear,
in the debate which they hold over Emily, and in their
subsequent actions, that relatively to one another Pala-
mon is the dreamer, Arcite the man of action. It is
Palamon who insists on the inviolability of their vow
of friendship, and Arcite who, after an attempt at un-
worthy quibbling, comes out with the plain statement

that

Love is a gretter lawe, by my pan,
Than may be yeve to any ertbly man,

and who recognizes that, since they are both condemned
to prison perpetually, the question of prior claim to
Emily is one of purely academic interest. Partly as a
result of opportunity, partly as a result of character, it
is Arcite who determines the destiny of the two ; while
Palamon merely drifts with the current of circumstance.
The same distinction is observed in Arcite's prayer to
Mars for victory, the definite practical means to the
attainment of his desires ; while Palamon prays Venus
for success in his love, leaving the means of its attain-
ment to the providence of the heavenly synod. But in
prowess in arms, and in chivalric courtesy, there is not
a jot of superiority in either ; and the reader of the
tale, like Emily herself, is unable to decide on which
he would wish the ultimate success to light. When

THE KNIGHT'S TALE 171

the action closes, and the dying Arcite betroths Emily
to his kinsman-rival, friendship wins its final triumph
over jealousy, and the two noble kinsmen remain in
our memory not as dissimilar rivals, but as eternal
friends, one and indivisible.

As for Emily, she is a fair vision of womanly beauty
and grace, and little more. Only once in the whole
story, and that when the story is more than half done,
in her prayer to Diana, do we hear Emily speak. We
think of her as she roams up and down in her garden
on the fatal spring morning, gathering flowers ' to make
a sotil gerland for hir hede,' singing like an angel of
heaven. We see her beauty and recognize her worth,
realizing that the love of her may well be strong enough
to break the friendship of a life ; and yet we know
her not at all. She is the golden apple of strife, and
later the victor's prize ; but, consciously and of her
own volition, she never affects the action of the tale ;
she does nothing. When Fletcher in the Two Noble
Kinsmen tried to develop her into a dramatic charac-
ter, her inaction and indecision rendered her contemp-
tible or absurd. Chaucer wisely kept her a vision and a
name, letting us realize her character only in its effect
upon others.

Theseus, the brave warrior, the man of anger, who
is yet able to turn anger to justice when persuaded of
the right, who can good-naturedly see the absurdity of
Palamon and Arcite, yet tolerantly remember that

A man mot been a fool, or yong or old,

and that he too had been a lover in his youth, is the
most actual personage in the tale. He is, moreover,
the motive power of the plot; his acts and decisions
really determine the whole story.

It is not in the characterization, but in the descrip-

172 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

tion, that the greatness of the Knight's Tale resides.
The poem opens with the brilliant pageant of the vic-
torious home-coming of Theseus, thrown into sharp
contrast by the band of black-clad widowed ladies who
meet him on the way. A never-to-be-forgotten picture
is that of Emily roaming in her garden, while the
kinsmen look down upon her through thick prison-bars.
The meeting and silent encounter of the cousins in the
wood, the great theatre with its story-laden oratories,
the vivid portraits of Emetrius and Lygurge, all the
varied bustle of preparation, the vigorous description
of the tournament itself, — these, with occasional pas-
sages of noble reflection, form the flesh and blood of
the poem, of which the characters and the action are
merely the skeleton framework. The Knight's Tale is
preeminently a web of splendidly pictured tapestry, in
which the eye may take delight, and on which the
memory may fondly linger. In the dying words of
Arcite : —

What is this world ? What asketh men to have ?
Now with his love, now in his colde grave
Allone, withouten any companye, —

the terrible reality of the mystery of life, its tragedy
and its pathos, are vividly suggested ; but it is only
suggested, as a great painting may touch on what is
most sacred and most deep.

It is this essentially pictorial character of the poem
which accounts for the slight success of Fletcher's at-
tempt to translate it into drama, the poetry of action.
In the Two Noble Kinsmen the slenderness of the
plot, and the inconsistency of the characters, which we
have accepted without question in the Knight's Tale^
become painfully apparent. The splendid effectiveness
of silence, which Chaucer has utilized so artistically
in the first appearance of Emily, and in the encounter

THE MILLER AND THE REEVE 173

in the wood, is necessarily sacrificed to dramatic exi-
gencies. The tournament is transacted off the stage,,
and the descriptions of the three oratories drop out
altogether. A reading of Fletcher's drama is of the
greatest help in enabling one to recognize the distinc-
tive poetic qualities of Chaucer's narration; just as a
comparison with Dryden's brilliant modernization of
the tale will help one to realize the peculiar charm of
Chaucer's simple, unassuming diction.

THE TALES OF THE MILLER AND THE EEEVE

The Knight's long tale of love and chivalry won, as
it deserved, universal approbation : —

In al the route nas ther yong ne old
That he ne seyde it was a noble storie
And worthy for to drawen to memorie.

The Host, chuckling with delight over the success-
ful beginning of his story-telling scheme, turns to the
Monk and courteously asks him to tell 'sumwhat to
quyte with the Knightes tale.' The choice of the Monk
was dictated, doubtless, by the Host's punctilious re-
gard for social rank, the worthy ecclesiastic being after
the Knight the most dignified personage of the com-
pany. But since the Monk must of necessity tell a
serious tale, which could not offer a sufficiently effec-
tive contrast to the Knight's, the poet, as overruling
providence of the pilgrimage, devises an interruption
of the Host's less artistic scheme by the obstreper-
ous intrusion of the Miller; who, though so drunk
that 'unnethe upon his hors he sat,' insists that he
knows a ' noble tale,' with which to repay the Knight.
The Host, as complete tavern-keeper, knows not only
the deference to be paid to men of rank, but also the
more delicate diplomacy of dealing with a drunken
man. When his soft-spoken words of deprecation fail

174 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

to silence the unruly Miller, he recognizes that discre-
tion is the better part of courtesy, and suffers him to
proceed.

After making the quite unnecessary * protestation '
that he is drunk, — a fact of which he is convinced
by the sound of his own voice, — he announces that his
tale is to be of a carpenter and his wife, and of how a
clerk made a fool of the carpenter. But this theme
treads on the toes of another in the company. The
General Prologue tells us of the Reeve that —

In youthe he lerned hadde a good mister ;
He was a wel good wrigkte, a carpenter.

So we are prepared for the change from the 'noble
tale' of the Knight to the ribald tale of the Miller
by an altercation between drunken Robin and the
white-haired Osewold, who thinks the tale directed
against himself. And when the Miller's tale is done,
the wounded professional pride of the Reeve furnishes
us with a companion tale of how two Cambridge stu-
dents got the better of a cheating miller.

The tales of the Miller and the Reeve are so closely
linked by this dramatic interlude, and are moreover so
similar in spirit, that it will be convenient to treat
them together.

For neither of these tales do we possess Chaucer's
immediate source ; but there exist stories sufficiently
like them to indicate that in neither case did
Chaucer draw wholly on his own imagination.
In the Miller's Tale we have a combination of two
stories originally distinct — the story of a man who is
made to believe that the great day of reckoning is at
hand, represented by a German tale of one Valentin
Schumann, printed in 1559, and the story of Absolon
and Nicholas, to which an analogue is found in a col-
lection of novette by Massuccio di Salerno, who flour-

THE MILLER AND THE REEVE 175

ished in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Other
similar tales are found in German and in Latin.1

A tale similar to that of the Reeve is found in Boc-
caccio's Decameron, Day 9, Nov. 6 ; and still closer to
Chaucer are two French fabliaux which are reprinted
in the volume of Originals and Analogues published
by the Chaucer Society.2

The point of strongest resemblance between the
tales of the Miller and the Reeve is their extreme in-
decency, an indecency which cannot be wholly -n^ TWO
explained away as due to the frankness of a Tale8
less delicate age. Chaucer, himself, was quite aware
that to many of his readers these tales would be objec-
tionable. Half seriously, half playfully, he prefaces
them with an apology in which he warns away the
squeamish, and at the same time disclaims any per-
sonal responsibility for the tales.

What sholde I more seyn, but this Millere
He nolde his wordes for no man forbere,
But told his cherles tale in his manere ;
Me thinketh that I shal reherce it here.
And therfore every gentil wight I preye,
For goddes love, demeth nat that I seye
Of evel entente, but that I moot reherce
Hir tales alle, be they bettre or werse,
Or elles falsen sum of my matere.
And therfore, whoso list it nat yhere,
Turne over the leef, and chese another tale ;

Avyseth yow and putte me out of blame ;
And eek men shal nat make ernest of game.

1 Thoae who wish to go farther with this not very profitable theme
may consult the papers of R. Kbhler, in Anglia, 1. 38-44, 186-188 ; 2.
135-136 ; of H. Varnhagen, in Anglia, 1. Anzeiger 81-85 ; of L. Fran-
kel, in Anglia, 16. 261-263 ; and of E. Kolbing, in Zeitschrift fur ver-
gleichende Literaturgeschichte, 12. 448-450 ; 13. 112. See also L. Proe-
scholdt, in Anglia, 7. 117.

8 Pp. 85-102. For a full discussion of the sources of the Reeve's
Tale, see the paper by H. Varnhagen, in Englische Studien, 9. 240-266.

176 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

This is in effect a repetition of the disclaimer given in
the General Prologue, 11. 725-742 ; what is its valid-
ity ? That he must rehearse all the tales of all his pil-
grims precisely as they were told, whatever their char-
acter, or else ' falsen som of his matere,' is precisely
the argument by which the followers of Zola defend
their ultra-realism. The simple answer to all this is
found in the fact that the great poets have never con-
ceived of their function as that of a mere photographer
or stenographer. They ' imitate nature,' to be sure, but
with a difference. If it is their duty to observe, it is
also their duty to select, to adapt, to idealize. It would
have been perfectly possible to give a true picture of
the varied humanity which made up the Canterbury
pilgrimage, without suffering these churls to tell their
4 cherles tales,' which no sophistry can elevate into
true art.

I do not believe that Chaucer was in the least
deceived by this argument. He deliberately chose
to insert the tales, not as works of art, nor even as a
necessary part of a great artistic whole, but merely
as a diverting interlude. Making a rather considerable
allowance for greater freedom of speech, they are tales
of the sort which entirely moral men of vigorous na-
ture have found diverting, and at which the less vigor-
ous have always raised their eyebrows. Having chosen
to insert the tales, he playfully answers the anticipated
charges of the moralist, by assuring him that he wrote
the tales unwillingly, compelled to do so by the higher
moral consideration of strict truthfulness. Inasmuch
as the Canterbury Tales are in the main truly great
art, and as these tales are by their nature not true art,
I think it unfortunate that Chaucer included them ;
but I am very far from considering them as evidence
of immoral character in their author.

THE MILLER AND THE REEVE 177

What I take to be Chaucer's serious defense of these
tales is contained in a single line, which concludes the
passage quoted above : —

And eek men slial nat make ernest of game.

In other words, both these tales narrate practical jokes,
and their comic interest depends on the clever working-
out and complete success of the trick. In the Miller's
Tale, for example, the attention is centred on the
ludicrous gullibility of the jealous carpenter and
the clever manoeuvring of hende Nicholas, not on the
immoral purpose for which the trick is devised. So in
the Reeve's Tale, there is a sort of rough poetic justice
in the complete discomfiture of the cheating miller;
and on this, rather than on the immoral character of the
retribution, the effectiveness of the story depends. It is
not immorality for immorality's sake, but immorality
for the joke's sake. Of course, this does not lessen the
moral blame of the two Cambridge students, when
seriously considered; but it very materially lessens
the immorality of the story. It is only when the reader
reverses the emphasis, when, in Chaucer's words, he
makes earnest of game, that the tales become actively
immoral.

In the Miller's Tale, in particular, the attention is
diverted from the lustful and nasty features of the story,
to the brilliant characterizations, and to the consummate
skill with which the narrative is transacted. In none of
Chaucer's tales is there more convincing proof of his
mastery of the technique of story-telling. The tale con-
sists of two comic intrigues combined into a single unity.
It will be worth while to notice with some particularity
the steps by which this end is attained.

Since Nicholas is to be the prime mover of the action,
without whose machinations neither plot could have

178 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

matured, the first thirty-three lines of the tale are de-
voted to a vivid description of his person and personality.
The carpenter, as passive centre of the plot, is next de-
scribed more briefly. Nearly forty lines are then devoted
to a description of Alisoun, whose attractiveness consti-
tutes the causa causans for both intrigues. These por-
traits, and that of Absolon which follows a little later,
are done with all the skill which marks the portraiture
of the General Prologue. After another forty lines, in
which the relations between Nicholas and Alisoun are
established, the main action is fully launched, and the
natural pause which ensues is utilized for the introduc-
tion of the second action. Absolon is described, and his
persistent attentions to Alisoun are recorded, eighty-
four lines sufficing to set the new intrigue afoot. Re-
suming the thread of the main argument, some two
hundred and fifty lines are devoted to the clever scheme
by which the carpenter is beguiled into believing that
a second Noah's flood is toward, and the two lovers at-
tain their end. Particularly rich in humor is the scene
where Nicholas, in feigned trance, predicts the coming
deluge, a prediction for which we have been artistically
prepared by the earlier statement that all Nicholas's
fancy ' was turned for to lerne astrologye.' Again there
is a natural pause in the action, in which the story
reverts to Absolon. Because the carpenter, in instant
fear of the flood which is at hand, has kept all day to
his house, Absolon is led to believe that he is from
home, and consequently chooses this particular night
to pay his addresses. He goes to Alisoun's window,
where he is duped, and has his revenge. This section
of the tale occupies about a hundred and sixty lines.
Thirty-eight lines now suffice to end the tale. The
frantic cry of ' Water ! ' uttered by Nicholas as a result
of Absolon's revenge, wakes the sleeping carpenter, andj

THE COOK'S TALE 179

fitting in with his expectation of a flood, leads him to
cut the ropes which suspend his ark of safety, thus
bringing about the catastrophe of the main action.

It is certainly a pity that such excellent skill was
expended on a story which many of Chaucer's readers
will prefer to skip ; and yet, as we have seen, it is this
very skill which does most to minimize the objection-
able character of the tale.

THE COOK'S TALE

Whoever may have been offended at the freedom of
the Reeves Tale, jolly Hodge of Ware was not of the
strait-laced sect : —

The Cook of London, whyl the Reve spak,
For joye, him thoughte, he clawed him on the bak,
' Ha ! ha ! ' quod he, ' for Cristes passion n,
This miller hadde a sharp conclusioun
Upon his argument of herbergage ! '

Perhaps, in his vocation of cook, he has had to do with
cheating millers, and consequently finds special relish
in the tale. He volunteers a * litel jape that fil in our
citee,' which is to deal, saving the presence of mine
host, with a London 'hostileer.' After some playful
allusions to the tricks of the culinary profession, the
Host bids him proceed.

The tale of the Cook is a mere fragment, extending
only to fifty-eight lines, and though we have a fine
piece of portraiture in the picture of Perkin Revellour,
who is to be the hero, and a fairly complete mise en
scene, we have not enough of the story to form any
guess as to its plot. We can only surmise that it is to
be a 'merry' tale of the same general type as those
of the Miller and the Reeve. Perhaps it was a recog-
nition of the fact that three tales of this sort on end
would be too large a dose of * mirth ' that caused the

180 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

poet to abandon it; for, as the old scribe says, 'Of
this Cokes tale maked Chaucer na more.'

There is a spurious tale, certainly not by Chaucer,
which some of the manuscripts, and the old editions,
insert after this fragment under the title of The Cokes
Tale of Gamelyn; but a discussion of this tale, which
has some interest because of its relation to Shakespeare's
As You Like It, is outside the scope of the present
work.1

1 The tale may be fonnd in the appendix to vol. iv of Skeat's Ox-
ford Chaucer. For a discussion of it, see the article by E. Lindner, in
Englische Studien, 2. 94-114, 321-343.

CHAPTER X

THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUP B
THE MAN OF LAW'S TALE

THE first day's journey had brought the band of pil-
grims only fifteen miles on their way ; and the night
had been spent at the little town of Dartford in Kent.1
Either the company had slept long and started late on
the second day's ride, or the beauty of a sunny morn-
ing in mid-April had made the diversion of story-tell-
ing superfluous; for it is already ten o'clock when
the Host suddenly turns his horse about, and reminds
his fellow-voyagers that, a fourth part of the day is
already spent, and time is wasting. The Man of Law
is called on to begin the entertainment of the day. As
a lawyer, he is too well schooled in the law of contracts
to refuse assent : —

' To breke forward is not myn entente.
Bihest is dette, and I wol holde fayn
Al my biheste ; I can no better seyn ; '

but since the tale he is minded to tell is in effect the
legend of a good woman, he feels not unnatural hesi-
tation in narrating it, when Chaucer, as all the pilgrims
know, has written a whole volume of such legends.

' I can right now no thrifty tale seyn,
But Chaucer, though he can but lewedly
On metres and on ryming craftily,2

1 Cf. p. 155.

2 The depreciation of Chaucer's skill is to be considered a bit of the
poet's half -humorous modesty, rather than as representing dramatically
the opinion of the Man of Law.

182 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Hath seyd hem in swich English as he can
Of olde tyme, as knoweth many a man.
And if he have not seyd hem, leve brother,
In o book, he hathe seyd hem in another.'

Hereupon follows a catalogue of women faithful in
love whose stories Chaucer had narrated, or planned
to narrate, in the Legend of Good Women, referred to
here as the Seintes Legende of Cupyde. How shall he,
the Man of Law, presume to rival such a master in
this particular art? Ovid's story of the daughters of
Pierus who dared contend with the Muses, and were
for their presumption turned into chattering magpies,
should give him pause : —

' But nathelees, I recche noght a bene
Though I come after him with hawe-bake ;
I speke in prose, and lat him rymes make.'
And with that word he, with a sobre chere,
Bigan his tale, as ye shal after here.

Though many of the incidents of the tale of Con-
stance are found in other, earlier stories, Chaucer's
immediate source was the Anglo-Norman
Chronicle of the Englishman, Nicholas Tri-
vet, a voluminous English scholar and historian, who
flourished in the first half of the fourteenth century.1
Trivet's chronicle, written in the Anglo-Norman French
of the English court, devotes a long section to the his-
tory of ' la pucele Constaunce,' 2 the account agreeing
in all important details with that given by Chaucer.
Chaucer has very considerably condensed the story, has

1 The Dictionary of National Biography, following the early bio-
graphers, Leland and Bale, gives the date of his death as 1328 ; but
since his chronicle includes the reign of Pope John XXII, who died in
1334, the date is certainly wrong.

2 As reprinted in Originals and Analogues, the story occupies 25
pages. The text is provided with a running summary and a translation
in English (pp. 1-53).

THE MAN OF LAW'S TALE 183

added many original passages of a reflective or lyrical
character, and has altered some of the minor details.1
Thus, for example, Trivet narrates in detail how King
Alia slew his mother with his own hands,2 an episode
which Chaucer has preferred to soften down into a mere
vague statement. If the student will take the trouble
to pick out Chaucer's original additions to the tale, as
indicated in the foot-note, he will find that they com-
prise all the most beautiful passages in the tale. Thus,
when Constance and her child are put to sea in the rud-
derless boat, Trivet merely says : ' The mariners with
great grief commended her to God, praying that she
might again return to land.' It is Chaucer who has
added the sublimely beautiful lines (825-868) which
show her noble resignation, and supreme trust in God.
Of what wondrous pathos is the stanza : —

Hir litel child lay weping in hir arm,
And kneling, pitously to him she seyde,
'Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee non harm.'
With that hir kerchef of hir heed she breyde,
And over his litel yen she it leyde ;
And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste,
And into heven hir yen up she caste.

Chaucer's less gifted contemporary, John Gower, has
also told the story of Constance in the second book
of his Confessio Amantis ; but that both poets went

1 About 350 lines of the 1029 comprising the tale are not represented
in Trivet. Four of the added stanzas (11. 421-427, 771-777, 925-931,
1135-1141) are translated from the De Contemptu Mundiof Pope Inno-
cent III, a work of which Chaucer tells us (Prologue to the Legend of
Good Women, A version, 11. 414-415) that he had made a transla-
tion (now lost). One stanza (11. 813-819) is from Boethius. The rest is
Chaucer's own. Chaucer's additions comprise lines 190-203 ; 270-287 ;
295-315; 330-343; 351-371; 400-410; 421-427; 449-462; 470-504;
631-658; 701-714; 771-784; 811-819; 825-868; 925-945; 1037-1043;
1052-1078; 1132-1141.

3 ' And with that he cut off her head and hewed her body all to pieces
as she lay naked in her bed ' (p. 38).

184 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

independently to Trivet is proved by the fact that each
gives details found in Trivet, but not found in the other.
But a few points of agreement between Chaucer and
Gower as against Trivet make it probable that there is a
relation closer than that of a common source, that one
poet borrowed a touch here and there from the other's
version. If so, the borrower was apparently Chaucer; for
if Gower had had Chaucer's text before him as he wrote,
it is hard to believe that he would not have appropri-
ated some of the strikingly beautiful passages peculiar
to that version.1 As the Confessio Amantis was not pub-
lished till 1390, we can with some confidence assign the
composition of the Man of Law's Tale to the last ten
years of Chaucer's life, a date which is in accord with
other indications which we have as to the chronology of
the Canterbury Tales.2

The Man of Law's statement that he learned the
story from a merchant is not to be taken seriously;

1 For a full discussion of the question, see the papers by E. Liicke,
'Das Leben der Constanze bei Trivet, Gower, und Chaucer,' in
Anglia, 14. 77-122, 147-185.

* For the evidence which points to a date as late as 1390 (perhaps
later than 1394) for the Man of Law's Tale, see J. S. P. Tatlock, De-
velopment and Chronology, pp. 172-188. Critics have been inclined to
see in the Man of Law's statement (B. 77-89) that Chaucer would
never write such ' unkinde abhominaciouns ' as the stories of Canace
and of Apollonius of Tyre, an implied allusion to the Confessio
Amantis, which includes these tales. Though both stories must have
been familiar quite independently of Gower's telling of them, this
reference, if made shortly after the publication of the Confessio, may
have been intended as a sly dig at a brother! poet. There is no suffi-
cient reason, however, for believing that these lines indicate a falling-
out between the two friends. The only real basis for a supposed es-
trangement is the fact that in later recensions of the Confessio Gower
omitted, along with his praise of King Richard, the passage of gracious
compliment to Chaucer (8. 2941*-2959*) found in the first recension.
It is at least hazardous to assume that this omission is to be explained
only on the ground of lapsed cordiality. But see Tatlock, op. cit.
p. 173, n. 2.

THE MAN OF LAW'S TALE 185

but it suggests, none the less, the way in which many
mediaeval tales were transplanted from one country to
another.

Looked at merely as a narrative, the tale has but
little claim to greatness. It consists of a series of im-
probable episodes, bound together merely by T
the accident that they all happen to the same as a work
heroine. Though in the fact that the fleet
which eventually saves Constance, and brings her back
to Rome, had been dispatched by the emperor on a
punitive expedition against the 'cursed wikked Sow-
danesse,' we see an attempt to link the beginning of
the tale with its close, there is too much of accident,
and too little of direct causal connection, in the events
of the tale to leave it any organic unity. The episode
of the steward of the ' hethen castel,' who comes down
to Constance's ship and tries to violate her, is in no
way connected with what precedes or follows. The tale
has all the structural defects of the typical romance
or saint's legend.

What raises this legend into the realm of true art,
and even gives to it a high degree of spiritual unity,
is the wonderfully beautiful personality of Constance.
There is little to be said of this character by way of
analysis ; there is no baffling problem of motives nor
complexity of warring qualities to fascinate the intel-
lect, no development of character under stress of cir-
cumstance ; from the first she is utterly transparent,
utterly perfect. We see her in prosperity, we see her
in bitterest adversity, in what she believes to be the
hour of her death ; she is the same always, unmoved,
unshaken. The great Christian virtues of humility,
faith, hope, charity, sum up the whole of her nature ;
by these stars she steers her rudderless boat as she
sails in the salt sea ; by these she lives in the court of

186 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

emperor and king. So little is she moved by outward
circumstance, that the mere events of the story sink
into insignificance ; we forget their improbability, or
rather, in the presence of such superhuman perfection,
the supernatural seems merely natural. Chaucer does
not try to explain these miracles away; he accepts
them frankly, even gladly : —

Men mighten asken why she was not slayn ?
Eek at the feste who mighte hir body save ?
And I answere to that demaunde agayn,
Who saved Daniel in the horrible cave ?

Or again, ' Who kepte hir fro the drenching in the see?'
Chaucer asks, and answers : —

Who bad the foure spirits of tempest,
That power ban t'anoyen land and see,
' Bothe north and south, and also west and est,
Anoyeth neither see, ne land, lie tree ? '
Sothly, the comaundour of that was he,
That fro the tempest ay this womman kepte
As wel whan that she wook as whan she slepte.

When we see her set adrift again with her ' litel sone,'
weeping piteously over his distress though not her own,
we are inevitably reminded of another Mater Dolorosa,
the ' Moder and mayde bright, Marye,' to whom she
prays. We are quite ready to agree with Ten Brink
when he says : ' The heroine here appears almost a
personification of Christianity itself, such as it comes
to heathen nations, is maligned and persecuted, yet, in
the strength of its Founder, endures in patience and
finally remains victorious.' * Be it remembered, how-
ever, that she is more than a personification, a per-
sonality.

I fancy that we are often inclined to underestimate
the art which is requisite to the depiction of such a
1 Hist. Eng. Lit. (Eng. trans.) 2. 156.

THE SHIPMAN'S TALE 187

figure as that of Constance. It is precisely in its sim-
plicity, its absence of all complexity, that the difficulty
of the portrayal resides. By ' character ' we mean the
markings or traits which distinguish one individual
from another, or rather from our somewhat vaguely
conceived ' normal ' man or woman. In bidding us
pattern our imperfect natures after the one perfect
nature, Christianity bids us shake off our personal
idiosyncrasies, the traits or markings — blemishes, if
you will — which distinguish us from our pattern. It fol-
lows logically that, if we were able to carry out this
Christian ideal, we should lose the distinguishing
traits which constitute our character as individuals.
Constance has attained the ideal ; she is perfect ; and
consequently her ' character ' seems to us shadowy or
unreal. In a sense she has no character. To depict
such a nature as this in its ideal perfection, and yet
to make us feel the force of her personality, and love
her and sympathize with her, to accomplish this, is
a greater artistic triumph than to create a Criseyde.
Chaucer is here working hi the spirit of the Christian
Middle Age, which loved the perfect, the universal ; it
was the Renaissance which taught us to set such store
by the necessarily imperfect individual.

THE SHIPMAN'S TALE

The tale of Constance has given the lie to the Man
of Law's modest statement that he knows no * thrifty '
tale. At its conclusion the Host rises in his stirrups
with the exclamation : —

' This was a thrifty tale for the nones ! '

He is apparently in the mood for 'thrifty' tales, for
he turns next to the parish priest, the ' povre persoun
of a toun,' and demands of him a tale. But he has

188 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

unfortunately larded his request with two of the oaths
without which his tongue seldom wags ; and the good
parson is scandalized : —

The Persone him answerde, ' ben'cite!
What eyleth the man so sinfully to swere ? '

ach unreasonable objection to the picturesque in
language can come only from a follower of the new
sect of Wiclif . The Host makes no great pretense to
religion ; but he hates a heretic ; he ' smells a loller in
the wind,' and dreads a ' predicacioun ' after the man-
ner of Wiclif 's itinerant preachers. There is another
staunch upholder of orthodoxy in the person of the
conscienceless Shipman.

' He shal no gospel glosen heer ne teche.

We leve alle, in the grete god,' quod he.
' He wolde sowen som difficultee

Or springen cokkel in our clene corn.' *

Such a calamity the Shipman stands ready to avert by
telling a tale himself, which he promises shall be free
from philosophy or other scientific lore. One need not
dilate on the rich humor of this episode, wherein Chau-
cer chooses the Host and the Shipman as the bitterest
opponents of heretical doctrine.

We do not know the immediate source of the /Ship-
man's Tale. A similar story is found in the Decam-
eron, Day 8, Nov. 1 ; but Chaucer's setting
of the tale near Paris indicates that he
derived it from a French fabliau now lost. Save for
its general tone of loose morality, there is no special
appropriateness in assigning the tale to the Shipman ;

1 The term ' loller ' or ' lollard,' derisively applied to the followers
of Wiclif, probably means only a foolish talker ; but it was popularly
associated with the Latin lollium, tares, with reference to the parable
of the tares sown among the wheat.

THE SHIPMAN'S TALE 189

and the use of the first person pronoun plural in the
passage beginning —

He moot us clothe, and he moot us arraye,

shows that it was originally intended for one of the
female members of the company, who can have been
no other than the Wife of Bath. Apparently Chaucer
first wrote the tale for her, and then lighting on another
story which should more fully reveal his conception of
her character, utilized the rejected tale for the Ship-
man, forgetting to eliminate the inconsistent passage
referred to above.

Though much more delicate than the tales of the
Miller and the Reeve, the tale of the Shipman is essen-
tially more immoral. Hende Nicholas re- Theg^p.
ceives a righteous retribution for his deeds; man's

Tale.

and the two Cambridge students have at
least a certain provocation for theirs. The Monk, Dan
John, is false not only to his professions as a man of
God, but violates also the sacred laws of hospitality
and of common gratitude. He cultivates the friend-
ship of the worthy merchant merely that he may live
on him, and, not content with that, deliberately plays
him false with his wife. With equal nonchalance he
leaves the woman he has corrupted to extricate herself
as best she can from an exceedingly embarrassing situ-
ation. The story ends with the laugh all on his side.
The moral of the tale seems to be, as Mr. Snell has
put it, ' that adultery is a very amusing and profitable
game, provided that it is not found out.' The intrigue
is, of course, a clever one, the actors are clearly char-
acterized, and the narrative is well conducted ; but
neither the intrigue, nor the art of the tale, is brilliant
enough to blind us, even partially, to the disagreeable
picture of treachery and lust. The chief artistic merit

190 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

of the piece consists in the realistic picture it gives of
a well-to-do bourgeois household, and of the business
methods of a fourteenth-century merchant, such as
Chaucer must have seen often at the London Custom
House.

THE PRIORESS'S TALE

Very different is the tale of the gentle Prioress
which follows. With all courtesy, the usually rough-
spoken Host turns to Madame Eglantine : —

' My lady Prioresse, by your leve,
So that I wiste I sholde yow nat greve,
I wolde demen that ye tellen sholde
A tale next, if so were that ye wolde.
Now wol ye vouchesauf , my lady dere ? '

And the courteous request meets with courteous assent.
As set forth in the General Prologue, Madame Eg-
lantine's character is compounded of many affectations.
Scrupulous in her dress and table manners, priding
herself on her command of an antiquated Norman
French which she supposes is still the French of fash-
ionable society, in all things taking pains to ' countre-
fete chere of court,' she stands as the typical superior of
a young ladies' school. Next to this quality of utter

* seemliness ' comes the good lady's tenderness of heart :

She wolde wepe, if that she sawe a inoiis
Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.

As seen superficially at the Tabard Inn, she is dis-
stinctly likeable, but also a little ridiculous. The true
measure of her character is to be found in the fuller
revelation of her tale. She might have been expected
to tell a courtly tale, which should establish her repu-
tation as an accomplished woman of the world ; but her
affectations are only on the surface. Her legend of the

* litel clergeon ' breathes the spirit of earnest, heart-

THE PRIORESS'S TALE 191

felt religion, and shows that the tenderness of her
heart is not confined to the sufferings of a wounded
mouse or a favorite lap-dog, but makes her keenly
susceptible to the truest and deepest pathos. Instead
of the calm assurance and self-confidence of a lady
superior, we find in her invocation of the Blessed Vir-
gin a sincere Christian humility : —

' My conning is so wayk, o blisf ul queue,
For to declare thy grete worthinesse,
That I ne may the weigh te nat sustene,
But as a child of twelf monthe old or lease,
That can unnethes any word expresse,
Bight so fare I, and therfor I yow preye,
Gydeth my song that I shal of yow seye.'

To understand the spirit which gave rise to stories
such as that told by the Prioress, we must think our-
selves back into a time when the antipathy
which some Christians now feel against the
Jewish race on purely social grounds had all the force
of a religious passion. * His blood be on us and on
our children,' shouted the multitude of Jerusalem ; and
the multitude of mediaeval Europe felt it a sacred duty
that the blood-guiltiness should be brought home to
the self-cursed race. The pages of European history
are stained with many stories of senseless persecution,
which, though due doubtless in part to the fact that
the Jews were rich while the Christians among whom
they lived were poor, were possible only because of
this mistaken religious zeal.

It is entirely possible that, stung into fury by these
persecutions, the Jews may have sought revenge by the
treacherous murder of Christian children. So wide-
spread a belief in such a murderous practice could
hardly have sprung up without some sort of founda-
tion. But be that as it may, all Europe firmly believed

192 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

that, inspired by fierce hatred of Christ, the Jews, in
Passion Week particularly, were in the habit of reen-
acting the scenes of the crucifixion, taking as their
victim any Christian child whom they were able to
decoy into their houses. If the child was not crucified,
he was murdered outright, and his blood was used in
some gruesome religious ceremony.

The earliest story of a Christian child murdered by
Jews comes from the first quarter of the fifth century,
and is narrated in Greek by the Church historian Soc-
rates. As translated by Dr. James of Cambridge,1 the
story runs as follows : ' Now a little after this the Jews
paid the penalty for further lawless acts against the
Christians. At Inmestar, a place so-called, which lies
between Chalcis and Antioch in Syria, the Jews were
in the habit of celebrating certain sports among them-
selves : and, whereas they frequently did many foolish
actions in the course of their sports, they were put
beyond themselves (on this occasion) by drunkenness,
and began deriding Christians and even Christ him-
self in their games. They derided the Cross and those
who hoped in the Crucified, and they hit upon this plan.
They took a Christian child and bound him to a cross
and hung him up ; and to begin with they mocked and
derided him for some time ; but after a short space they
lost control of themselves, and so ill-treated the child
that they killed him. Hereupon ensued a bitter conflict
between them and the Christians.'

There seems to have been no recurrence of this crime,
either in fact or in fiction, until the year 1144, when
occurred the famous * martyrdom ' of St. William of

1 The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, by Thomas of
Monmouth, edited by Jessopp and James, Cambridge, 1896, p. Ixiii.
To the Introduction of this volume I am indebted for much valuable
information about the legend.

THE PRIORESS'S TALE 193

Norwich. According to the life of St. William, written
a few years later by Thomas of Monmouth, a monk of
Norwich Priory, William, who had from the first been
distinguished for his sanctity, was at the age of twelve
decoyed on Tuesday of Holy Week into a Jew's house
in Norwich. Here on the following day he was cru-
cified and pierced in the left side, a crown of thorns
upon his forehead. On Good Friday his body was put
in a sack and carried by the murderers to Thorpe
Wood, where it was hanged to a tree. It was finally
removed to the Monks' Cemetery in Norwich, where
many miracles were wrought by its agency. That a boy
named William was actually murdered in Norwich in
1144, and that his murder was attributed to the Jews,
we can assert without question ; whether or not any
Jews were really concerned in the crime is open to
serious doubt. The fame of his martyrdom, however,
spread rapidly ; and we begin to hear of similar boy-
martyrs in England and on the continent. Of these
the most famous is St. Hugh of Lincoln, alluded to by
the Prioress at line 1874 of her tale, who, according
to the chronicle of Matthew Paris, was murdered by
Jews in the year 1255. l The tomb of St. Hugh is still
pointed out to the curious visitor at Lincoln.

The number of such supposed martyrdoms is very
large. Adrian Kembter, in a book published at Inns-
bruck in 1745, enumerates fifty-two, the last of which
occurred in 1650. Even to-day a belief in such Jewish
atrocities has survived in Eastern Europe. The New
York Sun for April 4, 1904, published the following
statement under date of Vienna, April 3 : * Die Zeit
publishes an extraordinary anti-Jewish proclamation
issued by the Orthodox Association of Odessa, urging

1 Three ballads on the murder of Hugh of Lincoln are found in Pro-
fessor Child's English and Scottish Ballads.

194 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

right-minded Russians to follow the glorious example
of their brethren who settled their accounts with the
Jews at Kishineff last Easter. It declares that the vic-
tory is incomplete, for Satan has incarnated himself in
the Jews. . . . The proclamation adds : " The Russians
must aid the government to exterminate the Jews, who
drink the blood of Russian children." ' *

A legend so widely current as this could not fail to
find expression in literature, especially when it lent
itself so readily to human pathos and religious enthu-
siasm. The Chaucer Society's volume of Originals
and Analogues contains three stories similar to that
of the Prioress : the legend of Alphonsus of Lincoln,
from a volume entitled Fortalitium Fidei, written in
Latin prose, and dating from the second half of the
fifteenth century; a French poem of 756 lines from a
collection of Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary by
Gautier de Coincy (1177-1236), telling the legend of
an English boy murdered by a Jew for singing Gaude
Maria ; and an English poem of 152 lines of octosyl-
labic couplets from the Miracles of Oure Lady, which
tells of a Paris beggar-boy killed by a Jew for singing
Alma Redemptoris Mater?

If we compare these three versions with the Prior-
ess's Tale, we find that they exhibit several traits in
common. In each instance the story is told to the
greater glory of the Virgin Mary ; it is the devotion
of the boy-martyr to her, shown by the singing of a
hymn in her honor, which leads to the murderous act
of the Jew; it is by her agency that the miracle is
wrought which betrays the murder. In each the child's

1 My attention was called to this modern analogue by my friend and
former pupil, Mr. S. B. Hemingway, of New Haven.

2 The Miracles of Oure Lady have been published by Dr. Karl Herat*
mann, in Herrig's Archivfur Neuere Sprachen, 56. 223-236.

THE PRIORESS'S TALE 195

mother goes to seek him, and is advised of his where-
abouts by the miraculously continued singing of the
hymn. The first and third versions agree with Chau-
cer in specifying the Alma Bedemptoris Mater as the
hymn which excited the wrath of the Jew ; the first
and second agree in stating that the boy learned the
hymn at school ; the first and third agree that the mur-
dered body was thrown into a ' wardrobe ; ' the second
version differs from all the rest in that the murdered
boy is restored to life. Of the three versions the first
is, on the whole, nearest to Chaucer's ; but its date
precludes the idea that it was Chaucer's source. Chau-
cer must have used some version of the story which has
not been preserved to us. For purposes of comparison,
however, a synopsis of the tale may be interesting.

In the city of Lincoln dwelt a poor widow, who had
a son ten years old named Alphonsus, whom she sent
to school. After he had learned to read, he was set to
study the rudiments of grammar and music. Hearing
often that splendid antiphon, Alma Redemptoris, sung
in church, he conceived such great devotion toward the
Blessed Virgin, and so deeply impressed the antiphon
upon his memory, that wherever he went, day or night,
he used to sing it most sweetly with a loud voice. Now
when he went to his mother's house, or back again to
school, his way led through the Jewry. One of the Jews
asked a Christian doctor what was the meaning of that
song that sounded so sweet. On learning that it was
a hymn sung to the praise and honor of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, he began to plot with his fellows how
they might slay the child who sang it. Waiting for a
favorable opportunity, they seized on the boy as he
was going through their quarter, singing the aforesaid
antiphon with a loud voice. Having cut out his tongue,
with which he praised the Blessed Virgin, and torn out

196 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

his heart, with which he pondered his song, they threw
his body into their privy. But the Blessed Virgin, who
is mother of mercy and pity, came to his aid, and placed
a precious stone in his mouth to take the place of his
tongue ; and straightway he began to sing, as before,
the aforesaid hymn, even better and louder than at
first, nor did he cease day or night from his singing ;
and in this manner he continued for four days.

Now his mother, when she saw that he did not come
home as usual, sought for him throughout the city ; and
finally, at the end of the four days, she went through
the Jews' quarter, where her son had been slain, and,
behold, the voice of her son, singing most sweetly that
hymn of the Virgin which she had often heard from
him, sounded in her ears. On hearing it, she shouted
loudly ; and her shouts gathered a crowd of people,
who, with the judge of the city, broke into the house
and took the body away; but never did he cease to
sing that sweet song, even though he was dead. The
body was placed on a couch and borne to the cathedral
church of that town, where the bishop celebrated Mass,
and bade the congregation pray earnestly that the se-
cret might be revealed. When the sermon was finished,
the little boy rose, and stood upon his couch, and took
a precious stone from his mouth, and told all the people
what had happened to him, and how the Virgin had
come to him, and placed the stone in his mouth, that he
should not cease, though dead, from her praise. Having
finished, he gave the precious stone to the bishop, that
it might be placed with the other relics on the altar,
signed himself with the sign of the holy cross, and
committed his spirit into the hands of the Saviour.

The version of the story which Chaucer used prob-
ably differed in some details from the foregoing. Chau-
cer's schoolboy lived in a great city of Asia, instead of

THE PRIORESS'S TALE 197

in inerry Lincoln ; but the more significant of the di-
vergences may well be laid to Chaucer's artistic genius.
The art of the Prioress's Tale is shown chiefly in the
increased emphasis laid on the human, as opposed to
the supernatural aspects of the story. The Chaucer's
main purpose of the other versions is to show Version-
the miraculous power of the Blessed Virgin and the
black malignancy of the cursed Jews, the murdered
boy himself being little more than a lay-figure, a ne-
cessary part of the machinery of the tale. Chaucer
has slighted neither the glories of the Virgin nor the
wickedness of the Jews ; but he has subordinated both
to the deep and tender pathos which centres in his
4 litel clergeon, seven yeer of age,' his ' martir, souded
to virginitee.' Eight full stanzas are devoted to the
setting forth of his sweetly simple child-nature, before
the tragic murder is even hinted at. We see the little
clerk on his daily walk to and from his school, bending
the knee, and saying his Ave Mary, wherever he saw
an image of the Motker of Christ. His learning of the
hymn which is to prove his destruction is shown in
detail. As he sits in school conning his ' litel book,' he
hears the Alma Itedemptoris sung by older children
in another room, —

And, as he dorste, he drough him ner and ner,
And herkned ay the wordes and the note,
Til he the firste vers coude al by rote.

Even the older schoolfellow who teaches him the rest of
the song, and tells him what it means, is clearly, though
briefly, characterized: —

His felaw, which that elder was than he,

Answerde him thus : ' this song, I have herd seye,

Was maked of our blisful lady free,

Hir to salue, and eek hir for to preye

To been our help and socour when we deye.

198 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

I can no more expounde in this matere ;
I lerne song, I can but smal grammere.'

He is a likeable boy ; but he lacks the divine spark of
his younger comrade. To him the anthem is but part
of his school task. Not so the ' litel clergeon : ' —

' And is this song maked in reverence
Of Cristes moder ? ' seyde this innocent ;

' Now certes, I wol do my diligence
To conne it al, er Cristemasse is went ;
Though that I for my prymer shal be shent,
And shal be beten thryes in an houre,
I wol it conne, our lady for to honoure.'

If we wish to realize Chaucer's power in depicting
these children, we have only to compare them with
the utterly impossible children who occasionally appear
in the plays of Shakespeare. If we wish to appreciate
the difference between true pathos and mere sentiment
in the portrayal of childhood, we may compare the
Prioress's Tale with Tennyson's In the Children's
Hospital.

After the murder is done, our attention is called for
a while to the sorrowing mother, as she seeks her child,
and to the tender love of the Virgin Mother who suc-
cors him in his death ; but our ears ring through it all
with the sweet, clear voice of the martyred boy as he
sings : —

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quse pervia cceli
Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,
Surgere qui curat, populo : tu quse genuisti,
Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem,
Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore
Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.1

1 This anthem is sung1 at Compline from the Saturday evening be-,
fore the first Sunday in Advent until the feast of the Purification
(JBreviarium Romanum, Mechliniae, 1866, Pars Hiemalis, p. 147). There
is another Advent antiphon beginning with tha same line (see Skeat's

SIR THOPAS 199

SIR THOPAS AND THE TALE OF MELIBEUS

The Prioress's tale of the 'litel clergeon' has left
the company, as well it might, in sober mood. It is the
sort of story that one wants to ponder awhile in rever-
ent silence. Even the rougher members of the party
are deeply touched ; and the Host himself, when, feel-
ing his obligation to keep the journey a merry one, he
begins to jest and jape again, pays subtle tribute to
the potency of the spell by speaking in the seven-line
stanza of the Prioress's Tale.

The Host begins to look about for the teller of the
next tale. It must be a tale of mirth to restore the
light-heartedness of the company ; but not a ' mery '
tale of the coarser sort — that would be too violent a
shifting of tone. His glance lights on Chaucer, who is
riding silently, his eyes upon the ground, ' in thought-
ful or in pensive mood,' attentively listening to all
that is said, but taking no part in the general conver-
sation. He is just the man to tell 'som deyntee thing.'
The poet is apparently traveling incognito ; 1 the Host,
at least, has no inkling as to the identity of the guest
whom he is entertaining unawares. He begins by
rallying him good-naturedly, though unceremoniously,
on his retiring manners, and on the generous propor-
tions of his figure : —

' He in the waast is shape as wel as I.'

There is something ' elvish ' about his countenance,
says the Host, as though he were a visitant from the
land of faery, in the world, but not of it. Precisely the

Oxford Chaucer, 5. 177) ; but that the one given above is the one Chau-
cer had in mind is rendered probable by the direct translation from it
given in the third of the three versions of the legend mentioned above.
1 One wonders whether the Man of Law in his reference to Chaucer
was equally ignorant of the poet's presence.

200 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

word, we agree, to describe the peculiar elusiveuess of
Chaucer's playful-serious nature.

If the Host is ignorant of Chaucer's identity, we are
not ; and when Geoffrey agrees to tell a story, we pre-
pare ourselves for a tale which shall be the masterpiece
of the whole collection. But that is not Chaucer's way.
It is much more modest, and vastly more humorous,
that he should represent himself as telling a tale which
should outwear the patience of his hearers before it
was half told. Dramatically, too, his choice is entirely
probable. Suppose a great master of the violin trav-
eling incognito should be jocosely invited to ' favor the
company with a tune;' what more likely, granting
him a keen sense of humor, than that he should tune
his fiddle and strike up Yankee Doodle or an Irish jig?
His musical reputation is secure. And so with Chau-
cer; does not the reader know that all the tales are
his ? A keen observer would doubtless detect a master's
touch even in the rendition of Yankee Doodle, and
the veriest tyro in literature must recognize that the
burlesque of Sir Thopas is executed with matchless
poetical skill.

To appreciate fully the delicacy and point of this
literary satire, one should know some of the weary
The Rime romances which so vastly delighted our fore-
ofsir fathers of long ago.1 From morn to noon,

from noon to dewy eve, one may read of
Sir Degrevant and Sir Eglamour and Sir Guy of
Warwick, of Lybeaus Disconus and of the mythical
Alexander. These romances often have the charm of
naive simplicity, but they are terribly long-winded, full

1 A readily accessible example of the species, though written long
after Chaucer's death, is the Squyr of Lowe Degre, recently edited for
the Athenfeum Press Series by Professor W. E. Mead. It is by no
means wholly devoid of interest, and is, as its editor remarks, ' merci-
fully brief.' The language will offer no difficulty to a reader of Chaucer.

SIR THOPAS 201

of digression and minute description, and, of course,
highly improbable.

With such works before him, Chaucer might very
easily have given us a howling farce, after the manner
of Shakespeare's 'Pyramus and Thisbe' or Butler's
Hudibras ; but this would not have been quite courte-
ous to those of his contemporaries who were still writ-
ing such romances, and to the still larger number who
still were glad to read them. Neither would it have
been so effective ; one may easily o'erleap himself in
the matter of satire, and make his caricature so gross
that it ceases to convince. Chaucer has performed the
more delicate and much more difficult task of writing
an imitation, so true to the original that one might
easily read it through in a collection of romances with-
out suspecting its good faith, while so subtly height-
ening the original traits of diffuseness and essen-
tial nonsense, that its absurdity becomes immediately
patent to one who will look a second time. All the
real charm of na'i ve simplicity Chaucer has reproduced
intact. We are really disappointed when the tale is
rudely stopped in the middle of a line. Nearly a hun-
dred lines pass musically by before anything happens
at all. At last the much belauded hero finds himself
face to face with a ' greet geaunt,' and we look to see
lively action. But no; Sir Thopas politely promises
to meet the giant to-morrow, and makes his escape.

And al it was thurgh goddes gras
And thurgh his fair beringe.

We must hear to the minutest detail how he was armed,
and how he appeared as he rode forth ; and the tale is
interrupted in its two hundred and seventh line, before
there is any remote prospect of battle. The broad drift
of the absurdity is obvious enough ; it is in little touches
of the deepest bathos, and in the continually recurring

202 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

tone of petit-bourgeoisie^ that the subtler humor re-
sides. We are to be impressed with the hero's surpass-
ing comeliness of feature. His face is white as a lily ?
No, as payndemayn, the choicest quality of wheat
bread. 'His rode is lyk scarlet in grayn,' i. e. it will
not come out in the wash. And to cap the stanza: —

And I yow telle in good certayn,
He hadde a semely nose.

The forest through which Childe Thopas rides is in-
fested with many wild beasts. We look to hear of the
lion and the pard ; but the next verse explains : —

Ye, bothe bukke and hare 1

Or, again, we are to be told how the hero's very person
inspires fear : —

For in that contree was ther noon
That to him dorste ryde or goon,
Neither wyf ne childe.

As examples of the bourgeois tone, as Professor Koel-
bing calls it,1 one may notice that in the catalogue of
' herbes grete and smale ' which spring in the forest is
mentioned

Notemuge to putte in ale,

Whether it be moyste or stale,

Or for to leye in cofre.

So, too, when Sir Thopas wished to swear a mighty oath,

He swoor on ale and breed,

How that ' the geaunt shal be deed,

Bityde what bityde I '

But to the Host, that sturdy dispenser of ale and wine,
the crowning absurdity, beyond which he cannot suffer
the tale to proceed a stanza, is the statement : —

Himself drank water of the wel,
As did the knight Sir Percivel.

Let him disdain the use of a roof, if he please, and
1 ' Zu Chaucer's Sir Thopas,' Englisdie Studien, 11. 495-511.

THE MONK'S TALE 203

'liggen in his hode ; ' but of deliberate choice to drink
4 water of the wel ' —

' No more of this, for goddes dignitee,'
Quod oure hoste, ' for thou makest me
So wery of thy verray lewednesse
That, also wisly god my soule blesse,
Myn eres aken of thy drasty speche.'

Under this rude interruption Chaucer shows an
angelic sweetness of temper. It is the best rime he
knows ; but if it is not acceptable to the company, he
will tell a little thing in prose. From the standpoint
of the modern reader, at least, Chaucer more than
revenges himself by inflicting his long ' moral tale ver-
tuous ' of Melibeus.

The Tale of Melibeus is a translation of a French
work called Le livre de Melibee et de dame Prudence,
which is in its turn based on the Liber Con- TheTaieot
solationis et Consilii of Albertano of Bres- Melibeus-
cia, who died soon after the middle of the thirteenth
century. Dame Prudence gives some excellent advice
to her impulsive husband, Melibeus, and, to adopt
the words of Tyrwhitt, the tale ' was probably much
esteemed in its time ; but in this age of levity, I doubt
some readers will be apt to regret that he did not rather
give us the remainder of Sire Thopas.' Here is a good
opportunity to take Chaucer at his word, when he says
of another tale : —

And therfore, whoso list it nat yhere,
Turne over the leef, and chese another tale.

THE MONK'S TALE

The modern reader has doubtless been bored by the
moralizing tale of Melibeus, if indeed he has not
skipped it outright. Not so the honest Host. He has
your true middle-class Englishman's love for moraliz-

204 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

ing, if not for morality. Moreover, the tale has for him
a special and personal interest: —

Our hoste seyde, ' as I am faithful man,

And by the precious corpus Madrian,

I hadde lever than a barel ale

That goode lief my wyf hadde herd this tale ! '

She is no Dame Prudence to restrain her husband's
wrath. On the contrary, she is a sort of bourgeois Lady
Macbeth, urging on her husband to acts of violence ;
while in her ability to vilify the poor man, and force
him to do her will, she is own sister to the Wife of
Bath. She will make him slay one of the neighbors,
and bring him to a murderer's death, one of these days,
the Host predicts : —

' For I am perilous with knyf in honde,
Al be it that I dar nat hir withstonde.'

After this bit of realism, which serves well as a buffer
between the rather ponderous ' tales ' which precede
and follow, the Host turns to my lord the Monk, and
begins to rally him on his general air of well-fed
prosperity and physical fitness. From such a sleek,
comfortable-looking gentleman, the Host confidently
expects a ' mery ' tale. But alas ! for mine Host's dis-
appointed hopes! The Monk is not, like the reckless
Pardoner, a man who can suffer his dignity to lie fallow
for a season. However far he may stray from the
* reule of Seint Maure or of Seint Beneit,' the dignity
of his person and his rank allow no unseemliness or
levity of speech. In his own cell, surrounded by his
fellow monks, with a plump swan and a good bottle
before him, his fat sides may have shaken often enough
with laughter at a merry jest ; but no such relaxation
is convenient in the promiscuous company of the Can-
terbury Road. With unruffled patience he hears the
Host through to the end, suffering his free familiarity

THE MONK'S TALE 205

and scarcely veiled innuendo to pass unanswered and
unnoticed.

' I wol doon al my diligence.
As fer as sonneth into honestee,
To telle yow a tale, or two, or three.'

The tales he offers are a life of Edward the Confessor,
or a series of ' tragedies,' of which he has a hundred at
home in his cell. Condescendingly he explains to the
unlearned that —

Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
As olde bokes maken us memorie,
Of him that stood in greet prosperitee
And is yfallen out of heigh degree
Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly.

With true scholarly spirit he apologizes for the lack of
chronological order in what is to follow ; with a self-
depreciation worthy of Matthew Arnold he begs to be
excused for his ignorance ; and then, without waiting
to see whether the choice is going to be acceptable,
launches into his weary string of ' tragedies.'

One day, as the sprightly author of the Decameron
was sitting in his study, he was visited by a strange
monk, who told him of a death-bed vision, in .

Sources.

which a fellow monk had seen heaven and
hell opened before him, and had clearly distinguished
Giovanni Boccaccio among those dwelling in the less de-
sirable of these mansions. The impressionable, imagi-
native nature of Boccaccio was so deeply moved by this
gruesome prophecy that he was at first determined to
burn his books, and devote himself to a life of religion ;
but under the saner counsels of his friend Petrarch,
he decided instead to abandon his more frivolous com-
positions, and give himself to the study of classical
philology. Among the works which followed on this so-
called conversion is one entitled De Casibus Virorum

206 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

et Feminarum lllustrium, a sort of biographical diction-
ary, dealing with the lives of those who had stood in
great prosperity and had fallen from their high degree
into misery, and had come to a wretched end. Not a
very pleasant subject for a book, we are tempted to say ;
but the subject was one which appealed to an age
intensely interested in biography, and eagerly craving
the excitement of tragic downfalls. During the period
when Chaucer was strongly under the influence of Boc-
caccio and other Italian models, — the exact year we
cannot determine, — he seems to have planned a similar
work in his own English, which was to have consisted
of a hundred * tragedies,' beginning with Lucifer and
Adam and extending down to his own day — such a
work as his disciple Lydgate accomplished in his Fall
of Princes, a generation later. Fortunately, we think,
this work was one of the many which Chaucer planned
and started, but never brought to completion. He
either tired of it, or perhaps came soon to recognize
that the work was not worth doing. That he was con-
scious of its literary badness at the time he wrote the
Canterbury Tales is shown by the criticisms showered
upon it by such diverse characters as the Knight and
the Host. He had, however, written some dozen or
thirteen of the hundred tragedies, taking up his subjects
not chronologically, but according to his whim and
fancy ; and when he came to construct the Canterbury
Tales, he saw a chance to utilize these discarded frag-
ments, dramatically so appropriate to the ponderous dig-
nity of the Monk, while at the same time indicating his
maturer critical judgment as to their literary worth.
He added four new paragraphs dealing with contem-
porary worthies,1 purposely upset the chronological

1 See Skeat's argument to prove that the tragedies of Pedro of Spain,
Pedro of Cyprus, Barnaho, and Ugolino are of later date, hi the Oxford

THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 207

order to conceal the incompleteness of the series and
to give greater naturalness to the Monk's narration,
and foisted the whole off upon the substantial shoul-
ders of the defenseless Monk. Here is a thrifty way
of disposing of one's literary bastards ! In composing
the several sections, Chaucer had recourse not only to
his great model, Boccaccio, but to the Vulgate Bible,
to Ovid, Boethius, Guido, and others, the tale of Ugo-
lino being taken bodily from the thirty-third canto of
Dante's Inferno.

A discussion of the literary merit of these ' tragedies '
must resemble the famous chapter on the snakes of
Ireland. With few exceptions, they have no
literary merit. Apart from the unspeakable teen Tra-
monotony of the series, the dry epitomizing gedies-
character of the individual narrations and the inevit-
ably recurring moral make them intolerable. The one
shining exception to this sweeping condemnation is the
tale of Ugolino, a splendid bit of condensed narrative,
rich in pathos and true tragic power ; but the excel-
lence of this piece is due to the success with which the
author has reproduced the matchless art of Dante.

Before leaving the tale, one may pause a minute
to notice the eight-line stanza in which it is written,
a measure which Chaucer had used in his very early
A. B. C. This stanza, when supplemented by an ad-
ditional alexandrine, gives us the Spenserian stanza of
the Faerie Queene.

THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE

Not only the Knight who interrupts courteously
and the Host who seconds his objection more roughly,

Chaucer, vol. iii. pp. 428-429. The account of Barnabo deals with events
•which happened in 1385, which is the latest historical allusion con-
tained in the Canterbury Tales.

208 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

but the whole company must have been bored to death
by the weary string of dismal 'tragedies' which
the Monk has thought fit to narrate on this sunny
eighteenth of April. The Knight objects that most
people care for but ' litel hevinesse ; ' it is pleasanter
to hear of men who from poor estate have attained to
great and lasting prosperity. The Host assures the
reverend gentleman that such talk as his is not worth
a butterfly : —

' For sikerly, nere clinking of your belles,
That on your brydel hange on every syde,
By heven king, that for us alle dyde,
I sholde er this han fallen doun for slepe,
Although the slough had never been so depe.'

We poor readers, who can hear this merry clinking
of the bridle bells but faintly with the inner ear of
imagination, are surely to be forgiven if we * fallen
doun for slepe ' before the ' tragedies ' are half recounted.
However, we have, by way of compensation, a relief
which was not possible to the pilgrims — the blessed
relief of skipping ; boldly turn three pages at once, and
we reach one of the merriest tales that ever graced
our English tongue.

Neither in the General Prologue nor in the links
which fit the tale into its framework has Chaucer taken
any pains to characterize the ' gentil Freest ' who tells
this tale. So we may dismiss him without ceremony,
and imagine ourselves face to face with Chaucer ; his
is the all-pervading geniality and sly elvish humor of
this sparkling tale, which seems part and parcel of
the April sunshine. There is no piece of all Chaucer's
writings that one would sooner choose to set before
the uninitiated and say, 'Here is the Chaucer whom
we love.' Dull must he be of soul who fails to become
a convert. Here is the vivid delineation of scene, the

THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 209

subtle characterization, the infinite ease and grace of
language and verse, the delicate play of humor, above
all the fresh-hearted gayety and eminent sanity to
which we gladly turn when wearied out with the more
modern poets and story-tellers who insistently brood
over the mystery of this unintelligible world, as the pil-
grims turned from the weary ' tragedies ' of the Monk.
Let no one suppose that our present-day fad for ani-
mal stories, wherein only too often an entirely respec-
table dumb beast is endowed with a degree
of wishy-washy sentimental] sm which even a
moderately intelligent human being would be ashamed
of, is at all a modern discovery. Far in the ' dark
backward and abysm of time,' long centuries before the
authors of the Jungle Books or the Brer Fox stories
were dreamed of, our remote ancestors delighted in
stories of beasts and birds who spoke and acted more
or less like men and women, though keeping in the
main the frolic wantonness and shrewd cunning of the
beast. In those old days, I suppose, people were inter-
ested in animals as the daily companions of the field,
and even of the hearth ; to-day, in the crowded life of
our cities, we are interested in beasts because we see
so little of them. An honest, well-meaning clergyman
spends a summer vacation in the country, and armed
with opera-glass, note-book, and abundant sentiment,
'discovers ' in the life of the forest a far-seeing wisdom,
a pathos, a tragedy, with which he fills his books — or
lecture-halls — for a year to come. From this so-called
' nature study ' the step to the sentimental animal story
is inevitable. I do not mean that all our animal stories
are so written ; I could name at least three writers of
such tales who escape, or nearly escape, the charge
of false sentimentality ; it is the great army of their
imitators — but enough of this.

210 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Any one who will venture into the labyrinthine dis-
cussions of the folklorists will find abundant proof
that stories not unlike the central episode of the cock
and fox in Chaucer's tale have been told since the ear-
liest times in all countries of the world, from darkest
Africa to farthest Inde. Tales of the fireside soon find
their way into literature, when literature has once ap-
peared, and so it was with these popular stories of the
beast and bird. There have been in the past two main
forms of the animal story : the JEsopian fable, written
by a moralizer who sought to give new effectiveness to a
familiar bit of practical wisdom ; and the animal epic,
the great representative of which is Reynard the Fox,
written, in its later form at least, by a satirist who
wished to make fun of men and women under the con-
venient guise of animals, at whom any one may laugh
without fear of the censor. Of these two literary forms,
that of the fable is the simpler and apparently the
earlier. I need not characterize it; every one knows
his JEtSOp ; but it is interesting to see how the germ
of Chaucer's tale appears in fable setting. Here is a
translation of a Latin fable from the early Middle
Ages, one of a collection which goes under the name
of Romulus : l —

A Cock was walking up and down on the dunghill,
when a Fox, seeing him, came near, and sitting down
before him, broke in with these words : ' I never saw
a fowl equal to you in good looks, nor one who deserved
more praise for the sweetness of his voice, save only
your father. He, when he wanted to sing louder than
usual, used to shut his eyes.' The Cock, who was a
great lover of praise, did as the Fox suggested ; he

1 A verse translation of Marie de France's later but more artistic
version of this fable is given by Professor Skeat in the Oxford Chaucer,
vol. iii, p. 432.

THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 211

shut his eyes, and began to sing with a loud voice.
Immediately the Fox made a rush at him, and turned
his song into sadness by hurrying off to the woods
with the singer. There happened to be shepherds in
the field, and they began to chase the Fox with dogs
and with great outcry. Then the Cock said to the Fox :
' Tell them that I belong to you, and that this robbery
is none of their business.' But when the Fox began to
speak, the Cock dropped from his mouth, and by the
aid of his wings soon found refuge in the top of a tree.
Then the Fox said, ' Woe to him who speaks when
he had better be silent.' And the Cock answered him
from the tree, ' Woe to him who closes his eyes when
he had better keep them open.' 1

French and German scholars have not yet finished
fighting out the question to which nationality belongs
the honor of originating the great animal epic of the
Middle Ages, in which King Noble the lion, Bruin the
bear, Grimbald the wolf, and the other animals hold
their parliaments, and issue their decrees for the sup-
pression of Reynard the fox, hero of this ' vulpiad,' who
manages by his cleverness to outwit them all. The epic
of Reynard, as we have it in French and German, and
in the other tongues into which it was translated,2 is
not the work of any single author or single age. Like
the great cathedral buildings of England, the original
fabric was freely added to and elaborated, any animal
fable tending to get itself incorporated into this most
popular of poems. The story of the cock and the fox
is found both in the French Roman de Renart and in
the German Relnecke Fuchs ; but neither can have
been Chaucer's immediate source. Miss Kate Petersen,

1 I have followed the Latin text given by Miss Petersen : On the
Sources of the Nonne Prestes Tale, Boston, 1898, pp. 3-6.
3 The first English translation was made by Caxton in 1481.

212 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

who has examined the matter most carefully, concludes
that Chaucer follows a version of the epic now lost to
us, which was nearer to the German Reinecke than to
the French Renart. By comparing Chaucer's version
with these two, and making allowances for what may
have been Chaucer's independent changes and addi-
tions, she ingeniously reconstructs what must have been
the main details of the version Chaucer used. This
reconstructed version I shall reproduce here as a basis
for comparison with the Nun's Priest's Tale.1

Beside a grove dwells a woman somewhat advanced
in years, content with her property and with her pro-
vision of grain and bacon. Within her yard, protected
by fence and hedge, she keeps a cock named Chante-
cler and a number of hens, the best of which is named
Pinte. One day at sunrise the fox, full of tricks, comes
after Chantecler, but finds the fence too strong for
him. At last, however, he pulls out a slat with his
teeth, and crawls through the hedge into a heap of
cabbages, where he lies hidden. Pinte perceives his
presence, and calling out to Chantecler, who is asleep,
she and her companions fly up on a beam. Chantecler
comes up proudly, assures the hens that they are quite
safe in this yard, and bids them return to their former
place. He then tells Pinte that he has had a bad dream
in which he saw a reddish beast ; is it any wonder that
he is distressed and full of apprehension ? May heaven
interpret the dream aright ! Here, perhaps, Pinte offers
some interpretation of the dream. Chantecler makes a
reply in which he scoffs at dreams and makes humorous

l On the Sources of the Nonne Prestes Tale, Radcliff e College Mono-
graphs, No. 10, Boston, 1898. (In reproducing her hypothetical ver-
sion of the tale, I take some liberties with her language.) This study
supersedes the discussion of sources given in Originals and Analogues,
pp. 111-128, though the French texts there given are useful for con-
sultation.

THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 213

remarks about women. Summoning up his courage, he
defies the dream.

A little before noon, Chantecler, unaware of the fox,
flies nearer to the place where he is lurking, and on
first seeing him, starts to flee. But the fox begs Chan-
tecler not to flee from a friend. Have not their families
always been on friendly terms ? He praises the singing
of Chantecler's father, who used to sing with closed
eyes. Why should not Chantecler try to imitate him ?
Chantecler, too rash to perceive his folly, begins to beat
his wings, and to sing with closed eyes. Upon this the
fox seizes him by the throat and runs for the wood,
while Pinte and the other hens lament their loss.
The woman comes at the cry of the hens, and seeing
the fox with Chantecler in his mouth cries, ' Harrow ! *
Every one pursues the fox. The dog is let loose. But
Chantecler, in all his peril, prompts the fox to utter
words of defiance to his pursuers. The fox opens his
mouth, whereupon the cock escapes and flies into a
tree. The cock assures the fox that the adventure shall
not be repeated. The fox invokes shame upon the
mouth that speaks out of season ; and Chantecler says,
'Misfortune come upon him who shuts his eyes at
the wrong time.'

Though the point of this tale is the same as that of
the Latin fable, we find the characters supplied with
definite habitation and with names, while the story is
elaborated by the introduction of a new episode, that
of the premonitory dream, and by some attempt at char-
acterization. Chaucer, in utilizing this story, has made
some changes in detail — the appearance of the fox is
deferred until later in the story, when his part in the
action is to be important, distinctly improving the
structure of the narrative ; he has greatly elaborated
the discussion of the dream, giving the skeptical atti-

214 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

tude to Pertelote rather than Chanticleer ; and he has
immensely heightened the description and characteriza-
tion. In this way, what was originally a fireside story
has become first a literary fable, then a developed nar-
rative, and lastly a work of art.

Chaucer's first care in retelling the old story was to
give heightened color and realism to his background.
Chaucer's He goes out into the country and paints a
Version. peasant's cottage, such as must have been
matter of common experience to the readers of his own
day — the simple house of two rooms, with its sooty
' hall * serving as kitchen, living-room, hen-house, barn,
and pig-sty, and the smaller * bower ' where slept the
widow and her daughters. We are given a view of the
every-day peasant life, its hard work and meagre fare,
its narrowing interests ; all this serving as a sharp con-
trast to the lordly elegance and wide intellectual scope
of Chanticleer. Still, it is not an unhappy life that
Chaucer shows; if the widow's board is but plainly
furnished forth, she has as recompense a good diges-
tion: —

The goute lette hir nothing for to daunce,

N' apoplexye shente nat hir heed.

Best of all, she has that 'hertes suffisaunce* which
makes any life worth the living. Once again, later in
the tale, the peasant life reasserts itself, when the
widow, her daughters, the neighbors, and all the ani-
mals of the farm in wild bedlam join in the hue and
cry after the marauding fox. Both these pictures have
all the vividness and realism of a Dutch genre paint-
ing by Teniers or Gerard Dou.

A greater achievement than this is the creation of
Chanticleer, a character which is real and interesting,
while remaining still a rooster, at the same time human
and galline. To accomplish this, Chaucer has seized

THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 215

on the trait of character which is in a rooster most
human and in a man most galline, the quality which
the two species share in common — egotism, personal
vanity, in a word, the strut. This is the quality which
mankind agrees in attributing to the rooster as a type ;
doubtless a rooster poet would attribute the same qual-
ity to man. This is the trait of character which in the
old fable leads to Chanticleer's downfall, when the fox
cozens him with his pretty obvious flattery ; this is pre-
eminently the quality of the domestic tyrant. So that
it is without any sense of incongruity that we see the
two types coalesce.

Chanticleer, as he is first described to us, is only a
superlative rooster, superlative in his crowing, superla-
tive in his galline beauty : —

In al the land of crowing nas his peer.

His vois was merier than the mery orgon

On messe-dayes that in the chirche gon;

Wei sikerer was his crowing in his logge,

Than is a clokke, or an abbey orlogge.

By nature knew he ech ascencioun

Of equinoxial in thilke toun ;

For whan degrees fif tene were ascended,

Thanne crew he, that it mighte nat ben amended.

From this it is an easy step to the singing of a song
with words : —

But such a joye was it to here hem singe,
Whan that the brighte sonne gan to springe,
In swete accord, 'my lief is faren in londe.'

This is followed up by an offhand statement : —

For thilke tyme, as I have understonde,
Bestes and briddes coude speke and singe.

We accept this statement readily enough, as a neces-
sary condition of animal stories. But if animals can
talk, they can also have dreams. So bit by bit we are
led into the plausible impossibility of the conjugal

216 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

dispute, with all its display of erudition and dialec-
tics.

Dame Partlet becomes the typical housewife, kindly
solicitous of her husband's welfare, even though she
reproach him for his faint heart, —

' Have ye no inannes herte, and ban a berd ? '

unwilling of course to accept his explanation of the
dream, confident in the superiority of her own wisdom
and in the efficacy of her own homely remedies. Was
there ever a wife who did not love to prescribe from
her medicine chest, or ever a husband who did not pro-
test that medicine was quite unnecessary ? She is even
ready to humor her husband's weakness for pedantry,
quotes to him from one of his own authors, enters at
length into a scientific explanation of dreams. She has
not lived with the learned Chanticleer for nothing. As
for the cock, he is your typical pedant and egotist. He
is proud of his voice, of his learning, and of his immense
superiority to his wives, whose company he enjoys be-
cause of his superiority. With what evident self-satis-
faction he quotes an uncomplimentary Latin proverb,
which he translates wrongly, deliciously conscious that
his playful fraud cannot be detected : —

' For also siker as In principio,
Mulier est hominis confusio; *
Madame, the sentence of this Latin is —
Womman is maunes joye and al his blis.'

His wife ventures to quote the authority of Cato
that dreams are not to be regarded. Very well, if she
wants authorities, she shall have them ; and he proceeds
to bury her volumes deep under his accumulated lore.
She ought to know that a woman can't argue. But if

1 The phrase ' In principio ' begins the book of Genesis and the Gos-
pel of St. John, in the Vulgate. ' It is as true as the Bible that woman
is man's confusion.'

THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 217

Chanticleer is pedant and egotist, he is nevertheless a
kindly soul, and we cannot but like him.

However learnedly Chanticleer may discourse, how-
ever human he may seem in his petty domestic tyran-
nies, Chaucer never suffers us quite to forget that he
is but a rooster and that Dame Partlet is but a hen.
Were we to forget, the delicious humor of the situ-
ation would be lost. This end Chaucer attains by con-
stantly recurring to distinctly galline traits. After
displaying her complete acquaintance with the materia
medica, and assuring her husband that the herbs neces-
sary

' To purgen yow binethe, and eek above '

are growing right there in the yard, she bids him

' Pekke hem up right as they growe, and ete hem ID.'

So, too, when the long debate is ended, the rooster
nature reasserts itself : —

And with that word he fley doun fro the beem,
For it was day, and eek his hennes alle ;
And with a chnk he gan hem for to calle,
For he had founde a corn, lay in the yerd.
Royal he was, he was namore aferd.

He loketh as it were a grim leoun ;
And on his toos he rometh up and doun,
Him deyned not to sette his foot to grounde.

The beautiful bubble of pride and lordliness is
pricked to nothing by the clever stratagem of Daun
Russel the fox, and his ignominious rape of Chanti-
cleer. That the airy fabric of the tale may not fall too
suddenly to ground, Chaucer has recourse to the mock
heroic. The marauding fox is apostrophized as

O newe Scariot, newe Genilonf

False dissimilour, O Greek Sinon,

That broghtest Troye al outrely to sorwe!

218 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

There is learned discussion of free-will and God's fore-
knowledge, as one might debate the reason of a prince's
fall. The outcry of the widowed hens is compared
to the lamentations of the Trojan ladies when Ilion
was won, to the shrieks of * Hasdrubales wyf,' to the
wailing of the senators' wives when Nero burned impe-
rial Rome. It takes all the wild hubbub of shouting
rustics, barking dogs, and quacking geese to bring
us back again to the realization that all this mighty
action has been transacted in a poor widow's barnyard,
and that its protagonists are but a cock and a fox.

The rest of the story, which now follows the lines
of the old fable, is disposed of quickly ; the moral is
pointed, and thus is ended Chaucer's tale of Chanti-
cleer.

CHAPTER XI
THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUPS C AND D

THE PHYSICIAN'S TALE

THE Physician's Tale begins a new group of tales,
and Chaucer has provided it with no prologue by way
of introduction. The portrait of this doctor of physio
given in the General Prologue is allowed to stand as
our sole information about the character which, judged
from a modern standpoint, has in it more of the quack
than of the reputable practitioner. Neither is the tale
which Chaucer assigns to the man of medicine partic-
ularly appropriate to him. One cannot refrain a smile
at Ten Brink's ingenious suggestion that its ' desperate,
bloody ending ' is ' appropriate to the character of the
Doctor and his professional acquaintance with violent
remedies.' One may notice, too, that Virginia's allusion
to the daughter of Jephthah gives the lie to the state-
ment of the General Prologue that

His studie was but litel on the bible.

Chaucer had apparently written the story with another
purpose in view, perhaps with the intention of incor-
porating it into the Legend of Good Women, and
finding it in his desk drawer, determined, with his
accustomed literary thrift, to turn it to account in the
Canterbury Tales. If not particularly appropriate, it
is not markedly inappropriate. Possibly the digression
on the proper bringing up of daughters may have been
inserted as suitable to the Doctor in his capacity of
family adviser.

220 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

One who was not familiar with Chaucer's literary
methods would immediately assume from the explicit
statement of the first line that the source of
the tale was Titus Livius. Livy's history is,
of course, the ultimate source ; but the most hasty read-
ing of the Latin story will show a wide divergence. In
Livy, Virginius, on hearing the unjust sentence, imme-
diately snatches up a knife, and without any pause
buries it in his daughter's breast. This is more natural
and less revolting than the deliberate deed of Chaucer's
Virginius. The rather barbarous episode of the head
sent to Appius on a charger is also absent from Livy's
narrative. Chaucer did not make these changes him-
self ; for in dealing with themes from antique history
he is usually chary of alteration. The tale explicitly
says : —

This is no fable,

• But knowen for historial thing notable,
The sentence of it sooth is, out of doute.

Moreover, though the change makes possible the affect-
ing dialogue between Virginia and her father, which is
the emotional climax of the tale, it involves, as we have
seen, a certain untruth to nature as compared with
Livy's treatment. The truth is that Chaucer did not
go to Livy at all. Indeed, we have no proof that Livy
was any more than a name to him. The outline of the
story, and the ascription of it to Livy, are taken directly
from that great storehouse of story, the Roman de la
Rose. Jean de Meun's narrative is not long, and since
a comparison of it with Chaucer's tale serves well to
show the latter's literary methods, I shall translate the
passage entire.1

1 The story occupies lines 5613-5682 of Meon's edition of the Roman
de la Hose. Skeat has reprinted the passag-e in the Oxford Chaucer,
vol. 3. pp. 435-437. I have made my translation from his text.

THE PHYSICIAN'S TALE 221

Did not Appius well deserve to hang, who made his
servant undertake, by means of false witnesses, a false
quarrel against the maiden Virginia, who was daugh-
ter to Virginius, as saith Titus Livius, who knows well
how to relate the case ? This he did because he could
not have mastery over the maiden, who cared not for
him, nor for his lust. The false churl said in audience :
* Sir judge, give sentence for me, for the maid is mine ;
I will prove her for my slave against all men living : for
soon after she was born, she was taken from my house
and given in keeping to Virginius, where she has been
brought up. Therefore I demand of you, Sir Appius,
that you deliver me my slave, for it is right that she
serve me, and not him who has brought her up ; and if
Virginius denies this, I am all ready to prove it, for
I can find good witnesses of the fact.' Thus spake
the false traitor, who was a retainer of the false judge ;
and when the plea had gone thus far, before Virgin-
ius, who was all ready to reply and confound his adver-
saries, had spoken, Appius gave hasty judgment that
without delay the maiden should be returned to the
churl. And when the good gentleman before named,
good knight and well-renowned, that is to say, Vir-
ginius, heard this thing, and saw well that he could
not defend his daughter against Appius, but that he
would be forced to give her up and deliver her body
over to shame, he chose injury rather than shame, by a
wonderful determination, if Titus Livius lies not. For
in love, and without malice, he straightway cut off the
head of his beautiful daughter Virginia and presented
it to the judge before all men in full consistory ; and the
judge, as the story says, straightway gave order that
he be taken and led away to be slain or hanged. But
he neither slew him nor hanged him, for the people
defended him, being moved to great pity as soon as the

222 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

deed was known ; then, for this evil deed, Appius was
put in prison, and there quickly slew himself before
the day of his trial ; and Claudius, who had challenged
the maiden, was sentenced to death as a malefactor ; but
Virginius, taking pity on him, won a reprieve for him,
making suit to the people that he should be sent into
exile, and all were condemned and put to death who
were witnesses in the case.

What Chaucer has done is to reproduce this narrative
with substantial fidelity, heightening its effectiveness
Chaucer's somewhat by a freer use of direct discourse,
version. while adding of his own fantasy two long
original passages, which serve to change entirely the
artistic emphasis of the tale. These passages are the
charming description of Virginia's maidenly loveliness,
with the digression on the bringing up of daughters,
and the infinitely pathetic scene in which Virginia
learns her father's purpose, and herself chooses death
rather than shame. Beside the wonderful effectiveness
of these two passages, the narrative portions sink into
insignificance, or rather serve as a mere framework
for the picture of Virginia's spotless purity. In the
French it is the unjust judge and his righteous pun-
ishment that receive chief emphasis ; with Chaucer, the
personality of Virginia dominates the whole. The nar-
rative is not slighted ; it is merely subordinated ; and
the memory of the reader lingers fondly on the maid
who

Floured in virginitee
With alle humilitee and abstinence.

THE PARDONER'S TALE

The Host has been so wrought upon by the pathos
of the Physician's tale of Virginia, that he feels it abso-
lutely essential to his physical well-being that he hear a

THE PARDONER'S TALE 223

* mery tale.' With a delicate touch of satire, the author
makes him turn to the Pardoner as one most likely to
satisfy this need. The Pardoner is ready enough with
his assent; but the company has reached a wayside
tavern, whose 'ale-stake,' crowned with its garland,
projects far over the muddy road, and the physical
well-being of the Pardoner demands that he stop long
enough to drink a draught of corny ale and eat a cake.
The ' gentles ' of the company, however, know only too
well what to expect when a pardoner undertakes to tell
a ' mery tale.' * Let him tell us no ribaldry,' they cry.

' Tel us som moral thing, that we may lere
Som wit, and thanne wol we gladly here.'

Ready complaisance is part of the Pardoner's stock in
trade.

' I graunte, y wis,' quod he, ' but I mot thinke
Upon som honest thing, whyl that I drinke.'

Things honest and of good report proceed from a par-
doner's lips only as the result of meditation.

The Pardoner is, of course, a dreadful hypocrite ; but
his hypocrisy is a part of his profession merely, and he
is now on a vacation. He is an honest hypocrite, at least
in so far as he does not deceive himself, nor try to pass
himself for a holy man 'among friends.' As he sits
and quaffs his corny ale and surveys his fellow voy-
agers, his tongue is loosened, and in a spirit partly of
bravado, but more, I think, with an artist's natural
pride in his art, he begins to give away some of the
secrets of his trade. ' Here, in this company, you see, I
am a very unassuming, good-natured fellow ; but when
I preach in church, I take pains to assume a haughty
manner of speech, and put in a word of Latin here
and there " to saffron with my predicacioun." I show
my relics — they are really only rags and bones — I

224 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

preach always on the sin of avarice, so that my hear-
ers may give the larger offering. In this way I win a
hundred marks * a year.'

The Pardoner's reason for giving this frank account
of his own hypocrisies I take to have been something
like this. ' I am not really a moral man,' he implies,
* and I do not intend to take the trouble of keeping up
appearances on this journey ; but it is my business to
give moral discourses, and since you insist on having
a moral tale, I will give you an example of my pulpit
oratory.'

' For, though myself be a ful vicious man,
A moral tale yet I yow telle can,
Which I am wont to preche, for to winne.
Now holde your pees, my tale I wol beginne.'

The sermon which follows on this preamble consists
of a highly dramatic story, which is interrupted after
a few lines by a long discussion on the sins of swear-
ing, gluttony, dicing, and other of the deadly sins, and
only continued after an interval of some hundred and
sixty lines. This discussion contains several touches of
humor ; but our main attention must be occupied with
the story itself.

The immediate source of the Pardoner's Tale, which

may have been some fabliau now lost, is not known to

us ; but the story in its main features is one

of great antiquity and wide dissemination.

The earliest form of the tale which has been discovered

is in an old Hindoo collection of tales, and bears the title

VedabWia Jdtaka. Other versions are found in Persian,

Arabic, Kashmiri, and Tibetan. From the Orient the

tale was brought to Europe, where versions are found

in Italian, German, French, Portuguese, and Latin.*

1 Equivalent to at least seven hundred pounds of modern money.

2 See Originals and Analogues of Some of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales^
pp. 129-134, 415-436.

THE PARDONER'S TALE 225

The latest appearance of the story is found in the tale of
The King's Ankus, in Kipling's Second Jungle Book.
The version which bears closest resemblance to Chau-
cer's is found in the 1572 edition of the Cento Novelle
Antiche, a collection of tales which probably antedates
Boccaccio. This tale is in itself so well told, and fur-
nishes so interesting a comparison with Chaucer, that
I shall translate it entire.

Here, is the story of a hermit, who as he was walk-
ing through a forest, found very great treasure.

Walking one day through a forest, a Hermit found a
large cave which was well concealed, and betaking him-
self thither — for he was very weary — as he reached the
cave, he beheld in a certain place a great gleaming ;
for there was much gold there. Now as soon as he saw
what it was, incontinently he went away, and began to
run through the desert as fast as he could go. As he
was running thus, the Hermit came upon three great
robbers, who had taken their stand in this forest to rob
whosoever should pass there. But never as yet had they
learned that this gold was there. Now as they stood
concealed, and saw this man fleeing so, who had no
one behind to pursue him, they were at first somewhat
afeard ; but, notwithstanding, they accosted him to
know why he fled, for of this they marveled greatly.
He answered and said : ' My brothers, I flee death,
who comes after me, pursuing me.' They, seeing neither
man nor beast that pursued him, said : ' Show us who
pursues thee, and lead us where this death is.' Then
the Hermit said to them, ' Come with me, and I will
show you him ; ' but he begged them in every way that
they should not seek death, forasmuch as he for his
part was fleeing him. And they, wishing to find death,
to see after what fashion he was made, asked him
nothing else. The Hermit seeing that he could not do

226 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

otherwise, and being in fear, conducted them to the cave
whence he had departed, and said to them, 'Here is
death which pursued me,' and showed them the gold
that was there ; and incontinently they knew what it
was, and they began to be exceeding joyful, and to make
great solace together. Then they dismissed this good
man, and he went away about his own business ; and
they began to say to one another how he was a great
simpleton. Remained all these three robbers together,
to guard this treasure, and began to reason what they
should do. One of them answered and said : ' It seems
to me that since God has given us this high good for-
tune, we should not depart hence, until we carry away
all this treasure.' And the other said : ' Let us not do
so ; let one of us take somewhat of it, and go to the
city and sell it, and get bread and wine and whatsoever
else we need, and on this errand let him use the best wit
he has : let him so do, that he may furnish us forth.'
To this agreed they all three together. Now the Devil,
who is full of devices, and in his wickedness ordains
as much evil as he can, put into the heart of him who
went to the city for provisions, ' As soon as I am in the
city (said he to himself), I will eat and drink as much
as I need, and then provide myself with certain things
for which I have use now at the present time ; and then
I will poison what I carry to my companions : so that
when they shall both be dead, I shall be lord of all that
treasure, and, as it seems to me, it is so great, that I
shall be the richest man of all this country as regards
my having ; ' and as it came to him in thought, so he
did. He took meat for himself, as much as he needed,
and then all the rest he poisoned, and so carried it to
those his companions.

While he was going to the city, according as we have
said, if he considered and devised evil to slay his com-

THE PARDONER'S TALE 227

panions, to the end that all might remain to him, they
on their part thought no better of him than he of them,
and they said to one another : 'As soon as this comrade
of ours shall return with bread and wine and with the
other things which we need, we will slay him, and then
we will eat what we want, and then all this great trea-
sure will be between us two. And as we shall be fewer
that share it, so much greater part will each of us have.'
Now comes he who was gone to the city to buy the things
of which they had need. When he was returned to his
companions, straightway when they saw him, they were
upon him with lances and with knives, and slew him.
As soon as they had him dead, they ate of what he had
brought ; and as soon as they were filled, both fell down
dead. And thus they died all three ; for the one slew
the other as you have heard, and had not the treasure.
And so our Lord God pays traitors ; for they went to
seek death, and in this manner they found it, and in
such way as they were worthy of. And the wise man
wisely fled from it, and the gold remained without a
master as at first.

It is easy to see why this tale should have been a
popular one ; it is in its nature essentially tragic, the
catastrophe coming as a direct result of evil charac-
ter; in the eagerness with which death is sought and
the ease with which it is found, we have a perfect ex-
ample of dramatic irony.

The effectiveness of the Pardoner's Tale depends
first on the effectiveness of its theme, as shown in the
Italian novella, and in hardly less measure on The Par
the setting which Chaucer has given to it. In

the background of the story looms that most
terrible and mysterious force, the plague, death raised
to its highest power. In our Western world of sanitary
science, widespread pestilence has ceased to be a matter

228 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

of national experience. To realize what it means, we
must read in our newspapers of its ravages in India or
China, or better still, read the accounts of Thucydides
or Boccaccio or DeFoe. But to Chaucer and his readers
the plague was a matter of personal experience. Four
times during the reign of Edward III, in 1348-49, 1361-
63, 1369, and 1375-76, England was swept by pesti-
lence. In the first of these plagues, the same which
Boccaccio describes in the Introduction of the Decam-
eron, we are told that half the population of England
perished.

A highly interesting feature of Boccaccio's descrip-
tion of the plague is the account he gives of its vary-
ing effect on the moral tone of Florentine society. Some
gave themselves up to religious exercise ; others shut
themselves up in their houses, ate the most nourishing
food, and kept their minds occupied with pleasant top-
ics ; but many, in the conviction that to-morrow they
should die, spent to-day in eating, drinking, and making
merry. It is to this last class that the three * riotours '
of the Pardoner's Tale belong. In the Flemish town
where the scene of the story is laid, a thousand victims
have already fallen ; but unchastened by the calamity,
the three 'riotours' sit in drunken revelry at their
tavern, though it is not yet nine of the day. Amid their
laughter and oaths comes the solemn clink of the fu-
neral bell. It is the corpse of one of their own friends,
suddenly stricken as he sat drunk upon his bench.
Though moved to no amendment of life, they are not
sufficiently callous to continue their merry-inaking. In
drunken rage they vow to seek out this false traitor
Death and be revenged. The taverner has mentioned
a great village a mile or more away, where not a
human soul is left alive. Surely here victorious Death
must keep his abode. The background darkens, as the

THE PARDONER'S TALE 229

three 'riotours,' after taking that ill-kept oath of
mutual faith, with swords drawn and their mouths
full of curses, rush madly towards the city of Death.
We feel already that doom hangs over them. They are
what a Scotchman calls 'fey,' marked out for death.
All this, it will be noticed, is absent from the Italian
novella.

Chaucer now provides a contrast of overwhelming
power. An old, poor man, 'al forwrapped save his
face,' meets them at a stile, which marks, perhaps,
the confines of the village they are seeking. It is
' crabbed age and youth,' drunken excitement and calm
philosophic meditation.

' Ne deeth, alias ! ne wol nat ban my lyf ;
Thus walke I, lyk a restelees caityf,
And on the ground, which is my modres gate,
I knokke with my staf, bothe erly and late,
And seye, " leve moder, leet me in !
Lo, how I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin !
Alias ! whan shul my bones been at reste ?
Moder, with yow wolde I chaunge my cheste,
That in my chambre longe tyme hath be,
Ye ! for an heyre clout to wrappe me ! "
But yet to me she wol nat do that grace,
For which f ul pale and welked is my face.'

He, too, it seems, is a seeker after death. But who
is he, this mysterious passenger ? Whence comes he ?
whither goes he? Whose is the treasure that lies
beneath the oak? and how came it there? To none
of these questions does Chaucer so much as hint an
answer. We feel that the old man is something other
than the hermit of the Italian novella; the hermit
was fleeing death, this man is seeking it. One of the
' riotours ' accuses him of being Death's spy ; we are
tempted to believe that he is rather very Death him-
self. But Chaucer does not say so ; he wraps him in

230 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

a mystery as deep as the mystery of death. The pale,
withered face and heavily shrouded figure rise like
a vapor, and fade as suddenly into thin air. Was he
a reality or a vision? And the treasure, those eight
bushels of gold florins, were they real and palpable,
or only a dreadful mocking vision ? Reality or vision,
they have in them the power of deadly work.

The three doomed revelers run up the crooked way ;
but instead of grim, antic Death, they find what seems
to them the very fullness of life. Here is provision
for endless days and nights of dissipation. They are
struck into silence by the vision. The clink of funeral
bell, the mad quest of Death, the mysterious figure, all
are forgotten. The fumes of drunkenness clear away.
They are at once practical. No questions are asked ;
the money must be secured. Why care for Death?
Here is life, and life in more abundance.

The cuts are drawn ; the messenger is dispatched ;
the two plots are laid, and the poison is bought. A
few brief strokes sketch in the triple murder.

Thus ended been thise homicydes two,
And eek the false empoysoner also.

Three dead bodies and a heap of worthless gold ! They
have found Death — the vanquisher. The strange old
man totters on his way, tapping with his stick at the
gates of our common grave, the earth, still seeking the
death which these so readily have found. Will he ever
find it? or is he doomed to a withering Tithonus-like
immortality, deathless as Death itself ?

This is the tale of the Pardoner, — full of tragic
terror ; dramatic in its structure, transacted as it is
almost wholly in dialogue ; never hurried, but marching
forward with sure strides, unimpeded with a single
superfluous detail, irresistible and inevitable as death
and night.

THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE 231

As for the moral of it, one could draw morals enough
if it were desirable. The miserable mountebank of
a Pardoner sees in it only the exemplification of his
favorite theme : Radix malorum est cupiditas.

One reads of the preacher Whitefield that, in address-
ing a seaman's mission in New York, he described a
shipwreck with such vividness that a hardened old salt
jumped to his feet and cried, * Man the boats ! she '11
sink ! ' And again that in Philadelphia the utilitarian
skeptic Ben Franklin emptied his purse into the preach-
er's collection-box. With such a tale as this the Par-
doner may well have passed off his spurious relics, and
won the hundred marks a year which he boasts of as
his income. The sublime audacity of the Pardoner, how-
ever, is reserved till the end of the tale, when in the
glow of his oratory he offers his worthless relics to the
very company to whom he has made an expose of his
lying methods. I hardly think he expected to win their
silver ; as we have seen, he is on a vacation. It is rather
the conscious artist in hypocrisy, who wishes to give a
crowning example of his art.

THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE

The Wife of Batlis Prologue is a dramatic mono-
logue in which a highly characterized, but at the same
time a typical, woman of the middle class is made to
reveal her own personality, narrate the events of her
own life, and pronounce her opinions on the topic which
is to her the most vital of our human life. At every
step one is conscious of the new influences brought into
our literature by the Italian Renaissance. The intense
interest in all sorts and conditions of men, without
which our great dramatic literature could never have
been ; the breaking down of class distinction, which
makes a cloth-weaver ' of bisyde Bathe ' fit subject for

232 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

a poet's verse, and gives to her thoughts and experi-
ences a value as real as those of a countess or queen ;
and lastly, the almost revolutionary daring with which
the poet makes his creation demolish the cherished
mediaeval ideal of celibacy, — all these proclaim the
author of the Wife of Bath's Prologue as the first
modern man of England, with the virtues and faults
of our modern world.

Though this composition is essentially one of Chau-
cer's most original productions, here as elsewhere he is
indebted to 'olde bokes.' The original con-
ception of the Wife of Bath is due, appar-
ently, to an allegorical personage in the Roman de la
Rose named La Vieille, a personage who, though first
introduced in the earlier part of the poem by Guil-
laume de Lorris, is elaborated in Jean de Meun's satiri-
cal continuation of the work. But though the points
of similarity are numerous, La Vieille remains, as her
name indicates, an abstraction, or at most a type ; while
the Wife of Bath is a living, breathing woman. Other
hints for the elaboration of the character Chaucer seems
to have drawn from Jean de Meun's description of Le
Jaloux, an old married man, who attributes to woman
many of the qualities which the Wife of Bath eagerly
claims for herself.1 For the long discussion of celibacy,
however, Chaucer has gone directly to a work of St.
Jerome, used also by the author of the Roman de la
Rose, known as Hleronymus contra Jovinianum, in
which the holy father demolishes with much acerbity
the argument of one Jovinian, who had ventured to
write against the practice of celibacy. In the course
of this argument Jerome inserts a long extract from
a lost work of a Greek named Theophrastus, entitled

1 See W. E. Mead, ' The Prologue of the Wife of Bath's Tale,' Publi-
cations of the Modern Language Association of America, 16. 388-404.

THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE 233

Liber Aureolus de Nuptlis. A further source is the
Epistola Valerii ad Rufinum de, non Ducenda Uxore,
printed among the works of Jerome, though written
much later. These three works, it will be observed,
were all contained in the favorite volume of the Wife
of Bath's fifth husband, the volume which the irate
lady forces him to burn. The delicious humor of Chau-
cer's procedure consists in suffering the serious argu-
ments of a father of the church to be quoted and
refuted by such a one as the Wife of Bath. Bitter
attacks on the frailty of woman were a commonplace
of the old monastic literature ; but Chaucer is engaged
in no moral diatribe. Neither does he feel called upon
to espouse the cause of woman vilified; in the spirit
of the dramatist he creates a woman who not only
exemplifies all that had been charged against woman,
but who even glories openly in the possession of these
qualities, and by his art forces us to take her point of
view, and all but sympathize with her.

It is hard to say how far Chaucer himself was in
sympathy with the views which the Wife of Bath pro-
pounds on the subject of marriage and vir- TheArgu-
ginity. That he was no mere glorifier of the ^J^
sensual may go without saying ; but that he Celibacy,
recognized the fallacy of the prevailing ideal of celi-
bacy, and that besides his merely dramatic interest in
the Wife of Bath he was also interested in breaking
down a false idol, is quite probable. Professor Louns-
bury has called attention to the fact that Chaucer has
twice put into the mouth of the Host, in his words
to the Monk (B 3133-3154) and to the Nun's Priest
(B 4637-4646), opinions of a similar character, and on
the basis of these facts he calls the Wife's Prologue a
' revolutionary document,' in which the poet, shielding
himself behind the ample figure of this clothmaker of

234 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Bath, has spoken out with playful exaggeration his
opinion on one of the questions of the day.

Whether Chaucer's or not, the opinions are revo-
lutionary enough even at the present day. This four-
teenth-century advocate of a return to nature is, how-
ever, so prolix in her speech, and so given to digression,
that it is not wholly a work of supererogation to sum
up briefly the argument she advances.

A little while ago she had been told that since Christ
went to but one wedding, she too, the much-married,
should have confined herself to a single husband. Then,
too, what a sharp word Christ spoke to the woman of
Samaria anent her five husbands, — precisely the num-
ber which the Wife has reached herself ! But the good
woman frankly confesses that the significance of that
rebuke she has never been able to understand. There
is another ' gentil text,' though, the meaning of which
she can easily grasp, — the command to be fruitful and
multiply. God never defined the number of husbands
which might be taken.

But of no nombre mencioun made he,
Of bigamye or of octogamye.

(Notice the delicious coinage of a new word, necessary
to contain the new wine of her advanced opinions.)
Solomon had many wives at once. ' Would that similar
liberty were allowed to me ! ' sighs the Wife of Bath.

So far, it will be noticed, the argument has dealt
with second marriage ; but there are those who recom-
mend the avoidance of marriage altogether, and praise
perpetual virginity. Yet God has never expressly com-
manded virginity, and the apostle, though he counsels
it, does not enjoin it. Up to this point the discussion
has consisted of an appeal to the authority of holy
writ ; the Wife now descends boldly to the ground of
common sense. If every one should practice virginity,

THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE 235

who, pray, is to beget virgins and bring them forth?
It may be that virginity is more excellent than the
married state ; very well, wooden vessels are needed
in the household as well as golden. The Wife of Bath
is quite contented with the humbler lot. Once more
there is a bold appeal to common sense : it is the
obvious intention of nature that man should marry
and bring forth issue. Having established her point,
she can afford to be generous to her opponents; they
may follow virginity if they please : —

I nil envye no virginitee;
Lat hem be breed of pured whete-seed,
And lat us wy ves hoten barly-breed ;
And yet with barly-breed, Mark telle can,
Our lord Jesu refresshed many a man.
In swich estaat as god hath cleped us
I wol persevere, I nam nat precious.

Despite its playful tone, the argument is a good one,
and it may well be believed that Chaucer is at least
half in earnest.

The chief interest of this Prologue lies not in its
character as a controversial pamphlet, but in The wife
its portrayal of a human type. It is a great of Bath,
human document.

Looked at superficially, the Wife of Bath is a thor-
oughly healthy animal, somewhat over forty, of
substantial figure, dressed conspicuously, exceedingly
coarse in her speech, but withal a friendly, good-natured
woman, and by no means lacking in shrewd, practical
wisdom. Though she has picked up many odds and
ends of knowledge from her scholar-husband, Jankin,
her manner of speech shows her to be essentially illit-
erate. Her whole theory of life is one of frank ani-
malism. This is what one takes in at first glance,
and this, probably, is all that her companions on the

236 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Canterbury journey saw in her ; but Chaucer saw more.
He saw that with all her apparent gayety, she was not
happy.

She begins her long preamble with mention of ' wo
that is in mariage.' She argues at length to prove
that marriage is the summum bonum of life, and she has
had the singular good fortune to enter five times into
this blessed state ; surely she should know the quintes-
sence of bliss. But none of her marriages has been
fortunate; of her husbands she says: 'Three of hem
were gode and two were badde ; ' but with none of them
was she happy. The first three she had married for
their money. They were too old to satisfy her lust;
they chided and harangued her ; they would not even
give her money enough to satisfy her love of finery.
The fourth husband was a reveler, who made her as
jealous as she had made his predecessors. The fifth,
clerk Jankin, tried to lord it over her, and told her
uncomplimentary stories from his books. When she
had at last won the mastery, he disobligingly died. Is
not this ' tribulacioun in mariage ' ?

She is haunted, moreover, with a vague suspicion
that, argue as she may to the contrary, her way of
life is not the right one, a subconscious conviction that
reaches masterful expression in the single exclamation :

Alias ! alias ! that ever love was sinne !

A further proof of her failure to attain happiness is
found in her restlessness. As the souls of the lustful
in the first circle of the Inferno are blown about con-
tinually by the whirlwind, so she has been driven by
her restlessness to seek strange lands. She has been to
Rome, to Santiago in Spain, to Boulogne, to Cologne.
Thrice she has made the long journey to Jerusalem.
When we meet her, she is on the road to Canterbury.

THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE 237

It is the same insatiable lust for travel which marks
the restlessness of our modern life.

Worst of all, the Wife of Bath is growing old. Mar-
ried first at the age of twelve, she is already forty
when she marries her fifth husband. She must now be
nearing fifty. Her good days are done. If, as Horace
tells us, no piety can give pause to wrinkles and sure-
advancing age, neither can the impiety of rank animal-
ism. It is not only * indomitable death ' whose approach
she has to dread, but the dulling of the sharp edge of
pleasure on which her fancied happiness depends.

' But age, alias ! that al wol envenyme,
Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith;
Lat go, fare-wel, the devel go therwith !
The flour is goon, ther is na-more to telle,
The bren, as I best can, now moste I selle;
But yet to be right mery wol I fonde.'

The spirit of reckless bravado in these lines cannot
blind us to the terrible truth they contain. The last line
in particular tells us that the gayety of her character is
a forced gayety : —

' But yet to be right mery wol 2 fonde.'

There is, as Professor Lounsbury has said, a profound
'undertone of melancholy' running through all the
apparent gayety of the piece.

It is this deeper significance of the character which
we must urge against those who are tempted to quarrel
with the Prologue on the score of morality. Chaucer
has indeed chosen to depict an immoral woman, and he
has allowed her to reveal herself with a coarse plainness
of language which is sure to shock the fastidious of
a more prudish age, and which may well have shocked
the more fastidious of Chaucer's contemporaries; but
we must remember that Chaucer has not apologized for

238 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

her immorality, nor attempted to represent it as other
than it is. Some readers may find the poem disgusting;
but no one can call it seductive. Chaucer has, more-
over, preserved the moral balance by his clear appre-
ciation of the fact that unstinted gratification of sense
is not the road to happiness.

THE WIFE OP BATH'S TALE

It was Chaucer's first intention, as we have seen
above,1 to put in the mouth of the Wife of Bath the
'merry' fabliau of the Parisian merchant and his un-
faithful wife which we know as the Shipman's Tale.
The general tenor of this tale is thoroughly appropri-
ate to the Wife of Bath; but Chaucer conceived a new
and better idea. The good woman's prologue has dealt
with the 'wo that is in mariage.' She has proposed a
problem — how to be happy though married; and in her
own tale and in those of the Clerk, the Merchant, and
the Franklin which follow are presented various answers
to the problem or contributions towards its solution.
Recent critics have called this set of tales the 'marriage
group.'

In the Wife's own tale the knight, confronted with
the choice whether he would have his wife old and foul
but faithful and devoted, or young and fair but skittish,
leaves the decision to the lady herself, giving her the
mastery and sovereignty over him. As a reward for his
submission, she promises to be both fair and good.

And thus they live, unto hir lyves ende,
In parfit joye.

The recipe for marital happiness is to let your wife have
her own way in everything.

1 See page 189.

THE WIFE OF BATH'S TALE 239

After the quarrelsome interlude of Friar and Sum-
moner is concluded, the Clerk of Oxford returns to the
theme of marriage with a tale addressed directly to
the Wife of Bath, which offers exactly the opposite an-
swer. Marquis Walter rules his ever-patient wife with
the most autocratic sovereignty. To all his commands,
however outrageous, she gives unquestioning, uncom-
plaining obedience; and, her twelve years of trial over —

Ful many a yeer in heigh prosperitee
Liven thise two in concord and in reste.

The Clerk's playful recipe for happiness is complete
wifely submission.

The Merchant's Tale offers no recipe for happiness,
but elaborates further the woe that is in marriage, par-
ticularly in such an ill-assorted union as that of January
and May, perhaps in any marriage entered into with
the sole idea of 'fol delit.' Chaucer had been reading
the Miroir de Mariage of Deschamps, and from it he
draws in considerable measure the long satirical dis-
cussion of marriage which occupies the earlier part of
the Merchant's Tale.1

The final contribution to the debate is found in the
Franklin's Tale. Dorigen and her husband Arviragus
have found the solution in mutual forbearance. The
husband swears that he will 'take no maistrye agayn
hir wil'; and she in return promises that there shall
never be dispute between them, that she will be his
'humble trewe wyf.' This, says the Franklin, is the
only way to married happiness: —

For o thing, sires, saufiy dar I seye,
That frendes everich other moot obeye,

1 See the article by J. L. Lowes on 'Chaucer and the Miroir de
Mariage,' Modern Philology, 8. 165-186, 305-334.

240 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

If they wol longe holden companye.
Love wol nat ben constreyned by maistrye;
Whan maistrie comth, the god of love anon
Beteth hise winges, and farewell he is gon! *

Stories closely akin to that told by the Wife of Bath
are found elsewhere in English literature. Gower tells
essentially the same story, though in much
less artistic form, in the first book of the Con-
fessio Amantis. In Bishop Percy's folio manuscript
there are two ballads — the Wedding of Sir Gawain
and Dame Ragnell and the Marriage of Sir Gawaine
— which develop the same theme. Still another in-
stance of the tale is the border ballad of King Hen-
• rie in Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Sim-
ilar stories of a loathly lady who becomes beautiful in
her marriage-bed are found in Icelandic, Gaelic, French,
German, and in the Orient. Indeed, the idea of dis-
enchantment by a kiss is a common theme of fairy
tales, as in the well-known nursery story of the Sleep-
ing Beauty.2

Though Gower's version and Chaucer's are nearer
akin to one another than to any other of the tales known
to us, neither seems to have been direct source for
the other. Dr. G. H. Maynadier,3 who has gone most
thoroughly into the question, believes that the tales
of Chaucer and Gower go back ultimately to an Old

1 Through these tales of the 'marriage group' there runs another
thread of common interest, the discussion of 'gentillesse.' The doc-
trine that 'gentillesse' depends not on birth but on excellence of
character, promulgated by the loathly lady in the Wife's tale, is ex-
emplified by the perfect bearing of the lowly-born Griselda. The
Franklin is impressed by the ' gentillesse ' of the Squire and his tale of
Canace. He wishes that his own son 'mighte lerne gentillesse aright.'
The Franklin's Tale shows that a clerk can ' doon a gentil dede ' as well
as a knight or squire.

J See Originals and Analogues, pp. 481-524.

1 The Wife of Bath's Tale, its Sources and Analogues, London, 1901.

THE WIFE OF BATH'S TALE 241

Irish original ; but his argument, though interesting,
is so involved that one fails to be convinced by it.

The Friar, always ready, as the Sumraoner declares,
to intermeddle in matters that do not concern him, has
laughed at the undue length of the Wife's TneTaie
preamble to her tale. She does not immedi- Itself-
ately answer him ; indeed, the loud-voiced Summoner
gives her no chance ; but when the Host has called the
Friar and Summoner to order, she takes occasion, in
the opening paragraph of her tale, to pay back her
critic with a clever dig. Her tale is to be a fairy tale,
and so she begins with the remark that

In th' olde dayes of the king Arthour,
Of which that Britons speken greet honour,
Al was this land fulfild of fayerye.
The elf-queen, with hir joly companye,
Daunced ful ofte in many a greue mode;

but now their place has been taken by these limiters
and other holy friars : —

For ther as wont to walken was an elf,
Ther walketh now the limitour himself.

As a result of this change, —

Wommen may go saufly up and doun,
In every bush, or under every tree ;
Ther is noon other incubus but he,
And he ne wol doon hem but dishonour.1

The Wife of Bath has introduced her tale and paid
back the Friar at the same time ; while the combina-
tion of delicate imagination with coarse insinuation
serves admirably as a transition from the Prologue to
the tale itself.

1 I. e., ' He -will not carry them off to fairy-land ; he will only dis-
honor them.' This is the reading of Skeat's text and of the best
MSS. The Globe Edition, following the Cambridge MS., reads : ' And
he ne wol doon hem non dishonour,' which must, of course, be taken
as sarcasm.

242 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

The story proceeds smoothly for a while, till the
knight begins to collect answers to the riddle, ' What
thing is it that wommen most desyren?' The Wife
finds herself face to face again with the question she
has debated in her Prologue ; and fifty-seven lines are
devoted to a discussion of the various answers sug-
gested, and to the tale of Midas's wife (learned doubt-
less from husband number five). One may notice that
she here returns for a while from the land of fiction
to the problems of reality. This is suggested subtly
by a change of tense, and by the introduction of the
pronoun ' we,' which indicates her lively personal par-
ticipation in the matter. Compare, for example, the

Sotnme seyde, wommen loven best richesse
of line 925 with

Somme seyde, that our hertes been most esed,
When that we been yflatered and yplesed

of lines 929, 930, and with change to the present tense :

And somme seyn, how that we loven best
For to be free, and do right as us lest.

The story is resumed with the charmingly poetical
vision of the four and twenty ladies dancing under a
forest side, who vanish as the knight approaches. The
picture is not elaborated as Spenser would have treated
it ; * it is merely suggested to the imagination. It is
sufficient, however, to furnish us with the hint that the
loathly lady is not of human kind. One may notice
in passing how Chaucer has managed to introduce an
element of surprise into the story. The hag does not,
as in Gower, specify the condition on which she will
extricate the knight from his difficulty, she merely
demands the granting of her first request; not till
after the knight's triumphant answer to the queen, is
1 Cf. Faerie Queene, 6. 10. 10-18.

THE WIFE OF BATH'S TALE 243

marriage mentioned. Nor does the reader learn the
answer to the riddle till the knight speaks it out in full
court.

Brought to the fulfillment of his pledge, the knight
ungenerously, though not unnaturally, objects that his
wife is loathly and old and come of low kind. This
gives occasion for the long and excellent sermon on the
nature of true nobility which occupies the last quarter
of the tale : —

Loke who that is most vertuous alway,
Privee and apert, and most enteudeth ay
To do the gentil dedes that he can,
And tak him for the grettest gentil man.

The noble ideas nobly expressed in this speech, which
suggest familiar words of Burns and of Tennyson,
though part of Chaucer's personal creed, as shown by
their reappearance in his balade of Gentilesse, are not
his original discovery. A similar strain of democracy
may be found in Dante, in Petrarch, in Boccaccio,
and in the Roman de la Rose. Some exception has
been taken, however, to the dramatic appropriateness
of such sentiments to the character of the Wife of
Bath. Ten Brink says, for example : ' The thoroughly
sound moral of the long sermon given by the wise old
woman, before her metamorphosis, to her young, unwill-
ing husband, comes more from the heart of the poet
than from the Wife of Bath.' 1 But is not the Wife
of Bath, as a prosperous member of the middle class,
precisely the person to assert that true gentility is
not the peculiar possession of the nobly born? If the
poet has lent to these lines a tone of higher poetry
than the Wife can be conceived capable of, he has done
only what Shakespeare does continually. The function
of the dramatist is not that of the mere reporter.
1 History of English Literature (English trans.), 2. 163.

244 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Another possible objection that may be urged against
this passage is that so long a digression interrupts too
seriously the progress of the tale. On the contrary,
it is an artistic device of the highest skill. A loathly
hag is to be transformed suddenly into a beautiful lady.
Such a process makes a large draught on our powers
of belief. The high poetry of the long discourse serves
to bridge over the change ; our minds are for the time
being diverted from what is going on. We are held
captive by the spell of her poetry, and at the conclusion
of the speech are not surprised to find that the speaker
is of wondrous beauty. As a further instance of Chau-
cer's art in the management of the metamorphosis, we
may notice that he refrains from any detailed descrip-
tion either of her ugliness or of her beauty. Our minds
are less startled by the change from ugliness in general
to beauty in general than by that of a definite type of
ugliness into a definite type of beauty.

The tale is one of Chaucer's poetic triumphs.

THE FRIAR'S TALE

At the conclusion of the Wife of Bath's long pre-
amble, it will be remembered, the Friar had * intermed-
dled ' with a derisive laugh at the good woman's long-
windedness, and had been promptly called to order by
the Summoner. Each promised to tell a tale which
should not be complimentary to the other's profession ;
and only with difficulty could the Host calm them
down, and win a hearing for the Wife of Bath. All
through this enforced silence, the quarrel has been
smouldering ; and the Friar has cast dark looks upon
his natural foe. When Dame Alice has ended, the
Friar hastens to seize the opportunity to strike the first
blow. His tale is ably paid back by the Summoner ;
and each reader must decide for himself which comes

THE FRIAR'S TALE 246

out better in this war of tales. The enmity of the
Friar and the Summoner is not come of new; their
quarrel is the quarrel of their professions. The Sum-
moner belongs to the organization of the so-called sec-
ular clergy, which includes the parish priests, the arch-
deacons, and the bishops. The Friar, as a member of
a mendicant order, belongs to the so-called religious
clergy — those who had taken definite religious vows,
and belonged to world-wide organizations, which held
authority directly from the Pope, and were independ-
ent of the jurisdiction of the national church. Such
a co-existence of separate ecclesiastical organizations
within the same realm gave rise, of course, to endless
jars ; for the religious clergy were continually en-
croaching on the privileges of their secular brethren,
and the latter not unnaturally tried to curb their
power. Thus the Friar boasts that he and his order
are outside the Summoner's jurisdiction ; to which the
Summoner gives countercheck quarrelsome by the
answer that so are ' the wommen of the styves.' Since
we know that the Friar could rage ' as it were right
a whelpe,' and since the ' fyr-reed cherubines face * of
the Summoner portends a choleric disposition, their
quarrel was a foregone conclusion. As it was appar-
ently Chaucer's purpose to show up both professions
impartially, he chose the clever device of * making
each of these rascals demolish the other,' a device
which serves also to heighten the dramatic realism of
the Canterbury pilgrimage.

The Friar's Tale is merely an application to the
profession of the Summoner of a popular anecdote, pre-
viously told at the expense of a bailiff or a

•* ^ SOUTC6S*

lawyer, but equally appropriate to any other
unpopular functionary. Two analogues to Chaucer's
tale are given in the Chaucer Society's volume of

246 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Originals and Analogues. The first of these, and the
one which illustrates most clearly what the poet had
to build on, is found in a volume, printed probably
about 1480, written by a Dominican friar named John
Herolt, which is intended as a help to sermon-writers.
The second section of the work contains a series of
short anecdotes which a preacher might find useful
as examples to point his moral. Among them is the
story just referred to. Of course this volume appeared
nearly a century later than the Canterbury Tales ; but
the anecdote may well have been in circulation long
before. If Chaucer found it in some similar work on
sermon-writing, its appropriateness to the preaching
Friar is very obvious. The heightened effectiveness
of Chaucer's tale, which, in the absence of any evi-
dence to the contrary, we may suppose due to his own
genius, is clearly shown by a comparison with this
Latin Narrative of a certain Wicked Seneschal which
I shall give here in translation.

There was a certain man, a seneschal and lawyer,
a calumniator of the poor, and a despoiler of goods of
every sort. One day he went to court to bring a suit,
and to enrich himself. A certain man met him in the
way and said to him, * Where are you going ? and
what is your business ? ' The first man answered, * I
am going to make money.' And the second said, 'I
am just such a one as you. Let 's go together.' When
the first man consented to this, the second said to him,

* How do you make your money ? ' And he answered,

* The substance of the poor, as long as they have any-
thing, which I get by law-suits and prosecutions, either
justly or unjustly. Now I have told you how I make
my money, tell me, prithee, how do you make yours ? '
The second answered him and said, ' I put down to my
profit everything that is given to the devil in curses.'

THE FRIAR'S TALE 247

The first man laughed, and made fun of the second,
not knowing that he was the devil. After a little, as
they were going through a town, they heard a poor
man curse a calf, which he was leading to market,
because it would not go straight ; and they also heard
a similar curse from a woman who was beating her
boy. Then said the first to the second, * Here 's a
chance for you to make money if you wish. Take the
boy and the calf.' The second answered, 'I can't, be-
cause they are not cursing from their hearts.' Now
when they had gone a little further, a band of poor
men came along, going to the law-court, and seeing the
seneschal, they all began to hurl curses at him with
one accord. And the second said to the first, ' Do you
hear what they say ? ' 4 1 hear,' said he, ' but it makes
no difference to me.' And the second said, ' They are
cursing from their hearts, and giving you over to the
devil, and so you shall be mine.' And straightway he
snatched him up and disappeared with him.1

This is a clever and diverting anecdote ; but Chau-
cer's tale is something more. We may notice first of
all the heightened realism given by the de- chaucer'a
tailed description of the Summoner and his Tale<
methods, and of the fiend, as he rides in his gay dis-
guise of yeoman's green ; by the vivid picture of the
carter urging his horses, Brok and Scot, through the
heavy slough, whacking them and cursing them while
the wagon sticks, calling down all the blessings of
heaven upon them when the wheels begin to turn ;
and by the half-humorous, half-pathetic figure of old
Mabely indignantly repelling the Summoner's persecu'
tion, wishing him and the new pan, which he covets,
both to the devil together. The dialogue between the

1 Still another analogue, from the Zurich poet, Usteri (1763-1827X
is given by F. Vetter in Anglia, Beiblatt, 13. 180, 181.

248 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

two travelers is, as Ten Brink calls it, a little master-
piece. Though he is entertaining him unawares, the
Summoner finds the fiend such eminently congenial
company, that he immediately pledges him a life-long
friendship. Shameless as he is, he none the less tries
to hide the fact of his detested calling : —

He dorste nat, for verray filthe and shame,
Seye that he was a somnour, for the name.

Deliciously humorous is the series of hints by which
the fiend gradually reveals his true identity. He, too,
is a sort of bailiff, who must gather in his lord's rents.
As for his dwelling-place, it is ' fer in the north con-
tree ' (the region where Lucifer set up his power) ; l
the yeoman hopes to see his new friend there some
day ; he will give him such clear directions before they
part, that he cannot possibly miss it. The fiend's ac-
count of his own unscrupulous methods draws from
the Summoner a frank confession that he makes off
with everything that he can find, 4 but-if it be to
bevy or to hoot.' The Summoner must know the name
of this stranger so completely after his own heart.

This yeman gan a litel for to smyle.
1 Brother,' quod he, ' wiltow that I thee telle ?
I am a feend, my dwelling is in belle.'

The Summoner is naturally a little startled at the
revelation, but not for long ; he is not the man to give
up so charming an acquaintance for a trifling circum-
stance. One may be a little taken aback on discover-
ing that a chance acquaintance is a rabid anarchist or
violent atheist. If he is well dressed, and a gentleman,
we can pardon him some eccentricities of belief ; and

1 The hell of Teutonic mythology was located in the north, as the
region of darkness. A false interpretation of Isaiah 14. 12-14 may
have helped to incorporate the same idea into Christian myth. Of.
Milton, Paradise Lost, 5. 755.

THE SUMMONER'S TALE 249

then, too, a man of revolutionary tendencies is so in-
teresting. The Summoner begins immediately to ques-
tion him on the ' privitees ' of a fiend's existence. The
fiend, who, we may notice, has a supreme contempt for
the speculations of theologians —

I do no fors of your divinitee —

obligingly satisfies his curiosity, so far as these things
can be explained to a mere mortal. Hereafter, he pro-
mises, the Summoner shall come where he needs no
further teaching : —

For thou sbalt by thyn owene experience
Conne in a chayer rede of this sentence
Bet than Virgyle, whyl he was on lyve,
Or Dant also.

The Summoner may be professor of demonology, if he
wishes, and lecture from a professional chair draped in
the red, not of a doctor of divinity, but the red glare of
hell-fire.

There is one moment of suspense, just before the
tale reaches its catastrophe. Old Mabely wishes the
Summoner to the devil with all her heart, but with
one proviso, ' but he wol him repente.' The Summoner,
who has surely had warning enough of what he is to
expect, who was quick enough to suggest to his diabolic
friend that the carter's horses were legitimate prey, is
fatally blind. Proudly he asserts that he has no inten-
tion of repenting, and the fiend bears him off body and
soul to hell,

Wher-as that somnours ban hir heritage.

THE SUMMONEE'S TALE

Once, near the beginning of the Friar's tale, the
Summoner could not refrain an interruption ; but, on
the whole, he kept himself very well in hand, know-
ing that the hour of his revenge was near. At the end

250 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

of the tale, however, he is quaking like an aspen leaf
for wrath, and, unable to wait for the slower revenge
of his tale, serves an hors d'cettvre in the shape of a
not very savory anecdote, which describes the partic-
ular place in hell reserved for these cursed friars. If
the Friar has been able to tell much of the true nature
of fiends, it is no wonder, for

Freres and feendes been but lyte a-sonder.

The tale of the Summoner is, as far as our present
knowledge suffers us to say, mainly original. The cen-
tral idea of it, to be sure, may very well have
been suggested by an old French story, the
Tale of the Priest's Bladder, versified by one Jakes
de Basiu.1 This story tells of a priest near Antwerp,
who is visited on his death-bed by two Jacobin friars,
who beg an offering. He has already made his will,
and at first refuses them outright ; but when they are
importunate, he bids them come next day with their
prior, and he will give them a jewel which he would
not part with for a thousand silver marks. The jewel
turns out to be his own bladder, which they may
cleanse and use for a pepper-box ; and the friars go
home, laughed at of all. Quite possibly Chaucer knew
some variant of this tale, now lost to us. The definite
localization of the incident at Holderness in York-
shire makes this probable. If such a variant existed,
it probably contained the change in the nature of the
bequest, and the germ, at least, of the closing scene
in the hall of the lord, where the young squire wins
a new gown by his clever resolution of the problem
which the churl had set. We may assume, with some

1 The tale is given by Legrand d'Aussy in his collection of Fabliaux
ou Contes, Fables et Romans du Xlle et du Xllle. Siecle (1829). It is
reprinted in Originals and Analogues of Some of Chaucer's Canterbury
Talet, pp. 137-144.

THE SUMMONER'S TALE 251

confidence, that the long hypocritical prediction with
which Friar John favors the bed-rid churl, and the per-
fect life-likeness of the scene, are Chaucer's original
addition.

Some readers, I suppose, will be offended at the
coarseness of the Summoner's Tale. Coarse it cer-
tainly is in its closing portion, but not in 1^8^.
the least vicious. So callous is the wretched moner's
friar of the tale in his miserable hypocrisies,
that he needs a coarse insult by way of discipline. In-
deed, the outspoken frankness of the conclusion comes
as a positive relief after the sanctimonious pretenses
of the friar. As for the coarseness of old Thomas, we
may dismiss that as does the lady in the castle, whither
the irate friar has betaken himself for redress : —
I seye, a clierl hath doon a cherles dede;

as for the coarseness of the squire, that is so ingenious
that it is surely forgivable.

But the real literary value of the Summoner's Tale
lies not in the plot of it, however artistically conducted,
so much as in the masterful portrait of the dissembling
friar. James Russell Lowell has called attention to the
rich suggestiveness of the line : —

And fro the bench he droof awey the cat.

'We know without need of more words that he has
chosen the snuggest corner.' Admirable, too, is the
picture of the good-wife with her kindly hospitality,
her openness to flattery, and her ample faith in the
efficacy of Friar John's prayers, contrasting sharply
with the companion picture of her churlish husband
and his rough incredulity.

At the shameless hypocrisy of the friar, one knows
not whether to laugh or to weep. So complete a master
is be of the art of shamming that, even in his trans-

252 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

port of rage, he remembers to protest at the title of
' master ' which the lord bestows on him : —

' No maister, sire,' quod he, ' but servitour,
Thogh I have had in scole swich honour.
God lyketh nat that " Raby " men us calle,
Neither in market ue in your large halle;'

a disclaimer which is careful to specify that the title is
not at all inappropriate. The only thing he forgets is,
that for a preacher who has so ably denounced the sin
of wrath, it is hardly consistent to give such an emi-
nent example of the sin in his own person : —

He looked as it were a wilde boor;

He grinte with his teeth, so was he wrooth.

All this is humorous enough on the surface of things ;
but to one who knows something of the high ideals
which St. Francis and St. Dominic set before their
orders of mendicants, and something of the great work
for humanity, and for true religion, which these orders
achieved in the early days of their purity, this picture
of degradation has more of tragedy than of comedy.
It is precisely the greatest tragedy and the most
inexplicable mystery of our little life, that the great
institutions founded by our wisest and best for the
attainment of the noblest aims should, almost without
exception, develop, sooner or later, into instruments
of positive evil. The friar does not sin in ignorance ;
his long sermon shows that he had all the precepts of
his pious founder at the tip of his oily tongue ; but
these precepts have become a hollow mockery, and
worse. Unfortunately, the testimony of Chaucer does
not stand alone. Boccaccio, Gower, Langland, and
Wiclif, men of very diverse temperaments and preju-
dices, all agree with Chaucer in painting the mendi-
cant orders as hopelessly corrupt — a thinly whited
sepulchre filled with dead men's bones.

CHAPTER XII
THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUPS E, F, G, H, I

THE CLERK'S TALE

APPARENTLY the university students of the fourteenth
century were as diverse a lot as those of the present
day. Clerk Nicholas of the Miller's Tale, with his
gay sautrye,' and the two Cambridge students who
take their mischievous revenge on the Miller of Trump-
ington, represent one species of the genus ; while the
poor clerk of the Canterbury pilgrimage belongs to
the class which we thoughtlessly dismiss with the word
* grind.' Lean he is of figure, sober of his bearing,
threadbare as to his coat : —

For him was lever have at his beddes heed

Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,

Of Aristotle and his philosophye,

Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye.

Of studie took he most cure and most hede.

Sharply contrasted with the ready assurance of 'hende
Nicholas ' is the bashful reserve of this nameless Clerk
of Oxenf ord : —

' Sir clerk of Oxenford,' our hoste sayde,

' Ye ryde as coy and stille as dooth a inayde,

Were newe spoused, sitting at the bord ;

This day ne herde I of your tonge a word.

I trow ye studie aboute som sophyme.'

So academic is his bearing, that the Host feels it neces-
sary to request that he refrain from preaching, and from
too scholarly a manner of speech. But the Clerk is no

254 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

mere mechanical ' grind.' We discover the eager play
of an active and original mind in his very way of speak-
ing, ' short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.' It is a
delight to see the sudden flash of enthusiasm with which
he refers to the great and worthy clerk, Fraunceys
Petrark. That he is by no means lacking in a healthy
vein of roguish humor, the closing stanzas of his tale
show clearly enough. That the Host's warning against
too lofty and pedantic a style was superfluous, the tale
itself may bear witness. It is written in 'an honest
method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more
handsome than fine.'

In response to the Host's command to tell a
Scarves. . , y- ,

tale, the Clerk says : —

I wol yow telle a tale which that I
Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,
As proved by his wordes and his werk.
He is now deed and nayled in his cheste,
I prey to god so yeve his soule reste!
Fraunceys Petrark, the laureat poete,
Highte this clerk.

/

Chaucer's tale of Griselda is, indeed, only a close trans-
lation of Petrarch's Fable of Obedience and Wifely
Faith, which is in its turn a somewhat freer Latin ren-
dering of the tenth novella of the tenth day in Boccac-
cio's Decameron. Prefixed to Petrarch's rendering of
the tale is a Latin letter to Boccaccio telling how the
translation came to be made. Though Petrarch and
Boccaccio were close friends, and though the Decameron
had been written at least twenty years earlier, Petrarch
seems not to have read it till a year or two before his
death, which occurred in 1374. Even then Petrarch
found the book too big to read through. He merely
glanced over the greater part of it, reading carefully
only the introductory description of the plague and

THE CLERK'S TALE 255

the concluding tale of Griselda. The latter impressed
him so deeply that he committed it to memory, and was
in the habit of repeating it to his friends. Wishing to
make it current among those who knew no Italian, he
found leisure to turn it into Latin, retelling it in his
own words, adding and changing a little here and there.
That Chaucer used Petrarch's version rather than
Boccaccio's original we know from the Clerk's explicit
statement. Independently of that, a comparison of the
three versions establishes the fact beyond shadow of
doubt. Great as is Chaucer's debt to Boccaccio, we have
no evidence that he ever read a line of the work on
which Boccaccio's fame now chiefly rests. The problem
of Boccaccio's sources for the tale is a puzzling one, and
fortunately is of no immediate concern to the student
of Chaucer. We may notice, however, that the tale is
found in a collection of French Fabliaux, ou Contes
du XHIe et du XHIIe Siecle, edited by Le Grand
(1781).1

If the question of Chaucer's source for the Clerk's
Tale is a simple one, very complicated is the question
as to the exact way in which Petrarch's fable The gu
reached him. The Clerk of Oxenf ord is made posed Meet.
to say that he learned the tale at Padua from

the worthy clerk, Fraunceys Petrark ; and this and
has been taken to mean that Chaucer himself
heard the story from Petrarch's lips. At first blush there
is much to lend probability to this interpretation. Pe-
trarch's version of the tale was made in 1373, while the
' laureat poete ' was actually living at Arqua, a suburb
of Padua ; and 1373 is the date of Chaucer's first visit
to Italy. What more likely than that Chaucer should
have sought out the chief man of letters in all Italy,

1 An abstract of the fabliau is given in Originals and Analogues to
Borne of Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales, pp. 527-537.

256 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

and that Petrarch, who, we know, was in the habit of
reciting the tale to his friends, should have entertained
his guest with the fable of Griselda? If it is objected
that Chaucer's version follows Petrarch's so closely that
he must have had the Latin text before him as he wrote,
it is plausibly suggested that Petrarch presented his
visitor with a manuscript of the tale as a parting gift.
Professor Skeat is so sure of the interpretation that he
insists that any one who doubts it must accuse Chaucer
of deliberate falsehood. Chaucer's romantic biographer,
Godwin, even tells us just how the two poets felt on
meeting, and what each said to the other.

Nevertheless, there have long been skeptics to doubt
this pleasing theory. Professor Lounsbury, after call-
ing attention to the fact that the Canterbury Tales is a
dramatic composition, and that it is the Clerk of Oxen-
ford and not Chaucer who says he learned the tale from
Petrarch at Padua, sums up with the sentence : ' We
can creditably and honestly try hard to think that the
two poets met ; but with the knowledge we at present
possess, we have no right to assert it.' 1 Much as we
should like to believe a story which appeals so strongly
to our sense of what ought to have been, I fear that
in view of recent investigations, even the cautious posi-
tion of Professor Lounsbury is no longer tenable. Mr.
F. J. Mather, after carefully investigating the exact
date of Petrarch's composition of the fable, and the
chronology of Chaucer's Italian journey, and looking
into the conditions of traveling in the fourteenth
century, has come to the following conclusions.2 For
Petrarch's translation of the Griselda story ' any date in
the early months of 1373 is possible, any date earlier

1 Studies in Chaucer, 1. 68.

2 ' On the asserted meeting of Chaucer and Petrarca,' Modern Lan-
guage Notes, 12. 1-11.

THE CLERK'S TALE 257

than April is improbable.' The mission of which
Chaucer was a member was sent primarily to conduct
business at Genoa. Leaving England on December 1,
1372, it could not have reached Genoa much before
February 1, 1373.1 On reaching Genoa, Chaucer was
detached from his associates and sent on special busi-
ness to Florence. Supposing that he made no stay in
Genoa, he may have been in Florence about February
10. He was apparently back in Genoa by March 23.
The length of his possible stay in Florence is thus seen
to be only a few weeks; and diplomatic business is usu-
ally not very quickly dispatched. Moreover, a journey
from Florence to Padua, easy enough in the day of rail-
ways, was then to be accomplished only by a long and
dangerous ride over mountain roads, still made diffi-
cult by the winter's snow. It seems improbable that
Chaucer made this wide detour, but if he did, he could
not have been in Padua later than March 15, a date too
early for the probable composition of Petrarch's Latin
version.

We cannot assert positively that Petrarch and Chaucer
did not meet ; but in the absence of any positive evi-
dence of their meeting, we must admit that the proba-
bilities are strongly against it. As for Chaucer's actual
possession of the tale, Mr. Mather has shown that it
speedily became popular, and that manuscripts of it
were early multiplied. That Petrarch was dwelling near
Padua, Chaucer might easily have learned without
coming within two hundred miles of the place.

What we shall think of the Clerk's Tale will be
largely determined by what we think of the Grisel(ja
woman about whose personality the whole the Patient.

1 An allowance of two months for the journey to Genoa is probably
excessive. On his second Italian Toyape of 1378, Chaucer was absent
from England less than four months. The second journey, however, was
made in the summer, when traveling was doubtless easier.

258 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

action centres. We are shown a young peasant-girl of
blameless life, who is suddenly taken from her daily
round of unremitting toil and frugal simplicity to be
made first lady of a great domain. The sweet nobility
of her character is raised far above the play of outward
circumstance. She fills her new station as naturally and
simply as she had tended sheep or turned her spinning-
wheel ; she gives to her husband the same unfeigned,
unstinted love and devotion that she had given to her
old and feeble father. With a character such as this,
and with great beauty of person as its fitting shrine, it
is no wonder that Marquis Walter loved her, and that
his people came to look upon her as the brightest star
of all their land. A character which can stand sudden
prosperity without receiving a flaw can also stand ad-
versity. With unquestioning obedience she suffers her
children to be snatched from her, and herself to be sup-
planted by an unknown rival. The crowning instance
of her wonderful patience is her prayer to Walter to
spare his new-found lady : —

' O thing biseke I yow and warne also,
That ye ne prikke with no tormentinge
This tendre mayden, as ye han don mo;
For she is fostred in hir norishinge
More tendrely, and, to my supposinge,
She coude nat adversitee endure
As coude a povre fostred creature.'

Here is no word of reproach ; though the reproach in-
evitably implied is heavy enough. Notice the carefully
guarded phrase, ' as ye han don mo,' where mo means
not me but more, 'as you have done to others.'1

1 Petrarch's Latin reads : ' Unum bona fide te precor ac moneo, ne
lianc illis aculeis agites, quibus alteram agitasti.' Boccaccio is a little
more definite : ' Ma quanto posso vi priego, che qnelle pnnture, le quali
air altra, che vostra fu, gia deste, non diate a questa.' (But I beg you
•with all my might that you give not to this woman those pricks which
you gave to the other who was yours.)

THE CLERK'S TALE 259

What are we to think of this matchless patience?
Most modern readers, particularly women readers, I
suppose, will think it ridiculous, if not positively crim-
inal. Imagine a convention of woman's rights advocates
debating the conduct of Griselda ! ' Miserable, weak-
spirited creature ! ' one hears them shriek. But those
were the days when women still promised at the altar
to obey their lords, and considered the promise as
something more than a meaningless phrase. Moreover,
Griselda was not only her husband's wife, but his subject
as well ; and the obligation of the vassal to obey the
lord was only less sacred than man's obligation to obey
his God. Griselda merely lives up strictly to the letter
and spirit of her obligation, and, one may add, to the
letter and spirit of the command that we ' resist not
evil,' a command which our modern world has agreed to
ignore. But, some one exclaims, is not a woman's first
duty to protect her offspring, and is not Griselda vir-
tually an accomplice before the act to what she supposes
to be the murder of her children ? A duty, doubtless,
and a sacred one ; but by what authority do we call it
her ' first duty ' ? Mothers have been known to urge
their sons on to almost certain death in battle ; and the
deed has been called one of noble patriotism. There is an
old story, not yet quite forgotten, of a father who stood
ready to sacrifice an only son, at what he believed to be
the command of his God. He may have been mistaken ;
Griselda may have been mistaken ; perhaps we shall
one day be so civilized that the Spartan mother will
no longer be held up as a model. The question of pre-
cedence in moral duties is a more troublesome one than
any that has vexed the master of ceremonies at a court
levee ; and each age must be left to settle the matter for
itself. Griselda merely put in practice what all her
contemporaries held in theory. Petrarch was a man of

260 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

enlightened views, far in advance of his age ; yet it did
not occur to him to question the Tightness of her conduct.
He tells, in one of his letters, how he once gave the tale
to a friend, and asked him to read it aloud. The friend
broke down in the middle of the reading, and could not
continue for his tears. I am not arguing the question
on its merits ; I merely insist that he who would read
the tale aright must imaginatively think himself into
the spirit of a time long past, in which men held princi-
ples quite other than ours, but in which, as in our own,
there were found those who would answer unflinchingly
to the stern voice of duty. Unquestioning obedience
to duty is a quality too noble and too rare in any age to
suffer us to question too nicely the occasion which calls
it forth. The tale is, as Ten Brink calls it, ' the Song
of Songs of true and tender womanhood.'

Just what Chaucer himself thought of Griselda is
not entirely clear to me. At the conclusion of the tale
he makes the teller say : —

This storie is seyd, nat for that wyres sholde

Folwen Grisilde as in humilitee,

For it were importable, though they wolde;

But for that every wight, in his degree,

Sholde be constant in adversitee

As was Grisilde.

The difficulty of interpretation lies in the word * importa-
ble,' which means ' unbearable.' l Does it mean that such
conduct would be unbearable to others, or that a woman
who should strive to follow Griselda would be unable
to bear the strain ? The context seems to me to favor
the latter interpretation, in which case we shall conclude
that Chaucer considered Griselda's humility entirely
right, but for the majority of women an unattainable
ideal. The roguish reference to the Wife of Bath, and
1 Of. Canterbury Tales, B 3792 : ' Hia peynes weren importable.'

THE CLERK'S TALE 261

the humorous envoy which follow are merely intended
to restore the playful tone which Chaucer wished
should dominate the Canterbury Tales.

One dramatic problem of peculiar difficulty is pre-
sented by the character of the Marquis, Griselda's
husband. The plot of the story demands that ^^
he shall act with wanton cruelty, and cause his Marquis
wife twelve years of needless sorrow. Yet it a te
was not possible to paint him as a heartless villain ; for
Griselda must not only obey him, but love him. This
fundamental inconsistency cannot be removed; but
the art of the story is shown in the extent to which it
is concealed.

The opening sections of the tale present him in a
distinctly favorable light. He is young, handsome, and
good-natured : —

A fair persone, and strong, and yong of age,
And ful of honour and of curteisye,
Discreet ynogh his contree for to gye.

All his people love him, both lords and commons. He
has no vices ; in light-hearted carelessness he spends his
time a-hawking and a-hunting. Though he was

To speke as of linage,
The gentilleste yborn of Lumbardye,

he is quick to discern the true nobility of a peasant girl;
and, far from entertaining any dishonorable designs
upon her, is ready to make her his wife, and treat her
as his equal. It is easy to see the grounds of his gen-
eral popularity.

Yet, withal, there is an unlovely side to his nature ;
he is essentially selfish, a spoiled child. He neglects
affairs of state, thinking only of his own pleasure. It
is obviously his duty to marry and beget an heir; yet
he prefers bachelor freedom, and has to be reminded
of his duty by a delegation of his subjects. He is too

262 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

good-natured to refuse the request ; but willfully declines
the offer of his lords to choose a fitting consort for him,
and asserts his liberty of action by flying in the face of
conventionality and wedding a peasant. There is surely
as much of pride as of generosity in his action ; and one
is tempted, too, to think that he foresees less interfer-
ence to his liberty from a wife who is his inferior.

He has his way, weds Griselda, and is proud to find
his eccentric choice justified by Griselda's popularity,
and by her dignity in her new position. He is fond of
her as a spoiled boy is fond of a favorite horse, and in
mere pride of possession proceeds to put her through
her paces. As the reckless horseman is not contented
that his mare can take an ordinary hedge or ditch, but
keeps trying her at harder barriers to test the limits
of her excellence, so Walter devises still harder tests of
his wife's patience and obedience. He does not mean to
be cruel; he believes in his wife, and intends to set all
right in the end ; he loves her after a selfish fashion.
Even when all is over, he feels no particle of remorse ; he
has restored to her her children and the incomparable
blessing of his own love. But those twelve years !

THE MERCHANT'S TALE

Whatever Chaucer may have thought of Griselda as
an ideal of womanhood, he was quite aware that actual
realizations of the ideal are not over-numerous. The
fabulous Chichevache, who feeds only on patient wives,
is never in danger of a surfeit. Having depicted a wife
of the type of Griselda, the poet restores the balance of
actuality by telling, in the person of the Merchant, the
not very edifying tale of January and May.

As seen at the Tabard Inn, on the eve of the Canter-
bury pilgrimage, no one would have suspected the skel-
eton in the prosperous merchant's domestic closet. His

THE MERCHANT'S TALE 263

forked beard, his Flemish beaver hat, his ' botes clasped
f aire and f etisly,' his self-satisfied manner of speech, —

Souninge alway th'encrees of his winning,
suggest no hidden tragedy. But he has listened with
strange feelings to the Clerk's story of Griselda, who
suffered twelve long years without a murmur. He, poor
man, has been married but two months, —

' And yet, I trowe, he that al his lyve
Wyflees hath been, though that men wolde him ryve
Unto the herte, ne coude in no manere
Tellen so muchel sorwe, as I now here
Coude tellen of my wyves cursednesse ! '

The Host, it will be remembered, has some experience
in conjugal infelicity, and readily enough gives the
Merchant leave to tell his tale.

The greater part of the Merchant's Tale is, as far as
we know, Chaucer's original creation ; only the climax
of the tale, the scene in the garden, where the
blind husband recovers his sight just in time
to witness his wife's infidelity, and is persuaded that all
was done for his own good, can be traced to an earlier
original. The particular version of this ' pear-tree story '
which Chaucer used is not known to us; but several
analogous tales, European and Oriental, are given in
the Chaucer Society's volume of Originals and Ana-
logues,1 which may be read and compared by those who
think it worth while to trace the genesis of a tale which
was hardly worth telling in the first place. Of these
analogues, the best known is the ninth novella of the
seventh day in Boccaccio's Decameron. This, though
obviously a related tale, differs materially from the ver-
sion Chaucer must have followed, the element of the
husband's blindness being entirely lacking. Even in
the portion of the tale which is borrowed, Chaucer's
» Pp. 177-188, 341-364.

264 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

originality may be seen. As Tyrwhitt says : ' Whatever
was the real origin of this tale, the machinery of the
faeries which Chaucer has used so happily, was probably
added by himself ; and indeed, I cannot help thinking
that his Pluto and Proserpina were the true progenitors
of Oberon and Titania, or rather, that they themselves
have, once at least, deigned to revisit our poetical sys-
tem under the latter names.'

Chaucer's tale has been retold by Pope under the title
of January and May.1

Whatever one may think of the merits of the Mer-
chant's Tale, it will not do to dismiss it, as does a recent
The Tale writer on Chaucer, as a mere ' tale of harlotry ; '
itself for the poet's chief interest in the story cen-
tres not in its adulterous denouement, but in the
humorous character-sketch of old January. The doting
gray-beard has spent his godless life in unbridled
wantonness ; and now that he is sixty years and more,
and the spark of desire is burning low, he decides that
the comfort and happiness of his declining years, and
incidentally the salvation of his soul, will be furthered
by a tardy entrance into ' that holy bond with which that
first God man and womman bond.' Only a young and
beautiful wife will answer the purpose ; and with such
a one old January foresees a life of unmixed bliss : —

For wedlok is so esy and so clene,
That in this world it is a paradys.

The sage counsels of Justinus, who urges objections
manifold, avail as much as good advice usually avails a
man who is already decided : —

For whan that he himself concluded badde,
Him thoughte ech other maimes wit so badde,

1 For a comparison of Pope's version with the original, see the article
by A. Schade, in Englische Studien, 25. 1-130, 26. 161-228.

THE MERCHANT'S TALE 265

That inpossible it were to replye
Agava his chois, this was his fantasye.

The sycophant, Placebo, who is clever enough to argue
on the popular side, bears away the palm for wisdom.
Exceedingly delicate is the irony with which Chaucer
manages this debate, and proclaims the unending hap-
piness of the married state, while making it quite appar-
ent all the while that for January the roseate vision is
to be but mockery. So plausible is the sarcastic praise
of marriage that the passage beginning : —

For who can be so buxom as a wyf ?
Who is so trewe, and eek so ententyf
To kepe him, syk and hool, as is his make ?

has actually been quoted, in all seriousness, to show
Chaucer's ' perception of a sacred bond, spiritual and
indestructible, in true marriage between man and
woman ' ! l

Foredoomed inevitably to failure, this senseless
union of ' crabbed age and youth ' is rendered yet more
absurd by the elaborate marriage-feast, which Chaucer,
contrary to his usual custom, has described at length,
but described with an irony all the more biting because
of its apparent good faith : —

Whan tendre youthe hath wedded stouping age,
Ther is swich mirthe that it may nat be writen.

When, in the sequel, the entirely natural happens,
and * f aire f resshe May ' plays false with her marriage
vows, she carries our sympathies with her. Not that
we approve of her conduct exactly, but our attention is
diverted from the merely lascivious in the tale, and from
the moral questions involved, to the eminent poetic jus-
tice of old January's cuckoldom. An immoral tale is
made to subserve a sort of crude morality.

1 The Prologue, Kniqht's Tale, etc., edited by Richard Morris, Oxford,
1895, p. xyiii, and Morley, English Writers, 2. 135, 256, 286.

266 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Even when the faithless wife occupies the centre of
attention, it is the cleverness of her intrigue, and the
sublime audacity of her inspired self -vindication, rather
than her sensual desires which interest us ; while the deli-
cate conceit of an overruling providence in the persons
of Pluto and Proserpine, king and queen of faery, who
sagely debate the wisdom of King Solomon and of Jesus
jilius Syrak) relieves the essential coarseness of the tale.
Even in the realm of faery, a wife will have her way :
Pluto may espouse the cause of the injured husband,
but the queen knows a subtler magic than his own.

It would have been easy, had Chaucer so wished, to
give the tale a tragic ending ; but it is conceived from
beginning to end in the spirit of a ' humor ' comedy of
Ben Jonsou. The tragedy is there, to be sure, but it is
concealed so successfully from its victim that he ends
his days, for aught we know, in the paradise of fools
whose bliss is their ignorance.

The Merchant's Tale was written when Chaucer was
at the height of his power, after he had already
achieved one masterpiece of the same general character
in the Wife of Bath's Prologue.1 Immoral the tale
certainly is ; but its immorality is not insidious, and
the spirit of broad comedy which pervades the piece is
all but sufficient to sweeten the unwholesomeness of it.

THE SQUIRE'S TALE

When Milton in II Penseroso wished to summon
up the memory of Chaucer, he did so by an allusion to
the Squire's Tale: —

Or call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,

1 That the Merchant's Tale is later than the Wife of Bath's Prologue
is shown by the direct allusion to the latter at line 16S5.

THE SQUIRE'S TALE 267

And who had Canace to wife,
That owned the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass
On which the Tartar King did ride.

Another of England's greater poets, the author of the
Faerie Queene, took upon himself the task of complet-
ing the half -told story, after addressing ' Dan Chaucer '
in terms of deepest reverence and love.1 A lesser poet,
Leigh Hunt, who made a modernization of the Squire's
Tale, entertained the idea of writing a conclusion to it,
but wisely refrained.2 The critic, Warton, placed the
tale next after that of the Knight as * written in the
higher strain of poetry.'

A considerable part of the attention which this tale
has received is due, I fancy, to the very fact that it
was left half told. I am inclined to suspect that Chau-
cer abandoned the work because he did not know how
to conclude it ; and if this is so, any attempt on our
part to guess its conclusion must be futile. The Tar-
tar King is provided with a wondrous horse of brass, on
which he can fly ' as hye in the air as doth an egle,'
and in the space of four and twenty hours arrive in
whatsoever land he will. To his daughter, Canace, is
given a magic ring, whose virtue is such that with it
on her finger she shall understand the voices of all
the birds of heaven and converse with them in their
own tongue, and a mirror in which all the deeds of
men are revealed as if face to face. There is a magic
sword, too, which will pierce the strongest armor, and
like Achilles' spear ' is able with the change to kill and
cure.' In the second part, Canace, by virtue of her

1 Faerie Queene, Book 4, Cantos 2 and 3.

2 See Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, 3. 211-212. One John Lane, a
friend of Milton's father, produced in 1630 a long continuation of the
tale, which has been published by the Chaucer Society. It is miserable
nonsense.

268 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

ring, learns a tale of unhappy love from a falcon, who
is, we must suppose, some princess laboring under an
enchanter's spell. There are great wars toward. With
such a beginning, what is not possible ? The imagina-
tion roams through limitless fields of pleasing conjec-
ture. The very name of magic has its fascination for
our poor race of mortals, shut in as we are by the
relentless barrier of the possible and the actual. Any
conclusion which Chaucer, or any other poet, could
have written would be barren and commonplace com-
pared with our vague imaginings. And this is inevit-
able in the very nature of the case. Let the magic
horse, the ring, the sword, and mirror be put to practi-
cal use, let their use result in any definite achievements
or events, and they are immediately vulgarized. Once
more the tyranny of the actual, if not the possible,
shuts us in ; and the boundless scope of the imagina-
tion is narrowed to nothing. An exactly similar case is
presented by Coleridge's wonderful fragment, Kubla
Khan, which deals, be it noticed, with the same Ori-
ental dynasty as Chaucer's tale, Kubla Khan being a
grandson of Gengis Khan, whose name becomes the
Cambinskan of Chaucer. This poem is unfinished for
the good reason that it could not be finished ; it is essen-
tially a fragment ; and so great is Coleridge's art that
the fragment may be said to constitute a distinct lit-
erary form. Much might be said of the beauty of the
incomplete, of the desirability of leaving things half
finished. The beauty of a spring day is in large mea-
sure the promise of summer days to come, which, when
they come, fall often below our expectation. The un-
equaled charm of a noble youth rests on the unlimited
possibility of noble action which lies before him. The
early death of Keats has served to magnify fourfold
the estimate set upon his work. We have no proof

THE SQUIRE'S TALE 269

that he would ever have surpassed the actual achieve-
ments he has left to us. Indeed, there are indications
that he would not have done so. Yet such is the power
of the incomplete, that we hear critics speak of him as
one who might have been a second Shakespeare. Or, to
take an example from what might have been, suppose
that Milton had been cut off after he had completed
only the first two books of Paradise Lost. What
should we not have expected of the ten remaining
books of a poem which opens so magnificently ? But
we have the poem entire, and know that the level of
the first two books was higher than Milton could con-
sistently maintain. The more one considers the keen-
ness of Chaucer's critical insight and the strange

* elvishness' of his character, the more strongly one sus-
pects that Chaucer recognized this power of the incom-
plete, and deliberately left his tale half told.

In no case has Chaucer more happily suited the tale to
the character of the teller than in the case of the Squire.
As the Knight, his father, tells a noble tale of tour-
nament and knightly love, so his son, the Squire, turns
naturally to a theme of chivalry. But there is a differ-
ence. Warton says that ' the imagination of this story
consists in Arabian fiction engrafted on Gothic chivalry.'
It is in the days of our youth that the fiction of the Ara-
bian Nights appeals most strongly to us. Before the

* shadows of our prison house ' close about us, we are
all impatient of the actual, and dream of the infinite
possibilities that might follow on the impossible. The
Knight has lived his life and worked his work, and so
his story, however ideal in its spirit, is of things accom-
plished, of deeds already done. The Squire, though

He had been somtyme in chivachye,
In Flaundres, in Artoys, and Picardye,
And born him wel, as of so litel space,

270 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

is living mainly in the infinite future, where all things
are possible. All that his father has accomplished is
as nothing beside what he intends to do. His charm,
like that of the tale he tells, is in large measure the
charm of incompleteness.

There is hardly a feature of the Squire's Tale which
does not find its parallel in the Oriental literature of
magic. A reader whose acquaintance with this
literature is confined to the Arabian Nights
will find such parallels in abundance.1 But no single
narrative which Chaucer might have used has yet been
discovered. Whether any such narrative existed, or
whether Chaucer merely allowed his imagination to play
freely with the familiar themes of Arabian magic, fill-
ing in his background with such scraps of knowledge
about Tartary and the Far East as he had picked up in
reading or conversation, we cannot say. The general
character of the tale, and in particular its unfinished
state, would favor the latter theory.

Professor Skeat tried hard to prove that Chaucer's
acquaintance with Gengis Khan, and with such features
of local color as his story presents, was derived from
the famous book of the travels of Marco Polo ; but this
theory has been shown to be absolutely without foun-
dation.2 Such are Chaucer's mistakes and confusions
that it is hard to believe that he could have had any
connected account of the Tartars before him.8

1 The whole subject has been investigated with great thoroughness
by Mr. W. A. Clouston, in an article entitled On the Magical Elements in
Chaucer's Squire's Tale, appended to the Chaucer Society's edition of
John Lane's continuation of the Squire's Tale.

2 J. M. Manley, ' Marco Polo and the Squire's Tale,' Publications of
the Modern Language Association of America, 11. 349-362.

8 Perhaps this is the best place to notice another exploded theory,
that of Professor Brandl, who with characteristic German ingenuity
has found in the Squire's Tale an elaborate allegory of the English
court, Cambinskan representing Edward III, and Canace his daughter-

THE FRANKLIN'S TALE 271

THE FRANKLIN'S TALE

The portrait of the Franklin in the General Prologue,
though an attractive one, hardly does full justice to this
* worthy vavasour.' We are shown a prosperous coun-
try land-holder, a man of sixty or over, we may suppose,
with beard as white as the daisies which stud his spa-
cious meadows, and with countenance as ruddy as the
wine which lies in his well-stocked cellar. It takes no
extraordinary power of clairvoyance to know that his
table must be loaded with ' alle deyntees that men coude
thinke,' while the general kindliness and good-nature of
his bearing tell us that there is always room at his board
for another guest. We like the good man, and should
be glad enough to receive an invitation to spend a week-
end in a house where it ' snows meat and drink.' But
we dismiss him from our thought as ' Epicurus owne
sone ' for his good living, and as the Saint Julian of his
country for generous hospitality. It is only after we
have traveled a day or two with him on the Canterbury
road, and heard him tell his noble tale, that we see more
intimately into his life and aspirations.

The Franklin has much in common with the better
type of the 'self -made man.' He has at his disposal all
that money can buy, and he has held office in his own
county ; but he is uncomfortably conscious of a certain
lack of ' gentility,' — betrayed by his fondness for the
words ' gentil ' and ' gentilesse,' — and of the full edu-
cation which would adorn his prosperous estate.

' But, sires, bycause I am a burel man,
At my biginning first I yow biseche
Have me excused of my rude speche ;
I learned never rethoryk certeyn.'

in-law Constance, second wife of John of Gaunt (Englische Studien,
12. 161). This fanciful theory has been demolished by Professor Kit-
tredge, in Englische Studien, 13. 1-25.

272 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

That he has made up in some way or other for the lack
of early advantages, is shown by the excellence of his
tale, and by the more or less learned discussions which
he rather needlessly introduces, such as the historical-
mythological catalogue of women who died rather than
sully their honor, which occupies lines 1366-1456. His
enlightened views and sound good sense are shown in
the opinion he expresses of astrology : —

And swich folye,
As in our dayes is nat worth a flye.

Once he indulges in one of the figures of rhetoric of

which he has professed his ignorance : —
But sodeinly bigonne revel newe
Til that the brighte sonne loste his hewe ;
For th'orisonte hath reft the sonne his light ;

but his good sense and native honesty bring him down
to earth again in the line which follows : —
This is as muche to seye as it was night.
Conscious that, with all that he has acquired and at-
tained, he can never be quite the complete gentleman, he
would fain be the father of a gentleman ; but his hopes
are disappointed by the unfortunate vulgar procliv-
ities of his son and heir. To the gallant young squire he
says : —

' I have a sone, and, by the Trinitee,
I hadde lever than twenty pound worth lond,
Though it right now were fallen in myn bond,
He were a man of swich discrecioun
As that ye been ! fy on possessioun
But-if a man be vertuous withal.
I have my sone snibbed, and yet shal,
For he to vertu listeth nat entende;
But for to pleye at dees, and to despende,
And lese al that he hath, is his usage.
And he hath lever talken with a page
Than to commune with any gentil wight
Ther he mighte lerne gentillesse aright.'

THE FRANKLIN'S TALE 273

So might a Toledo oil-magnate bewail the vicious tend-
encies of the son whom he is lavishly maintaining at
Yale or Harvard. Considering this, there is something
of pathos as well as fine generosity, in the enthusi-
astic praise which the Franklin bestows on the Squire
for his noble tale, which we, alas ! can never hear to its
end: —

* In feith, Squier, thou hast thee wel yquit,
And gentilly; I preise wel thy wit.'

This outburst of praise calls the Host's attention
to the Franklin; and, though he disposes of the good
man's most cherished aspiration with a contemptuous
4 straw for your gentillesse ! ' he nevertheless singles
him out as the teller of the next tale.

Were it not that in other instances we find Chaucer
assigning a fanciful, rather than the actual, source for
his compositions, the opening lines of the
Franklin's Tale would seem sufficient evi-
dence that its source was a courtly Breton lay, such as
those that have come down to us in French dress from
the hand of Marie de France.

Thise olde gentil Britons in hir dayes
Of diverse aventures maden layes,
Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge;
Which layes with hir instruments they songe,
Or elles redden hem for hir plesaunce;
And oon of hem have I in remembraunce,
Which I shal seyn with good wil as I can.

But no such lay has been preserved to us.1 Tales similar

1 Dr. W. H. Schofield has attempted to prove from an account of a
Briton chieftain, Arviragus, in Geoffrey of Monmonth'a Historia, that
such a legend actually existed in South Wales, whence it was carried
to Brittany, and written up, perhaps with accretions from another source
ultimately Oriental, by a poet of the school of Marie de France. (Publi-
cations of the Modern Language Association of America, 16. 405-449.)
The argument is ingenious, and one would be glad to accept it ; but it
consists of hypotheses rather than of evidence. An elaborate refutation

274 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

to that of the Franklin have been found in Sanskrit, Bur-
mese, Persian, and other Oriental tongues ; and a still
closer parallel is offered in a tale told by Boccaccio in his
early prose work the Filocolo, and again, with slight va-
riations, in the Decameron, Day 10, Nov. 5.1 In Boccac-
cio's version, a faithful wife promises an importunate
lover, of whom she wishes to be rid, that she will give
him her love, if he can make a garden bloom and bear
fruit in mid-January. The lover accomplishes this by
the help of a magician ; and the story concludes as does
the Franklin's. Of the two parallel tales of Boccaccio,
that in the Filocolo is somewhat nearer to Chaucer's ;
and it is possible that Chaucer may have drawn his
material thence, changing the scene to Brittany, alter-
ing the names in accordance with this change, and con-
siderably modifying the story itself; but it is more
probable that his source was a French fabliau, closely
related to the source whence Boccaccio's tale was drawn.
The fact that the scene was laid in Brittany would be
sufficient to explain the fanciful attribution to a Breton
lai. The history of the tale, as it traveled from the dis-
tant east to Chaucer's study, was probably similar to
that of the story which we have in the Pardoner's
Tale.2 It is interesting to notice that Beaumont and
Fletcher have utilized the plot of the Franklin's Tale
for a one-act play entitled The Triumph of Honour.
The chief beauty of this tale resides in the noble

of Dr. Schofield's contention is given by P. Rajna in Romania, 32. 204-
267. (' Le Origini della Novella narrata dal Frankeleyn nei Canterbury
Tales del Chaucer.')

1 The story also appears in the twelfth canto of Boiardo's Orlando
Innamorato. See Originals and Analogues to Some of Chaucer'1 s Canterbury
Tales, pp. 289-340, where several Oriental versions and the Decameron
novella are given in translation. For the relation of Chaucer's version
to Boccaccio's, see the article by P. Rajna, in Romania, 32, 204-267.
Kajn.-i's conclusions in this matter the present writer cannot accept.

3 Cf. above, p. 224.

THE FRANKLIN'S TALE 275

spirit which pervades it. The unswerving fidelity of
Dorigen, who cannot make merry when her husband is
overseas, and who unhesitatingly rejects the Literary
advances of her lover Aurelius ; the utmost Qualities.
loyalty to the spoken pledge, which impels Arviragus
to send his wife to keep a promise, though spoken in
jest — are so potent in their power for good that not
only the passionate lover, but the poor scholar in far-
off Orleans, are compelled to an equal nobility. Ten
Brink says of the poem : ' The contagious influence of
good, proceeding from a common as well as from a
noble disposition, and the wondrous power of love, are
beautifully symbolized in this fable. And throughout
all his story Chaucer gives special prominence to the
idea by which the whole receives its internal comple-
tion, viz., the idea that love and force mutually exclude
each other, while patience and forbearance belong to
the very essence of love.' 1

Beautiful as is this picture of married love, Chaucer
has taken care that it shall not become sentimental, by
touching it here and there with his own peculiar humor.
Thus with sly ambiguity he asks, after describing the
bliss of Arviragus and Dorigen, —

Who coude telle, but he had wedded be,
The joye, the ese, and the prosperitee
That is betwixe an housbonde and his wyf ?

And again in describing the grief of Dorigen at her
husband's departure for Britain : —

For his absence wepeth she and syketh,
As doon thise noble wyves whan hem lyketh.

After giving us the passionate ' complaint ' uttered by
Aurelius in his love-longing, there is on the author's
part a playful assurance of his own unconcern : —

1 History of English Literature (English trans.), 2. 169.

276 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Dispeyred in this torment and this thoght

Lete I this woful creature lye ;

Chese he, for me, whether he wol live or dye.

The poem ends in the manner of the debat literature
so popular in mediaeval France, with a question addressed
to the judicious reader, or rather to the members of the
pilgrimage : —

Lordinges, this question wolde I aske now,
Which was the moste free, as thinketh yow?

Which of the three — Arviragus, who sacrifices his wife
to his sense of honor, Aurelius, who foregoes his coveted
opportunity, or the clerk of Orleans, who in remitting his
promised fee, showed that he too ' coude doon a gentil
dede ' — shows the greatest freedom, i. e., generosity ?
One would be glad to hear the discussion which must have
arisen among the company when this question was pro-
pounded ; but one of the several gaps in the unfinished
framework of the Canterbury Tales follows the Frank-
lin's Tale, and the reader is left to imagine the debate,
and to settle the burning question by himself. In at-
tempting the question, one must decide whether or not
the terrible sacrifice of Arviragus was necessary, or even
justifiable. Probably most modern readers will decide
that it was neither. A jesting promise is made on con-
dition that the seemingly impossible be performed. By
calling in the aid of magic, the condition is fulfilled.
Surely it is a hyperquixotic sense of honor which shall
insist on the fulfillment of a pledge so circumstanced.
But the Middle Age apparently admired such extreme
conceptions of honor,1 and I, for one, am not willing
to say that they were wrong. It would not hurt our
modern world to be a little more quixotic in its sense
of honor. I am quite ready to grant that in this in-

1 Cf. The tale of Nathan and Mithridanea, in Boccaccio's Decani'
eron, Day 10, Nov. 3.

THE SECOND NUN'S TALE 277

stance Arviragus was mistaken, that truth did not de-
mand the sacrifice ; even, if you will, that the sacrifice
should not have been made ; and yet his act is none the
less a noble act. I cannot see that its spirit is very
different from the spirit of the equally quixotic com-
mand, ' If any man will sue thee at the law, and take
away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.' In the
event, at least, Arviragus is justified ; his noble deed
begets nobility in others ; and we are shown once more
that it is indeed possible to overcome evil with good.

THE SECOND NUN'S TALE

Of the Second Nun, to whom the manuscript rubrics
assign the legend of St. Cecilia, we know nothing be-
yond the mere fact of her presence in the pilgrim-com-
pany as attendant on the Prioress. At the end of the
description of Madam Eglantine in the General Pro-
logue we read : —

Another Nonne with hir hadde she,
That was hir chapeleyne.

Chaucer has provided no introductory prologue to the
tale itself to inform us further of the good lady's per-
sonality, nor of the circumstance of her narration. The
appropriateness of tale to teller is, however, obvious
at a glance. Like the tale of the Prioress, the story
breathes that spirit of peculiar religious exaltation
which we associate with all that is most beautiful in the
monastic life.

That the legend of St. Cecilia was not originally in-
tended for its present place as one of the Canterbury
Tales might be shown from the internal evi- Date of
dence of the tale itself. In open contradic- Composition,
tion to the idea of oral narration on the pilgrimage is
line 78 : -

Yet preye I yow that reden that I loryte.

278 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Equally inconsistent is line 62, in which the speaker
refers to herself as ' unworthy sone of Eve.' We have,
however, a piece of external evidence on the question
which is even more convincing. In the Legend of
Good Women Dan Cupid says of the poet : —

He hath in prose translated Boe'ce,
And mad the Lyf also of seynt Cecyle.

This evidence taken together may be held to prove
that the tale was written before 1385, and was not
revised for its present position.

That the legend was written after Chaucer's Italian
journey of 1373 is rendered probable by the fact that
lines 36-51 are translated from the last canto of Dante's
Paradiso. From its general stylistic qualities, and in
particular from the closeness with which it follows its
original, critics have been inclined to ascribe it, with
Ten Brink, to the very beginning of Chaucer's so-called
Italian period, that is, to the years 1373-74. Proba-
bility favors this ascription ; but it must be remem-
bered that we have no positive evidence in its support.1
The source of the Second Nun's Tale is suggested
by the rubric which precedes line 85 : Interpretacio
nomlnis Cecilie, quam ponit frater Jacobus
lanuensis in Legenda Aurea. This Jacobus
Januensis, better known as Jacobus a Voragine, was a
Dominican friar, who in 1292 was consecrated arch-
bishop of Genoa ; and his Golden Legend, ' a collec-
tion of the legendary lives of the greater saints of the
mediaeval church,' was one of the most popular books
of the Middle Ages. Professor Koelbing has shown,
however, that Chaucer's original was a Latin life of
St. Cecilia, which, though closely related to that in the
Golden Legend, is in some particulars nearer to the

1 Dr. Koeppel, in Anglia, 14. 227-233, favors a date later than that
of Troilus and Criseyde.

THE SECOND NUN'S TALE 279

life of the saint written by Simeon Metaphrastes,1
printed in a collection of saints' lives by Aloysius
Liporaanus, Louvain, 1571. There is no proof that
Chaucer used the French translation of the Golden
Legend by Jehan de Vignay, nor any of the earlier
English accounts of St. Cecilia.2

Though we do not possess Chaucer's exact original,
we know from the extant Latin versions, from which it
probably differed only in minute details, that his trans-
lation is exceedingly literal. The following extract
from the version of Metaphrastes may be compared with
Chaucer's corresponding lines : ' Dixit Almacius prse-
fectus: Elige tu unum ex duobus, aut sacrifica aut
nega te esse cristianam, ut delicti tibi detur venia.
Tune dixit ridens sancta Ca&cilia : O judicem pudore
necessario affectum ! Vult me negare et esse me inno-
centem, ut ipse me faciat crimini obnoxiam.' 3

In Chaucer's English this becomes : —

Almache answerde, ' chees oou of thise two,
Do sacrifyce, or Cristendom reueye,
That thou rnowe now escapen by that weye.'
At which the holy blisful fayre niayde
Gan for to laughe, and to the juge seyde,
1 0 juge, conf us in thy nycetee,
Woltow that I reneye innocence,
To make me a wikked wight ? ' quod she.

This passage is typical of Chaucer's procedure through-
out, so that we may agree with Professor Koelbing's
assertion that ' apart from the charming versification,
which seems splendidly suited to the subject, Chaucer's
proprietorship in the composition consists only in single
words or half lines, which he used to fill out his verse.'
Any criticism of the tale, then, must be a criticism of

1 Englische Studien, 1. 215-248.

* See Originals and Analogues, pp. 189-219.

8 From Koelbing's article cited above, p. 223.

280 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

the original saint's legend rather than of Chaucer. It
is a story of a type to which our modern world is
The Tale inclined to do small justice. Full as it is of
the supernatural and the impossible, it lends
itself readily enough to the laugh of the mocker ;
while even the human motives of the saintly heroine
are far from the comprehension of to-day. Yet for its
pathos, its noble spirit of high religion, above all for
the irresistible force of Cecilia's sweet personality, the
tale may still be read and loved by all whose hearts are
not completely hardened. Chaucer, apparently, took
the tale quite seriously ; the genuineness of its religious
feeling cannot be questioned. So that his deliberate
choice of theme, not in the first place for the Second
Nun, but for himself, is a valuable piece of testimony
as to his deeper and more serious life.

Of the historical Cecilia little is known beyond what
can be inferred from the developed legend. Her mar-
tyrdom is usually assigned to the reign of the Emperor
Alexander Severus (A. D. 222-235) ; but even this is
not certain. St. Cecilia's present fame as patroness of
music and inventor of the organ is a later develop-
ment, of which Chaucer probably never heard. The
Cecilia of the legend sang to God in her heart ' whyl
the organs maden melodye,' and she received an angel
visitant ; but the two facts are unconnected, and the
mention of the organ is only a passing one.

THE CANON'S YEOMAN'S TALE
When the Second Nun has finished her tale of St.
Cecilia, and the company have reached the little village
of Boghton under Blee, they are joined by two new-
comers, the Canon and his Yeoman, who have ridden
furiously to overtake them, fearing perhaps to travel
alone through the robber-haunted Forest of Blean.

THE CANON'S YEOMAN'S TALE 281

The black-clothed Canon speaks but little ; but his
silence is more than atoned for by the garrulous lo-
quacity of his Yeornan. Little by little it transpires
that the Canon is a practicer of alchemy. The Yeoman
will not be silenced : —

And whaii this cbanon saugh it wolde nat be,

But his yeman wolde telle his privetee,

He fledde awey for verray sorwe aud shame.

Chaucer had little, if any, of the reformer's spirit
in his make-up ; but with his temperamental tendency
to see the comic in human life, he had a keen interest
in hypocrisy and clever imposture, an interest which
at times almost extends to an intellectual admiration.
With lively intellectual interest, but with no trace of
bitterness, he shows up the lying devices of his Par-
doner. With less detail, but with rich humor, Clerk
Nicholas in the Miller's Tale is made to exemplify the
tricks of the false astrologer. The Canon's Yeoman's
Tale is a complete expose of alchemy made by one of
its victims, and consequently made with a personal bit-
terness that has led many critics to the unwarranted
supposition that Chaucer himself had fallen prey to the
imposture. Chaucer may have believed, as did all the
most learned of his time, in the theoretical possibility
of transmuting the baser metals into gold. The fullness
and accuracy of his acquaintance with the subject, as
shown in the tale itself, prove that his intellectual
curiosity had led him to explore the mysteries of the
science. Even the Canon's Yeoman's Tale itself in-
dicates no active disbelief in the theory of alchemy.
But his sound common sense told him that in actual
experience the search for the philosopher's stone had
been but a pursuit of will-o'-the-wisp, when it had not
been downright fraud and imposture. We can be sure,
I think, that the only use Chaucer made of alchemy was

282 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

in transmuting the base metal of human greed and folly
into the finer gold of humor. The bitterness of the
Oanon's Yeoman's Tale is the dramatic indignation
of the Yeoman, who at last discovers that he has been
made a gull. Needless to say, it gives the highest real-
ism and color to the tale.

When his master takes to flight, and the Yeoman
finds himself free of the incubus that has for seven long
years possessed him, robbing him of money and of
health, his pent-up scorn finds vent in a long rambling
exposition of alchemical mysteries. He has learned his
lesson well ; and the ' terms ' of the * elvish craft,' ' so
clergial and so queynte,' flow freely from his loosened
tongue. There is no order in his speech ; and the
majority of his terms are, of course, meaningless to
us. The total effect is one of bewildering confusion,
precisely the effect which Chaucer wished to produce.
Deliciously humorous is his description of the sudden
bursting of the pot which contained the mixture which
was to bring great wealth. Some said this, and some
said that, but the bitter fact remained that months of
labor had gone for nothing.

The first part of the tale deals with the futile at-
tempts of serious alchemy, in which the deceivers are
themselves deceived, and all alike share in the common
failure. The second part, which is the more interest-
ing, tells of the clever trick of legerdemain by which
another canon, less scrupulous than the one we have
met, convinces a gullible priest that he actually pos-
sesses the elixir, and disposes of his worthless receipt
for the considerable sum of forty pounds.

No source for the tale is known, and probably none
is to be sought. Very likely the anecdote of the second
part is founded on an actual occurrence. A trick closely
similar to this was actually perpetrated in New York

THE MANCIPLE'S TALE 283

in the summer of 1890.1 After all, the chief interest
of the tale lies not so much in its substance as in the
personality of the Yeoman who relates it.

THE MANCIPLE'S TALE

The journey to Canterbury is nearly ended, and
already the company is in sight of a little town, —

Which that ycleped is Bob-up-and-doun,
Under the Blee, in Caunterbury weye.

Meanwhile honest Hodge of Ware, the Cook of Lon-
don, has been taking advantage of his vacation days to
sample the wine or ale of every wayside tavern, until he
has got himself disgracefully drunk. He talks through
his nose, breathes heavily, and finally falls from his
horse into the mire, whence he is raised into the saddle
again only after much shoving and lifting. Obviously,
he is in no condition to tell the tale which mine Host
demands of him ; so that the Manciple's ready offer to
serve in his stead is gladly accepted. On the first day
of the pilgrimage, it will be remembered, the Cook had
been called on for a tale, and had responded with the
story of Perkin Revelour, which Chaucer left unfin-
ished after the fifty-eighth line. That he should be
called on a second time is proof that, when the Man-
ciple's Prologue was written, Chaucer had not aban-
doned his original plan, as announced in the General
Prologue, that each of the pilgrims should tell two
tales on the road to Canterbury, and other two on the
journey home.

The tale which the Manciple tells is a short and sim-
ple one, and needs no long exposition here. It is merely

1 See Dr. C. M. Hathaway's edition of Ben Jonson's Alchemist, New
York, 1903, pp. 87, 88. The introduction of this volume contains an
interesting history of alchemy, its theory and practice, down to the
present day.

284 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

a clever retelling of the fable of Apollo and Coronis
in Ovid's Metamorphoses, 2. 531-632. Chaucer has
somewhat simplified the tale, and has added some moral
reflections on the futility of trying to restrain a wife,
and on the undesirability of repeating scandal, the latter
taken from Albertano of Brescia's treatise on the Art
of Speaking and of Keeping Silence.1 The same tale is
told by Gower in Confessio Amantis, 3. 783-830. Mr.
Clouston has shown 2 that the tale is ultimately of Ori-
ental origin, and that a version of the story, independent
of that given by Ovid, was brought to Europe in the
Middle Ages, and incorporated into the popular collec-
tion of tales entitled Li Romans des Sept Sages. But
Chaucer's tale was probably drawn directly from Ovid,
and certainly has no connection with this version last
named.

THE PARSON'S TALE

In the life of the fourteenth century the Church
played, for good and for evil, a part of the first impor-
tance, so that one need not be surprised that of the
nine and twenty gathered together at the inn in South-
wark, eleven are connected in one way or another with
the ecclesiastical organization. Surveying this delega-
tion as a whole, one is forced to the conclusion that
the English Church had fallen on evil days ; and this
conclusion is strengthened by the appearance of other
churchmen quite as unworthy as these in the tales
themselves. Unfortunately, the concurrent testimony
of such diverse observers as Gower, Langland, and
Wiclif proves that Chaucer's picture is not overdrawn.
Against such a background of corruption and unwor-
thiness, the poor parson of a town stands out with singu-
lar beauty, and the sympathetic portrait of him given

1 See the article by Koeppel, in Herrig's Archiv, 86. 44.

2 Originals and Analogues, 437-480.

THE PARSON'S TALE 285

in the General Prologue is justly regarded as one of
the loveliest bits of Chaucer's poetry.

Often enough on the road to Canterbury the good
priest must have been shocked by the words he had
to hear; but he knew how to keep his peace. He

* ne maked him a spyced conscience.' Only once does
he protest, when on the second day of the journey the
Host turns to him and with an oath demands a tale.
The Parson's mild rebuke calls forth from the Host a
scornful answer : —

' I smelle a loller in the wind,' quod he.

' How ! good men,' quod our hoste, 'herkneth me;

Abydeth for goddes digue passioun,

For we shall ban a predicacioun;

This loller beer wil precben us somwhat.'

But the Shipman, that stout defender of the estab-
lished faith, throws himself into the breach ; the dan-
ger of a * predicacioun ' is for the present averted ; and
the unpleasantness blows over. Not, however, till all the
other pilgrims have told their tales, late in the after-
noon of the last day's ride, does the Host again make
requisition for the Parson's tale. This time the Par-
son suffers his profanity to pass without rebuke. The
Host's earlier fears of a * predicacioun,' however, are
fully realized. The Parson will tell no fable, either in
rime or alliteration ; his tale is to be * moralitee and
vertuous matere,'

To shewe yow the wey, in this viage,
Of tbilke parfit glorious pilgrimage
That highte Jerusalem celestial.

The whole company sees the appropriatness of ending

* in som vertuous sentence,' and the Parson is given
free audience.

Much as we may admire the beauty of the Parson's
character as parish priest, we are heartily glad that we

286 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

do not have to sit under his preaching of a Sunday. His
sermon, or meditation, as he calls it, is interminably
long, and for our modern taste at least, intolerably dull.
It is full of excellent teaching, often expressed in tren-
chant language ; but for effectiveness as a whole, it is
immeasurably inferior to the brilliant sermon of the
miserable Pardoner. The theme of the discourse is Peni-
tence ; but into its midst is introduced a digression on
the seven deadly sins and their remedies, longer than
all the rest of the sermon, which hopelessly destroys
the unity and proportion of the whole.

Of the source of the Parson's Tale Professor Skeat
says : * 'It is now known that this Tale is little else
Sources than an adaptation (with alterations, omis-
Authen- sions, and additions, as usual with Chaucer)
ticity. of a French treatise by Frere Lorens, entitled
La Somme des Vices et des Vertus, written in 1279.' 2
Until quite recently this statement was universally ac-
cepted ; but we now know that the Parson's Tale and
La Somrne des Vices et des Vertus both go back to an
earlier common original, the Summa sen Tractatus de
Viciis of Guilielmus Peraldus, a Dominican Friar of
the thirteenth century, while the main body of the tale
which deals with penitence is from the Summa Casuum
PaenitenticB of another Dominican of the same century,
Raymund of Pennaforte.3 In just what versions these
treatises reached Chaucer we do not yet know ; but,

1 Oxford Chaucer, 3. 502.

a In the Chaucer Society's volume of Essays on Chaucer, pp. 503—
610, may be found a minute comparison of the Parson's Tale and the
Somme, by W. Eilers.

8 The Sources of the Parson's Tale, by Miss Kate O. Petersen, Rad-
cliffe College Monographs, 12. Boston, 1901. Favorably reviewed by
E. Koeppel, in Englische Studien, 30. 464-467. Professor Liddell's ' A
New Source of the Parson's Tale,' in the Furnivall Miscellany, 255-277,
is no longer important.

THE PARSON'S TALE 287

though the Somme of Frere Lorens may have been
consulted, it cannot have been his direct or even indi-
rect source. Nor do we know whether the unfortunate
piecing together of two distinct treatises is due to
Chaucer, or to his immediate original.

So inartistic is this combination, that many critics,
among them Ten Brink, have been unwilling to believe
that the tale as preserved to us is Chaucer's authentic
work. The whole digression on the seven deadly sins,
and other lesser sections of the work, they regard as
interpolations by another hand. But this method of
higher criticism, by which everything offensive to the
aesthetic taste of the critic is conveniently branded as
interpolation, is fortunately going out of fashion ; and
in this particular case there is no adequate ground for
supposing that the tale is not in all essentials as Chau-
cer wrote it.1

It will be remembered that the Host accused the
Parson of being a ' loller,' i e. a lollard, a follower of
Wiclif. Superficially, the portrait of the Parson in the
General Prologue suggests the ' poor preachers ' who
spread the reformer's teachings through the country-
side ; and a serious attempt has been made to prove
that he was intended as a Wiclifite, and that Chaucer
himself was in sympathy with the movement. Of course
the Parson's ' meditation,' with its insistence on the
necessity of auricular confession, is eminently orthodox ;
and if we accept it as genuine, we must at once dis-
miss the theory of his Wiclifite sympathies. Apart
from this objection, the theory never had any adequate
evidence in its favor. As for the Host's playful charge,
one may readily enough answer that it is quite in

1 Professer Koeppel, in Herrig's Archiv, 87. 33-54, has shown that
many quotations from the section on the seven deadly sins occur in
Chaucer's other works, just as we find similar quotations from Boe-
thius and from the Tale ofMelibeus,

288 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

accord with Chaucer's characteristic humor to have it
suggested that the one thoroughly worthy ecclesiastic
in the company is a heretic.1

In the last paragraph of the Parson's Tale, under
the caption ' Here taketh the makere of this book his
The Re- leve,' is found a strange and sad leave-taking,
tractation. jn wnjcn the poet beseeches ' mekely for the
mercy of god, that ye preye for me, that Crist have
mercy on me and foryeve me my giltes : — and namely,
of my translacions and endytinges of worldly vanitees,
the whiche I revoke in my retracciouns : as is the book
of Troilus ; The book also of Fame ; The book of the
nynetene Ladies ; The book of the Duchesse ; The
book of seint Valentynes day of the Parlement of
Briddes ; The tales of Caunterbury, thilke that sounen
into sinne.' The only works that he does not regret
are the translation of Boethius, 'and other bokes of
Legendes of seintes, and omelies, and moralitee, and
devocioun.' All for which we prize Chaucer he would
rather not have writ ! We should be glad to believe
that these words are not authentic ; but, remembering
Tolstoi and Ruskin, we dare not. The sincerity of the
passage cannot be questioned. We must believe that
in the sadness of his latter days the poet's conscience
was seized upon by the tenets of a narrow creed, which
in the days of his strength he had known how to trans-
mute into something better and truer. But into the
sacredness of his soul we had better not pry too curi-
ously.

* So here is ended the book of the Tales of Caunter-
bury, compiled by Geffrey Chaucer, of whos soule Jesu
Crist have mercy. Amen.'

1 Those who wish to pursue this Wiclifite theory may read the essay
on ' Chaucer a Wicliffite,' in Essays on Chaucer, 227-292, by H. Simon.

APPENDIX

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STUDY OF
CHAUCER

THE first question that presents itself to the student of
Chaucer is that of editions of the poet's works. The more ad-
vanced student must have access to Skeat's edition in six
volumes,1 commonly known as The Oxford Chaucer, pub-
lished in 1894. Though somewhat deficient in scholarly
method, this edition contains the most satisfactory text of
Chaucer's works in their entirety which has yet appeared,
and in notes and introductions a vast store of valuable infor-
mation. The introductions, however, are already in many
particulars antiquated. Skeat's text, with condensed glossary,
and brief general introduction, but without explanatory
notes, is also published in a single volume, called The Stu-
dent's Chaucer (Oxford University Press, 1900). This is the
most satisfactory edition of Chaucer now available for the
average reader. It is, everything considered, preferable to
the Globe edition, edited by Pollard, Heath, Liddell, and
McCormick (Macmillan, 1903). Professor F. N. Robinson of
Harvard has now (1921) in preparation and nearly completed
a single volume edition of Chaucer to be published in the
Cambridge Poets Series (Houghton Mifflin Company),
which will undoubtedly supersede both the Globe edition and
the Student's Chaucer of Skeat. The older editions of Chaucer
have no value save to the book-collector or the special student
of textual criticism, and should be avoided.

For the student of Chaucer's language and verse the stand-
ard work is Ten Brink's The Language and Metre of Chaucer
(English translation of the second German edition by M.

1 A seventh volume contains all the pieces which have in the past
been erroneously included among Chaucer's works.

292 APPENDIX

Bentinck Smith, Macmillan, 1901). l The less advanced stu-
dent will find all that he needs clearly presented in Pro-
fessor Samuel Moore's Historical Outlines of English Philol-
ogy and Middle English Grammar (George Wahr, Ann Arbor,
Michigan, 1919). This small volume contains an excellent
account of Chaucerian pronunciation, with phonetic tran-
scriptions. The best existing glossary is that in the Oxford
Chaucer. Under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution,
Professor J. S. P. Tatlock of Leland Stanford University is
now completing a concordance to Chaucer originally under-
taken by the late Professor Fliigel. This work, when pub-
lished, will be indispensable to serious students.

For the lif e of Chaucer, about which we have but few signi-
ficant details, the student may best use the article by J. W.
Hales in the Dictionary of National Biography. The fullest
presentation of the little we know is given in the Chaucer
Society volume of Life Records of Chaucer (1900). Interesting
light is thrown on one phase of the poet's career in Dr. J. R.
Hulbert's University of Chicago dissertation, Chaucer's Offi-
cial Life (1912). The most comprehensive study of the chro-
nology of the poet's literary career is Professor Tatlock's
Chaucer Society volume, The Development and Chronology of
Chaucer's Works (1907). The author's conclusions have not,
however, been accepted in their entirety by other scholars.
Miss Caroline F. E. Spurgeon's Chaucer Society volumes, Five
Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion (1914 and
1918), and her earlier book, Chaucer devant la Critique en
Angleterre et en France (Paris, 1911), form the starting-point
for any study of Chaucer's influence on later literature.

The great mass of Chaucerian scholarship is contained in the
voluminous publications of the Chaucer Society (London),
in the various scholarly journals, English, American, and
German, and in various university series of doctoral disserta-
tions. This material has been made accessible by the admir-

1 A third edition of the German work, revised by Eduard Eckhardt
has just appeared (Leipzig, Tauchnitz, 1920). The advanced student
will also consult Die Sprachlichen Eigentilmlichkeiten der wicMigeren
Chaucer-Handschriften und die Sprache Chaucers, by Dr. Friedrich
Wild (Wiener Beilrage, xliv, Vienna and Leipzig, 1915).

APPENDIX 293

able bibliography compiled by Miss E. P. Hammond, Chaucer,
a Bibliographical Manual (Macmillan, 1908). This volume is
indispensable to advanced students. It is supplemented, par-
ticularly in the case of matter published since 1907, by Pro-
fessor J. E. Wells's Manual of the Writings in Middle English
(Yale University Press, 1916), and the 'First Supplement' to
this work (1919).

Among more popular discussions of Chaucer and his poetry
may be mentioned the study by Professor E. Legouis of the
Sorbonne, Geojfroy Chaucer (Paris, 1910; English translation,
London and New York, 1913), and Professor Kittredge's de-
lightful and illuminating volume of lectures entitled Chaucer
and his Poetry (Harvard University Press, 1915). Mr. G. G.
Coulton's Chaucer and his England (Putnam's, 1908) contains
interesting matter on the daily life of Chaucer's England. Pro-
fessor T. R. Lounsbury's three volumes of Studies in Chaucer
(Harper's, 1892) and the pages devoted to Chaucer in Ten
Brink's History of English Literature, Vol. ii, Part I, (Holt,
1893), contain much that is still of value.

NOTES AND REVISIONS

(!N this appendix will be found references to important books
and articles which have been published since the first edition
of this book appeared in 1906, and a few corrections and addi-
tions to its text, which could not conveniently be incorporated
in the body of the volume. It is not intended that the bibliog-
raphy of recent books and articles should be complete. For
example, no notice is taken of such unfounded conjectures as
those contained in Mr. Victor Langhans's extensive volume,
Untersuchungen zu Chaucer, Halle, 1918.)

Page 59. Professor W. O. Sypherd has pointed out interest-
ing similarities between the Book of the Duchess and the anony-
mous fourteenth-century French poem, Le Songe Vert:
Modern Language Notes, 24. 46-47 (1909). See also Professor
Kittredge's article on ' Guillaume de Machaut and the Book
of the Duchess,' Publications of the Modern Language Associa-
tion, 30. 1-24 (1915).

Page 64. It was formerly believed that the two eagles 'of
lower kinde' in the Parliament of Fowls stood for William of
Bavaria and Frederick of Meissen; but Professor O. F. Emer-
son, Modern Philology, 8. 45-62 (1910), and Professor Samuel
Moore, Modern Language Notes, 26. 8-12 (1911), have shown
that it is more probable that the third eagle represents
Charles VI of France, and the second, Frederick of Meissen.
In 1913 Professor J. M. Manly, Studien zur englischen Philolo-
gie, ed. Morsbach, 50. 279-290, argued that the poem is merely
a variation of the conventional demande d' amours, where a
hypothetical case of love-casuistry is propounded and left for
solution to the wits of readers or auditors. He declines to see
in it any allusion to the marriage of Richard and Anne, or to
admit the necessity of any personal allegory. In the following
year Professor Emerson, Journal of English and Germanic
Philology, 13. 566-582, replied with new evidence in support

APPENDIX 295

of his position. In 1920 Miss Edith Rickert, Modern Philol-
ogy, 18. 1-29, argued that the demande d 'amours of Chaucer's
poem was intended to compliment not Queen Anne, but the
Lady Philippa of Lancaster, eldest daughter of John of Gaunt.
In this interpretation the three suitor eagles become the lady's
cousin, King Richard II, whom, as Froissart declares, Duke
John wished to annex as son-in-law, William of Bavaria, and
John of Blois, all of whom were possible suitors for the lady in
the year 1381.

The arguments are too complex for summary and criticism
here. The present writer can only state his opinion that the
demande d' amours of the Parliament of Fowls seems clearly
intended as an allegory of some actual courtship, and that
Miss Rickert's interpretation involves more serious inconsis-
tencies than those which she and Professor Manly have
pointed out in the theory which identifies the 'formel egle'
with the Lady Anne of Bohemia.

Page 66, line 1. The present writer now believes that the
composition of the Knight's Tale falls two or three years later
than that of the Parliament of Fowls. Cf. p. 168.

Page 66, line 8. The De Planctu Naturae may be read in the
English translation of D. M. Moffat, Yale Studies in English,
vol. 36 (1908).

Page 68. Dr. Edgar F. Shannon, Publications of the Modern
Language Association, 27. 461-485 (1912), has pointed out re-
semblances of a general character between Anelida and
Arcite and the Heroides of Ovid. In the same article he has
shown that the Amores of Ovid were sometimes referred to by
mediaeval scholars under the title 'Corinna' — the name of
Ovid's mistress in whose honor they are written. He suggests
that this is the explanation of Chaucer's mysterious ' Corinne.*
Unfortunately, Dr. Shannon has been able to find but one
possible parallel between Anelida and the Amores, and that of
a sort that might easily be fortuitous.

In Publications of the Modern Language Association, 86. 186—
222 (1921), Professor Frederick Tupper has argued that the
story of Anelida and Arcite was intended to shadow forth the
events of an unhappy marriage in one of the noble families of

296 APPENDIX

Ireland. Anelida, the 'quene of Ermony,' he identifies with the
young countess of Ormonde. The name Ormonde was com-
monly represented in contemporary Latin charters as 'Ermonie ' ;
and the maiden name of the countess was Anne Welle, while her
husband, the earl, was on his mother's side a d'Arcy. The re-
semblance of these names to Anelida and Arcite, when taken
in conjunction with the equivalence of Ormonde and Ermony,
constitutes a considerable presumption in favor of Tupper's
theory; but there is no positive evidence in its support. The
only reason for believing that the marriage hi question was
an unhappy one is the existence of two illegitimate sons of
the Earl of Ormonde, who may perfectly well have antedated
his marriage to Anne Welle. In the poem, moreover, Arcite's
new love never granted him any grace (lines 188, 189). Pro-
fessor Tupper suggests a number of further identifications,
such as that of Theseus with Lionel, Duke of Clarence, which
are much less plausible.

Miss M. Fabin, Modern Language Notes, 34. 266-272,
argues that Anelida is indebted to Le Lai de la Sousde of
Machaut.

Page 69, line 7. Cf. note on page 6, line 1, above.

Page 69, line 24. For a further account of the troubles of
the mediaeval author with his copyists, see the article by R. K.
Root, 'Publication before Printing,' Publications of the
Modern Language Association, 28. 417-431 (1913). See also
E. P. KuhPs 'A Note on Chaucer's Adam,' Modern Lan-
guage Notes, 29. 263-264 (1914).

Page 72, line 13. See the article by J. L. Lowes, 'The
Chaucerian "Merciles Beaute" and three poems of Des-
champs's,' Modern Language Review, 5. 33-39 (1910).

Page 73. We now know, thanks to the brilliant discovery of
Miss Edith Rickert, Modern Philology, 11. 209-225 (1913),
that the balade, Truth, is addressed to Chaucer's friend, Sir
Philip la Vache. The word 'vache' in the envoy should,
therefore, be printed with a capital V. La Vache was son-in-
law to Chaucer's friend, Sir Lewis Clifford. Miss Rickert has
recorded the main facts of his career.

Page 76. In Modern Language Notes, 27. 45-48 (1912),

APPENDIX 297

Professor J. L. Lowes discusses the reference in the Envoy to
Bukton to captivity in Frisia, and suggests that the poem
might have been written at any time between 1393 and 1396.
Professor Kittredge, Modern Language Notes, 24. 14-15 (1909)
cites from Deschamps some interesting parallels in dispraise
of marriage.

Page 86. Professor Kittredge has suggested, Modern Phi-
lology, 14. 129-134 (1917), that 'litel Lowis' may have been
the son of Chaucer's friend, Sir Lewis Clifford, and the 'son*
of the poet only by affectionate adoption.

Page 151. The closest parallel to the framework of the
Canterbury Tales is furnished by the prose Novelle of Giovanni
Sercambi of Lucca written some time later than 1374. In this
collection, the tales, though narrated by a single speaker, are
addressed to a group of travelers on a journey through Italy.
Brief interludes describe the doings of the company on the way.
There is a 'president' who exercises a function somewhat anal-
ogous to that of Chaucer's Host. It is possible that Chaucer
may have known Sercambi's work; but his debt to it, if any, is
of a very general nature. He does not seem to have utilized
any of the individual tales of the collection. The Novelle have
survived only in a single manuscript, which has never been
printed in its entirety. The best discussion of the matter is
Professor Karl Young's essay, 'The Plan of the Canterbury
Tales,' Kittredge Anniversary Papers, pp. 405-417 (1913).
The first scholar to call attention to the parallel was H. B.
Hinckley in his Notes on Chaucer (Northampton, Mass.,
1907).

Page 152. The student who wishes to venture into the
tangled problem of the order of the groups of the Canterbury
Tales will do well to begin with Miss E. P. Hammond's dis-
cussion, Chaucer, a Bibliographical Manual, pp. 158-172,
241-264. It must be remembered that the unity of Group B,
as adopted by Furnivall for the Chaucer Society and observed
in modern editions, rests on the authority of a single and other-
wise unreliable manuscript. This manuscript (Selden B 14 of
the Bodleian Library) is the only one which reads 'Shipman'
in line B 1179. Instead, we find the word 'Squier' in all but

298 APPENDIX

one of the remaining manuscripts which contain this link; in
that the word 'Sompnour' is substituted. The Selden manu-
script is the only one in which the Shipman's Tale follows im-
mediately the Man of Law's Tale. In the remaining manu-
scripts the Man of Law is followed by the Squire or by the
Wife of Bath. The link which in Skeat's edition is called the
'Shipman's Prologue' should instead be called the 'Man of
Law's Epilogue.' Scholars to-day consider the Man of Law's
Tale with its introductory lines and this epilogue as one group,
which they designate as B \ The group which begins with the
Shipman's Tale and ends with the Nun's Priest's epilogue is
designated B2.

The position assigned by Furnivall to C immediately after
B2 is entirely arbitrary. In all existing manuscripts except
Selden B 14, where it is found between G and H, it immedi-
ately precedes B2. Professor Samuel Moore, Publications of the
Modern Language Association, 30. 116-123 (1915), has accord-
ingly argued that the proper order is A, B1, C, B2, D, etc.
This seems more probable than the order A, C, B1, B2, D,
urged by G. Shipley in Modern Language Notes, 10. 260-279
(1895).

When Chaucer died, the Canterbury Tales were still un-
finished. It seems clear that the pile of manuscript which he
left gave no certain indication of the order in which he in-
tended to incorporate the various fragments into a unified
whole. Perhaps he himself had had no settled intention in the
matter. Various scribes tried in various ways to arrange the
sequence; and the result was the discord which now exists in
the surviving manuscripts. The modern editor must similarly
do the best he can to arrive at an arrangement which, if not
Chaucer's own, shall in its avoidance of inconsistencies be one
which Chaucer might have approved. He will consider pri-
marily the geographical allusions in the various fragments
and the references from one fragment to another, and will
consider only secondarily the order presented in the existing
manuscripts. From this point of view the order devised by
Furnivall and adopted by Skeat in his edition remains a
reasonably satisfactory solution; even though we grant, as

APPENDIX 299

seems probable, that Chaucer had no hand in the linking to-
gether of B1 and B2, and that he thought of C as preceding B2.

Skeat's Chaucer Society volume, The Evolution of the
Canterbury Tales (1907), confuses rather than clarifies the
problem.

Page 173. See the discussion of the Miller and the Reeve by
Dr. W. C. Curry, Publications of the Modern Language Associ-
ation, 35. 189-209 (1920).

Page 175. For a parallel to Chaucer's apology for his inde-
cent tales, see the article by R. K. Root, 'Chaucer and the
Decameron,' Englische Studien, 44. 1-7 (1911).

Page 191. For a full and very interesting discussion of the
Prioress's Tale and of the various versions of the story in
mediaeval literature, see Professor Carleton Brown's Chaucer
Society volume, A Study of the Miracle of Our Lady told by
Chaucer's Prioress (1910).

Page 223. See Dr. W. C. Curry's interesting article, 'The
Secret of Chaucer's Pardoner,' Journal of English and Ger-
manic Philology, 18. 593-606 (1919).

Page 253. On the Clerk of Oxford, see the article by Profes-
sor H. S. V. Jones in Publications of the Modern Language As-
sociation, 27. 106-115 (1912).

Page 255. Dr. W. E. Farnham has argued, Modern Lan-
guage Notes, 33. 193-203 (1913), that Chaucer had access to
the Italian version of Griselda as well as to Petrarch's Latin.
Professor Cook has suggested, Romanic Review, 8. 210 (1917),
that Chaucer consulted a French translation of Boccac-
cio's tale. •

Page 270. A little further light has been thrown on the
sources of the Squire's Tale by Professor H. S. V. Jones in
Publications of the Modern Language Association, 20. 346-359
(1905), and by Professor J. L. Lowes in Washington Univer-
sity Studies, Vol. I, Part II, pp. 3-18 (St. Louis, 1913).

Page 273. The fidelity of the Franklin's Tale to its Breton
setting is admirably discussed by Professor J. S. P. Tatlock in
his Chaucer Society volume, The Scene of the Franklin's Tale
Visited (1914). Mr. Tatlock believes that Chaucer has with
deliberate art given to a story derived from other sources —

300 APPENDIX

including the Filocolo of Boccaccio — the character of a
Breton lay. See also the article by J. L. Lowes, ' The Frank-
lin's Tale, the Teseide, and the Filocolo,' Modern Philology,
15. 689-728 (1918). Professor Lowes has shown conclusively
that in numerous passages of the Franklin's Tale Chaucer has
drawn on the Teseide of Boccaccio. He argues also for Chau-
cer's debt to the Filocolo. In spite of important differences,
the Franklin's Tale is closer to the version in the Filocolo than
to any other known version of the story; and there is no
reason why Chaucer may not have known this work of
Boccaccio. The facts can, however, be equally well ex-
plained on the assumption of a lost fabliau which was the
ultimate common source of the Italian and the English tales.

See also Professor Tatlock's article, 'Astrology and Magic in
Chaucer's Franklin's Tale,' Kittredge Anniversary Papers, pp.
339-350 (Boston, 1913), and Professor W. M. Hart's essay on
the narrative art of the Franklin's Tale and its relation to the
Breton lay in Haverford Essays, pp. 185-234 (Haverford, Pa.,
1909).

Page 277. The student who wishes to understand the type
of composition, of which the Second Nun's legend of St.
Cecilia is an example, should consult Professor G. H. Gerould's
scholarly book, Saints' Legends (Boston and New York, 1916).
The Second Nun's Tale is discussed on pages 239-244. See
also Professor Carleton Brown's 'The Prologue of Chaucer's
"Lyf of Seint Cecile," ' Modern Philology, 9. 1-16 (1911), and
the papers by Professor J. L. Lowes in Publications of the
Modern Language Association, 26. 315-323 (1911) and 29.
129-133 (1914).

Page 288. See the article on 'Chaucer's Retractations,' by
Professor J. S. P. Tatlock, in Publications of the Modern
Language Association, 28. 521-529 (1913).

INDEX

INDEX

A. B. C., 57, 58, 207.

Adam. Words unto, 69, 70, 84,
297.

Against Women Unconstant, 78.

Alarms de Insulis, 66, 129, 296.

Albertano of Brescia, 203, 284.

Alcestis, 140-144.

Alchemy, 23, 25, 281-283.

Alma Redemptoris, 198.

Alphonsus of Lincoln, 194-196.

Amorous Complaint, 79.

Andreas Capellanus, 103.

Andida and Arcite, 68, 69, 296,
297.

Anne, Queen of England, 63, 64,
89, 141-144, 167, 295, 296.

Arabian Nights, 151, 269, 270.

Astrolabe, 23, 85, 86, 298.

Astrology, Chaucer's attitude to-
wards, 22, 24.

Astronomy, Chaucer's interest
in, 22.

Balade of Complaint, 79.

Beaumont and Fletcher, 274.

Benoit de Sainte-More, 94-96, 97,
100.

Beovmlf, 80.

Beryn, Tale of, 158, 159.

Boccaccio, 17, 18, 20, 21, 32, 65,
68, 88, 90, 96-98, 103, 125, 136,
137, 142, 152, 163, 168, 175,
188, 205, 207, 228, 243. 254,
255, 263, 274, 300, 301.

Boethius, 17, 19, 46, 70. 71, 73,
74, 75, 80-85, 90, 117, 125, 127,
168, 207.

Book of the Duchess, 15, 18, 37, 38,
58, 59-63, 66, 68, 295.

Bukton, 76, 77, 298.

Canon's Yeoman's Tale, 23, 280-

283.
Canterbury Tales, 18, 135, 151-

160, 298-300.

Cento Novelle Antiche, 225-227.
Chretien de Troyes, 102.
Christianity, Chaucer's attitude

towards, 26.
Chronology of Chaucer's writings,

15-19, 292.
Cicero, 65, 129.
Claudian, 65.
Clerk's Tale, 37, 148, 239, 253-

262, 300.

Clifford, Sir Lewis, 138, 298.
Coleridge, 268.
Complaint of Mars, 63, 77.
Complaint of Venus, 77.
Complaint, to his Empty Purse, 78.
Complaint to his Lady, 68.
Complaint to Pity, 58. 59.
Cook's Tale, 179, 180.
'Corinne,' 68, 69, 296.
Courtly love, 102-105, 112, 115-

117, 120.
Criseyde, 105-114, 187.

Dante, 3, 4, 17, 85, 65, 68, 104,

129, 207, 243, 278.
Dares Phrygius, 93-95, 100, 101.
Decameron, 152, 175, 188, 228,

254, 263, 274, 300.
Deschamps, 138, 139, 141, 144,

239, 298.
Dictys Cretensis, 91-93, 95, 100,

101.

Diomede, 113, 114.
Dramatic power of Chaucer, 38,

122, 123.
Dryden, 100 n, 173.

304

INDEX

Envoy to Bukton, 76, 77.
Envoy to Scogan, 75, 76.

Faerie Queene, 35, 207.

Filocolo, 99, 274, 301.

Filostrato, 96-100, 123, 142.

Fletcher, 172, 173, 274.

Florus, 136.

Former Age, 38, 70, 71, 84.

Fortune, 71, 84.

Franklin's Tale, 24, 42, 148, 239,

271-277, 300, 301.
Friar, 48.

Friar's Tale, 244-249.
Froissart, 64, 76, 129, 138, 139.

Gautier de Coincy, 194.

Gentilesse, 25, 38, 74, 243.

Gentilesse, 240 n, 243.

Golden Legend, 278.

Gower, 11, 13, 26, 33, 88, 124,

137, 151, 183, 184, 240, 284.
Graunsoun, Otes de, 77.
Groups of Canterbury Tales, 152-

154, 298-300.
Guido delle Colonne, 94-96, 100,

101, 137, 207.
Guilielmus Peraldus, 286.
Guillaume de Deguilleville, 57.
Guillaume de Lorris, 16, 45-50.
Guillaume de Machaut, 60, 61,

78. 138, 295, 297.

Herolt, John, 246, 247.
Homer, 91, 93, 95, 101.
Horace, 101.
House of Fame, 18, 23, 30, 37. 101,

128-134, 140.
Hugh of Lincoln, 193.
Humor of Chaucer, 39.
Hunt, Leigh, 267.
Hyginus, 137.

Irony, 40. 99, 118. 121, 227.

Jacobus a Voragine, 278.

Jakes de Basiu, 250.

Jean de Meun, 16, 20 46-50, 81,

84, 220, 232.
Jerome, St., 232.
Jews, mediaeval attitude toward'

191-194.

John of Gaunt, 59, 63.
Joseph of Exeter, 100. ;

Keats, 268, 269.

Kipling, 225.

Knight's Tale, 18, 23, 24, 27, 36.

37, 39, 42, 66. 69, 150, 163-173,

269, 296.

Lack of Steadfastness, 74, 75.

Langland, 11, 12, 26, 163.

La Vache, Sir Philip, 297.

Legenda Aurea, 278.

Legend of Cleopatra, 150.

Legend of Dido, 25, 150.

Legend of Good Women, 18, 26, 84,

135-150, 151, 182, 219. .
Legend of Thisbe, 150.
Le Songe Vert, 295.
Livy, 137, 220.
'Lollius,' 100-102.
Lorens, Frere, 286, 287.
Lowell, 37, 62, 251.
Lydgate, 141. 206.

Machaut, 60, 61, 78, 138, 295.

297.

Macrobius, 65, 129.
Manciple's Tale, 283, 284.
Man of Law's Tale, 38, 148, 181-

187, 238.
Marco Polo, 270.
Marie de Champagne, 103.
Marie de France, 102, 210, 273.
Marriage, 77, 102, 103, 233-236,

238-240, 263, 275, 298.
Martianus Capella, 129.
Massuccio di Salerno, 174.

INDEX

305

Medievalism and the Renais-
sance, 3-7.

Melibeus, Tale of, 203.

Merchant's Tale, 239, 262-266.

Merciless Beauty, 72, 297.

Messahala, 86.

Miller, 300.

Millers Tale, 36, 39, 173-179.

Milton, 266, 267, 269.

Monk's Tale, 18, 33, 151, 203-
207.

Narrative art, 121-123, 177-179.
Nature, Chaucer's love of, 147-

149.
Nun's Priest's Tale, 89, 68, 207-

218.

Originality of Chaucer, 21.
Orosius, 136.
Otes de Graunsoun, 77.
Ovid, 20, 61, 97, 127, 129, 136,
137, 207, 284, 296.

'Palamon and Arcite,' 167, 168.

Pandarus, 118-121.

Papacy, England and the, 9-11.

Pardoner, 20, 48, 223, 224, 300.

Pardoner's Tale, 36, 40, 222-231.

Parliament of Fowls, 18, 39, 63-
68, 72, 140, 168, 295, 296.

Parson's Tale, 284-288.

Pathos of Chaucer, 40.

Pearl, 12.

Peasant's Revolt, 31, 167.

Petrarch, 17. 42, 69, 129, 132, 243,
254, 255, 259; supposed meet-
ing with Chaucer, 255-257.

Physician's Tale, 219-222.

Pindarus Thebanus, 91.

Plutarch, 136.

Pope, 127, 264.

Predestination, 24, 90, 117. 125,
126, 218.

Prioress, 161, 190, 191.

Prioress's Tale, 38, 39, 190-198.

300.

Proces of the Sevyn Sages, 152.
Prologue, 27, 145, 160-163.
Protestantism, 5.
Proverbs, 78.

Radicalism of Chaucer, 25.

Realism, 140, 168 n.

Reeve, 300.

Reeve's Tale, 39, 173-179.

Reinecke Fuchs, 211, 212,

Rembrandt, 160.

Renaissance contrasted with Me-

diaevalism, 3-7.
Retractation, 288, 301.
Reynard the Fox, 210.
Roman de Renart, 211, 212,
Roman de la Rose, 45-51, 59, 80,

102, 129, 137, 140, 220-222,

232, 243.

Roman de Troie, 94-97.
Romans des Sept Sages, 284.
Romaunt of the Rose, 15, 45-56,

65.

Romulus, 210.
Rosemound, To, 72, 73.

St. Cecilia, 277-280.

Second Nun's Tale, 18, 277-280,

301.

Scholarship of Chaucer, 32.
Scogan, 76.
Sercambi, 298.
Shakespeare, 4, 97, 99, 100.
Shipman's Tale, 187-190, 238,

299.

Simeon Metaphrastes, 279.
Sir Gawayne, 12.
Sir Tho-pas, 30, 34, 39, 199-203.
Skepticism of Chaucer, 24.
Socrates, 192.

Somnium Scipionis, 65, 66, 129.
Spenser, 242, 267.
Squire's Tale, 266-270, 300.

306

INDEX

Statius, 68, 106, 168.
Strode, 124.
Style of Chaucer, 41.
Summoner's Tale, 23, 89, 249-
252.

Testide, 65, 68, 69, 90, 125, 163-

166, 301.

Theophrastus, 232.
Thomas of Monmouth, 193.
Tragedy. 40, 125, 205.
Trivet, Nicholas, 85, 182-184.
Troilus, 115-118.
Troilus and Criseyde, 17, 18, 38,

40, 56, 84, 87-127, 168.
Troy Story, 90-97.
Truth, 29, 30, 38, 73, 74, 84, 297.
Two Noble Kinsmen, 172, 173.

Usk, Thomas, 90.

Valerius, 233.

Versification of Chaucer, 34.

Virgil, 129, 131, 133.

Warton, 267, 269.

Whitfield, 231.

Wiclif, 13, 287.

Wife of Bath, 20, 48, 161, 235-

238.

Wife of Bath's Prologue, 231-238.
Wife of Bath's Tale, 25, 39, 74,

238-244.

William of Norwich, 192, 193.
Womanly Noblesse, 79.
Words unto Adam, 69, 70, 84,

297.

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