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notes are added, and many of the pieces (including | referred to the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth political ballads) printed by Warton, Percy, Ritson, and Wright.

One of the most pleasing of these poems is the Owl and Nightingale, a dispute between the two birds about their powers of song, consisting of about 1800 verses in rhymed octosyllabic metre.

The satirical poem, called the Land of Cockayne, which Warton placed before the reign of Henry II., is at least as late as A. D. 1300, and is clearly traced to a French original. It is somewhat doubtfully ascribed, with other poems, to MICHAEL OF KILDARE, the first Irishman who wrote verses in English. It is a satire upon the monks. That the Metrical Romances should have been translated from the French, is a natural result of the fact, that French was the language of popular literature for some generations after the Conquest. Many of the legends were, indeed, British and Anglo-Saxon; but this may be accounted for by the affinity of the Britons and Armoricans, and the close connection between the Norman and the later Anglo-Saxon kings. Nor is it probable that the Trouvères should have missed many of these legends. Their poetry at first amused the leisure and enlivened the banquets of the conquerors; but, as the two races became one, and as the Anglo-Saxon tongue died out, they began to be translated into the newformed language of the English people. The most popular of these, such as Havelok, Sir Tristram, Sir Gawaine, Kyng Horn, King Alesaunder, and Richard Coeur de Lion, may be referred to the beginning of Edward I.'s reign. They are followed by a series of poems by unknown authors, far too numerous to mention, down to and considerably below the age of Chaucer, many of which are printed in the collections mentioned below. The change, by which these English Metrical Romances superseded the French originals, may be

their popularity, besides being divided with the prose romances, yielded, at least among the educated classes, to the regular poetry of Chaucer and his school; but they only ceased to be generally written after the beginning of the sixteenth. It was not till three hundred years later that Sir Walter Scott revived the taste for a kind of poetry, similar in form, but appealing to very different sentiments. Among the Minor Poems, other than Romances, are many imitations of the French Fabliaux, or Tales of Common Life. The Satires, both political and ecclesiastical, undoubtedly helped the progress of freedom under Henry III. and his successors, and prepared the way for Wickliffe, if they do not rather exhibit a state of popular feeling demanding such a teacher.

The chief authorities for these four periods are Wright, Biographia Britannica Literaria. Vol. I. The Anglo-Saxon Period, Lond. 1842; Vol. II. The Anglo-Norman Period, Lond. 1846; Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, first published in 1765; Warton, History of English Poetry, 1774, edited by Price, 3 vols. 8vo., Lond. 1840; Tyrwhitt, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, with Preliminary Essays, 1775; Pinkerton, Scottish Poems, 3 vols. 1792; Herbert, Robert the Devylle, 1798; Ritson, Ancient Songs, and other collections; Ellis, George, Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, 3 vols. 8vo. 1805; Wright, Political Songs of England from John to Edward II., 1839; the publications of the Roxburghe Club, the Bannatyne, Maitland, Abbotsford, and Camden Societies, the Society of Antiquaries, &c.; Chambers, Cyclopædia of English Literature; Craik, History of English Literature and the English Language, 2 vols., 1861; Marsh, Origin and History of the English Language, 1862.

CHAPTER II.

THE AGE OF CHAUCER.

A. D. 1350-A. D. 1400.

§ 1. The fourteenth century a great period of transition- Chaucer, the type of his age. 2. His literary predecessors, especially GoWER. 3. Influence of WICLIFFE. § 4. CHAUCER: his personal history, character, and appearance. § 5. Two periods in his literary career, corresponding to the Romantic and Renaissance tendencies. The religious element: his relations to Wicliffe. § 6. Critical survey of his works. Of the Romantic type:-(i.) Romaunt of the Rose; (ii.) Court of Love; (iii.) Assembly of Fowls; (iv.) Cuckow and Nightingale ; (v.) The Flower and the Leaf; (vi.) Chaucer's Dream; (vii.) Boke of the Duchesse; (viii.) House of Fame. Of the Renaissance type: (ix.) The Legende of Good Women; (x.) Troilus and Cresseide. § 7. The CANTERBURY TALES; the Prologue and Portrait Gallery. § 8. Plan incomplete. The existing Tales; their arrangement, metrical forms, and sources. § 9. Critical examination of the chief Tales, in their two classes, serious and humorous. The two prose Tales. § 10. Chaucer's services to the English language.

§ 1. THE fourteenth century is the most important epoch in the intellectual history of Europe. It is the point of contact between two widely-differing eras in the social, religious, and political annals of our race; the slack water between the ebb of Feudalism and Chivalry, and the " young flood" of the Revival of Letters and the great Protestant Reformation. As in the long bright nights of the Arctic summer, the glow of the setting sun melts imperceptibly into the redness of the dawning, so do the last brilliant splendors of the feudal institutions and the chivalric literature transfuse themselves, at this momentous period, into the glories of that great intellectual movement which has given birth to modern art, letters, and science. Of this great transformation the personal career, no less than the works, of the first great English poet, CHAUCER, will furnish us with the most exact type and expression; for, like all men of the highest order of genius, he at once followed and directed the intellectual tendencies of his age, and is himself the "abstract and brief chronicle" of the spirit of his time. Dante is not more emphatically the representative of the moral, religious, and political ideas of Italy, than Chaucer of English literature. He was, indeed, an epitome of the time in which he lived; a time when chivalry, about to perish forever as a political institution, was giving forth its last and most dazzling rays, "and, like the sun, looked larger at its setting;" when the magnificent court of Edward III. had carried the splendor of that system to the height of its development; and when the victories of Sluys, of Crécy, and Poitiers, by exciting the national pride, tended to consummate the fusion into one vigorous nationality of the two elements which formed the English people and the English language. It was these triumphs that gave to the English character its

peculiar insularity; and made the Englishman, whether knight or yeoman, regard himself as the member of a separate and superior race, enjoying a higher degree of liberty and a more solid material welfare than existed among the neighboring continental monarchies. The literature, too, abundant in quantity, if not remarkable for much originality of form, was rapidly taking a purely English tone; the rhyming chronicles and legendary romances were either translated into, or originally composed in, the vernacular language.

§ 2. Thus, among the predecessors of Chaucer, the literary stars that heralded the splendid dawning of our national poetry, Richard Rolle, Laurence Minot, and the remarkable satirist Langlande in South Britain, and Barbour, Wyntoun, and Blind Harry in Scotland, all show evident traces of a purely English spirit.* The immediate poetical predecessor of Chaucer, however, was undeniably Gower, whose interminable productions, half moral, half narrative, and with a considerable infusion of the scholastic theology of the day, though they certainly will terrify a modern reader by their tiresome monotony and the absence of originality, rendered inestimable services to the infant literature, by giving regularity, polish, and harmony to the language. Indeed, the style and diction of Gower is surprisingly free from difficult and obsolete expressions; his versification is extremely regular, and he runs on in a full and flowing, if commonplace and unpoetical, stream of disquisition. It is very curious, as an example of the contemporary existence of the French, the Latin, and the vernacular literature at this period in England, that the three parts of Gower's immense work should have been composed in three different languages: the Vox Clamantis in Latin, the Speculum Meditantis in Norman-French, and the Confessio Amantis in English.†

§ 3. In endeavoring to form an idea of the intellectual situation of England in the fourteenth century, we must by no means leave out of the account the vast influence exerted by the preaching of Wicliffe, and the mortal blow struck by him against the foundations of Catholic supremacy in England. This, together with the general hostility excited by the intolerable corruptions of the monastic orders, which had gradually invaded the rights, the functions, and the possessions of the far more practically-useful working or parochial clergy, still further intensified that inquiring spirit which prompted the people to refuse obedience to the temporal as well as spiritual authority of the Roman See, and paved the way for an ultimate rejection of the Papal yoke. Much influence must also be attributed to Wicliffe's translation of the Bible into the English language, and to the gradual employment of that idiom in the services of the church, towards the perfecting and regulating of the English language; an influence similar in kind to the settlement of the German language by Luther's version of the same holy book, though, perhaps, less powerful in degree; for in the latter case

* For an account of Chaucer's predecessors, see Notes and Illustrations (A). For a fuller account of Gower, see Notes and Illustrations (B).

the reading class in Germany must have been more numerous than in the England of the fourteenth century.*

§ 4. GEOFFREY CHAUCER was born in 1328, and his long and active life extended till the 25th of October, 1400. Consequently the poet's career almost coincides, in its commencement, with the splendid administration of Edward III.; and comprehends also the short and disastrous reign of Richard II., whose assassination preceded the poet's death by only a few months. In the brilliant court of Edward, in the gay and fantastic tourney, as well as in the sterner contests of actual warfare, the poet appears to have played no insignificant part. He is supposed to have been sprung of wealthy, though not illustrious parentage, and must have been of gentle blood; his surname, which is the French Chaussier, evidently pointing at a continental — at that period equivalent, in a certain degree, to an aristocratic origin. Besides this, we have distinct proof, not only in the fact of his having been “armed a knight" (which is shown by his evidence in the disputed cause of the Scrope and Grosvenor arms), but also in the honorable posts which he held, that Chaucer must have belonged to the higher sphere of society. His marriage, too, with Philippa de Roet, a lady of Poitevin birth, the daughter of a knight, and one of the maids of honor in attendance upon Queen Philippa, would still further tend to confirm this supposition.

Though but little credit is due to the details set forth in the ordinary biographies of the poet, I will condense into a rapid sketch such as are best established; for every trait is interesting that helps us to realize the individual existence of so illustrious a man.

The inscription upon his tomb in Westminster Abbey, which still exists, though the recumbent Gothic statue of the poet, originally a portrait, has become unhappily so defaced that even the details of the dress are no longer distinguishable, fixes the period of his birth in 1328, and that of his death in 1400. This tomb, however, was not erected till 1556, by Mr. Nicholas Brigham, probably an admirer of his genius. Chaucer calls himself a Londenois or Londener in the Testament of Love. In his Court of Love he speaks of himself under the name and character of "Philogenet - of Cambridge, Clerk; " but this hardly proves that he was educated at Cambridge. According to an authentic record, he was taken prisoner in 1359 by the French at the siege of Rhétiers, and being ransomed, according to the custom of those times, was enabled to return to England, in 1360.

His marriage with Philippa de Roet, which took place in 1367, may have brought him more under the notice of the court; for in 1367 we find him named one of the "valets of the king's chamber," and writs are addressed to him under the then honorable designation "dilectus valettus noster." His official career appears to have been active and even distinguished: he enjoyed during a long period various profitable offices connected with the customs, having been comptroller of the

* For an account of Wicliffe and his school, see Notes and Illustrations (C).

important revenue arising from the large importation of Bordeaux and Gascon wines into the port of London; and he seems also to have been occasionally employed in diplomatic negotiations. Thus, he was joined with two citizens of Genoa in a commission to Italy in 1373, on which occasion he is supposed to have made the acquaintance of Petrarch, then the most illustrious man of letters in Europe. Partly in consequence of his marriage with Philippa de Roet, whose sister, Catherine Swynford, was first the mistress and afterwards the wife of John of Gaunt, and partly perhaps from sharing in some of the political and religious opinions of that powerful prince, Chaucer was identified to a considerable degree both with the household and party of the duke of Lancaster; and the death of the duchess Blanche in 1369 is believed to have suggested to him the subject of his Boke of the Duchesse, and the Complaynte of the Blacke Knyght. One of the most interesting particulars of his life was his election as representative for Kent in the parliament of 1386, which was dissolved in December of the same year.

The year 1382 was the signal for a great and unfavorable change in the poet's fortunes. In consequence of the active part taken by him in the struggle between the court and the city of London, on occasion of the re-election of John of Northampton to the mayoralty, Chaucer fell into disgrace and difficulty, and was exposed to serious persecution, and even imprisoned in the Tower, whence he is said to have attained his liberation only on condition of accusing and denouncing his associates. This imprisonment lasted three years; and in addition to heavy fines and the loss of his offices, the poet underwent a severe domestic calamity in the death of his wife, in 1387. The catastrophe in his affairs to which we have alluded was, however, followed by a partial restoration to favor; for in 1390 he was appointed to the office of clerk of the king's works, which he held for only about a year; and there is reason to believe that, though his pecuniary circumstances must have been, during a great part of his life, proportionable to the position he occupied in the state and in society, his last days were more or less clouded by embarrassment. It is with regret that we are obliged to abandon the supposition, founded on insufficient evidence, of his having resided, during the latter part of his life, at Donnington Castle. It is more probable that the close of his career was passed at Woodstock, where a house was long shown as having been the poet's residence. His death took place at Westminster, and the house in which this event occurred was afterwards removed to make room for the chapel of Henry VII.

If we may judge from an ancient and probably authentic portrait of Chaucer, attributed to his contemporary and fellow-poet, Occleve, as well as from a curious and beautiful miniature introduced, according to the fashion of those times, into one of the most valuable manuscript copies of his works, our great poet appears to have been a man of pleasing and acute, though somewhat meditative and abstracted countenance, wearing a long beard; and he seems to have become

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