their style and versification (for they are both written in the octosyllabic Trouvère measure, the same as that employed in the Romaunt of the Rose), and in some degree also by the connection of their subject with John of Gaunt, Chaucer's friend and patron, and the marriage of that nobleman with Blanche, heiress of Lancaster. This prince, then bearing the title of Earl of Richmond, was united to his cousin in 1359, and the Duchess dying ten years after, John was married a second time, in 1371, to Constance, daughter of Peter the Cruel, King of Spain. Both poems are allegorical; and allude, though sometimes rather obscurely as regards details, to the courtship of John of Gaunt, and his grief, under the person of the Black Knight, at the loss of his first wife. There may be traced in the Dream allusions to Chaucer's own courtship and marriage, to which we have referred in our biographical remarks, and which took place about 1360. (viii.) For its extraordinary union of brilliant description with learning and humor, the poem of the House of Fame is sufficient of itself to stamp Chaucer's reputation. It is written in the Trouvère measure, and under the fashionable form of a dream or vision, gives us a vivid and striking picture of the Temple of Glory, crowded with aspirants for immortal renown, and adorned with myriad statues of great poets and historians, and the House of Rumor, thronged with pilgrims, pardoners, sailors, and other retailers of wonderful reports. The Temple, though originally borrowed from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, exhibits in its architecture and adornment that strange mixture of pagan antiquity with the Gothic details of medieval cathedrals, that strikes us in the poetry and in the illuminated MSS. of the fourteenth century: and in the description of the statues of the great poets we meet with a curious proof of that mingled influence of alchemical and astrological theories perceptible in the science and literature of Chaucer's age. In richness of fancy it far surpasses Pope's imitation, The Temple of Fame. (ix.) The Legend of Good Women is supposed, from many circumstances, to have been one of the latest of Chaucer's compositions, and to have been written as a kind of amende honorable or recantation for his unfavorable pictures of female character; and in particular for his having, by translating the Roman de la Rose, to a certain degree identified himself with Jean de Méun's bitter sarcasms on the sex. Though the matter is closely translated, for the most part, from the Heroides of Ovid, the coloring given to the stories is entirely Catholic and mediæval. The misfortunes of celebrated heroines of ancient story are related in the manner of the Legends of the Saints, and Dido, Cleopatra, and Medea are regarded as the Martyrs of Saint Venus and Saint Cupid. The poet's original intention was to compose the legends of nineteen celebrated victims of the tender passion; but the work having been left incomplete, we possess only those of Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle, Medea, Lucretia, Ariadne, Philomela, and Phillis. The poem is in ten-syllable heroic couplets, the rhymed heroic measure, and exhibits a consummate mastery over the resources of the English language and prosody, and many striking passages of description interpolated by Chaucer. A few droll anachronisms also may be noted, as the introduction of cannon at the Battle of Actium. (x.) The poem which the generations contemporary with, or succeeding to, the age of Chaucer placed nearest to the level of the Canterbury Tales, was unquestionably the Troilus and Creseide; and this judgment will be confirmed by a comparison of the two works; though the wonderful variety and humor of the Tales has tended to throw into the shade, for modern readers, the graver beauties of the poem we are now about to examine. The source from which Chaucer drew his materials for this work was indubitably Boccaccio's poem entitled Filostrato. The story itself, which was extremely popular in the Middle Ages (and its popularity continued down to the time of Elizabeth, Shakespeare himself having dramatized it), has been traced to Guido di Colonna, and to the mysterious book entitled Trophe of the equally mysterious author Lollius, so often quoted in Chaucer's age, and respecting whom all is obscure and enigmatical. Some of the names and personages of the story, as Cryseida (Chryseis), Troilus, Pandarus, Diomede, and Priam, are obviously borrowed from the Iliad; but their relative positions and personality have been most strangely altered; and the principal action of the poem, being the passionate love of Troilus for his cousin, her ultimate infidelity, the immoral subserviency of Pandarus, all of which became proverbial in consequence of the popularity of this tale, all details, in short, bear the stamp of mediæval society, and have no resemblance whatever to the incidents and feelings of the heroic age, a period when the female sex was treated as it is now in Eastern countries, and when consequently that sentiment, which we call chivalric or romantic love, could have had no existence. Chaucer has frequently adhered to the text of the Filostrato, and has adopted the musical and flowing Italian stanza of seven lines; but in the conduct of the story he has shown himself far superior to his original, the characters of Troilus, Pandarus, and Creseide in the Filostrato, contrasting very unfavorably with the pure, noble, and ideal personages of the English poet, whose morality, indeed, is far higher and more refined than that of his great Florentine contemporary. I may remark in conclusion, that this beautiful poem is of great length, nearly equal in this respect to the Æneid of Virgil, and that it abounds in charming descriptions, in exquisite traits of character, and in incidents which, though simple and natural, are involved and developed with great ingenuity. § 7. Chaucer's greatest and most original work is, beyond all comparison, the Canterbury Tales. It is in this that he has poured forth in inexhaustible abundance all his stores of wit, humor, pathos, splendor, and knowledge of humanity: it is this which will place him, till the remotest posterity, in the first rank among poets and characterpainters. The exact portraiture of the manners, language, and habits of society in a remote age could not fail, even if executed by an inferior hand, to possess deep interest; as we may judge from the avidity with which we contemplate such traits of real life as are laboriously dug up by the patient curiosity of the antiquary from the dust and rubbish of bygone days. How great then is our delight when the magic force of a great poet evokes a whole series of our ancestors of the fourteenth century, making them pass before us "in their habit as they lived," acting, speaking, and feeling in a manner invariably true to general nature, and stamped with all the individuality of Shakespeare or Molière. The plan of the Canterbury Tales is singularly happy, enabling the poet to give us, first, a collection of admirable daguerreotypes of the various classes of English society, and then to place in the mouths of these persons a series of separate tales highly beautiful when regarded as compositions and judged on their own independent merits, but deriving an infinitely higher interest and appropriateness from the way in which they harmonize with their respective narrators. The work can be divided into two portions, which are, however, skilfully mixed up and incorporated: the first being the general prologue, describing the occasion on which the pilgrims assemble, the portraits of the various members of the troop, the adventures of their journey and their commentaries on the tales as they are successively related: and the second the tales themselves, viewed as separate compositions. The general plan of the work may be briefly sketched as follows. The poet informs us, after giving a brief but picturesque description of spring, that being about to make a pilgrimage from London to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket in the Cathedral of Canterbury, he passes the night previous to his departure at the hostelry of the Tabard in Southwark. While at the inn the hostelry is filled by a crowd of pilgrims bound to the same destination: In felawschipe, and pilgryms were thei alle, The goodly company, assembled in a manner so natural in those times of pilgrimages and of difficult and dangerous roads, agree to travel in a body; and at supper the Host of the Tabard, a jolly and sociable personage, proposes to accompany the party and serve as a guide, having, as he says, often travelled the road before; and at the same time suggests that they may much enliven the tedium of their journey by relating stories as they ride. He is to be accepted by the whole society as a kind of judge or moderator, by whose decisions every one is to abide. As the journey to Canterbury occupies one day, and the return another, the plan of the whole work, had Chaucer completed it, * But in his subsequent enumeration (see next page) Chaucer counts thirty persons. would have comprised the adventures on the outward journey, the arrival at Canterbury, a description, in all probability, of the splendid religious ceremonies and the visits to the numerous shrines and relics in the Cathedral, the return to London, the farewell supper at the Tabard, and dissolution of the pleasant company, which would separate as naturally as they had assembled. Harry Bailey proposes that each pilgrim should relate two tales on the journey out, and two more on the way home; and that on the return of the party to London, he who should be adjudged to have related the best and most amusing story should sup at the common cost. Such is the setting or framework in which the separate tales are inserted; and the circumstances and general mise en scène are so natural and unforced, that no reader refuses credence to the ancient tradition of our great poet's having founded his work upon an actual pilgrimage to Canterbury, in which he had himself taken part. The tales themselves are admirably in accordance with the characters of the persons who relate them, and the remarks and criticisms to which they give rise are no less humorous and natural; some of the stories suggesting others, just as would happen in real life under the same circumstances. The pilgrims are persons of all ranks and classes of society; and in the inimitable description of their manners, persons, dress, horses, &c., with which the poet has introduced them, we behold a vast and minute portrait gallery of the social state of England in the fourteen century. They are (1.) A Knight; (2.) A Squire; (3.) A Yeoman, or military retainer of the class of the free peasants, who in the quality of an archer was bound to accompany his feudal lord to war; (4.) A Prioress, a lady of rank, superior of a nunnery; (5, 6, 7, 8.) A Nun and three Priests, in attendance upon this lady; (9.) A Monk, a person represented as handsomely dressed and equipped, and passionately fond of hunting and good cheer; (10.) A Friar, or Mendicant Monk; (11.) A Merchant; (12.) A Clerk, or Student of the University of Oxford; (13.) A Serjeant of the Law; (14.) A Franklin or rich country-gentleman; (15, 16, 17, 18, 19.) Five wealthy burgesses or tradesmen, described in general but vigorous and characteristic terms; they are A Haberdasher, or dealer in silk and cloth, A Carpenter, A Weaver, A Dyer, and A Tapisser, or maker of carpets and hangings; (20.) A Cook, or rather what in old French is called a rôtisseur, i. e. the keeper of a cook's-shop; (21.) A Shipman, the master of a trading vessel; (22.) A Doctor of Physic; (23.) A Wife of Bath, a rich cloth-manufacturer; (24.) A Parson, or secular parish priest; (25.) A Ploughman, the brother of the preceding personage; (26.) A Miller; (27.) A Manciple, or steward of a college or religious house; (28.) A Reeve, bailiff or intendant of the estates of some wealthy landowner; (29.) A Sompnour, or Sumner, an officer in the then formidable ecclesiastical courts, whose duty was to summon or cite before the spiritual jurisdiction those who had offended against the canon laws; (30.) A Pardoner, or vendor of Indulgences from Rome. To these thirty persons must be added Chaucer himself, and the Host of the Tabard, making in all thirty-two. § 8. Now, if each of these pilgrims had related four tales, viz., two on the journey to Canterbury, and two on their return, the work would have contained 128 stories, independently of the subordinate incidents and conversations. In reality, however, the pilgrims do not arrive at their destination, and there are many evidences of confusion in the tales which Chaucer has given us, leading to the conclusion that the materials were not only incomplete, but left in an unarranged state by the poet. The stories that we possess are 25 in number, and are distributed as follows: The Knight; The Miller; The Reeve; The Cook, to whom two tales are assigned; * The Man of Law; The Wife of Bath; The Friar; The Sompnour; The Clerk of Oxford; The Merchant; The Squire, whose tale is left unfinished; The Franklin; The Second Nun; The Canon's Yeoman a personage who does not form a part of the original company, but joins the cavalcade on the journey; The Doctor; The Pardoner; The Shipman; The Prioress; Chaucer himself, to whom two tales are assigned in a manner to which I shall refer presently; The Monk; the Nun's Priest; The Manciple, and the Parson. Thus it will be seen that many of the characters are left silent, while some of them relate more than one story, and two persons altogether extraneous are introduced. These are the Canon and his Yeoman, who unexpectedly join the cavalcade during the journey; but it is uncertain whether this episode, which was probably an afterthought of the poet, takes place on the journey to or from Canterbury. The Canon, who is represented as an Alchemist, half swindler and half dupe, is driven away from the company by shame at his attendant's indiscreet disclosures; and the latter, remaining with the pilgrims, relates a most amusing story of the villanous artifices of the charlatans who pretended to possess the Great Arcanum. The stories narrated by the pilgrims are admirably introduced by what the author calls "prologues," consisting either of remarks and criticisms on the preceding tale, and which naturally suggest what is to follow, of the incidents of the journey itself, an excellent example of which is the drunken uproariousness of the Miller and the Cook, or of the infinitely varied manner in which the Host proposes and the Pilgrims receive the command to perform their part in contributing to the common entertainment. The Tales are all in verse, with the exception of two, that of the Parson, and Chaucer's second narrative, the allegorical story of Melibœus and his wife Patience. Those in verse exhibit an immense variety of metricial forms, ranging from the regular heroic rhymed couplet, in which the largest portion of the work is composed, as well as the general prologue and introductions to each story, through a great variety of stanzas of different lengths and arrangement, down to the short irregular octosyllable verse of the Trouvère Gestours, and in the case of the Tale of Gamelyn — the - * The first is broken off abruptly almost at the beginning, and the second is by some suspected not to be the work of Chaucer at all, as it is written in a style and versification unlike the rest of his poems, and seems to belong to an older and ruder period of English literature. The Cook's Tale of Gamelyn, if really written by Chaucer, was perhaps intended to be related on the journey home. |