No More Learning

The transitions of mood, and of attention to
subject, are remarkable. In particular, that instantaneous shifting
from grave to gay, and from the serious to the humorous, which
puzzles readers not to the English manner born, and of which he,
Shakespeare and Thackeray are the capital representatives, per-
vades the whole piece like the iridescence in shot silk or in certain
enamels. The allegory of the leaf and the flower; the presence
of the god of love and his wrath with those who treat him lightly;
the intercession of the gracious lady Alcestis ; the poet's apology
and his determination to turn into English divers classical stories
as a penance, are all mixed up with descriptions of nature,
with innocent pedantry (which, in fact, determines the fashion


## p. 177 (#195) ############################################

The Canterbury Tales 177
of the penance or for which the penance is an excuse) and with
touches of temporal colour and respect of distinguished persons.
All combine to make the thing unique. And both here and in
the actual legends of the martyrs of love, from Cleopatra to
Hypermnestra, the immense capacities of the metre are well
manifested, though not, of course, either with the range or with
the perfection of The Canterbury Tales themselves. It is very
interesting to find that in this first essay in it he has had a
presentiment of its great danger-monotony-and, though he
has naturally not discovered all the preservatives, he is almost
naïvely observant of one—the splitting of the couplet at a para-
graph’s end.
Still, that he was dissatisfied is evident, not merely from the in-
completeness of the actual scheme, but from off-signs of impatience
and discomfort in its course. The uniformity of subject, and the
mainly literary character of the treatment required, obviously
weighed on him. He wanted life and colour,' which here he could
not give or, rather, which he could have given, but which he was
anxious to apply to a larger and fresher scheme, a more varied
repertory, and one which, above all, would enable him not only to
take his models from the actual, but often, if not always, to give
manners and character and by-play, as well as fresco painting from
the antique, with a mainly sentimental connection of background
and subject.
That he found what he wanted in the scheme of The Canterbury
Tales, and that, though these also are unfinished (in fact not half-
finished according to their apparent design), they are one of the
greatest works of literature-everybody knows. Of the genesis
of the scheme itself nobody knows anything. As Dickens says,
'I thought of Mr Pickwick': so, no doubt, did Chaucer 'think of'
his pilgrims. It has been suggested—and denied—that Boccaccio,
so often Chaucer's immediate inspirer, was his inspirer in this case
also, by the scheme and framework of The Decameron. It is,
indeed, by no means unlikely that there was some connection ;
but the plan of collecting individually distinct tales, and
uniting them by means of a framework of central story, was
immemorial in the east; and at least one example of it had
been naturalised in Europe, under many different forms, for a
couple of centuries, in the shape of the collection known as The
Seven Sages. It is not necessary to look beyond this for general
suggestion; and the still universal popularity of pilgrimages pro-
vided a more special hint, the possibilities of which it certainly
12
L. L. II.
CH. VII.


## p. 178 (#196) ############################################

178
Chaucer
did not require Chaucer's genius to recognise. These fortuitous
associations-masses of drift-wood kept together for a time and
then separated-offer almost everything that the artist, desirous
of painting character and manners on the less elaborate and more
varied scale, can require. Though we have little of the kind from
antiquity, Petronius shows us the germs of the method; and, since
medieval literature began to become adult in Italy, it has been
the commonest of the common.
To what extent Chaucer regarded it, not merely as a convenient
vehicle for anything that he might take a fancy to write, but
as a useful one to receive anything of the less independent kind
that he had already written, is a very speculative question. But
the general tendency has been to regard The Knights T'ale, that
of the Second Nun and, perhaps, others, as examples of this latter
process, while an interesting hypothesis has been started that the
capital Tale of Gamelyn—which we find mixed up with Chaucer's
works, but which he cannot possibly have written-may have been
selected by him and laid by as the subject of rehandling into a
Canterbury item. But all this is guesswork; and, perhaps, the
elaborate attempts to arrange the tales in a consistent order are
a a little superfluous. The unquestionable incompleteness of the
whole and of some of the parts, the irregular and unsystematic
character of the minor prologues and framework-pieces, alike
preclude the idea of a very orderly plan, worked out so far as it
went in an orderly fashion. In fact, as has been hinted above,
such a thing is repugnant to Chaucer's genius as manifested not
merely here but everywhere.
Fortunately, however, he was able to secure a sufficient number
of happy moments to draw the main part of the framework-The
Prologue, in which the plan of the whole is sketched, the important
characters delineated and the action launched-without gap or
lapse. For it would be short-sighted to regard the grouping
of certain figures in an undescribed batch as an incompleteness.
Some writers of more methodical disposition would probably, have
proceeded from this to work out all the framework part, including,
perhaps, even a termination, however much liberty they might
reserve to themselves for the inset tales. But this was not
Chaucer's way. There have been controversies even as to the
exact number of tales that he originally promises or suggests :
and the incident of the canon's yeoman shows that he might
very well have reinforced his company in numbers, and have
treated them to adventures of divers kinds. In fact, the unknown


## p. 179 (#197) ############################################

The Canterbury Tales 179
deviser of The Pardoner and the Tapster, though what he has
produced is quite unlike Chaucer in form, has been much less
out of the spirit and general verisimilitude of the whole work
than more modern continuators. But it is most probable that
the actual frame-stuff-B0 much of it as is genuine (for there are
fragments of link in some MSS which are very unlikely to be
80) was composed by its author in a very haphazard manner,
sometimes with the tale he had in his mind, sometimes to cobble
on one which he had written more or less independently. The
only clear string of connection from first to last is the pervading
personality of the host, who gives a unity of character, almost as
great as the unity of frame-story, to the whole work, inviting,
criticising, admiring, denouncing, but always keeping himself in
evidence. As to the connection of origin between individual tales
and the whole, more hazardous conjectures in things Chaucerian
have been made than that the couplet-verse pieces were all or
mostly written or rewritten directly for the work, and that those
in other metres and in prose were the adopted part of the family.
But this can never be known as a fact. What is certain is that
the couplets of The Prologue, which must be of the essence of the
scheme, and those of most parts of it where the couplets appear,
are the most accomplished, various, thoroughly mastered verse
that we find in Chaucer himself or in any English writer up to
his time, while they are not exceeded by any foreign model unless
it be the terza rima of Dante. A medium which can render, as
they are rendered here, the manners-painting of The Prologue,
the comic monodrama of The Wife of Bath and the magnificent
description of the temple of Mars, has handed in its proofs'
once for all.
Whether, however, it was mere impatience of steady labour on
one designed plan, or a higher artistic sense which transcended
a mere mechanical conception of unity, there can be no doubt
of the felicity of the result. Without the various subject and
quality, perhaps even without the varied metre, of the tales, the
peculiar effect of 'God's plenty' (a phrase itself so felicitous that
it may be quoted more than once) would not be produced ; and
the essential congruity of the tales as a whole with the mixed
multitude supposed to tell them, would be wholly impossible.
Nothing is more remarkable than the intimate connection be-
tween the tales and The Prologue. They comment and complete
each other with unfailing punctuality. Not only is it of great
importance to read the corresponding portion of The Prologue
1242


## p. 180 (#198) ############################################

180
Chaucer
with each tale; not only does each tale supply, as those of the
Monk and the Prioress especially, important correction as well
as supplement; but it is hardly fantastic to say that the whole
Prologue ought to be read, or vividly remembered, before reading
each tale, in order to get its full dramatic, narrative and pictorial
effect. The sharp and obvious contrasts, such as that of The
Knight's Tale with the two that follow, though they illustrate
the clearness with which the greatest English men of letters
appreciated the value of the mixture of tragedy or romance with
farce or comedy, are less instructive, and, when properly appre-
ciated, less delightful, than other contrasts of a more delicate kind.
Such is the way in which the satire of Sir Thopas is left to the
host to bring out; and yet others, where the art of the poet is
probably more instinctive than deliberate, such as the facts that
nobody is shocked by The Wife of Bath's Prologue (the inter-
ruption by the friar and summoner is of a different character), and
(still more incomprehensible to the mere modern) that nobody
is bored by The Tale of Melibeus. Of the humour which is so
constantly present, it will be more convenient to speak presently
in a separate passage. It cannot be missed: though it may some-
times be mistaken. The exquisite and unlaboured pathos which
accompanies it, more rarely, but not less consummately, shown,
has been acknowledged even by those who, like Matthew Arnold,
have failed to appreciate Chaucer as a whole. But, on the
nature and constitution of that variety, which has also been
insisted on, it may be desirable to say something here and at
once.
It is no exaggeration or flourish, but a sound and informing
critical and historical observation, to say that The Canterbury
Tales supply a miniature or even microcosm, not only of English
poetry up to their date, but of medieval literature, barring the
strictly lyrical element, and admitting a part only of the didactic,
but enlarged and enriched by additional doses, both of the per-
sonal element and of that general criticism of life which, except
in Dante, had rarely been present. The first or Knight's Tale
is romance on the full, if not on the longest, scale, based on
Boccaccio's Teseide, but worked out with Chaucer's now invariable
idiosyncrasy of handling and detail; true to the main elements
of 'fierce wars and faithful loves'; possessing much more regular
plot than most of its fellows; concentrating and giving body to
their rather loose and stock description; imbued with much more
individuality of character; and with the presence of the author not


## p. 181 (#199) ############################################

The Canterbury Tales 181
obtruded but constantly throwing a shadow. That it is represen-
tative of romance in general may escape those who are not, as,
perhaps, but a few are, thoroughly acquainted with romance at
large and especially those who do not know that the man of the
twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries regarded the heroes
of the Charlemagne and Arthur stories, and those of antiquity, as
absolutely on a par.
With the high seriousness and variegated decoration of this
romance of adventure and quality contrast the two tales that
follow, one derived from a known fabliau, the other, possibly,
original, but both of the strict fabliau kind-that is to say, the
story of ordinary life with a preferably farcical tendency. If the
morals are not above those of the time, the nature and the manners
of that time the nature and manners no longer of a poetic Utopia,
localised, for the moment, in France or Britain or Greece or Rome
or Jerusalem or Ind, but of the towns and villages of England-
are drawn with a vividness which makes their French patterns
tame. What threatens a third story of this same kind, The Cook's
Tale, is broken off short without any explanation after about
fifty lines-one MS asserting that Chaucer 'maked namore' of it.
The Man of Law's Tale, the pathetic story of the guiltless and
injured Constance, returns to a favourite romance-motive and
treats it in rime royal-the most pathetic of metres—while The
Shipman falls back on the fabliau and the couplet. But Chaucer
was not the man to be monotonous in his variety. The next pair,
The Prioress's Tale and Chaucer's own Sir Thopas, indeed, keep
up the alternation of grave and gay, but keep it up in quite
a different manner. Appropriately in every way, the beautiful
and pathetic story of the innocent victim of Jewish ferocity is
an excursion into that hagiology which was closely connected
with romance, and which may even, perhaps, be regarded as one of
its probable sources. But the burlesque of chivalrous adoration
is not of the fabliau kind at all : it is parody of romance itself,
or, at least, of its more foolish and more degenerate offshoots. For,
be it observed, there is in Chaucer no sign whatever of hostility to,
or undervaluation of the nobler romance in any way, but, on the
contrary, great and consummate practice thereof on his own part.
Now, parody, as such, is absolutely natural to man, and it had been
frequent in the Middle Ages, though, usually, in a somewhat rough
and horseplayful form. Chaucer's is of the politest kind possible.
The verse, though singsong enough, is of the smoothest variety of
“romance six' or rime couée (664664 aabccb); the hero is 'a


## p. 182 (#200) ############################################

182
Chaucer
very parfit carpet knight'; it cannot be proved that, after his long
preparation, he did not actually encounter something more terrible
than buck and hare, and it is impossible not to admire his deter-
mination to be satisfied with nobody less than the Fairy Queen to
love par amours. But all the weak points of the weaker romances,
such as Torrent and Sir Eglamour, are brought out as pitilessly
as politely. It is one of the minor Chaucerian problems (perhaps
of as much importance as some that have received more attention),
whether the host's outburst of wrath is directed at the thing as a
romance or as a parody of romance. It is certain that uneducated
and uncultivated people do not, as a rule, enjoy the finer irony;
that it makes them uncomfortable and suspicious of being laughed
at themselves. And it is pretty certain that Chaucer was aware of
this point also in human nature.
Of The Tale of Melibeus something has been said by a hint
already. There is little doubt that, in a double way, it is meant
as a contrast not merely of grave after gay, but of good, sound,
serious stuff after perilously doubtful matter. And it is appre-
ciated accordingly as, in the language of Tennyson's farmer,
'whot a owt to 'a said. ' But the monk's experience is less happy,
and his catalogue of unfortunate princes, again strongly indebted
to Boccaccio, is interrupted and complained of, not merely by the
irrepressible and irreverent host but by the knight himself-the
pattern of courtesy and sweet reasonableness. The criticism is
curious, and the incident altogether not less so. The objection
to the histories, as too dismal for a mixed and merry company, is
not bad in itself, but a little inconsistent considering the patience
with which they had listened to the woes of Constance and the
prioress's little martyr, and were to listen (in this case without
even the sweetmeat of a happy ending) to the physician's story
of Virginia. Perhaps the explanation is meant to be that the
monk's accumulation of 'dreriment'-disaster heaped on disaster,
without sufficient detail to make each interesting—was found
oppressive: but a subtler reading may not be too subtle. Although
Chaucer's flings at ecclesiastics have been exaggerated since it
pleased the reformers to make arrows out of them, they do exist.
He had thought it well to atone for the little gibes in The Prologue
at the prioress's coquettishness of way and dress by the pure and
unfeigned pathos and piety of her tale. But he may have meant
to create a sense of incongruity, if not even of hypocrisy, between
the frank worldliness of the monk-his keenness for sport, his
objection to pore over books, his polite contempt of 'Austin,'
-
6


## p. 183 (#201) ############################################

The Canterbury Tales 183
his portly person—and his display of studious and goody pes-
simism. At any rate, another member of the cloth, the nun's
priest, restores its popularity with the famous and incomparable
tale of the Cock and the Fox, known as far back as Marie de
France, and, no doubt, infinitely older, but told here with the
quintessence of Chaucer's humour and of his dramatic and narra-
tive craftsmanship. There is uncertainty as to the actual order
here; but the Virginia story, above referred to, comes in fairly
well, and it is noticeable that the doctor, evidently a good judge
of symptoms and of his patients' powers of toleration, cuts it short.
After this, the ancient and grisly but powerful legend of Death and
the robbers strikes a new vein-in this case of eastern origin,
probably, but often worked in the Middle Ages. It comes with
a sort of ironic yet avowed impropriety from the pardoner : but
we could have done with more of its kind. And then we have
one of the most curious of all the divisions, the long and brilliant
Wife of Bath's Prologue, with her short, and by no means
insignificant but, relatively, merely postscript-like, tale. This dis-
proportion, and that of the prologue itself to the others, seems
to have struck Chaucer, for he makes the friar comment on it;
but it would be quite a mistake to found on this a theory that the
length was either designed or undesigned. Vogue la galère seems
to have been Chaucer's one motto: and he let things grow under
his hand, or finished them off briefly and to scale, or abandoned
them unfinished, exactly as the fancy took him. Broadly, we may
say that the tales display the literary and deliberately artistic
side of his genius: the prologues, the observing and dramatic
side; but it will not do to push this too hard. The Wife of Bath's
Prologue, it may be observed, gives opportunity for the display of
reading which he loves, as well as for that of his more welcome
knowledge of humanity: the tale is like that of Florent in Gower,
but the original of neither is known.
The interruption by the friar of The Wife of Bath's Prologue,
and a consequent wrangle between him and the summoner, lead to
a pair of satiric tales, each gibing at the other's profession, which
correspond to the earlier duel between the miller and reeve.
The friar's is a tale of diablerie as well as a lampoon, and of very
considerable merit; the summoner's is of the coarsest fabliau
type with a farcically solemn admixture. There is no comment
upon it; and, if The Clerk's Tale was really intended to follow,
the contrast of its gravity, purity and pathos with the summoner's
ribaldry is, no doubt, intentional. For the tale, introduced by


## p. 184 (#202) ############################################

184
I
Chaucer
some pleasant rallying from the host on the clerk's shyness and
silence, and by a most interesting reference of the clerk's own to
‘Francis Petrarch the laureate poet,' is nothing less than the
famous story of Griselda, following Petrarch's own Latin rendering
of Boccaccio's Italian. Some rather unwise comment has been
made in a purely modern spirit, though anticipated, as a matter
of fact, by Chaucer himself) on the supposed excessive patience
of the heroine. But it is improbable that Griseldas ever were, or
ever will be, unduly common; and the beauty of the piece on its
own scheme and sentiment is exquisite. The indebtedness to
Boccaccio is still more direct, and the fabliau element reappears,
in The Merchant's Tale of January and May-with its curious
fairy episode of Pluto and Proserpine. And then romance comes
back in the ‘half-told' tale of the squire, the 'story of Cam-
buscan bold'; which Spenser did not so much continue as branch
off from, as the minor romances of adventure branch off from the
Arthurian centre; of which Milton regretted the incompleteness
in the famous passage just cited; and the direct origin of which
is quite unknown, though Marco Polo, the French romance of
Cléomadès and other things may have supplied parts or hints.
The romantic tone is kept up in The Franklin's Tale of Arviragus
and Dorigen, and the squire Aurelius and the philosopher-magician,
with their strange but fascinating contest of honour and generosity.
This is one of the most poetical of all the tales, and specially
interesting in its portrayal-side by side with an undoubted belief
in actual magic—of the extent of medieval conjuring. The Second
Nun's Tale or Life of St Cecily is introduced with no real link,
and has, usually, been taken as one of the poet's insertions of
earlier work. It has no dramatic or personal interest of connection
with the general scheme; but this is largely made up by what
follows
the tale of the follies and rogueries of alchemy told by
the yeoman of a certain canon, who falls in with the pilgrims at
Boughton-under-Blee, and whose art and mystery is so frankly
revealed by his man that he, the canon, 'flees away for very
sorrow and shame. ' The exposure which follows is one of the
most vivid parts of the whole collection, and shows pretty clearly
either that Chaucer had himself been fleeced, or that he had
profited by the misfortunes of his friends in that kind. Then the
host, failing to get anything out of the cook, who is in the drowsy
stage of drunkenness, extracts from the manciple The Tale of the
Crow and the reason that he became black-the whole ending with
the parson's prose tale, or, rather, elaborate treatise, of penitence


## p. 185 (#203) ############################################

Prose
185
and the seven deadly sins. This, taken from both Latin and French
originals, is introduced by a verse-prologue in which occur the
lines, famous in literary history for their obvious allusion to
alliterative rhythm,
But trusteth wel, I am a southren man,
I can nat gesto rum, ram, ruf by lettre,
and ending with the 'retraction of his earlier and lighter works,
explicitly attributed to Chaucer himself, which has been already
referred to.
Of the attempts already mentioned to distribute the tales
according to the indications of place and time which they them-
selves contain, nothing more need be said here, nor of the moot
point whether, according to the host's words in The Prologue, the
pilgrims were to tell four stories each—two on the way to Canter-
bury and two on the return journey-or two in all-one going
and one returning. The only vestige we have of a double tale is
in the fragment of the cook’s above referred to, and the host's
attempt to get another out of him when, as just recorded, the
manciple comes to the rescue. All these matters, together with
the distribution into days and groups, are very problematical, and
unnecessary, if the hypothesis favoured above be adopted, that
Chaucer never got his plan into any final order, but worked at
parts of it as the fancy took him. But, before speaking shortly
of the general characteristics of his work, it will be well to notice
briefly the parts of it not yet particularised. The Parson's Tale,
as last mentioned, will connect itself well with the remainder of
Chaucer's prose work, of which it and The Tale of Melibeus are
specimens. It may be observed that, at the beginning of Melibeus,
and in the retraction at the end of The Parson's Tale, there are
some curious fragments of blank verse.
The prose complements are two :-a translation of Boethius's
de Consolatione, executed at an uncertain time but usually
associated in general estimate of chronology with Troilus, and
a short unfinished Treatise on the Astrolabe (a sort of hand-
quadrant or sextant for observing the positions of the stars),
compiled from Messahala and Johannes de Sacrobosco, intended
for the use of the author's ‘little son Lewis,' then (1391) in his tenth
year, and calculated for the latitude of Oxford. Both are interest-
ing as showing the endeavour of Middle English prose, in the
hands of the greatest of Middle English writers, to deal with
different subjects. The interest of the Astrolabe treatise is


## p. 186 (#204) ############################################

186
Chaucer
increased by the constant evidence presented by the poems of the
attraction exercised upon Chaucer by the science of astronomy or
astrology. This, so long as the astrological extension was admitted,
kept its hold on English poets and men of letters as late as Dryden,
while remnants of it are seen as late as Coleridge and Scott.
It is an excellent piece of exposition-clear, practical and to the
purpose ; and, in spite of its technical subject, it is, perhaps, the
best prose work Chaucer has left us. But, after all, it is a scientific
treatise and not a work of literature.
The translation of Boethius is literature within and without-
interesting for its position in a long sequence of English versions of
this author, fascinating for a thousand years throughout Europe
and Englished by king Alfred earlier and by queen Elizabeth later;
interesting from the literary character of the matter; and interest-
ing, above all, from the fact that Chaucer has translated into prose
not merely the prose portions of the original, but the 'metres' or
verse portions. These necessarily require, inasmuch as Boethius
has fully indulged himself in poetic diction, a much more ornate
style of phrase and arrangement than the rest—with the result
that we have here, for the first time in Middle English, distinctly
ornate prose, aureate in vocabulary, rhythmical in cadence and
setting an example which, considering the popularity both of
author and translator, could not fail to be of the greatest import-
ance in the history of our literature. Faults have been found with
Chaucer's translation, and he has been thought to have relied
almost as much on a French version as on the original. But one
of the last things that some modern scholars seem able to realise
is that their medieval forerunners, idolaters of Aristotle as they
were, appreciated no Aristotelian saying so much as that famous
one 'accuracy must not be expected. '
The remaining minor verse, accepted with more or less agree-
ment as distinguished from 'Chauceriana,' which will be dealt with
separately, requires but brief mention. Of the ballade To Rose-
mounde, The Former Age, the Fortune group, Truth, Gentilesse
and Lack of Steadfastness—though none is quite without interest,
and though we find lines such as
The lambish peple, voyd of alle vyce,
which are pleasant enough-only Truth, otherwise known as The
Ballad of Good Counsel, is unquestionably worthy of Chaucer.
The note of vanity is common enough in the Middle Ages; but
6
1 The Former Age.


## p. 187 (#205) ############################################

Minor Verse
187
it has seldom been sounded more sincerely or more poetically than
here, from the opening line
Flee fro the prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesso
to the refrain
And trouthe shal delivere it is no drede ;
with such fine lines between as
Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede.
The Envoys, or personal epistles to Scogan and Bukton, have
some biographical attraction, and what is now called The Com-
plaint of Venus, a translation from Otho de Granson, and the
wofully-comical Empty Purse, are not devoid of it; the elaborate
triple roundel (doubted by some) of Merciles Beaute is pretty,
and one or two others passable. But it is quite evident that
Chaucer required licence of expatiation in order to show his
genius. If the reference to 'many a song and many a licorous
lay' in the retraction is genuine and well-founded, it is doubtful
whether we have lost very much by their loss.
The foregoing observations have been made with a definite
intent to bring the account of this genius as much as possible
under the account of each separate exercise of it, and to spare
the necessity of diffuse generalisation in the conclusion; but
something of this latter kind can hardly be avoided. It will be
arranged under as few heads and with as little dilation upon them
as may be; and the bibliography of MSS, editions and commen-
taries, which will be found in another part of this volume, must
be taken as deliberately arranged to extend and supplement it.
Such questions as whether the Canterbury pilgrimage took place
in the actual April of 1385, or in any month of the poetical year,
or whether it is safe to date The House of Fame from the fact
that, in 1383, the 10th of December fell on a Thursday, the day
and month being given by the text and the day of the week being
that of Jove, whose bird carries the poet off-cannot be discussed
here. Even were the limits of space wider, the discussion might
be haunted by memories of certain passages in The Nun's Priest's
Tale and elsewhere. But some general points may be handled.
One such point of some importance is the probable extent
and nature of Chaucer's literary instruction and equipment. He
makes, not exactly a parade in the bad sense, but a very pardon-
able display of knowledge of that Latin literature which was the
staple of the medieval library; and, of course, he illustrates the


## p. 188 (#206) ############################################

188
Chaucer
promiscuous estimate of authorities and values which is charac-
teristic of his time. But the range of his knowledge, from the
actual classics (especially Ovid) downwards, was fairly wide, and
his use of it is generally apposite. In French, at least the French
of his own day, there can be no doubt that he was proficient, not
only as being grant translateur, but as taking subjects and forms
freely from what was still the leading literary vernacular of Europe
generally, though it had now been surpassed by Italy, so far as
individual accomplishment went. Nor, though the evidence is
less positive, can there be any reasonable doubt that he was
acquainted with Italian itself. A man of Chaucer's genius could,
no doubt, pick up a great deal of knowledge of Italian literature
even without, and much more with, the assistance of his Italian
visits. His mere reference to the 'laureat clerk Petrarch,' or to
Dante, “the great poet of Italy,' would not prove very much
as to the exact extent and nature of his acquaintance with
them. But the substance of Troilus, and of The Knight's
and Clerk': Tales, and of The House of Fame, proves every-
thing that can be reasonably required. It may be rash, espe-
cially considering how very uncertain we are of the actual
chronology of his works, to delimit periods of French and periods
of Italian influence too rigidly. But that these influences
themselves exist in Chaucer, and were constantly exerted on
him, there is no doubt at all. Much less attention has been
paid to his acquaintance with existing English literature; and
doubt has even been cast as to his possession of any. This is
ultra-sceptical, if it be the result of any real examination of the
evidence; but it is, probably, in most cases, based on a neglect or
a refusal to consider that evidence itself. That Chaucer had no
scholastic instruction in English (such as, no doubt, he had in
French and, possibly, in Italian) we know, indeed, for certain, or
almost for certain, inasmuch as his contemporary, Trevisa, informs
us that English was not used in schools, even for the purpose of
construing, till later. And it is, of course, certain that he makes
little direct mention of English writers, if any. He knew the
romances, and he makes them the subject of satiric parody in
Sir Thopas ; he knew (a point of some importance) the two
modes of alliteration and rime, and refers to them by the mouth
of one of his characters, the parson, in a fashion capital for literary
history. But there is little else of direct reference. A moment's
thought, however, will show that it would have been very odd
if there had been. Although Chaucer's is very far from being
a


## p. 189 (#207) ############################################

His Learning
189
mere court-poetry it was, undoubtedly, composed with a view to
court-readers; and these, as the passage in Trevisa shows,
were only just becoming accustomed to the treatment of English
as a literary language. There were no well-known named authors
for him to quote; and, if there had been, he could have gained
none of the little nimbus of reputation for learning which was so
innocently dear to a medieval writer, by quoting them. That, on
the other hand, he was thoroughly acquainted, if only by word
of mouth, not reading, with a great bulk of precedent verse and,
probably, some prose, can be shown by evidence much stronger
than chapter-and-verse of the categorical kind. For those who
take him-as he has been too seldom taken in the natural
evolution of English poetry and English literature, there is
not the slightest need to regard him as a lusus naturae who
developed the practice of English by the study of French, who
naturalised by touch of wand foreign metres and foreign diction
into his native tongue, and who evolved 'gold dewdrops of
English 'speech' and more golden bell-music of English rhythm
from Latin and Italian and French sources. On the contrary,
unprejudiced study will show that, with what amount of actual
book-knowledge it is impossible to say, Chaucer had caught up
the sum of a process which had been going on for some two
centuries at least and, adding to it from his own stores, as all great
poets do, and taking, as many of them have done, what help he
could get from foreigners, was turning cut the finished product
not as a new thing but as a perfected old one. Even the author
of Sir Thopas could not have written that excellent parody if he
had not been to the manner born and bred of those who produced
such things (and better things) seriously. And it is an idle multi-
plication of miracles to suppose that the verse—the individual
verses, not the batched arrangements of them—which directly
represents, and is directly connected with, the slowly developing
prosody of everything from Orm and Layamon to Hampole and
Cursor Mundi, is a sudden apparition—that this verse, both
English and accomplished, is fatherless, except for French,
motherless, except for Middle and Lower Latin, and arrived at
without conscious or even unconscious knowledge of these its
natural precursors and progenitors.
Of the matter, as well as of the languages, forms and sources
of his knowledge, a little more should, perhaps, be said. It
has been by turns exalted and decried, and the manner of its
exhibition has not always been wisely considered. It has been


## p. 190 (#208) ############################################

190
Chaucer
observed above, and the point is important enough for emphasis,
that we must not look in Chaucer for anything but the indis-
criminateness and, from a strictly scholarly point of view, the
inaccuracy, which were bred in the very bone of medieval study;
and that it would be hardly less of a mistake to expect him not
to show what seems to us a singular promiscuousness and irrele-
vancy in his display of it. But, in this display, and possibly, also,
in some of the inaccuracies, there is a very subtle and personal
agency which has sometimes been ignored altogether, while it has
seldom been fully allowed for. This is the intense, all-pervading
and all but incalculable presence of Chaucer's humour—a quality
which some, even of those who enjoy it heartily and extol it
generously, do not quite invariably seem to comprehend. Indeed,
it may be said that even among those who are not destitute of the
sense itself, such an ubiquitous, subterranean accompaniment of
it would seem to be regarded as an impossible or an uncanny
thing. As a matter of fact, however, it 'works i’ the earth so
fast' that you never can tell at what moment it will find utterance.
Many of the instances of this are familiar, and some, at least, could
hardly fail to be recognised except by portentous dulness. But it
may be questioned whether it is ever far off; and whether, as is so
often the case in that true English variety of the quality of which
it is the first and one of the most consummate representatives, it
is not mixed and streaked with seriousness and tenderness in
an almost inextricable manner. 'Il se moque,' says Taine of
another person, de ses émotions au moment même où il s'y livre. '
'
In the same way, Chaucer is perpetually seeing the humorous side,
not merely of his emotions but of his interests, his knowledge, his
beliefs, his everything. It is by no means certain that in his
displays of learning he is not mocking or parodying others as well
as relieving himself. It is by no means certain that, seriously as
we know him to have been interested in astronomy, his frequent
astronomical or astrological lucubrations are not partly ironical.
Once and once only, by a triumph of artistic self-restraint, he has
kept the ludicrous out altogether-in the exquisite Prioress's Tale,
and even there we have a sort of suggestion of the forbidden but
irrepressible thing in
As monkes been, or elles oghten be.
Of this humour, indeed, it is not too much to say (borrowing
Coleridge's dictum about Fuller and the analogous but very
different quality of wit) that it is the 'stuff and substance,' not


## p. 191 (#209) ############################################

His Humour
191
merely of Chaucer's intellect, but of his entire mental constitution.
He can, as has been said, repress it when art absolutely requires
that he should do so; but, even then, he gives himself compensa-
tions. He has kept it out of The Prioress's Tale; but he has
indemnified himself by a more than double allowance of it in his
description of the prioress's person in The Prologue. On the
other hand, it would have been quite out of place in the descrip-
tion of the knight, for whom nothing but respectful admiration is
solicited; and there is no need to suspect irony even in
And though that he were worthy, he was wys.
But in The Knight's Tale—which is so long that the personage
of the supposed teller, never obtruded, may be reasonably supposed
forgotten, and where the poet almost speaks in his own person-
the same writ does not run; and, towards the end especially, we
get the famous touches of ironic comment on life and thought,
which, though they have been unduly dwelt upon as indicating a
Voltairian tone in Chaucer, certainly are ironical in their treatment
of the riddles of the painful earth.
Further, it is desirable to notice that this humour is employed
with a remarkable difference. In most great English humorists,
humour sets the picture with a sort of vignetting or arabesquing
fringe and atmosphere of exaggeration and fantasy. By Chaucer
it is almost invariably used to bring a higher but a quite clear and
achromatic light on the picture itself or parts of it. The stuff is
turned rapidly the other way to show its real texture; the jest is
perhaps a burning, but also a magnifying and illuminating, glass,
to bring out a special trait more definitely. It is safe to say that
a great deal of the combination of vivacity and veracity in Chaucer's
portraits and sketches of all kinds is due to this all-pervading
humour; indeed, it is not very likely that any one would deny
this. What seems, for some commentators, harder to keep in
mind is that it may be, and probably is, equally present in other
places where the effect is less immediately rejoicing to the modern
reader; and that medieval pedantry, medieval catalogue-making,
medieval digression and irrelevance are at once exemplified and
satirised by the operation of this extraordinary faculty.
That the possession of such a faculty almost necessarily implies
command of pathos is, by this time, almost a truism, though it was
not always recognised. That Chaucer is an instance of it, as well
as of a third quality, good humour, which does not invariably
accompany the other two, will hardly be disputed. He is not


## p. 192 (#210) ############################################

192
Chaucer
a sentimentalist; he does not go out of his way for pathetic effect;
but, in the leading instances above noted of The Clerk's and
Prioress's Tales, supplemented by many slighter touches of the
same kind, he shows an immediate, unforced, unfaltering sym-
pathy which can hardly be paralleled. His good humour is even
more pervading.
It gives a memorable distinction of kindliness
between The Wife of Bath's Prologue and the brilliant following
of it by Dunbar in The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo; and
it even separates Chaucer from such later humorists as Addison
and Jane Austen, who, though never savage, can be politely cruel.
Cruelty and Chaucer are absolute strangers ; indeed, the absence
of it has brought upon him from rather short-sighted persons the
charge of pococurantism, which has sometimes been translated (still
more purblindly) into one of mere courtliness—of a Froissart-like
indifference to anything but the quality,' 'the worth, as he
might have put it himself. Because there is indignation in Piers
the Plowman, it is thought that Chaucer does not well not to be
angry: which is uncritical.
This curious, tolerant, not in the least cynical, observation and
relish of humanity gave him a power of representing it, which has
been rarely surpassed in any respect save depth. It has been
disputed whether this power is rather that of the dramatist or that
of the novelist–a dispute perhaps arguing a lack of the historic
In the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, Chaucer
would certainly have been the one, and in the mid-nineteenth the
other. It would be most satisfactory could we have his work in
both avatars. But what we have contains the special qualities
of both craftsmen in a certain stage of development, after a fashion
which certainly leaves no room for grumbling. The author has, in
fact, set himself a high task by adopting the double system above
specified, and by giving elaborate descriptions of his personages
before he sets them to act and speak up to these descriptions.
It is a plan which, in the actual drama and the actual novel, has
been found rather a dangerous one. But Chaucer discharges him-
self victoriously of his liabilities. And the picture of life which he
has left us has captivated all good judges who have given themselves
the
very slight trouble necessary to attain the right point of view,
from his own day to this.
Something has been said of the poetic means which he used to
work this picture out. They were, practically, those which English
poetry had been elaborating for itself during the preceding two or
three centuries, since the indrafts of Latin or Romance vocabulary,
sense.


## p. 193 (#211) ############################################

His Poetical Quality 193
and the gradual disuse of inflection, had revolutionised the language.
But he perfected them, to, probably, their utmost possible point at
the time, by study of French and Italian models as regards arrange-
ment of lines in groups, and by selecting a diction which, even in
his own time, was recognised as something quite extraordinary.
The old delusion that he 'Frenchified' the language has been
nearly dispelled as regards actual vocabulary; and, in points which
touch grammar, the minute investigations undertaken in the
case of the doubtful works have shown that he was somewhat
more scrupulous than were his contemporaries in observing formal
correctness, as it is inferred to have been. The principal instance
of this scrupulousness—the management of the valued final -e,
which represented a crowd of vanished or vanishing peculiarities
of accidence-was, by a curious consequence, the main cause of
the mistakes about his verse which prevailed for some three
centuries; while the almost necessarily greater abundance of
unusual words in The Prologue, with its varied subjects, probably
had something to do with the concurrent notion that his language
was obsolete to the point of difficulty, if not to that of unintelligi-
bility. As a matter of fact, his verse (with the exception of one
or two doubtful experiments, such as the nine-syllabled line where
ten should be) is among the smoothest in English ; and there are
entire pages where, putting trifling differences of spelling aside,
hardly a single word will offer difficulties to any person of toler-
able reading in the modern tongue.
It is sometimes complained by those who admit some, if not all,
of these merits in him that he rarely-a few would say never-
rises to the level of the highest poetry. Before admitting, before
even seriously contesting, this we must have a definition of the
highest poetry which will unite the suffrages of the competent, and
this, in the last two thousand years and more, has not been attained.
It will, perhaps, be enough to say that any such definition which
excludes the finest things in Troilus and Criseyde, in The Knight's
and Prioress's Tales and in some other places, will run the risk
of suggesting itself as a mere shibboleth. That Chaucer is not
always at these heights may be granted : who is ? That he is less
often at them than some other poets need not be denied; that he
1;
has access to them must be maintained. While as to his power to
communicate poetic grace and charm to innumerable other things
less high, perhaps, but certainly not always low; as to the abound-
ing interest of his matter; as to the astonishing vividness in line
and idiom of his character-drawing and manners-painting; and,
13
E. L. II.
CH, VII.


## p. 194 (#212) ############################################

194
Chaucer
above all, as to the wonderful service which he did to the forms
and stuff of English verse and of English prose, there should be
no controversy; at least the issue of any such controversy should
not be doubtful.
One afterthought of special interest may perhaps be appended.
Supposing Skeat's very interesting and quite probable con-
jecture to be true, and granting that The Tale of Gamelyn
lay among Chaucer's papers for the more or less distinct
purpose of being worked up into a Canterbury 'number,' it
is not idle to speculate on the probable result, especially in
the prosodic direction. In all his other models or stores of
material, the form of the original had been French, or Latin, or
Italian prose or verse, or else English verse or (perhaps in rare
cases) prose, itself modelled more or less on Latin or on French.
In all his workings on and after these models and materials, his
own form had been a greatly improved following of the same
kind, governed not slavishly, but distinctly, by an inclination
towards the Latin-French models themselves in so far as they
could be adapted, without loss, to English. Pure unmetrical
alliteration he had definitely rejected, or was definitely to reject,
in the famous words of the Parson. But in Gamelyn he had,
or would have had, an original standing between the two-and
representing the earliest, or almost the earliest, concordat or com-
promise between them. As was observed in the account given of
Gamelyn itself in the chapter on Metrical Romances, it is, generally
speaking, of the 'Robert-of-Gloucester' type-the type in which
the centrally divided, alliterative, non-metrical line has retained its
central division but has discarded alliterative-accentual necessity,
has taken on rime and has adopted a roughly but distinctly
metrical cadence. If, however, we compare Gamelyn (which is
put by philologists at about 1340) with Robert himself (who pro-
bably finished writing some 40 years earlier) some interesting
differences will be seen, which become more interesting still in
connection with the certainly contemporary rise of the ballad
metre of four short lines, taking the place of the two centre-
broken long ones. Comparing the Gamelyn execution with that
of Robert, that, say, of the Judas ballad and that of the earliest
Robin Hood pieces and others, one may note in it interesting
variations of what may be called an elliptic-eccentric kind. The
centre pin of the verse-division is steady; but it works, not in a
i Volume 1, p. 298.


## p. 195 (#213) ############################################

Chaucer and Gamelyn 195
round socket proportionate to itself so much as in a kind of
curved slot, and, as it slips up and down this, the resulting verse
takes curiously different, though always homogeneous, forms. The
exact ‘fourteener,' or eight and six without either lengthening or
shortening, is not extremely common, but it occurs often enough.
More commonly the halves (especially the second) are slightly
shortened; and, not unfrequently, they are lengthened by the
admission of trisyllabic feet. There is an especial tendency to
make the second half up of very short feet as in
Sik | ther, he lay |
where an attempt to scan
Sik ther he lay
1
will disturb the whole rhythm; and a tendency (which forewards
us of Milton) to cut the first syllable and begin with a trochee as
in the refrain beginning
Litheth and listeneth
in
Al thi londe that he hadde
and so on. While, sometimes, we get the full anapaestic ex-
tension
The frankeleyn seyde to the champioun: of him stood him noon eye.
And, in the same way, the individual lines indicate, in various
directions, the settlement of the old long line towards the deca-
syllable, towards the alexandrine, towards the 'fourteener' and
towards the various forms of doggerel, themselves giving birth to
the pure four-anapaest line which we find in the early sixteenth
century. Now the question is: 'Would the necessary attention to
these metrical peculiarities, implied in the process of (in Dryden's
sense) “translation," have produced any visible effect on Chaucer's
own prosody ? ' Nor is this by any means an idle question. That
Chaucer was a great mimic in metre, we know from Sir Thopas,
where he has exactly hit off the namby-pamby amble of the
“romance six' in its feeblest examples. Now this romance six
is very near to the ballad foursome have even guessed that the
latter is a 'crushed' form of it, though this is, perhaps, reversing
the natural order of thought. Would Chaucer have tried the
ballad four itself-regularising and characterising it as he did
other metres? Or would his study of the extremely composite and
germinal kind of verse in which, as has been shown, Gamelyn is
written, have resulted in the earlier development of some of these
:
germs?
13-2


## p. 196 (#214) ############################################

196
Chaucer
The question, let it be repeated, is by no means idle. That
the developments actually took place in the next century and a
half, at the hands of lesser men, shows, conclusively, that they might
have taken place, and probably would, at the hands of a greater
one earlier. But: 'Ought we to be sorry that they did not '-
though again not idle, is a very different question and one to
which the answer should probably be 'No' and not ‘Yes. '
For the impending linguistic changes, which ruined Chaucer's
actual decasyllable in the hands of his actual successors, would
probably, have played even greater havoc with freer and looser
measures, if he had attempted them. And if he had made a strict
eight and six, as he did a strict eight eight six in Sir Thopas, the
danger of rigid syllabic uniformity being regarded as the law of
English prosody—a danger actual for centuries—would have been
very much increased. As it was, these half-wildings of verse con-
tinued to grow in their natural way, without being converted into
'hybrid perpetuals' by the skill of any capital horticulturist. They.
remained in striking contrast to the formal couplets and stanzas :
reliefs from them, outlets, escapes. It did not matter if they were
badly done, for they carried no weight as models or masters: it
mattered supremely if they were well done, for they helped to
tune the national ear. They were in no vituperative sense the
corpora vilia in which experiment could be freely and inexpen-
sively made : though the experiments themselves were sometimes
far from vile. Therefore, one need not weep that Chaucer let
Gamelyn alone. He would have given us a delightful story, but
the story is full of delight for competent readers as it is. If he
had made it into 'riding rime’ it would not have been better, as
such, than its companions. If he had made it into anything else it
might have been a doubtful gain. And, lastly, the copy might, as in
so many other cases, have killed the original. Now, even for more
,
Chaucer, of which we fortunately have so much already, we could
not afford to have no Gamelyn, which is practically unique.
a


## p. 197 (#215) ############################################

CHAPTER VIII
THE ENGLISH CHAUCERIANS
The influence of Chaucer upon English poetry of all dialects,
during the entire century which followed his death, and part, at
least, of the next, is something to which there is hardly a parallel in
literature. We have to trace it in the present chapter as regards the
southern forms of the language : its manifestation in the northern
. being reserved for separate treatment. But, while there is absolutely
no doubt about its extent and duration, the curiously uncritical
habit of the time manifests itself in the fact that, after the very
earliest period, not merely Gower, who has been dealt with already,
but a third writer, himself the first and strongest instance of this
very influence, is, as it were, co-opted' into the governance which
he has himself experienced ; and Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate
are invoked as of conjoint and nearly equal authority. So with
Lydgate we must begin.
It was no part of the generous and spontaneous, if not
always wisely allotted, adoration which the Middle Ages paid
to their literary masters to indulge in copious biographical notices
of them; the rather numerous details that we possess about
Chaucer are almost wholly concerned with him as a member, in one
way or another, of the public service, not as a poet. Now Lydgate
(though his membership of a monastic order would not, necessarily,
have excluded him from such occupations) seems, as a matter of
fact, to have had nothing to do with them; and we know, in
consequence, very little about him. That his name was John, that
he took, as was very common, his surname from his birthplace, a
Suffolk village, but just on the border of Cambridgeshire, and that
he was a monk of the great Suffolk abbey of St Edmund's Bury, are
data; he was, in fact, and even still is, from habit or affectation,
spoken of as 'the monk of Bury,' as often as by his own name.
But further documentary evidence is very slight and almost wholly
concerned with his professional work; even his references to him-


## p. 198 (#216) ############################################

198 The English Chaucerians
self, which are by no means unfrequent, amount to little more than
that he had not so much money as he would have liked to have,
that he had more work than he would have liked to have and that
he wore spectacles-three things not rare among men of letters-
besides those concerning the place of his birth and his entry into
religion at fifteen years of age. Tradition and inference—sometimes
the one, sometimes the other, sometimes both-date his birth at
about 1370 and assign Oxford as the place of his education, with
subsequent studies in France and Italy. He seems, at any rate, from
his own assertion in an apparently genuine poem, to have been at
Paris perhaps more than once. His expressions as regards 'bis
mayster Chaucer' may, possibly, imply personal acquaintance.
Formal documents exist for his admission to minor, subdiaconal,
diaconal and priest's orders at different dates between 1388—9 and
1397. He (or some other John Lydgate) is mentioned in certain
documents concerning Bury in 1415 and 1423, in which latter
year he was also elected prior of Hatfield Broadoak. Eleven years
later, he received licence to return to the parent monastery. He
had divers patrons—duke Humphrey of Gloucester being one.
References to a small pension, paid to him jointly with one John
Baret, exist for the years 1441 and 1446; and it has been thought
that a reference to him in Bokenam's Saints' Lives as 'now exist-
ing' is of the same year as this last. Beyond 1446, we hear
nothing positive of him. It is thus reasonable to fix his career
as lasting from c. 1370 to c. 1450.
If this be so, his life was not short: and it is quite certain that
such exercises of his art as we possess are very long. The enormous
catalogue of his work which occurs in Ritson's Bibliographia
Poetica, extending to many pages and 251 separate items, has
been violently attacked : it certainly will not stand examination
either as free from duplicates or as confined to certain or probable
attributions. But it was a great achievement for its time; and it has
not been superseded by anything which would be equally useful to
whoever shall desire to play Tyrwhitt to Lydgate's Chaucer. Until
quite recently, indeed, the study of Lydgate was only to be pursued
under almost prohibitive difficulties ; for, though, in consequence of
his great popularity, many of his works were issued by our early
printers, from Caxton to Tottel, these issues are now accessible
only here and there in the largest libraries. Moreover they-and it
would seem also the MSS which are slowly being brought in to
supplement them-present, as a rule, texts of an extreme badness,
which may or may not be due to copyists and printers. Till


## p. 199 (#217) ############################################

Lydgate
199
nearly the close of the nineteenth century nothing outside these
MSS and early prints was accessible at all, except the Minor
Poems printed by Halliwell for the Percy Society, and the Story of
T'hebes and other pieces included among Chaucer's works in the
older editions down to Chalmers's Poets. During the last fifteen
years, the Early English Text Society has given us The Temple
of Glass, The Secrets of the Philosophers (finished by Burgh),
The Assembly of Gods, The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man,
two Nightingale Poems, Reason and Sensuality and part of the
Troy Book; while the Cambridge University Press has issued
facsimiles of Caxton's The Churl and the Bird and The Horse,
the Sheep and the Goose, reprinted earlier for the Roxburghe Club.
These, however, to which may be added a few pieces printed
elsewhere, form a very small part of what Lydgate wrote, the total
of which, even as it exists, has been put at about 140,000 lines. Half
of this, or very nearly half, is contained in two huge works, the Troy
Book of 30,000 lines, and The Falls of Princes, adapted from
Boccaccio, his most famous and, perhaps, most popular book,
which is more than 6000 lines longer. The Pilgrimage of Man
itself extends to over 20,000 lines and the other pieces mentioned
above to about 17,000 more. The remainder is made up of divers
saints' lives-- Our Lady, Albon and Amphabel, Edmund and
Fremund, St Margaret, St Austin, St Giles and the Miracles of St
Edmund-varying from five or six thousand lines to three or four
hundred; another allegorical piece, The Court of Sapience, of over
2000; poems less but still fairly long bearing the titles Aesop, De
Duobus Mercatoribus, Testament, Danse Macabre, a version of Guy
of Warwick, December and July and The Flower of Courtesy;
with a large number of ballades and minor pieces.
The authenticity of many of these is not very easy to establish,
and it is but rarely that their dates can be ascertained with anything
like certainty. A few things, such as the verses for queen
Margaret's entry into London, date themselves directly; and some
of the saints' lives appear to be assignable with fair certainty, but
most are extremely uncertain. And it does not seem quite safe to
assume that all the shorter and better poems belong to the earlier
years, all the longer and less good ones to the later.
The truth is that there is hardly any whole poem, and ex-
ceedingly few, if any, parts of poems, in Lydgate so good that we
should be surprised at his being the author of even the worst thing
attributed to him. He had some humour: it appears fairly enough
in his best known and, perhaps, best thing, the very lively little poem


## p. 200 (#218) ############################################

200 The English Chaucerians
called London Lickpenny (not 'Lackpenny' as it used to be read),
which tells the woes of a country suitor in the capital. And it
appears again, sometimes in the immense and curious Pilgrimage,
a translation from Deguileville, which undoubtedly stands in some
relation-though at how many stages nothing but the wildest
guessing would undertake to determine—to The Pilgrim's Progress
itself. But this humour was never concentrated to anything like
Chaucerian strength; while of Chaucerian vigour, Chaucerian
pathos, Chaucerian vividness of description, Lydgate had no trace
or tincture.
To these defects he added two faults, one of which Chaucer had
never exhibited in any great measure, and from the other of
which he freed himself completely. The one is prosodic in-
competence ; the other is longwinded prolixity. The very same
reasons which made him an example of the first made his con-
temporaries insensible of it; and, in Elizabethan times, he was
praised for 'good verse' simply because the Elizabethans did not
understand what was good or what was bad in Middle English
versification. Fresh attempts have recently been made to claim
for him at least systematic if mistaken ideas in this respect ; but
they reduce themselves either to an allegation of anarchy in all
English verse, which can be positively disproved, or to a mere
classification of prosodic vices, as if this made them virtues.
The worst of Lydgate's apparently systematic roughness is a
peculiar line, broken at the caesura, with a gap left in the
breaking as in the following,
For specheles nothing mayst thou spede,
OP,
Might make a thing so celestial.
This extraordinary discord, of which some have striven to
find one or two examples in Chaucer, is abundant in Lydgate
and has been charitably connected with the disuse of the final e
-in the use of which, however, the same apologists sometimes
represent Lydgate as rather orthodox. Unfortunately, it is not,
by a long way, the only violation of harmony to be found in him.
That some of his poems—for instance, The Falls of Princes-are
better than his average in this respect, and that some, such as The
Story of Thebes, are worse, has been taken as suggesting that
the long-suffering copyist or printer is to blame; but this will
hardly suffice. Indeed, Lydgate himself, perhaps, in imitation of
Chaucer, but with reason such as Chaucer never had, declares that


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Lydgate
201
at one time (as tho ') he had no skill of metre. It is enough to say
that, even in rime royal, his lines wander from seven to fourteen
syllables, without the possibility of allowing monosyllabic or
trisyllabic feet in any fashion that shall restore the rhythm ; and
that his couplets, as in The Story of Thebes itself, seem often to be
unaware whether they are themselves octosyllabic or decasyllabic-
four-footed or five-footed. He is, on the whole, happiest in his
ostensible octosyllabics-a metre not, indeed, easy to achieve con-
summately, but admitting of fair performance without much trouble,
and not offering any great temptation to excessive irregularity.
Unluckily, this very metre tempted Lydgate to fall into what is
to most people, perhaps, his unforgivable fault-prolixity and
verbiage. It has, now and then, enticed even the greatest into these
errors or close to them: and Lydgate was not of the greatest.
But it shows him, perhaps, as well as any other, except in very
short pieces like the Lickpenny.
He is, accordingly, out of these short pieces and a few detached
stanzas of his more careful rime royal, hardly anywhere seen to
more advantage than in the huge and curious translation from
Guillaume de Deguileville which has been referred to above. Its
want of originality places it at no disadvantage ; for it is very
doubtful whether Lydgate ever attempted any work of size that was
not either a direct translation or more than based upon some
previous work of another author. This quaint allegory, with
absolutely nothing of Bunyan's compactness of action, or of his
living grasp of character, or of his perfect, if plain, phrase, has a far
more extensive and varied conglomeration of adventure, and not
merely carries its pilgrim through preliminary theological diffi-
culties, through a Romance-of-the-Rose insurrection of Nature
and Aristotle against Grace, through an immense process of
arming which amplifies St Paul's famous text into thousands of
lines, through conflicts with the Seven Deadly Sins and the more
dangerous companionship of the damsel Youth—but conducts him
to the end through strange countries of sorcery and varied ex-
periences, mundane and religious. Thus, the very multitude and the
constant phantasmagoric changes of scene and story save the poet
from dulness, some leave of skipping being taken at the doctrinal
and argumentative passages. In the “Youth' part and in not a
few others he is lively, and not too diffuse.
Scarcely as much can be said of the still longer version of Guido
delle Colonne's Hystoria Troiana, which we possess in some 30,000
lines of heroic couplet, with a prologue of the same and an epilogue
6


## p. 202 (#220) ############################################

202 The English Chaucerians
in rime royal. To say that it is the dullest of the many ver-
sions we have would be rash, but the present writer does not
know where to put his hand upon a duller, and it is certainly
inferior to the Scots alliterative form, which may be of about the
same date. Part of its weakness may be due to the fact that
Lydgate was less successful with the heroic couplet than, perhaps,
with any other measure, and oftener used his broken-backed
line in it. But the poem was twice printed, huge as it is, and was
condensed and modernised by Heywood as late as 1614.
The theme of the Tale of Troy, indeed, can never wholly lack
interest, nor is interest wanting in Lydgate's poem. In this respect
he was more successful with the yet again huger Falls of Princes or
Tragedies of John Bochas. But this, also, was popular and produced
a family more deplorable, almost, than itself (with one or two well
known exceptions) in The Mirror for Magistrates of the next century.
Its only redeeming point is the comparative merit, already noticed,
of its rime royal. To this we may return: a few words must now
be said of some other productions of Lydgate. For what reason
some have assigned special excellence to Reason and Sensuality,
and have, accordingly, determined that it must be the work of his
poetic prime, is not very easy to discover. It is in octosyllables,
and, as has been said, he is usually happier there than in heroics or
in rime royal ; it is certainly livelier in subject than most of his
works ; and it is evidently composed under a fresher inspiration
from the Rose itself than is generally the case with those cankered
rose leaves, the allegoric poems of the fifteenth century; while its
direct original, the unprinted Échecs amoureux, is said to have
merit. But, otherwise, there is not much to be said for it. Its
subject is a sort of cento of the favourite motifs of the time-
Chess; Fortune (not with her wheel but with tuns of sweet and
bitter drink); the waking, the spring morning and garden; Nature;
the judgment of Paris ; the strife between Venus and Diana for the
author's allegiance; the Garden of Delight and its dangers; and the
Forest of Reason, with a most elaborate game of chess again to
finish-or, rather, not to finish, for the piece breaks off at about its
seven-thousandth line. It is possible that the argument of earliness
is correct, for some of the descriptions are fresh and not twice
battered as Lydgate's often are ; and there seems to be a certain
zest in the writing, instead of the groaning weariness which so
frankly meets the reader halfway elsewhere.
The Temple of Glass, partly in heroics, partly in rime royal, is
one of the heaviest of fifteenth century allegorical love-poems, in


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Lydgate
203
which two lovers complain to Venus and, having been answered
by her, are finally united. It is extremely prosaic ; but, by sheer
editing, has been brought into a condition of at least more
systematic prosody than most of Lydgate's works. The Assembly
of Gods is a still heavier allegory of vices and virtues presented
under the names of divinities, major and minor, of the ancient
pantheon, but brought round to an orthodox Christian conclusion.
The piece is in rime royal of the loosest construction, so much
so that its editor proposes a merely rhythmical scansion.
By far the best and most poetical passages in Lydgate's vast
work are to be found in The Life of Our Lady, from which Warton
long ago managed to extract more than one batch of verses to
which he assigned the epithets of elegant and harmonious' as
well as the more doubtful praise of 'so modern a cast. ' It is
possible that these citations and encomia are responsible for the
good opinion which some have formed of the poet ; but it is to
be feared that they will wander far and wearily among Lydgate's
myriads of lines without coming upon the equals of
6
6
Like as the dewe discendeth on the rose
In silver drops,
or,
0 thoughtful herte, plonged in dystresse,
With slomber of slouthe this longe winter's night-
Out of the slepe of mortal hevinesse
Awake anon! and loke upon the light
Of thilke starr;
or,
And he that made the high and crystal heven,
The firmament, and also every sphere;
The Golden ax-tree and the starres seven,
Citherea so lusty for to appere
And redde Marse with his sterne here.
The subject which never failed to inspire every medieval poet who
was capable of inspiration has not failed here.
The best of Lydgate's Saints' Lives proper appears to be the
Saint Margaret; it is very short, and the innumerable previous
handlings of the story, which has intrinsic capabilities, may have
stood him in good stead. On the other hand, the long Edınund
and Fremund, in celebration of the saint whom the poet was
more especially bound to honour, though spoken of by some
with commendation, is a feeble thing, showing no skill of narration.
It is not in quite such bad rime royal as Lydgate can sometimes
write; but, even here, the plangency of which the metre is capable,


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204
The English Chaucerians
and which would have come in well, is quite absent; while the
poem is characterised throughout by the flattest and dullest
diction. The two Nightingale poems are religious-allegorical.
They are both in rime royal and average not more than 400
lines each.
The beast-fable had something in it peculiarly suitable to
Lydgate's kind of genius (as, indeed, to medieval genius generally)
and this fact is in favour of his Aesop and of the two poems
(among bis best) which are called The Churl and the Bird and The
Horse, the Sheep and the Goose. Of these two pieces, both very
favourite examples of the moral tale of eastern origin which was
disseminated through Europe widely by various collections as well
as in individual specimens, The Churl is couched in rime royal
and The Horse in the same metre, with an envoy or moralitas
in octaves. Both are contained, though not completely, in Halliwell's
edition of the minor poems. The actual Aesop—a small collection
of Aesopic fables which is sometimes assigned to Lydgate's earliest
period, perhaps to his residence at Oxford-is pointless enough,
and contrasts very unfavourably with Henryson's. But the
remainder of these minor poems, whatever the certainty of their
attribution, includes Lydgate's most acceptable work :-London
Lickpenny itself; the Ballade of the Midsummer Rose, where 'the
eternal note of sadness' and change becomes musical even in him;
the sly advice to an old man who wished for a young wife; the
satire on horned head-dresses; The Prioress and her Three
Suitors; the poet's Testament; the sincere . Thank God of all'
and others.
The Complaint of the Black Knight, for long assigned to
Chaucer, though not quite worthy of him, is better than most
of Lydgate's poems, though it has his curious flatness; and
it might, perhaps, be prescribed as the best beginning for those
who wish to pass from the study of the older and greater poet
to that of his pupil.
Lydgate has not lacked defenders, who would be formidable
if their locus standi were more certain. The fifteenth century
adored him because he combined all its own worst faults, and the
sixteenth seems to have accepted him because it had no apparatus
for criticism. When, after a long eclipse, he was in two senses
taken up by Gray, that poet seems chiefly to have known The Falls
of Princes, in which, perhaps by dint of long practice, Lydgate's
metrical shortcomings are less noticeable than in some other places,
and where the dignity and gravity of Boccaccio's Latin has, to some


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Lydgate
205
6
6
>
extent, invigorated his style. Warton is curiously guarded in his
opinions; and a favourable judgment of Coleridge may, possibly, be
regarded as very insufficiently based. The apologies of editors
(especially those who are content with systematised metre, how-
ever inharmonious) do not go very far. On the whole, though
Ritson's condemnation may have been expressed with characteristic
extravagance and discourtesy towards the voluminous, prosaic and
drivelling monk, nobody can dispute the voluminousness in the
worst sense, and it is notable that even Lydgate's defenders, in pro-
portion as they know more of him, are apt to confess and avoid the
'prosaic' and to slip occasionally into admissions rather near the
drivelling. It is to be feared that some such result is inevitable.
A little Lydgate, especially if the little be judiciously chosen, or
happily allotted by chance, is a tolerable thing: though even this
can hardly be very delectable to any well qualified judge of poetry.
But, the longer and wider that acquaintance with him is extended,
the more certain is dislike to make its appearance. The prosodic
incompetence cannot be entirely due to copyists and printers;
the enormous verbosity, the ignorance how to tell a story, the
want of freshness, vigour, life, cannot be due to them at all.
But what is most fatal of all is the flatness of diction noticed
above the dull, hackneyed, slovenly phraseology, only thrown
up by his occasional aureate pedantry-which makes the common
commoner and the uncommon uninteresting. Lydgate himself,
or some imitator of him, has been credited with the phrase 'gold
dewdrops of speech about Chaucer. He would hardly have
thought of anything so good; but the phrase at least suggests an
appropriate variant, 'leaden splashes,' for his own.
The inseparable companion in literature of Lydgate is Thomas
Occleve or Hoccleve; whether this companionship extended to life
we do not know, though they may, perhaps, have had a common
friend in Chaucer, whose portrait adorns one of Occleve's MSS, and
of whom he speaks with personal warmth. This portrait is one
chief reason which we have for gratitude to Occleve; but it
is not the only one. In the first place, we have from him
what seems to be at least possibly autograph writing, a contri-
bution to our knowledge of the actual language and metre of
the work which (though one cannot but wish it came from Chaucer
himself) would, if certain, be of the greatest value. In the
second place, he has added, by some autobiographical confidences
which make him in a very weak and washed out way, it is
true) a sort of English and crimeless Villon, to the actual picture


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206
The English Chaucerians
of his times that we have in Lydgate's Lickpenny. His surname is
supposed, as that of his fellow Lydgate is known, to be a place-name,
and the nearest form is that of Hockliffe or Hocclyve in Bedfordshire.
But both Ock- and Hock- are common prefixes all over the south
and the midlands, while -cleve and -cliff are equally common
suffixes. In a Dialogue, he appears to assign his fifty-third year to
the twelve-month just before Henry V's death in 1422 : so that he
must have been born about 1368. In another poem, some ten
years earlier, the De Regimine Principum, he says that he had
been 'twenty years and four' in the office of the Privy Seal, which
gives us another date-say 1387—for his entrance there at the very
probable age of nineteen or so. He is also mentioned as actually a
clerk in a document apparently of that year. He thought of taking
orders, but did not : though, in 1399, he received a pension of £10
till he should receive a benefice (without cure of souls) of double
the value. Various entries of payments of this pension exist,
and also of office expenses. In 1406, he wrote the curious
poem above referred to, La Male Règle, in which he begs for
payment and confesses a long course of mild dissipation. His
salary was very small: under £4, apparently. He seems at one
time to have lived at Chester's inn in the Strand, and to have
married about 1411, being then over forty. About five years
later, he was out of his mind for a time.