No More Learning

But something must first be said on a preliminary point of
importance which has occupied scholars not a little, and on which
fairly satisfactory agreement has been reached : and that is the
probable order of the works in composition.
It has been observed that the facts of Chaucer's life, as known,
furnish us with no direct information concerning his literary work,
of any kind whatsoever. But, indirectly, they, as collected, furnish
6


## p. 168 (#186) ############################################

168
Chaucer
us with some not unimportant information—to wit, that in his
youth and early manhood he was much in France, that in early
middle life he was not a little in Italy and that he apparently
spent the whole of his later days in England. Now, if we take the
more or less authenticated works, we shall find that they sort
themselves up into three bundles more or less definitely consti-
tuted. The first consists of work either directly or pretty closely
translated or imitated from the French, and couched in forms
more or less French in origin—The Romaunt of the Rose, The
Complaints, The book of the Duchess, the minor ballades, etc.
The second consists of two important pieces directly traceable
to the Italian originals of Boccaccio, Troilus and Criseyde and
The Knight's Tale, with another scarcely less suggested by the
same Italian author, The Legend of Good Women, and, perhaps,
others still, including some of The Canterbury Tales besides The
Knights. The third includes the major and most characteristic
part of The Tales themselves from The Prologue onward, which
are purely and intensely English. Further, when these bundles
(not too tightly tied up nor too sharply separated from each other)
are surveyed, we find hardly disputable internal evidence that
they succeeded each other in the order of the events of his life.
The French division is not only very largely second-hand, but is
full of obvious tentative experiments; the author is trying his
hand, which, as yet, is an uncertain one, on metre, on language, on
subject; and, though he often does well, he seldom shows the
supremacy and self-confidence of mature genius. In the Italian
bundle he has gained very much in these respects: we hear a
voice we have not heard before and shall not hear again—the
voice of an individual, if not yet a consummate, poet. But his
themes are borrowed; he embroiders rather than weaves. In the
third or English period all this is over. 'Here is God's plenty,'
as Dryden admirably said; and the poet is the steward of the
god of poets, and not the mere interpreter of some other poet.
He has his own choice of subject, his own grasp of character and
his own diction and plot. He is at home. And it is a significant
fact that we have references to other works in The Tales, but none
to The Tales in other works. We may, therefore, conclude, without
pushing the classification to a perilous particularity, that it is
generally sound
We now come, without further difficulty or doubt, to those
parts of the works about which there is little or no contention;
only prefixing a notice of the English Romaunt of the Rose with


## p. 169 (#187) ############################################

Romaunt of the Rose 169
full reference to the cautions given previously. For this we have
but one MS (in the Hunterian collection at Glasgow) and the
early printed version of Thynne. The translation is very far from
complete, representing only a small part of the great original work
of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, and it is not continuous
even as it is. The usual practice of modern commentators has been
to break it up into three parts-A, B and C; but, by applying
to this division the rime and other tests before referred to, very
different results have been reached. The solution most in favour
is that Chaucer may not improbably have written A, may more or
less possibly have written C, but can hardly have written B, which
abounds in northern forms. It is, however, certain that he actually
translated this very part, inasmuch as he refers to it in The Legend.
Whatever may be the facts in these respects, there is a general
agreement of the competent that, from the literary point of view,
the whole is worthy of Chaucer and of the original. Of this
original, the earlier or Lorris part is one of the most beautiful
works of the Middle Ages, while the second or longer part by
Jean de Meun is one of the shrewdest and most characteristic,
The two authors were singularly different, but their English
translator, whoever he was, has shown himself equal to either
requirement, after a fashion which only a consummate man of letters
could display-such a man for instance as he to whom we owe
both the Prioress and the Wife of Bath. The soft love allegory of
the earlier part, with its lavish description and ornament, is not
rendered more adequately than the sharp satire and somewhat
pedantic learning of the second. The metre is that of the original
-the octosyllabic couplet—which was, on the whole, the most
popular literary measure of the Middle Ages in English, French
and German alike, and which had been practised in England for
nearly 200 years. To escape monotony and insignificance in this
is difficult, especially if the couplets are kept more or less distinct,
and if the full eight syllables and no more are invariably retained.
The English poet has not discovered all his possibilities of varia-
tion, but he has gone far in this direction. He has also been
curiously successful in sticking very closely to the matter of his
original without awkwardness, and, where he amplifies, amplifying
with taste. English literature up to, and even after, the time is
full of translation; is, indeed, very largely made up of it. But
there is no verse translation which approaches this in the com-
bined merits of fidelity, poetry and wit. The date is very un-
certain, but it must be early; some, who think the poem may all


## p. 170 (#188) ############################################

170
Chaucer
be Chaucer's, connect it with an early possible sojourn of his in
the north with the household of Lionel or his wife.
There are few data for settling the respective periods of com-
position of the early minor poems. If The book of the Duchess
(Blanche of Lancaster, who died in 1369) be really of the earliest
and The Complaint unto Pity is not usually assigned to an earlier
date-Chaucer was a singularly late-writing poet. But we may,
of course, suppose that his earlier work is lost, or that he devoted
the whole of his leisure (it must be remembered that he was in
the service' in various ways) to the Rose. On the other hand,
the putting of The Complaint of Mars as late as 1379 depends
solely upon a note by Shirley, connecting it with a court scandal
between Isabel of Castille, duchess of York, and John Holland,
duke of Exeter—for which there is no intrinsic evidence whatso-
ever. From a literary point of view one would put it much
earlier. With the exception of The Parliament of Fowls, which
has been not unreasonably connected with the marriage of
Richard II to Anne of Bohemia in 1382, internal evidence of style,
metrical experiment, absence of strongly original passages and
the like, would place all these poems before Troilus, and some
of them at a very early period of the poet's career, whensoever it
may have begun. Of the three which usually dispute the position
of actual primacy of date, The book of the Duchess or The Death
of Blanche is a poem of more than 1300 lines in octosyllables,
not quite so smooth as those of The Romaunt, but rather more
adventurously split up. The matter is much patched together out
of medieval commonplaces, but has touches both of pathos and
picturesqueness. The much shorter Complaint unto Pity has, for
its special interest, the first appearance in English, beyond all
reasonable doubt, of the great stanza called rime royal--that is
to say, the seven-lined decasyllabic stanza rimed ababbcc, which
held the premier position for serious verse in English poetry till
the Spenserian dethroned it. The third piece, Chaucer's A B C,
is in the chief rival of rime royal, the octave ababbcbc. The
other he probably took from the French : it is noticeable that
the A B C (a series of stanzas to our Lady, each beginning with
a different letter of the alphabet in regular order), though actually
adapted from the French of Deguileville, is in a quite different
metre, which may have been taken from Italian or French. And
one would feel inclined to put very close to these The Complaint
of Mars and A Complaint to his Lady, in which metrical ex-
ploration is pushed even further to nine-line stanzas aabaabbcc


## p. 171 (#189) ############################################

Early Poems
171
in the first, and ten-line as well as terza rima in the second. These
evidences of tentative work are most interesting and nearly de-
cisive in point of earliness ; but it is impossible to say that the
poetical value of any of these pieces is great.
In Anelida and Arcite and The Parliament of Fowls this
value rises very considerably. Both are written in the rime
royal-a slight anachronism of phrase as regards Chaucer, since
it is said to be derived from the use of the measure by James I
of Scotland in The Kingis Quair, but the only distinguishing
name for it and much the best. To this metre, as is shown from
these two poems and, still more, by Troilus, Chaucer had taken a
strong fancy; and he had not merely improved, if not yet quite
perfected, his mastery of it purely as metre, but had gone far to
provide himself with a poetic diction, and a power of writing
phrase, suitable to its purely metrical powers. The first named
piece is still a 'complaint'-queen Anelida bewailing the falseness
of her lover Arcite. But it escapes the cut-and-dried character
of some of the earlier work; and, in such a stanza as the following:
Whan sbe shal ete, on him is so hir thoght,
That wel unnethe of mete took she keep;
And whan that she was to hir reste broght,
On him she thoghte alwey till that she sleep;
Whan he was absent, provely she weep;
Thus liveth fair Anelida the quene
For fals Arcite, that did hir al this tene-
the poem acquires that full-blooded pulse of verse, the absence of
which is the fault of so much medieval poetry. That it is not,
however, very late is clear from the curious included, or concluding,
Complaint in very elaborate and varied choric form. The poem
is connected with The Knight's Tale in more than the name of
Arcite.
It is, thus, the inferior of The Parliament of Fowls. This
opens with the finest piece of pure poetry which, if the order
adopted be correct, Chaucer had yet written,
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,
Th’ assay so hard, so sharp the conquering,
The dredful joye, that alwey slit so yerne,
Al this mene I by love, that my feling
Astonyeth with his wonderful worching
So soro y-wis, that whan I on him thinke,
Nat wot I wel wher that I wake or winke;
and it includes not a few others, concluding, like Anelida, with a
lyric, shorter and more of the song kind, ‘Now welcom somer,' in
roundel form. This piece is also the first in which we meet most
.


## p. 172 (#190) ############################################

172
Chaucer
of the Chaucerian qualities—the equally felicitous and felicitously
blended humour and pathos, the adoption and yet transcendence
of medieval commonplaces (the dream, the catalogues of trees and
birds, the classical digressions and stuffings), and, above all, the
faculty of composition and handling, so as to make the poem,
whatever its subject, a poem, and not a mere copy of verses.
As yet, however, Chaucer had attempted nothing that much
exceeded, if it exceeded at all, the limits of occasional poetry;
while the experimental character, in metre especially, had dis-
tinguished his work very strongly, and some of it (probably most)
had been mere translation. In the work which, in all probability,
came next, part of which may have anticipated The Parliament
of Fowls, he was still to take a ready-prepared canvas of subject,
but to cover it with his own embroidery to such an extent as to
make the work practically original, and he was to confine it to
the metre that he had by this time thoroughly proved—the rime
royal itself.
In Troilus and Criseyde, to which we now come, Chaucer had
entirely passed his apprentice stage ; indeed, it may be said that,
in certain lines, he never went further, though he found new lines
and carried on others which here are only seen in their beginning.
The story of the Trojan prince Troilus and his love for a damsel
&
(who, from a confused remembrance of the Homeric heroines, was
successively called Briseida and Griseida or Criseida) is one of
those developments of the tale of Troy which, unknown to classical
tradition, grew up and were eagerly fostered in the Middle Ages.
Probably first sketched in the curious and still uncertainly dated
works of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, it had been worked
up into a long legend in the Roman de Troie of Benoit de
Sainte More, a French trouvère of the late twelfth century; these,
according to medieval habit, though with an absence of acknow-
ledgment by no means universal or even usual, had been adapted
bodily a hundred years later in the prose Latin Hystoria Troiana
of Guido delle Colonne. On this, in turn, Boccaccio, somewhat
before the middle of the fourteenth century, based his poem of n
Filostrato in ottava rima; and, from the Filostrato, Chaucer took
the story. Not more, however, than one-third of the actual Troilus
and Criseyde is, in any sense, translated from Boccaccio, who is
never named by the English poet, though he has references to
a mysterious 'Lollius. ' But such points as this last cannot be
dealt with here.
What really concerns us is that, in this poem, Chaucer, though


## p. 173 (#191) ############################################

Troilus and Criseyde 173
still playing the part of hermit-crab—in a manner strange to
modern notions, but constantly practised in medieval times and
by no means unusual in Shakespeare-has quite transformed the
house which he borrowed and peopled it with quite different
inhabitants. This is most remarkable in the case of Pandarus :
but it is hardly less so in those of Troilus and Criseyde them-
selves. Indeed, in this poem Chaucer has not only given us
a full and finished romance, but has endowed it with what,
as a rule, medieval romance conspicuously lacked-interest of
character as well as of incident, and interest of drama as well as
of narrative. Discussions (which need not be idle and should
not be other than amicable) have been, and may be, held on the
question whether Chaucer himself is not a sixteenth-seventeenth
century dramatist, and a nineteenth century novelist, who happened
to be born in the fourteenth century: and Troilus is one of the
first texts which lend themselves to this discussion. The piece
is somewhat too long; it has (which amounts to much the same
thing) too many digressions, and (again much the same thing) the
action is too seldom concentrated and ‘spirited up'-there is too
much talk and too little happens. But these were faults so
ingrained in medieval literature that even Chaucer could not
entirely get rid of them : and hardly anyone before him had got
rid of them to the same extent.
And if the comparative excellence of the story be great, the
positive excellence of the poetry is greater. Of the rime royal
stanza the poet is now a perfect master; and, if his diction has not
acquired its full suppleness and variety of application, its dignity
and its facility for the purposes to which it is actually applied
leave nothing whatever to be desired. A list of show passages
would be out of place here; it is enough to say that nowhere,
from the fine opening to the far finer close, is the medium of verse
and phrase other than fully adequate to the subject and the poet's
intention. It is, on the whole, the weakest point of medieval
poetry, that, with subjects of the most charming kind, and frequent
felicities of sentiment and imagery, the verse lacks finish, and the
phrase has no concentrated fire or sweetness. In Troilus this
ceases to be the case.
Very strong arguments, in the absence of positive evidence,
would be required to make us regard a work of such maturity
as early; and the tendency has been to date it about 1383. Of
late, however, attempts have been made to put it six or seven
years earlier, on the strength, chiefly, of a passage in the Mirour


## p. 174 (#192) ############################################

174
Chaucer
de l'Omme, attributed to Gower and supposed to be itself of
about 1376. Here it may be enough to say that, even if the
passage be certainly Gower's and certainly as early as this, it
need not refer to Chaucer's Troilus at all, or, at any rate, to
any tale of Troilus that Gower knew Chaucer to have finished.
That the poet, at this time still a busy man and having many
irons, literary and other, in the fire, may have been a considerable
time over so long a book, even to the length of having revised it,
as some think, is quite possible. That, as a whole, and as we have
it, it can be other than much later than the recognised 'early'
poems, is, on sound principles of literary criticism, nearly impos-
sible; the later date suits much better than the earlier both with
what followed as well as with what went before!
In any case, Chaucer's position and prospects as a poet on the
morrow, whenever this was, of his finishing Troilus, are interesting
to consider. He had mastered, and, to some extent, transformed,
the romance. Was he to continue this? Is it fortunate that he
did not? Is not a Lancelot and Guinevere or a Tristram and
Iseult handled à la Troilus rather to be deplored as a vanished
possibility? It would appear that he asked himself something like
this question; and, if the usually accepted order of his works be
correct, he was somewhat irresolute in answering it—at any rate
for a time, if not always. It is probable that, at any rate, The
Knight's Tale, the longest and most finished constituent of the
Canterbury collection, was begun at this time. It is somewhat
out of proportion and keeping with its fellows, is like Troilus taken
from a poem of Boccaccio's and, like Troilus, is a romance proper,
but even further carried out of its kind by story and character
interest, mixture of serious and lighter treatment and brilliancy
of contributory parts. It seems not improbable that the unfinished
and, indeed, hardly begun Squire's Tale, which would have made
such a brilliant pendant, is also of this time as well as St Cecily
and, perhaps, other things. But the most considerable products of
this period of hesitation are, undoubtedly, The House of Fame and
The Legend of Good Women. Neither of these is complete; in
fact, Chaucer is a poet of torsi; but each is an effort in a different
and definite direction, and both are distinguished remarkably from
each other, from their predecessor Troilus, and from The Canter.
bury Tales, which, as an entire scheme, no doubt succeeded them.
The House of Fame is one of the most puzzling of Chaucer's
· See bibliography ondex Tatldok.


## p. 175 (#193) ############################################

The House of Fame
175
9
productions. There are divers resemblances to passages in Dante
(“the great poet of Itaile,' as Chaucer calls him in another place),
and some have even thought that this poem may be the 'Dant in
English,' otherwise unidentified, which was attributed to him by
Lydgate ; but perhaps this is going too far. In some respects, the
piece is a reversion-in metre, to the octosyllable ; in general
plan, to the dream-form; and, in episode, to the promiscuous
classical digression : the whole story of the Aeneid being most
eccentrically included in the first book, while it is not till the
second that the main subject begins by a mysterious and gorgeous
eagle carrying the poet off, like Ganymede, but not to heaven, only
to the House of Fame itself. The allegorical description of the
house and of its inhabitants is brilliantly carried on through the
third book, but quite abruptly cut short; and there is no hint of
what the termination was to be. The main differentia of the poem,
however, is, besides a much firmer and more varied treatment
of the octosyllable, an infusion of the ironic and humorous element
of infinitely greater strength than in any previous work, irresistibly
suggesting the further development of the vein first broached in
the character of Pandarus. Nothing before, in this respect, in
English had come near the dialogue with the eagle and parts of
the subsequent narrative. It failed to satisfy the writer, however;
and, either because he did not find the plan congenial, or because
he found the metre once for all and for the last time even as he
had improved it—too cramping for his genius, he tried another
experiment in The Legend of Good Women, an experiment in
one way, it would seem, as unsatisfactory as that of The House
of Fame, in another, a reaching of land, firmly and finally. The
existence of a double prologue to this piece, comparatively lately
found out, has, of necessity, stimulated the mania for arranging and
rearranging Chaucer's work; but it need not do so in the very
least. The whole state of this work, if it teaches us anything,
teaches us that Chaucer was a man who was as far as possible
removed from the condition which labours and 'licks' at a piece
of work, till it is thoroughly smooth and round, and then turns
it out to fend for itself. If two of Chaucer's friends had pre-
vailed on him to give them each an autograph copy of a poem
of his, it is much more probable than not that the copies
would have varied—that that 'God's plenty of his would have
manifested itself in some changes. The work itself is quite un-
affected by the accident of its double proem. Whether it was
really intended as a palinode for abuse of women in earlier books


## p. 176 (#194) ############################################

176
Chaucer
may be seriously doubted; the pretence that it was is quite like
Chaucer's fun,' and quite like the usual fashion of ushering in
literary work with some excuse, once almost universal and still
not quite unknown. For the actual substance-stories of famous
and unhappy dames and damsels of old, who were, like Guinevere,
'good lovers'—he had precedents in two of his favourite authors,
Ovid and Boccaccio; and this would have been more than enough
for him. But, in handling them, he took a metre—which we cannot
say he had never used before, because we do not know the
exact dates of the original forms of The Knight's Tale and other
things, but—which had been sporadically and half-accidentally
practised in Middle English to no very small extent; which had
recently been used in France, where the single decasyllabic line
had been familiar ever since the dawn of French literature proper;
and of which, as it was, he had written many hundreds at the end
of his rime royal in Troilus and elsewhere. This is the great
decasyllabic or heroic couplet; the ‘riding rime' (not yet ‘riding,'
as Troilus was not yet royal'); the ouster of the octosyllabic as
staple of English verse; the rival of the stanza for two centuries,
and something like the tyrant of English prosody for two more;
and still one of the very greatest of English metres for every
purpose but the pure lyric.
The work resulting is of the greatest interest, and has been,
as a rule, rather undervalued. Tennyson judged better when he
made it the inspiration of one of the greatest of his own early
poems. The prologue, in whichever form we take it, is the most
personal, the most varied and, perhaps, the most complete utterance
that we have from Chaucer as far as substance goes, though it is
not his most accomplished performance as art. He is evidently at
a sort of watershed, looking before and after—but especially after-
at his own work. 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.