While in prison, he began a prose work entitled The Testament of Love, in order to beguile the tedium of a confinement, which made every hour, he says, appear to him a hundred winters; and he seems to have published it to allay the obloquy attendant on his misfortunes, as an explanation of his past conduct. It is an allegory, in imitation of Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy; an universal favourite in the early literature of Europe. Never was an obscure affair conveyed in a more obscure apology; yet amidst the gloom of allegory and lamentation, the vanity of the poet sufficiently breaks out. It is the goddess of Love who visits him in his confinement, and accosts him as her own immortal bard. He descants to her on his own misfortunes, on the politics of London, and on his devotion to the Lady Marguerite, or pearl, whom he found in a mussel shell, and who turns out at last to mean the spiritual comfort of the Church*.

In 1389 the Duke of Lancaster returned from Spain, and he had once more a steady protector. In that year he was appointed clerk of the works at Westminster, and in the following year clerk of those at Windsor, with a salary of £36 per annum. His resignation of those offices, which it does not appear he held for more than twenty months, brings us to the sixty-fourth year of his age, when he retired to the country, most probably to Woodstock, and there composed his immortal Canterbury Tales, amidst the scenes which had inspired his youthful genius.

In 1394 a pension of £20 a year was granted to him, and in the last year of Richard's reign he had a grant of a yearly tun of wine; we may suppose in lieu of the daily pitcher, which had been stopped during his misfortunes.

Tradition assigns to our poet a residence in his old age at Donnington Castle, near Newbury, in Berkshire; to which he must have moved in 1397, if he ever possessed that mansion: but Mr. Grose, who affirms that he purchased Donnington Castle in that year, has neglected to show the documents of such a purchase. One of the most curious particulars in the latter part of his life is the patent of protection granted to Chaucer in the year 1398, which his former inaccurate biographers had placed in the second year of Richard, till Mr. Tyrwhitt corrected the mistaken date. The deed has been generally supposed to refer to the poet's creditors; as it purports, however, to protect him contra æmulos suos, the expression has led Mr. Godwin to question its having any relation to his debtors and creditors. It is true that rivals or competitors this knowing sothe have I saide for troathe of my leigiaunce by which I was charged on my kinges behalfe."

* Mr. Todd has given, in his Illustrations, some poems supposed to be written by Chaucer during his imprisonment; in which, in the same allegorical manner, under the praises of Spring, he appears to implore the assistance of Vere, Earl of Oxford, the principal favourite of Richard II

are not the most obvious designation for the creditors of a great poet; but still, as the law delights in fictions, and as the writ for securing a debtor exhibits at this day such figurative personages as John Doe and Richard Roe, the form of protection might in those times have been equally metaphorical; nor, as a legal metonymy, are the terms rival and competitor by any means inexpressive of that interesting relation which subsists between the dun and the fugitive; a relation which in all ages has excited the warmest emulation, and the promptest ingenuity of the human mind. Within a year and a half from the date of this protection, Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, ascended the throne of England by the title of Henry IV.

It is creditable to the memory of that prince, that, however basely he abandoned so many of his father's friends, he did not suffer the poetical ornament of the age to be depressed by the revolution. Chaucer's annuity and pipe of wine were continued under the new reign, and an additional pension of forty marks a year was conferred upon him. But the poet did not long enjoy this accession to his fortune. He died in London, on the twenty-fifth of October, 1400, and was interred in the south cross aisle of Westminster Abbey. The monument to his memory was erected a century and a half after his decease, by a warm admirer of his genius, Nicholas Brigham, a gentleman of Oxford. It stands at the north end of a recess formed by four obtuse foliated arches, and is a plain altar with three quatrefoils and the same number of shields. Chaucer, in his Treatise of the Astrolabe, mentions his son Lewis, for whom it was composed in 1391, and who was at that time ten years of age. Whether Sir Thomas Chaucer, who was Speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of Henry IV. was another and elder son of the poet, as many of his biographers have supposed, is a point which has not been distinctly ascertained.

Mr. Tyrwhitt has successfully vindicated Chaucer from the charge brought against him by Verstegan and Skinner, of having adulterated English by vast importations of French words and phrases. If Chaucer had indeed naturalised a multitude of French words by his authority, he might be regarded as a bold innovator, yet the language would have still been indebted to him for enriching it. But such revolutions in languages are not wrought by individuals; and the style of Chaucer will bear a fair comparison with that of his contemporaries, Gower, Wickliffe, and Mandeville. That the polite English of that period should have been highly impregnated with French is little to be wondered at, considering that English was a new language at court, where French had of late been exclusively used, and must have still been habitual*. English

* [Dryden has accused Chaucer of introducing Gallicisms into the English language; not aware that French

must, indeed, have been known at court when Chaucer began his poetical career, for he would not have addressed his patrons in a language entirely plebeian; but that it had not been long esteemed of sufficient dignity for a courtly muse appears from Gower's continuing to write French verses, till the example of his great contemporary taught him to polish his native tongue*.

The same intelligent writer, Mr. Tyrwhitt, while he vindicates Chaucer from the imputation of leaving English more full of French than he found it, considers it impossible to ascertain, with any degree of certainty, the exact changes which he produced upon the national style, as we have neither a regular series of authors preceding him, nor authentic copies of their works, nor assurance that they were held as standards by their contemporaries. In spite of this difficulty, Mr. Ellis ventures to consider Chaucer as distinguished from his predecessors by his fondness for an Italian inflexion of words, and by his imitating the characteristics of the poetry of that nation.

He has a double claim to rank as the founder of English poetry, from having been the first to make it the vehicle of spirited representations of life and native manners, and from having been the first great architect of our versification, in giving our language the ten syllable, or heroic measure, which though it may sometimes be found among the lines of more ancient versifiers, evidently comes in only by accident. This measure occurs in the earliest poem that is attributed to himt, The Court of Love, a title borrowed from the fantastic institutions of that name, where points of casuistry in the tender passion were debated and decided by persons of both sexes. It is a dream, in which the poet fancies himself taken to the Temple of Love, introduced to a mistress, and sworn to observe the statutes of the amatory god. As the earliest work of Chaucer, it interestingly exhibits the successful effort of his youthful hand in erecting

was the language of the Court of England not long before Chaucer's time, and that, far from introducing French phrases into the English tongue, the ancient bard was successfully active in introducing the English as a fashionable dialect, instead of the French, which had, before his time, been the only language of polite literature in England.-SIR WALTER SCOTT'S Misc. Prose Works, vol. i. p. 426.]

* Mr. Todd, in his Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer, p. 26, observes, that authors, both historical and poetical, in the century after the decease of these poets, in usually coupling their names, place Gower before Chaucer merely as a tribute to his seniority. But though Gower might be an older man than Chaucer, and possibly earlier known as a writer, yet unless it can be proved that he published English poetry before his Confessio Amantis, of which there appears to be no evidence, Chaucer must still claim precedency as the earlier English poet. The Confessio Amantis was published in the sixteenth year of Richard II.'s reign, at which time Chaucer had written all his poems except the Canterbury Tales.

+ Written, as some lines in the piece import, at the age of nineteen.

a new and stately fabric of English numbers. As a piece of fancy, it is grotesque and meagre ; but the lines often flow with great harmony.

His story of Troilus and Cresseide was the delight of Sir Philip Sydney; and perhaps, excepting the Canterbury Tales, was, down to the time of Queen Elizabeth, the most popular poem in the English language. It is a story of vast length and almost desolate simplicity, and abounds in all those glorious anachronisms which were then, and so long after, permitted to romantic poetry such as making the son of King Priam read the Thebais of Statius, and the gentlemen of Troy converse about the devil, justs and tournaments, bishops, parliaments, and scholastic divinity.

The languor of the story is, however, relieved by many touches of pathetic beauty. The confession of Cresseide in the scene of felicity, when the poet compares her to the "new abashed nightingale, that stinteth first ere she beginneth sing," is a fine passage, deservedly noticed by Warton. The grief of Troilus after the departure of Cresseide is strongly portrayed in Troilus's soliloquy in his bed.

Where is mine owne ladie, lief, and dere?
Where is her white brest-where is it-where?
Where been her armès, and her iyen clere,
That yesterday this time with me were?
Now may I wepe alone with many a teare,
And graspe about I may; but in this place,
Save a pillowe, I find nought to embrace.

The sensations of Troilus, on coming to the house of his faithless Cresseide, when, instead of finding her returned, he beholds the barred doors and shut windows, giving tokens of her absence, as well as his precipitate departure from the distracting scene, are equally well described.

Therwith whan he was ware, and gan behold
How shet* was every window of the place,
As frost him thought his hertè gan to cold,
For which, with changed deedly palè face,
Withouten worde, he for by gan to pace,
And, as God would, he gan so fastè ride,
That no man his continuance espied.
Than said he thus: O paleis desolate,
O house of houses, whilom best yhight,

O paleis empty and disconsolate,

O thou lanterne of which queint is the light,

O paleis whilom day, that now art night;
Wel oughtest thou to fall and I to die,

Sens‡ she is went, that wont was us to gie§.

The two best of Chaucer's allegories, The Flower and the Leaf, and the House of Fame, have been fortunately perpetuated in our language; the former by Dryden, the latter by Pope. The Flower and the Leaf is an exquisite piece of fairy fancy. With a moral that is just sufficient to apologise for a dream, and yet which sits so lightly on the story as not to abridge its most visionary parts, there is, in the whole scenery and objects of the poem, an air of wonder and sweet

ness; an easy and surprising transition that is truly magical. Pope had not so enchanting a subject in The House of Fame; yet, with deference to Warton, that critic has done Pope injustice in assimilating his imitations of Chaucer to the modern ornaments in Westminster Abbey, which impair the solemn effect of the ancient building. The many absurd and fantastic particulars in Chaucer's House of Fame will not suffer us to compare it, as a structure in poetry, with so noble a pile as Westminster Abbey in architecture. Much of Chaucer's fantastic matter has been judiciously omitted by Pope, who at the same time has clothed the best ideas of the old poem in spirited numbers and expression. Chaucer supposes himself to be snatched up to heaven by a large eagle, who addresses him in the name of St. James and the Virgin Mary, and, in order to quiet the poet's fears of being carried up to Jupiter, like another Ganymede, or turned into a star like Orion, tells him, that Jove wishes him to sing of other subjects than love and "blind Cupido," and has therefore ordered, that Dan Chaucer should be brought to behold the House of Fame. In Pope, the philosophy of fame comes with much more propriety from the poet himself, than from the beak of a talkative eagle.

It was not until his green old age that Chaucer put forth, in the Canterbury Tales, the full variety of his genius, and the pathos and romance, as well as the playfulness of fiction. In the serious part of those tales he is, in general, more deeply indebted to preceding materials, than in the comic stories, which he raised upon slight hints to the air and spirit of originals. The design of the whole work is after Boccaccio's Decamerone; but exceedingly improved. The Italian novelist's ladies and gentlemen who have retired from the eity of Florence, on account of the plague, and who agree to pass their time in telling stories, have neither interest nor variety in their individual characters; the time assigned to their congress is arbitrary, and it evidently breaks up because, the author's stores are exhausted. Chaucer's design, on the other hand, though it is left unfinished, has definite boundaries, and incidents to keep alive our curiosity, independent of the tales themselves. At the same time, while the action of the poem is an event too simple to divert the attention altogether from the pilgrims' stories, the pilgrimage itself is an occasion sufficiently important to draw together almost all the varieties of existing society, from the knight to the artisan, who, agreeably to the old simple manners, assemble in the same room of the hostellerie. The enumeration of those characters in the Prologue forms a scene, full, without confusion; and the object of their journey gives a fortuitous air

to the grouping of individuals, who collectively represent the age and state of society in which they live. It may be added, that if any age or state of society be more favourable than another to the uses of the poet, that in which Chaucer lived must have been peculiarly picturesque ;— an age in which the differences of rank and profession were so strongly distinguished, and in which the broken masses of society gave out their deepest shadows and strongest colouring by the morning light of civilisation. An unobtrusive but sufficient contrast is supported between the characters, as between the demure prioress and the genial wife of Bath, the rude and boisterous miller and the polished knight, &c. &c. Although the object of the journey is religious, it casts no gloom over the meeting; and we know that our Catholic ancestors are justly represented in a state of high good-humour, on the road to such solemnities.

The sociality of the pilgrims is, on the whole, agreeably sustained; but in a journey of thirty persons, it would not have been adhering to probability to have made the harmony quite uninterrupted. Accordingly the bad-humour which breaks out between the lean friar and the cherubfaced sompnour, while it accords with the hostility known to have subsisted between those two professions, gives a diverting zest to the satirical stories which the hypocrite and the libertine level at each other.

Chaucer's forte is description; much of his moral reflection is superfluous; none of his characteristic painting. His men and women are not mere ladies and gentlemen, like those who furnish apologies for Boccaccio's stories. They rise before us minutely traced, profusely varied, and strongly discriminated. Their features and casual manners seem to have an amusing congruity with their moral characters. He notices minute circumstances as if by chance; but every touch has its effect to our conception so distinctly, that we seem to live and travel with his personages throughout the journey.

What an intimate scene of English life in the fourteenth century do we enjoy in those tales, beyond what history displays by glimpses, through the stormy atmosphere of her scenes, or the antiquary can discover by the cold light of his researches! Our ancestors are restored to us, not as phantoms from the field of battle, or the scaffold, but in the full enjoyment of their social existence. After four hundred years have closed over the mirthful features which formed the living originals of the poet's descriptions, his pages impress the fancy with the momentary credence that they are still alive; as if Time had rebuilt his ruins, and were reacting the lost scenes of existence.

WHANNE' that April with his shourès sote

The droughte of March hath perced to the roteb,
And bathed every veine in swiches licour,
Of whiche vertùe engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eke with his sotè brethe
Enspired hath in every holt and hethe
The tendre croppès, and the yongè sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfè cours yronned,
And smalè foulès maken melodie,
That slepen allè night with open eye,
So priketh heme nature in hirf corages;
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strangè strondes,
To serve halweys' couthed in sondry londes ;
And specially, from every shirès ende

Of Englelond, to Canterbury they wendek,
The holy blisful martyr for to seke,

That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke'.
Befelle, that, in that seson on a day,

In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay,
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devoute coràge,
At night was come into that hostelrie
Wel nine and twenty in a compagnie
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfallem
In felawship, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Canterbury wolden" ride.
The chambres and the stables weren wide,
And wel we weren esed attè beste.

And shortly, whan the sonne was gon to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everich ono,
That I was of hir felawship anon,
And made forword erly for to rise,
To take oure way ther as I you devise.

But natheles, while I have time and space,
Or that I forther in this talè pace,
Me thinketh it accordant to resòn,
To tellen you alle the condition
Of eche of hem, so as it semed me,
And whiche they weren, and of what degre;
And eke in what araie that they were inne :
And at a knight than wol I firste beginne.

A KNIGHT ther was, and that a worthy man
That fro the timè that he firste began
To riden out, he loved Chevalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curtesie.
Ful worthy was he in his lordès werre,
And therto hadde he ridden, no man ferre",
As wel in Cristendom as in Hethenesse,
And ever honoured for his worthinesse.

d Run. h To keep.

At Alisandre he was whan it was wonne.
Ful often time he hadde the bord begonnes
Aboven allè nations in Pruce.

In Lettowe hadde he reysed' and in Ruce,
No cristen man so ofte of his degre.

In Gernade at the siege eke hadde he be
Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie.
At Leyès was he, and at Satalie,

Whan they were wonne ; and in the Grete see
At many a noble armee hadde he be.

At mortal batailles hadde he ben fiftene,
And foughten for our faith at Tramissène
In listès thries, and ay slain his fo.
This ilke worthy knight hadde ben alsò
Sometime with the Lord of Palatie,
Agen another hethen in Turkie:

And evermore he hadde a sovereine pris".
And though that he was worthy he was wise,
And of his port as meke as is a mayde.

He never yet no vilanie ne sayde
In alle his lif, unto no manere wight.
He was a veray parfit gentil knight.

But for to tellen you of his araie,
His hors was good, but he ne was not gaie.
of fustian he wered a gipòn",

Alle besmotredw with his habergeon,
For he was late ycome fro his viàge,
And wentè for to don his pilgrimage.

With him ther was his sone a yongè Squier,
A lover and a lusty bacheler,
With lockès crully as they were laide in presse.
Of twenty yere of age he was I gesse.
Of his stature he was of even lengthe,
And wonderly deliver", and grete of strengthe.
And he hadde be somtime in chevachiea,
In Flaundres, in Artois, and in Picardie,
And borne him wel, as of so litel space,
In hope to stonden in his ladies grace.

Embrouded was he, as it were a mede
Alle ful of fresshè flourès, white and rede.
Singing he was, or floytinge alle the day,
He was as fresshe as is the moneth of May.
Short was his goune, with slevès long and wide.
Well coude he sitte on hors, and fayrè ride.
He coudè songès make, and wel endite,
Juste and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write.
So hote he loved, that by nightertaled
He slep no more than doth the nightingale.

rs Been placed at the head of the table. Travelled. Wore a short cassock.

u Praise.

w Smutted.

e Such.

e Them.

i Holidays.

2 Nimble.

1 Sick. m Fallen. P War. q Farther.

n Would.

Curteis he was, lowly, and servisable, And carfe before his fader at the table.

A Yeman hadde he, and servantes no mo
At that time, for him lustef to ridè so;
And he was cladde in cote and hode of grene.
A shefe of peacock arwes bright and kene
Under his belt he bare ful thriftily.
Well coude he dresse his takels yemanly:
His arwes drouped not with fetheres low.
And in his hond he bare a mighty bowe.

A not-hedi hadde he, with a broune visage.
Of wood-craft coudej he wel alle the usage.
Upon his arme he bare a gaie bracèr*,
And by his side a swerd and a bokeler,
And on that other side a gaie daggère,
Harneised wel, and sharpe as point of spere:
A Cristofre on his brest of silver shene.
An horne he bare, the baudrik was of grene,
A forster was he sothely as I gesse.

Ther was alsò a Nonne, a Prioresse,
That of hire smiling was full simple and coy;
Hire gretest othe n'as but by Seint Eloy ;
And she was cleped' Madame Eglentine.
Ful wel she sangè the service devine,
Entuned in hire nose ful swetely;
And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetislyTM,
After the scole of Stratford attè Bowe,
For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.
At metè was she wel ytaughte withalle ;
She lette no morsel from her lippès fall,
Ne wette hire fingres in hire saucè depe.
Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe,
Thatte no drope ne fell upon hire brest.
In curtesie was sette ful moche hire lest".
Hire over lippè wiped she so clene,
That in hire cuppè was no ferthing sene

Of gresè, whan she dronken hadde hire draught.
Ful semely after her mete she raught".
And sikerly she was of grete disport,
And ful plesant, and amiable of port,
And peined hire to contrefeten' chere
Of court, and ben estatelich of manère,
And to ben holden dignes of reverence.

But for to speken of hire conscience,
She was so charitable and so pitoùs,
She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous
Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde.
Of smalè houndès hadde she, that she fedde
With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel brede.
But sore wept she if on of hem were dede,
Or if men smote it with a yerdèt smert",
And all was conscience and tendre herte.

Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was ;
Hire nose tretis; hire eyen grey as glas;
Hire mouth ful smale, and therto soft and red;
But sikerly she hadde a fayre forched.

It was almost a spannè brode I trowe;
For hardily she was not undergrowe".

Ful fetise was hire cloke, as I was ware.
Of smale coràll aboute hire arm she bare
A pair of bedès, gauded all with grene;
And theron heng a broche of gold ful shene,
On whiche was first ywritten a crouned A,
And after, Amor vincit omnia.

Another Nonne also with hire hadde she,
That was hire chapelleine, and Preestès thre.
A Monk ther was, a fayre for the maistrie,
An outrider, that loved venerie;
A manly man, to ben an abbot able.
Ful many a deintè hors hadde he in stable :
And whan he rode, men might his bridel here
Gingèling in a whistling wind as clere,
And eke as loude, as doth the chapell belle,
Ther as this lord was keeper of the celle.

The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit,
Because that it was olde and somdele streit,
This ilkè monk lette oldè thingès pace,
And held after the newè worlde the trace.
He yave not of the text a pulled hen,
That saith, that hunters ben not holy men;
Ne that a monk, whan he is rekkěles",
Is like to a fish that is waterles;

This is to say, a monk out of his cloistre.
This ilkè text held he not worth an oistre.

And I say his opinion was good.

What shulde he studie, and make himselven woodb Upon a book in cloistre alway to pore,

Or swinken with his hondès, and laboùre,

As Austin bit? how shal the world be served ?
Let Austin have his swink to him reserved.
Therfore he was a prickasoure a right:
Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight:

Of pricking and of hunting for the hare
Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.
I saw his sleves purfiled at the hond
With griss, and that the finest of the lond.
And for to fasten his hood under his chinne,
He hadde of gold ywrought a curious pinne ;
A love-knotte in the greter end ther was.
His hed was balled, and shone as any glas,
And eke his face, as it hadde ben anoint.
He was a lord ful fat and in good point.
His eyen stepeh, and rolling in his hed,

That stemed as a fornëis of led.
His botès souple, his hors in gret estat ;
Now certainly he was a fayre prelat.
He was not pale as a forpined gost.
A fat swan loved he best of any rost.
His palfrey was as broune as is a bery.

A Frere ther was, a wanton and a mery,
A Limitour, a ful solempnè man.

In all the ordres foure is none that can'