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CHAUCER.

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GEOFFREY CHAUCER was born in London, and lived on the Thames bank, which was in the fourteenth century a much sweeter and pleasanter place than it is now. His father, John, and his grandfather, Richard Chaucer, were vintners of the City of London, and the youth thus grew up in an atmosphere of jollity and good cheer. Later in life he was engaged in the Custom House, and lived in the rooms over the Aldgate. He was therefore moving daily near Langland, the author of Piers Plowman,' who then lived on Cornhill; but the paths of the two poets do not appear to have crossed. Their temperament, genius, and fortune were widely different. Chaucer's nature was joyous, and his poetic vision was far-reaching; Langland was earnest and sad, and his genius, though profound, was somewhat narrow. The one poet was the favourite of princes; the other was poor and despised. The vice and hypocrisy which roused the indignation of Langland only excited merry scorn in Chaucer.

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The date of the poet's birth is uncertain. commonly accepted date is 1328, and if this is right he would be seventy-two at his death in 1400, and we find that Gower, in 1392, in the Confessio Amantis,' speaks of Chaucer as being nowe in his dayes olde.' But there is really no positive evidence for the date 1328, while we find that Chaucer himself, in giving evidence in a lawsuit in 1386, declared that he was forty years and upwards, and that he had borne arms for twenty

seven years. It is therefore probable that he was born not earlier than 1340.

Chaucer's writings show that he had partaken of the best learning of his times, and it is a pleasant fancy that we have some touches of his own portrait in the description of the Clerk of Oxenford :

For him was lever have at his beddes heed

Twenty bookes clothed in black and reed
Of Aristotle and his philosophie

Than robes riche, or fiddle or sautrie.

But the first certain information we have of him is in 1357, when he is mentioned more than once in the Household Book of Elizabeth, wife of Prince Lionel, third son of Edward III., and he was probably a page in the service of the princess and an inmate of the most brilliant court in Europe. Two years later he went with the English army to France, when Edward III. with 100,000 men ravaged once more the towns and fields of that unhappy land. Chaucer was taken prisoner by the French, and after the Treaty of Bretigny, of 1360, he was ransomed by the king.

In 1367 we find Chaucer in receipt of a pension or salary of twenty marks as one of the valets of the king's household, and to this time belongs his earliest original poem, his Compleynte to Pité, in which he mourns over the misery of unrequited love:—

With herte soore, and ful of besy peyne

That in this worlde was never wight so woo.

During the ten years 1370-80 Chaucer was several times sent abroad on diplomatic business, and to one of these missions, that of 1373, a special interest is at

tached. In December 1372 he left London, and returned in November 1373. During the year he transacted the king's business in Genoa and Florence, and it is imagined with much probability that he met the poet Petrarch at Padua. The Clerk of Oxenford, in introducing his tale of the Patient Griselda,' says:

I wil yow telle a tale, which that I
Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,
As provyd by his wordes and his werk.
He is now deed, and nayled in his chest,
I pray to God so give his soule rest.
Fraunces Petrark, the laureat poete,
Highte' this clerk, whos rethorique swete
Enlumynd al Ytail of poetrie.

Chaucer's diplomatic business was done, it would seem, to the king's liking, and on April 23, 1374, at the feast of St. George held at Windsor, the poet received a grant for life of a pitcher of wine daily to be received in London from the king's butler. Two months later he was appointed Comptroller of the Customs, and at about the same time he received a pension of 10l. a year for life from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, for the good service which had been rendered by him and his wife Philippa to the said Duke, his consort, and his mother the queen. This is the earliest mention of a wife of Chaucer, and there is much conjecture as to who the lady was. In 1366 a Philippa Chaucer is named as one of the ladies in waiting upon Queen Philippa, and it is quite possible that she was a cousin of Geoffrey's, and was married to him eight years later. For the next twelve years the poet retained his office in the Customs,

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and lived as a married man in his house at Aldgate, and it is thought that he is describing this period of his life when in The Temple of Fame' one addresses him thus :—

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When thy labour doon al ys

And hast ymade rekenynges
Instid of reste and newe thynges

Thou goost home to thy house anoon
And, also dombe as any stoon,

Thou sittest at another booke,

Tyl fully dasewyd ys thy looke.

In 1377 Edward III. died, but Chaucer's good fortune suffered no interruption. He was sent next year on a fresh mission to Italy, and he was appointed to an additional office in the Customs. In 1386 he was elected knight of the shire for Kent, but he lost both his offices in the Customs in that year. Changes of the king's ministers were probably the cause of this misfortune, and in 1389 Chaucer was once more in favour, and was appointed clerk of the king's works at the Palace of Westminster, Tower of London, and other royal seats and lodges, but he retained the office for about two years only.

Chaucer was now growing old, and his life had not been free from care. His wife was dead, and had left him a little son, Lewis, for whom he wrote a little prose treatise on the Astrolabe. He addresses him, Little Lowis, my sonne, I perceive well by certain evidences. thine abilitie to learne sciences touching numbers and proportions, and also wel consider I thy busie prayer in especiall to learne the Treatise of the Astrolabie.' He

dazed.

also tells him that he writes it in English for Latine ne canst thou nat yet but smale, my little sonne.' In his latter years, too, the poet seems to have known poverty. He had found need to dispose of some of his pensions, and in 1398 we find that he borrows small sums of money.

In 1899 Henry IV., the son of Chaucer's old patron the Duke of Lancaster, came to the throne, and the poet sent to him a little poem addressed to his empty purse. The appeal was effective, the poet's pension was doubled, and he took a lease of a house in the garden of St. Mary's Chapel in Westminster, and there he probably spent the last year of his life, for he died in October 1400, and was buried in the Abbey.

Among Chaucer's works there is a little poem which is said to have been made by him upon his dethe bedde leying in his grete anguysse.' It breathes a spirit of mild wisdom chastened by adversity.

Fle fro the pres, and duelle with soothfastnesse;
Suffice the thy good, though hit be smale,
For horde hath hate, and clymbyng tikelnesse2;
Pres hath envye, and wele is blent over alle;
Savour no more than the behove shalle;
Do well thyself that other folke canst rede,3
And trouthe the shal delyver, hit ys no drede.
That the is sent receyve in buxumnesse ';
The wrasteling of this world asketh a falle;
Her is no home, her is but wyldyrnesse,
Forth pilgrime, forth best out of thy stalle,
Loke up on hye, and thonke God of alle.
Weyve thy lust, and let thy goste the lede,
And trouthe shal the delyver, hit is no drede.

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