Had Chaucer left to us nothing but "Troilus and Criseyde," he would have given assurance of a poet so much greater than any English predecessor that the difference is one of kind, not of degree. Chaucer is our first poet of great and various genius.
Space being limited, we can only say that "The House of Fame" (1383) is much influenced by Dante, while, even in modelling himself on Dante, Chaucer gives play to his natural jollity and humour. Dante was never jolly. The poem in rhyming couplets of eight syllables shows Chaucer borne heavenwards by an eagle, like a middle-aged Ganymede, to Jove's House of Fame. He addresses the eagle with charming banter, and the bird tells him that he is to have a holiday, for all day he sits "at his reckonings" in the Custom House, and, when he returns home
also domb as any stoon
Thou sittest at another boke.
This was just before the spring of 1385, when Chaucer was allowed to have a deputy. This may have been granted at the request of the Queen, Anne of Bohemia; and, if she did not ask Chaucer to write his next work, the "Legend of Good Women," as counterbalancing the naughty Criseyde, he may have chosen the subject in gratitude. It concerns ladies who were true lovers; and this book Alcestis, who gave her life for her lord's, bids Chaucer present to the Queen. If he meant to celebrate nineteen of St. Cupid's Saints, he tired of his work, and tells only of ten, of whom Cleopatra and Medea are less than saintly. Boccaccio's book "On Famous Ladies," and Ovid, on Heroines, gave him hints and materials; he also uses Ovid's "Metamorphoses," the "Æneid," and other sources of information. He is extremely severe on male flirts.
Have at thee, Jasoun I now thyn horn is blowe!
but, far from being prolix, he merely gives the briefest summary possible of Medea's case, and leaves out almost the whole of the wonderful romance. He bids Theseus "be red for shame," as the deserter of Ariadne, but here again he is very brief, and leaves Ovid to tell the tale.
As all the stories are of man's cruelty and all the complaint of the women (who usually die forsaken), is
Oh, do not leave me!
the poet felt that the thing was like the tragedies of his monk in the "Canterbury Tales"—was becoming stereotyped, and he left off in the middle of a story. The poem is in "heroic" measure, and Chaucer's command of this practically new instrument is perhaps the main merit of the book.
The Canterbury Tales.