Through the same medium the poet describes himself as accustomed to look on the ground, to be "elvish" of countenance, silent, and reserved. We need only add to these traits another, also on the best of authorities—his own—namely, the love of walking, and enjoyment of all the sights and sounds of natural phenomena. In his 'Legend of Good Women' he writes—
"And as for me, though that I can but lite,[33]
On bookes for to read, I me delight,
And to them give I faith and full credénce
And in mine heart have them in reverence,
So heartily, that there is gamè none
That from my bookes maketh me to gone;
But it be seldom on the holyday,
Save certainly when that the month of May
Is comen, and that I hear the fowles[34] sing,
And that the flowres 'ginnen for to spring,
Farewell my book and my devotïon."
In 1386 the people emphatically marked their approbation of him whom kings had delighted to honour, by electing Chaucer to parliament as a knight of the shire for Kent. But, in all probability, that honour destroyed the poet's peace. Misfortunes began from this time to fall thickly upon him. Within two months after the meeting of parliament he was deprived of the comptrollership, as well as the comptrollership of the petty customs, that had been conferred by Richard II. four years before; and we are utterly in the dark as to the cause. Tyrwhitt, Godwin, and others have built up an elaborate hypothesis, as to his connexion with the civic commotion in London in 1384, when John of Northampton stood for the office of mayor in opposition to the court candidate; and which ended, they say, as concerned the poet, in his expatriation to Zealand, in his enduring great sufferings there, in his return to England in 1386, and in his committal to the Tower, until 1389. All these presumptions, founded on various passages of the 'Testament of Love,' the right key to which has evidently not yet been found, have been utterly set at rest by Sir Harris Nicholas's discovery of records showing that from 1380 to 1388 Chaucer received his pension regularly as it became due, in London, with his own hands. And, indeed, we have only to weigh for a moment the character and doings of the parliament to which he was elected, to satisfy us that there need be no surprise excited at the treatment experienced by Chaucer. Legislation, in the dictionary of the leading politicians of the day, meant intrigues for the possession of power. The parliament was divided into two parties; one supporting the king, and the king's favourites, De la Pole and De Vere, and the other determined to drive those favourites from power. The opposition was headed by the Duke of Gloucester, a brother of John of Gaunt, and it succeeded; De la Pole was dismissed, impeached, and imprisoned; and, finally, the successful party demanded and obtained from Richard a council for the government of the nation. There would be little relish then for the advice, little sympathy with the conduct of a man who in his writings was accustomed, whilst bidding the people to obey the king and the law, also to say to their governors—
"Knight, let thy deedes worship détermine,"
and
"Go forth, king, and rule thee by sapience;"
and who was in religion a Wickliffite.
In struggles between ambitious nobles and a king who desired to be despotic, a man of independent character might easily give deep offence to those against whom he acted, and without particularly pleasing those who might look upon him generally as their supporter; and that Chaucer appears to have done. He was made the victim of the one, and received no compensating benefits from the other. So, in 1388, he was compelled to sell two of his pensions, which were accordingly assigned to John Scalby. His wife's pension had ceased with the life of her to whom it had been granted. The last payment to Philippa Chaucer took place in June, 1387. She died therefore within a twelvemonth after the events that plunged them both in adversity.
In 1389, Richard, then in his twenty-second year, suddenly dismissed Gloucester, and confided the administration to another uncle, the Duke of York, and to a cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, who during all these changes was on the Continent endeavouring to establish for himself a Spanish sovereignty. Within two months after that change, Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the Works at the king's chief palaces, at a salary of two shillings a day, and in the course of his duties he had to superintend the onerous but honourable and gratifying task of repairing St. George's Chapel, Windsor. But again he was dismissed, after about two years' service; unless, indeed, which is possible rather than probable, that he, in order to carry out his literary views, had himself determined to retire finally from all public employment. He was now sixty-three years old; the "Comedy" over which he had so long pondered, and which was to contain the accumulated wealth of his genius, wisdom, and experience, was still unwritten, except in parts, and he had evidently long desired to abstract himself from mere worldly avocation. Thus in 1384 he had obtained from Richard a relaxation of Edward's stringent regulation, that he should not nominate a deputy, and in the very year that he ceased to hold his architectural appointments he had caused John Elmhurst to officiate for him. At all events, the years 1393, 1394, 1395, are supposed to have been those of the production of the 'Canterbury Tales' (which are known to have been produced after Jack Straw's insurrection, as that occurrence is mentioned in them), and we see no reason to disturb the supposition. Woodstock, a royal seat, was, according to tradition, the scene of the poet's labours on this his greatest work, as well as of others of an earlier date. In the scientific treatise addressed by Chaucer to one of his two sons, Lewis, who appears to have died young, there does appear something like evidence that Chaucer was living in the neighbourhood of Oxford when he composed that piece, which contains the date of 1391. Chaucer there speaks of the astrolabe he has "compounded after the latitude of Oxford." But there is really so little tangible knowledge concerning the poet's residence either at Woodstock or at Donnington Castle, that it is best to rest content with the fact that tradition does say Chaucer resided at both, and that at Donnington he planted the three oaks known respectively as Chaucer's oak, the king's oak, and the queen's. But then tradition must not be too exacting—must not also ask us to believe that the poet wrote several of his poems beneath the shade of one of the trees he had planted. It must have been a most precocious tree else.
In deep gloom, much we fear, the poet spent the latter hours of his day of life, though not without a sudden lighting up of the horizon ere the close, as if to surround his passage into the grave with something of the glory that should attend the sunset of such a life. Sir Harris Nicholas has collected together in his work (to which we must refer for the particulars) facts of the deepest interest, as showing that he was in poverty, sheer unmistakeable poverty, from 1394 to 1398. And yet John of Gaunt had not only returned to England, but had married the sister of the poet's wife, through which marriage therefore Chaucer became connected with the royal family of England. Was the poet too proud to make known the real state of his affairs? In 1398 Richard, with whom sympathy and admiration for Chaucer seem to have been the mere occasionally recurring whim of the moment, did again so far remember the poet as to confer on him another grant of wine, more valuable than the first, to be delivered by the poet's own son, Thomas, who had then risen to the rank of chief butler. In 1399 Richard was deposed, and Bolingbroke became king of England; and within four days the pension of twenty marks that Richard had granted to Chaucer in 1394 (six years after the sale of the two pensions formerly possessed by him) was doubled, leaving him, on the whole, the recipient of an income from the crown amply sufficient for all his wants. He now took a lease of a house situated in a garden adjoining Westminster Abbey, and there probably he died, on the 25th of October, 1400. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and it is only fitting that Poets' Corner, like English poetry itself, should date its foundation from Geoffrey Chaucer. As a poet, he needs no epitaph, but whenever we do—what has been often talked of—rebuild his monument in the Abbey, we need desire no nobler testimony of his character as a man to be inscribed on it, than the ballad with which we conclude, and which was written by him, as the affecting title states, when he lay upon his death-bed in "great anguish:"—
"Fly from the press,[35] and dwell with soothfastness,[36]
Suffice unto thy good, though it be small,
For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness;
Praise hath envý, and weal is blent over all;
Savour[37] no more than thee behovè shall;
Rede[38] well thyself that other folk canst rede
And truth thee shall delíver, it is no drede.
Paine thee not each crookèd to redress,
In trust of her that turneth as a ball,
Great rest standeth in little business;
Beware also to spurn against a nall,[39]
Strive not as doth a crocke with a wall;
Doomé thyself that doomest others dede,
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no drede.
That[40] thee is sent, receive in buxomness,[41]
The wrestling of this world asketh a fall;
Here is no home, here is but wilderness;
Forthe pilgrim, forthe beast out of thy stall,
Look up on high, and thanke God of all,
Waivè thy lusts, and let thy ghost[42] thee lead,
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no drede."