Of Aristotle and his philosophye,'
but he was a man of the true 'Merry England,' when oxen were roasted whole on feast-days, and pigs ran in the London streets. He followed the Court, but he knew the populace. His father was a vintner in Thames Street, and in the Cheapside taverns Chaucer found some of the material that his travels and learning taught him how to use. On St. George's day 1374 he was granted a pitcher of wine daily for life by his Majesty Edward the Third. It is probable that he met Petrarch at Padua. These two facts seem to me to present no very hollow portrait of the man.
Portraiture.
He brought into the art of story-telling a new clearness of sight in looking at other people and at the manners of the time. The romances had not represented contemporary life, but rather contemporary ideals. No one can pretend to find in Lancelot, in Roland, in Isoud of the White Hands, character-sketch or portrait. Lancelot is the perfect knight, Roland the perfect warrior, Isoud the beautiful woman. They were not a knight, a warrior, a woman. Those who heard the tales used the names as servant-girls use names in modern novels of plot, as pegs on which to hang their own emotions and their own ambitions. The lady who listened with her chin upon her hands as the trouveurs chanted before her, took herself the part of Isoud, and gave her lover or the lover for whom she hoped the attributes of Tristram. The jack-squire listening near the foot of the table himself felt Roland's steed between his legs. These names of romance were qualities not people. The Wife of Bath is a very different matter.
'In al the parisshe wyf ne was ther noon
That to th' offering bifore hir sholde goon;
And if ther dide, certeyn, so wrooth was she,
That she was out of alle charitee.
Hir coverchiefs ful fyne were of ground;
I dorste swere they weyeden ten pound