Chaucer was held in high estimation by his most distinguished contemporaries. John the Chaplain, who translated Boethius into English verse, as Chaucer had into prose, calls him the Flower of Rhetoric. Occleve laments him with personal affection as his father and master, and styles him the honour of English tongue. Lydgate, the monk of Bury, mentions him as a chief poet of Britain; the loadstar of our language; the notable rhetor. Dryden says, in the preface prefixed to his Fables,—“As Chaucer is the father of English poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or the Romans Virgil; he is a perpetual fountain of good sense, learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects; as he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace.”
Our account of his principal works must be brief. The Romaunt of the Rose is professedly a translation of the French Roman de la Rose. It is a long allegory, representing the difficulties and dangers encountered by a lover in the pursuit of his mistress, who is emblematically described as a Rose, and the plot, if so it may be called, ends with his putting her in a beautiful garden.
Troilus and Creseide is for the most part a translation of the Filostrato of Boccaccio, but with many variations and large additions. As a tale, it is barren of incident, although, according to Warton, as long as the Æneid; but it contains passages of great beauty and pathos.
The story of Queen Annelida and false Arcite is said to have been originally told in Latin. Chaucer names the authors whom he professes to follow. “First folwe I Stace, and after him Corinne.” The opening only is taken from Statius, so that Corinne must be supposed to have furnished the remainder; but who she was has never yet been discovered. False Arcite is a different person from the Arcite of the Knight’s Tale. It is probable therefore that this poem was written before Chaucer had become acquainted with the Teseide of Boccaccio.
The opening of the Assembly of Foules is built on the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero. The description of a garden and temple is almost entirely taken from the description of the Temple of Venus in the Fourth Book of the Teseide. Mr. Tyrwhitt suspects this poem to allude to the intended marriage between John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster, which took place in 1359.
Warton, in his History of English Poetry, intimates his belief that the House of Fame was originally a Provençal composition. But Mr. Tyrwhitt differs from him in opinion, and states that he “has not observed, in any of Chaucer’s writings, a single phrase or word which has the least appearance of having been fetched by him from the South of the Loire.” With respect to the matter and manner of his compositions, Mr. Tyrwhitt adds, that he “shall be slow to believe that in either he ever copied the poets of Provence,” or that he had more than a very slender acquaintance with them. The poem is an allegorical vision; a favourite theme with all the poets of Chaucer’s time, both native and foreign.
The Flower and the Leaf was printed for the first time in Speght’s edition of 1597. Mr. Tyrwhitt suggests a doubt of its correct ascription to Chaucer; but it seems to afford internal evidence of powers at all events congenial with those of Chaucer, in its description of rural scenery and its general truth and feeling. Dryden has modernised it, without a suspicion of its authenticity.
Chaucer’s prose works are—his Translation of Boethius, the Treatise on the Astrolabe, and the Testament of Love. The Canterbury Tales were his latest work. The general plan of them is, that a company of Pilgrims, going to Canterbury, assemble at an inn in Southwark, and agree that each shall tell at least one tale in going and another on returning; and that he who shall tell the best tales shall be treated by the rest with a supper at the inn, before they separate. The characters of the Pilgrims, as exhibited in their respective Prologues, are drawn from the various departments of middle life. The occurrences on the journey, and the adventures of the company at Canterbury, were intended to be interwoven as Episodes, or connected by means of the Prologues; but the work, like its prototype the Decameron, was undertaken when the author was past the meridian of life, and was left imperfect. Chaucer has, in many respects, improved on his model, especially in variety of character and its nice discrimination; but the introductory machinery is not contrived with equal felicity. Boccaccio’s narrators indulge in the ease and luxury of a palace; a journey on horse-back is not the most convenient opportunity of telling long stories to a numerous company.
The works of Chaucer, notwithstanding the encomiums of four successive centuries, emanating from poets and critics of the highest renown and first authority, are little read excepting by antiquaries and philologers, unless in the polished versions of Dryden and Pope. This is principally to be attributed neither to any change of opinion respecting the merit of the poet, nor to the obsoleteness of the language; but to the progressive change of manners and feelings in society, to the accumulation of knowledge, and the improvement of morals. His command over the language of his day, his poetical power, and his exhibition of existing characters and amusing incidents, constitute his attractions; but his prolixity is ill suited to our impatient rapidity of thought and action. Unlike the passionate and natural creations of Shakspeare, which will never grow obsolete, the sentiments of Chaucer are not congenial with our own: his love is fantastic gallantry; he is the painter and panegyrist of exploded knight-errantry. Hence the preference of the Canterbury Tales above all his other works; because the manners of the time are dramatized, in other ranks of life than that of chivalry; his good sense, and capacity for keen observation are called forth, to the exclusion of conventional affectations. With respect to his prose, it is curious as that “strange English” and “ornate style,” adopted by him as a scholar for the sake of distinction, rather than as a specimen of the language and mode of expression characteristic of his age.
