Now we come to a Poet of these times; not a poet by courtesy, not a small poet, but a real and a great one. His name is Chaucer. You may not read him; you may find his speech too old-fashioned to please you; you may not easily get through its meaning; but if you do, and come to study him with any warmth, the more you study him the more you will like him. And this—not because there are curious and wonderful tales in his verse to interest you; not because your passion will be kindled by any extraordinary show of dramatic power; but because his humor, and gentleness, and grace of touch, and exquisite harmonies of language will win upon you page by page, and story by story.
He was born—probably in London—some time during the second quarter of the fourteenth century;[40] and there is reason to believe that an early home of his was in or near Thames Street, which runs parallel with the river,—a region now built up and overshadowed with close lines of tall and grimy warehouses. But the boy Chaucer, living there five hundred and more years ago, might have caught between the timber houses glimpses of cultivated fields lying on the Southwark shores; and if he had wandered along Wallbrook to Cheapside, and thence westerly by Newgate to Smithfield Common—where he may have watched tournaments that Froissart watched, and Philippa, queen of Edward III., had watched—he would have found open country; and on quiet days would have heard the birds singing there, and have seen green meadows lying on either side the river Fleet—which river is now lost in sewers, and is planted over with houses.
On Ludgate Hill, in that far-off time, rose the tall and graceful spire of old St. Paul’s, and underneath its roof was a vista of Gothic arches seven hundred feet in length. The great monastery of the Templars—and of the Knights of St. John—where we go now to see that remnant of it, called the Temple Church,—had, only shortly before, passed into the keeping of the Lawyers; the Strand was like a country road, with great country-houses and gardens looking upon the water; Charing Cross was a hamlet midway between the Temple and a parish called Westminster, where a huge Abbey Church stood by the river bank.
Some biographers have labored to show that Chaucer was of high family—with titles in it. But I think we care very little about this; one story, now fully accredited, makes his father a vintner, or wine-dealer, with a coat-of-arms, showing upon one half a red bar upon white, and upon the other white on red; as if—hints old Thomas Fuller—’twas dashed with red wine and white. This escutcheon with its parti-colored bars may be seen in the upper left corner of the portrait of Chaucer, which hangs now in the picture-gallery at Oxford. And—for that matter—it was not a bad thing to be a vintner in that day; for we have record of one of them who, in the year after the battle of Poitiers, entertained at his house in the Vintry, Edward King of England, John King of France, David King of Scotland, and the King of Cyprus. And he not only dined them, but won their money at play; and afterward, in a very unking-like fashion—paid back the money he had won.
Chaucer was a student in his young days; but never—as old stories ran—at either Cambridge or Oxford; indeed, there is no need that we place him at one or the other. There were schools in London in those times—at St. Paul’s and at Westminster—in either of which he could have come by all the scholarly epithets or allusions that appear in his earlier poems; and for the culture that declares itself in his riper days, we know that he was more or less a student all his life—loving books, and proud of his fondness for them, and showing all up and down his poems traces of his careful reading and of an observation as close and as quick.
It is the poet’s very self, who, borne away in the eagle’s clutch amongst the stars, gets this comment from approving Jove[41]:
Thou hearest neither that nor this,
For when thy labor all done is,
And hast made all thy reckiningës
In stead of rest and of new thingës,