The poem has a freshness and tenderness which its conventional setting cannot conceal, and the humour of the conversation among the worm-foul, water-foul, and seed-foul, must have been even more delightful than it is to-day if—as has been suggested—the “fool cukkow,” “the waker goos,” “the popinjay, ful of delicacy,” and the rest were easily recognisable portraits of contemporary courtiers.
The Parlement of Foules was followed by the Hous of Fame. Here again Chaucer makes use of the conventional stock-in-trade of medieval poets.
We have the dream, the strings of proper names drawn from Ovid and Virgil and the Bible, the constant moralisations, the temple to which the dreamer is guided, the use of allegory and symbol, all of which are common property. The influence of Dante is evident, and shows itself in detail as well as in the conception of the whole. The method of beginning each book with an invocation, the exact marking of the date on which the poem was begun, the steep rock, the description of the house of Rumour, and numerous other points are borrowed direct from the Divina Commedia, while there is no need to emphasise the obvious resemblance between the general plan of Dante’s great poem and the Hous of Fame. Professor Skeat even goes so far as to suggest that Lydgate is referring to the Hous of Fame when he speaks of a poem of Chaucer’s as “Dant in English.”
The poem is divided into three books. Book I opens with a discussion of dreams in general, what causes them and what weight should be attached to them:—
Why that is an avisioun
And this a revelacioun.
This is followed by an invocation to the god of sleep, and then comes the vision itself. The poet falls asleep on the tenth day of December, and dreams that he is in a temple of glass. On a tablet on the wall is engraved the history of “daun Eneas,” and its recital occupies almost the whole of the book. When the poet has “seyen al this sighte” he passes out of the temple and finds himself in a desert place:—
Withouten toun, or hous, or tree
Or bush, or gras, or cred[41] lond.
·····
Ne I no maner creature
That is y-formed by nature
Ne saw.
Terrified by the strangeness and loneliness of the place, he casts his eyes towards heaven, praying to be saved,
Fro fantom and illusion,
and as he looks upwards he becomes aware of a wonderful eagle with feathers of gold, flying towards him. Book II opens with further remarks on dreams, and a declaration that no one, not even Isaiah or Scipio or Nebuchadnezzar, ever had such a dream as this. The story then continues. The eagle swoops down upon the poet and catches him up in “his grimme pawes stronge,”—