And yet, with all his shrewdness, Chaucer was not wholly exempt from the superstition of his age. Such vulgar trickery as that just described would never have imposed on him, but he is too truly fourteenth century in his point of view always to distinguish between astronomy and astrology. The thought that a man’s destiny may be written in the stars appealed to this lover of dreams. In the Man of Lawes Tale he breaks away from his original, to speculate on this subject:—
Paraventure in thilke large book
Which that men clepe the heven, y-writen was
With sterres, when that he (i. e. the Soldan) his birthe took
That he for love shulde han his deeth, allas!
For in the sterres, clerer than is glas,
Is writen, god wot, who-so coulde it rede,
The deeth of every man, withouten drede.
And again, after describing the grief of Constance at parting from her parents, he vehemently exclaims against the unfortunate conjunction of constellations which wrought such havoc, and asks if there were no “philosophre” to advise the emperor to consult some astrologer as to which was the auspicious time for him to marry.
Certain aspects of Chaucer’s character stand out with unmistakable clearness in his works. The most careless reader could hardly fail to be struck by his wide sympathies, ready humour, keen observation, and honesty of mind. His idealism, his poetic sensitiveness to the more imaginative side of life, are perhaps less often insisted upon, but are no less real. He is no visionary, afraid to face the facts of life, dwelling in a world of beauty and delight which has no counterpart on earth, but a poet who takes no shame in human nature, whose eyes see so clearly that they are not blinded by evil, who dares to say, with his Creator, that the world is good. In the Book of the Duchesse is a passage which explains much of Chaucer’s so-called worldliness. He is speaking of Blanche’s innocent kindliness, and how he never knew one less
Harmful, than she was in doing;
and he adds, in words as bold as Milton’s own,
I sey nat that she ne had knowing
What was harm; or elles she
Had coud[207] no good, so thinketh me.
He has little respect for a fugitive and cloistered virtue. But if he is, perhaps, over-ready to plunge into the dust and din of ordinary life, he never forgets the wonder and mystery that lie behind the commonplace.