English Literature for Boys and Girls

by H. E. Marshall

Chaucer's wife, too, had a pension, so the poet was well off. He had powerful friends also, among them John of Gaunt. And when the Duke's wife died Chaucer wrote a lament which is called the Dethe of Blaunche the Duchess, or sometimes the Book of the Duchess. This is one of the earliest known poems of Chaucer, and although it is not so good as some which are later, there are many beautiful lines in it.

The poet led a busy life. He was a good business man, and soon we find him in the civil service, as we would call it now. He was made Comptroller of Customs, and in this post he had to work hard, for one of the conditions was that he must write out the accounts with his own hand, and always be in the office himself. If we may take some lines he wrote to be about himself, he was so busy all day long that he had not time to hear what was happening abroad, or even what was happening among his friends and neighbors.

"Not only from far countree,
That there no tidings cometh to thee;
Not of thy very neighbours,
That dwellen almost at thy doors,
Thou hearest neither that nor this."

Yet after his hard office work was done he loved nothing better than to go back to his books, for he goes on to say:

"For when thy labour done all is
And hast y-made thy reckonings,
Instead of rest and newë things
Thou goest home to thy house anon,
And all so dumb as any stone,
Thou sittest at another book,
Till fully dazéd is thy look,
And livest thus as a hermite
Although thine abstinence is light."

But if Chaucer loved books he loved people too, and we may believe that he readily made friends, for there was a kingly humor about him that must have drawn people to him. And that he knew men and their ways we learn from his poetry, for it is full of knowledge of men and women.

For many years Chaucer was well off and comfortable. But he did not always remain so. There came a time when his friend and patron, John of Gaunt, fell from power, and Chaucer lost his appointments. Soon after that his wife died, and with her life her pension ceased. So for a year or two the poet knew something of poverty—poverty at least compared to what he had been used to. But if he lost his money he did not lose his sunny temper, and in all his writings we find little that is bitter.

After a time John of Gaunt returned to power, and again Chaucer had a post given to him, and so until he died he suffered ups and downs. Born when Edward III was in his highest glory, Chaucer lived to see him hated by his people. He lived through the reign of Edward's grandson, Richard II, and knew him from the time when as a gallant yellow-haired boy he had faced Wat Tyler and his rioters, till as a worn and broken prisoner he yielded the crown to Henry of Lancaster, the son of John of Gaunt. But before the broken King died in his darksome prison Chaucer lay taking his last rest in St. Benet's Chapel in Westminster. He was the first great poet to be laid there, but since then there have gathered round him so many bearing the greatest names in English literature that we call it now the "Poet's Corner."

But although Chaucer lived in stirring times, although he was a soldier and a courtier, he does not, in the book by which we know him best, write of battles and of pomp, of kings and of princes. In this book we find plain, everyday people, people of the great middle class of merchants and tradesmen and others of like calling, to which Chaucer himself belonged. It was a class which year by year had been growing more and more strong in England, and which year by year had been making its strength more and more felt. But it was a class which no one had thought of writing about in plain fashion. And it is in the Canterbury Tales that we have, for the first time in the English language, pictures of real men, and what is more wonderful, of real women. They are not giants or dwarfs, they are not fairy princes or knights in shining armor. They do no wondrous deeds of strength or skill. They are not queens of marvelous beauty or enchanted princesses. They are simply plain, middle-class English people, and yet they are very interesting.

In Chaucer's time, books, although still copied by hand, had become more plentiful than ever before. And as more and more people learned to read, the singing time began to draw to a close. Stories were now not all written in rhyme, and poetry was not all written to be sung. Yet the listening time was not quite over, for these were still the days of talk and story-telling. Life went at leisure pace. There was no hurry, there was no machinery. All sewing was done by hand, so when the ladies of a great household gathered to their handiwork, it was no unusual thing for one among them to lighten the long hours with tales read or told. Houses were badly lighted, and there was little to do indoors in the long winter evenings, so the men gathered together and listened while one among them told of love and battle. Indeed, through all the life of the Middle Ages there was room for story-telling.