He ends with reflections which are resigned, almost sad, and he contemplates with a tranquil look the juvenile passions he has just depicted. Troilus, resigned too, beholds, from heaven, the field under the walls of Troy, where he was slain, and smiles at the remembrance of his miseries; and Chaucer, transforming Boccaccio's conclusion like all the rest, addresses a touching appeal, and wise, even religious advice, to you,
O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she,
In which that love up groweth with your age.[522]
This return to seriousness is quite as noteworthy as the mixture of everyday life, added by the poet to the idea borrowed from his model. By these two traits, which will be seen again from century to century, in English literature, Chaucer manifests his true English character; and if we wish to see precisely in what consists the difference between this temperament and that of the men of the South, whom Chaucer was nevertheless so akin to, let us compare this conclusion with that of the "Filostrato" as translated at the same time into French by Pierre de Beauveau: "You will not believe lightly those who give you ear; young women are wilful and lovely, and admire their own beauty, and hold themselves haughty and proud amidst their lovers, for vain-glory of their youth; who, although they be gentle and pretty more than tongue can say, have neither sense nor firmness, but are variable as a leaf in the wind." Unlike Chaucer, Pierre de Beauveau contents himself with such graceful moralisation,[523] which will leave no very deep impression on the mind, and which indeed could not, for it is itself as light as "a leaf in the wind."
IV.
After 1379 Chaucer ceased to journey on the Continent, and until his death he lived in England an English life. He saw then several aspects of that life which he had not yet known from personal experience. After having been page, soldier, prisoner of the French, squire to the king, negotiator in Flanders, France, and Italy, he entered Westminster the 1st of October, 1386, as member of Parliament; the county of Kent had chosen for its representatives: "Willielmus Betenham" and "Galfridus Chauceres."[524] It was one of the great sessions of the reign, and one of the most stormy; the ministers of Richard II. were impeached, and among others the son of the Hull wool merchant, Michel de la Pole, Chancellor of the kingdom. For having remained faithful to his protectors, the king and John of Gaunt, Chaucer, looked upon with ill favour by the men then in power, of whom Gloucester was the head, lost his places and fell into want. Then the wheel of Fortune revolved, and new employments offered a new field to his activity. At the end of three years, Richard, having dismissed the Council which Parliament had imposed upon him, took the authority into his own hands, and the poet, soldier, member of Parliament, and diplomate, was appointed clerk of the royal works (1389). For two years he had to attend to the constructions and repairs at Westminster, at the Tower, at Berkhamsted, Eltham, Sheen, at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and in many others of those castles which he had described, with "pinacles, imageries, and tabernacles," and
ful eek of windowes
As flakes falle in grete snowes.[525]
His great literary occupation, during that time, was the composition of his famous "Canterbury Tales."[526] Experience had ripened him; he had read all there was to read, and seen all there was to see; he had visited the principal countries where civilisation had developed: he had observed his compatriots at work on their estates and in their parliaments, in their palaces and in their shops. Merchants, sailors, knights, pages, learned men of Oxford and suburban quacks, men of the people and men of the Court, labourers, citizens, monks, priests, sages and fools, heroes and knaves, had passed in crowds beneath his scrutinising gaze; he had associated with them, divined them, and understood them; he was prepared to describe them all.
On an April day, in the reign of Richard II., in the noisy suburb of Southwark, the place for departures and arrivals, with streets bordered with inns, encumbered with horses and carts, resounding with cries, calls, and barks, one of those mixed troops, such as the hostelries of that time often gathered together, seats itself at the common board, in the hall of the "Tabard, faste by the Belle"[527]; the inns were all close to each other. It was springtime, the season of fresh flowers, the season of love, the season, too, of pilgrimages. Knights returned from the wars go to render thanks to the saints for having let them behold again their native land; invalids render thanks for their restoration to health; others go to ask Heaven's grace. Does not every one need it? Every one is there; all England.
There is a knight who has warred, all Europe over, against heathens and Saracens. It was easy to meet them; they might be found in Prussia and in Spain, and our "verray parfit gentil knight" had massacred enormous numbers of them "at mortal batailles fiftene" for "our faith." Next to him, a squire who had, like Chaucer, fought in France, with May in his heart, a song upon his lips, amorous, elegant, charming, embroidered as a meadow—"as it were a mede"—with white and red flowers; a stout merchant, who looked so rich, was so well furred, and "fetisly" dressed that
Ther wiste no wight that he was in dette;