‘Princes of this palace · prest[16] undo the gatës,
For here cometh with crown · the king of all glory!’”
[7.] Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), the “father of English poetry,” and the greatest narrative poet of this country, was born in London in or about the year 1340. He lived in the reigns of Edward III., Richard II., and one year in the reign of Henry IV. His father was a vintner. The name Chaucer is a Norman name, and is found on the roll of Battle Abbey. He is said to have studied both at Oxford and Cambridge; served as page in the household of Prince Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward III.; served also in the army, and was taken prisoner in one of the French campaigns. In 1367, he was appointed gentleman-in-waiting (valettus) to Edward III., who sent him on several embassies. In 1374 he married a lady of the Queen’s chamber; and by this marriage he became connected with John of Gaunt, who afterwards married a sister of this lady. While on an embassy to Italy, he is reported to have met the great poet Petrarch, who told him the story of the Patient Griselda. In 1381, he was made Comptroller of Customs in the great port of London—an office which he held till the year 1386. In that year he was elected knight of the shire—that is, member of Parliament for the county of Kent. In 1389, he was appointed Clerk of the King’s Works at Westminster and Windsor. From 1381 to 1389 was probably the best and most productive period of his life; for it was in this period that he wrote the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women, and the best of the Canterbury Tales. From 1390 to 1400 was spent in writing the other Canterbury Tales, ballads, and some moral poems. He died at Westminster in the year 1400, and was the first writer who was buried in the Poets’ Corner of the Abbey. We see from his life—and it was fortunate for his poetry—that Chaucer had the most varied experience as student, courtier, soldier, ambassador, official, and member of Parliament; and was able to mix freely and on equal terms with all sorts and conditions of men, from the king to the poorest hind in the fields. He was a stout man, with a small bright face, soft eyes,
dazed by long and hard reading, and with the English passion for flowers, green fields, and all the sights and sounds of nature.
[8.] Chaucer’s Works.—Chaucer’s greatest work is the Canterbury Tales. It is a collection of stories written in heroic metre—that is, in the rhymed couplet of five iambic feet. The finest part of the Canterbury Tales is the Prologue; the noblest story is probably the Knightes Tale. It is worthy of note that, in 1362, when Chaucer was a very young man, the session of the House of Commons was first opened with a speech in English; and in the same year an Act of Parliament was passed, substituting the use of English for French in courts of law, in schools, and in public offices. English had thus triumphed over French in all parts of the country, while it had at the same time become saturated with French words. In the year 1383 the Bible was translated into English by Wyclif. Thus Chaucer, whose writings were called by Spenser “the well of English undefiled,” wrote at a time when our English was freshest and newest. The grammar of his works shows English with a large number of inflexions still remaining. The Canterbury Tales are a series of stories supposed to be told by a number of pilgrims who are on their way to the shrine of St Thomas (Becket) at Canterbury. The pilgrims, thirty-two in number, are fully described—their dress, look, manners, and character in the Prologue. It had been agreed, when they met at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, that each pilgrim should tell four stories—two going and two returning—as they rode along the grassy lanes, then the only roads, to the old cathedral city. But only four-and-twenty stories exist.
[9.] Chaucer’s Style.—Chaucer expresses, in the truest and liveliest way, “the true and lively of everything which is set before him;” and he first gave to English poetry that force, vigour, life, and colour which raised it above the level of mere rhymed prose. All the best poems and histories in Latin, French, and Italian were well known to Chaucer; and he borrows from them with the greatest freedom. He handles, with masterly power, all the characters and events in his Tales; and he is hence, beyond doubt, the greatest narrative poet that England ever produced. In the Prologue, his masterpiece, Dryden says, “we have our forefathers and great-grand-dames all before us, as they were in Chaucer’s days.” His dramatic power, too, is nearly as great as his narrative power; and Mr Marsh affirms that he was “a dramatist before that which is technically known as the existing drama had been invented.” That is to say, he could set men and women talking as they would and did talk in real life, but with more point, spirit, verve, and picturesqueness. As regards the matter of his poems, it may be sufficient to say that
Dryden calls him “a perpetual fountain of good sense;” and that Hazlitt makes this remark: “Chaucer was the most practical of all the great poets,—the most a man of business and of the world. His poetry reads like history.” Tennyson speaks of him thus in his “Dream of Fair Women”:—
“Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth,