Chaucer so far resembled Petrarch, that, like him, he was at once poet, scholar, courtier, statesman, philosopher, and man of the world; but considered merely as poets, they were the very antipodes of each other. The genius of Dante has been compared to a Gothic cathedral, vast and lofty, and dark and irregular. In the same spirit, Petrarch may be likened to a classical and elegant Greek temple, rising aloft in its fair and faultless proportions, and compacted of the purest Parian marble; while Chaucer is like the far-spreading and picturesque palace of the Alhambra, with its hundred chambers, all variously decorated, and rich with barbaric pomp and gold: he is famed rather as the animated painter of character, and manners, and external nature, than the poet of love and sentiment; and yet no writer, Shakspeare always excepted, (and perhaps Spenser) contains so many beautiful and tender passages relating to, or inspired by, women. He lived, it is true, in rude times, times strangely deficient in good taste and decorum; but when all the institutions of chivalry, under the most chivalrous of our kings and princes,[45] were at their height in England. As a poet, Chaucer was enlisted into the service of three of the most illustrious, most beautiful, and most accomplished women of that age—Philippa, the high-hearted and generous Queen of Edward the Third; the Lady Blanche of Lancaster, first wife of John of Gaunt; and the lovely Anne of Bohemia, the Queen of Richard the Second;[46] for whom, and at whose command, he wrote his "Legende of Gode Women," as some amends for the scandal he had spoken of us in other places. The Countess of Essex, the Countess of Pembroke, and that beautiful Lady Salisbury, the ancestress of the Montagu family, whose famous mischance gave rise to the Order of the Garter, were also among Chaucer's patronesses. But the most distinguished of all, and the favourite subject of his poetry, was the Duchess Blanche. The manner in which he has contrived to celebrate his own loves and individual feelings with those of Blanche and her royal suitor, has given additional interest to both, and has enabled his commentators to fix with tolerable certainty the name and rank of the object of his love, as well as the date and circumstances of his attachment.

In the earliest of Chaucer's poems, "The Court of Love," he describes himself as enamoured of a fair mistress, whom in the style of the time, he calls Rosial, and himself Philogenet: the lady is described as "sprung of noble race and high," with "angel visage," "golden hair," and eyes orient and bright, with figure "sharply slender,"

So that from the head unto the foot all is sweet womanhead,

and arrayed in a vest of green, with her tresses braided with silk and gold. She treats him at first with disdain, and the Poet swoons away at her feet: satisfied by this convincing proof of his sincerity, she is induced to accept his homage, and becomes his "liege ladye," and the sovereign of his thoughts. In this poem, which is extremely wild, and has come down to us in an imperfect state, Chaucer quaintly admonishes all lovers, that an absolute faith in the perfection of their mistresses, and obedience to her slightest caprice, are among the first of duties; that they must in all cases believe their ladye faultless; that,

In every thing she doth but as she should.
Construe the best, believe no tales new,
For many a lie is told that seem'th full true;
But think that she, so bounteous and so fair,
Could not be false; imagine this alway.

....*....*....*....*

And tho' thou seest a fault right at thine eye,
Excuse it quick, and glose it prettily.[47]

Nor are they to presume on their own worthiness, nor to imagine it possible they can earn

By right, her mercie, nor of equity,
But of her grace and womanly pitye.[47]

There is, however, no authority for supposing that at the time this poem was written, Chaucer really aspired to the hand of any lady of superior birth, or was very seriously in love; he was then about nineteen, and had probably selected some fair one, according to the custom of his age, to be his "fancy's queen," and in the same spirit of poetical gallantry, he writes to do her honour; he says himself,