John of Gaunt, who is the principal speaker and chief mourner in the poem, gives a history of his courtship, and tells with what mixture of fear and awe, he then "right young," approached the lovely heiress of Lancaster: but bethinking him that Heaven could never have formed in any creature so great beauty and bounty "withouten mercie,"—in that hope he makes his confession of love; and he goes on to tell us, with exquisite naïveté,—
I wot not well how I began,
Full evil rehearse it, I can:
....*....*....*....*
For many a word I overskipt
In telling my tale—for pure fear,
Lest that my words misconstrued were.
Softly, and quaking for pure dred,
And shame,—
Full oft I wax'd both pale and red;
I durst not once look her on,
For wit, manner, and all was gone;
I said, "Mercie, sweet!"—and no more.
Then his anguish at her first rejection, and his rapture when, at last, he wins from his ladye
The noble gift of her mercie;
his domestic happiness—his loss, and his regrets, are all told with the same truth, simplicity, and profound feeling. For such passages and such pictures as these, Chaucer will still be read, triumphant as the poet of nature, over the rust and dust of ages, and all the difficulties of antique style and obsolete spelling; which last, however, though repulsive, is only a difficulty to the eye, and easily overcome.
To return to Chaucer's own love.—In the opening lines of the "Booke of the Duchesse," he describes himself as wasted with his "eight years' sicknesse," alluding to his long courtship of the coy Philippa:
I have great wonder, by this light,
How that I live!—for day nor night
I may not sleepen well-nigh nought:
I have so many an idle thought
Purely for the default of sleep;
That, by my troth, I take no keep
Of nothing—how it com'th or go'th,
To me is nothing liefe or lothe;[51]
All is equal good to me,
Joy or sorrow—whereso it be;
For I have feeling in no thing,
But am, as 'twere, a mazed[52] thing,
All day in point to fall adown
For sorrowful imagination, &c.
In the same year with the Duchess died the good Queen of Edward the Third; and Philippa Picard being thus sadly released from her attendance on her mistress, a few months afterwards married Chaucer, then in his forty-second year.