Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 09

by Unknown

But Chaucer's activity was not confined to foreign missions or to diplomacy; he was as constantly employed in the civil service. In 1374 he was made controller of the great customs—that is, of wool, skins, and leather—of the port of London. In 1382 he received also the post in the same port of controller of the petty customs—that is, of wines, candles, and other articles. The regulations of the office required him to write the records with his own hand; and it is this to which Chaucer is supposed to refer in the statement he makes about his official duties in the 'House of Fame.' In that poem the messenger of Jupiter tells him that though he has done so much in the service of the God of Love, yet he has never received for it any compensation. He then goes on to add the following lines, which give a graphic picture of the poet and of his studious life:—

"Wherfore, as I said ywis,[2]
Jupiter considereth this,
And also, beau sir, other things;
That is, that thou hast no tidings
Of Lovès folk, if they be glad,
Ne of nought ellès, that God made;
And nought only from far countree
That there no tiding cometh to thee,
But of the very neighèboúrs,
That dwellen almost at thy doors,
Thou hearest neither that nor this;
But when thy labor all done is,
And hast made all thy reckonings,
Instead of rest and newè things,
Thou goest home to thine house anon,
And also[3] dumb as any stone,
Thou sittest at another book,
Till fully dazèd is thy look.
And livest thus as an eremite,
Although thine abstinence is lyte.[4]"

In 1386 Chaucer was elected to Parliament as knight of the shire for the county of Kent. In that same year he lost or gave up both his positions in the customs. The cause we do not know. It may have been due to mismanagement on his own part: it is far more likely that he fell a victim to one of the fierce factional disputes that were going on during the minority of Richard II. At any rate, from this time he again disappears for two years from our knowledge. But in 1389 he is mentioned as having been appointed clerk of the King's works at Westminster and various other places; in 1390 clerk of the works for St. George's chapel at Windsor. Both of these places he held until the middle of 1391. In that last year he was made one of the commissioners to repair the roadway along the Thames, and at about the same time was appointed forester of North Petherton Park in Somerset, a post which he held till his death. After 1386 he seems at times to have been in pecuniary difficulties. To what cause they were owing, or how severe they were, it is the emptiest of speculations to form any conjectures in the obscurity that envelops this portion of his life. Whatever may have been his situation, on the accession of Henry IV. in September, 1399, his fortunes revived. The father of that monarch was John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III. That nobleman had pretty certainly been from the outset the patron of Chaucer; it is possible—as the evidence fails on one side, it cannot be regarded as proved—that by his marriage with Katharine Swynford he became the poet's brother-in-law. Whatever may have been the relationship, if any at all, it is a fact that one of the very first things the new king did was to confer upon Chaucer an additional pension. But the poet did not live long to enjoy the favor of the monarch. On the 24th of December, 1399, he leased for fifty-three years or during the term of his life a tenement in the garden of St. Mary's Chapel, Westminster. But after the 5th of June, 1400, his name appears no longer on any rolls. There is accordingly no reason to question the accuracy of the inscription on his tombstone which represents him as having died October 25th, 1400. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was the first, and still remains perhaps the greatest, of the English poets whose bones have there found their last resting-place.

This comprises all the facts of importance we know of Chaucer's life. Before leaving this branch of the subject, however, it may be well to say that many fuller details about his career can be found in all older accounts of the poet, and in spite of the repeated exposure of their falsity still crop up occasionally in modern books of reference. Some are objectionable only upon the ground of being untrue. Of these are such statements as that he was born in 1328; that he was a student of Oxford, to which Cambridge is sometimes added; that he was created poet-laureate; and that he was knighted. But others are objectionable not only on the ground of being false, but of being slanderous besides. Of these the most offensive is the widely circulated and circumstantial story that he was concerned in the conflict that went on in 1382 between the city of London and the court in regard to the election of John of Northampton to the mayoralty; that in consequence of his participation in this contest he was compelled to seek refuge in the island of Zealand; that there he remained for some time, but on his return to England was arrested and thrown into the Tower; and that after having been imprisoned for two or three years he was released at last on the condition of betraying his associates, which he accordingly did. All these details are fictitious. They were made up from inferences drawn from obscure passages in a prose work entitled 'The Testament of Love.' This was once attributed to the poet, but is now known not to have been written by him. Even had it been his, the statements derived from it and applied to the life of the poet would have been entirely unwarranted, as they come into constant conflict with the official records. Not being his, this piece of spurious biography has the additional discredit of constituting an unnecessary libel upon his character.

From Chaucer the man, and the man of affairs, we proceed now to the consideration of Chaucer the writer. He has left behind a body of verse consisting of more than thirty-two thousand lines, and a smaller but still far from inconsiderable quantity of prose. The latter consists mainly if not wholly of translations—one a version of that favorite work of the Middle Ages, the treatise of Boëtius on the 'Consolation of Philosophy'; another the tale of Melibeus in the 'Canterbury Tales,' which is taken directly from the French; thirdly, the Parson's Tale, derived probably from the same quarter, though its original has not as yet been discovered with certainty; and fourthly, an unfinished treatise on the Astrolabe, undertaken for the instruction of his son Lewis. The prose of any literature always lags behind, and sometimes centuries behind, its poetry. It is therefore not surprising to find Chaucer displaying in the former but little of the peculiar excellence which distinguishes his verse. In the latter but little room is found for hostile criticism. In the more than thirty thousand lines of which it is composed there occur of course inferior passages, and some positively weak; but taking it all in all, there is comparatively little in it, considered as a whole, which the lover of literature as literature finds it advisable or necessary to skip. In this respect the poet holds a peculiar position, which makes the task of representation difficult. As Southey remarked, Chaucer with the exception of Shakespeare is the most various of all English authors. He appeals to the most diversified tastes. He wrote love poems, religious poems, allegorical poems, occasional poems, tales of common life, tales of chivalry. His range is so wide that any limited selection from his works can at best give but an inadequate idea of the variety and extent of his powers.

The canon of Chaucer's writings has now been settled with a reasonable degree of certainty. For a long time the fashion existed of imputing to him the composition of any English poem of the century following his death which was floating about without having attached to it the name of any author. The consequence is that the older editions contain a mass of matter which it would have been distinctly discreditable for any one to have produced, let alone a great poet. This has now been gradually dropped, much to the advantage of Chaucer's reputation; though modern scholarship also refuses to admit the production by him of two or three pieces, such as 'The Court of Love,' 'The Flower and the Leaf,' 'The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,' none of which was unworthy of his powers. It is possible indeed that the poet himself may have had some dread of being saddled with the responsibility of having produced pieces which he did not care to father. It is certainly suggestive that he himself took the pains on one occasion to furnish what it seems must have been at the time a fairly complete list of his writings. In the prologue to the 'Legend of Good Women' he gave an idea of the work which up to that period he had accomplished. The God of Love, in the interview which is there described as having taken place, inveighs against the poet for having driven men away from the service due to his deity, by the character of what he had written. He says:—

"Thou mayst it not deny:
For in plain text, withouten need of glose,[5]
Thou hast translated the Romance of the Rose;
That is an heresy agains my law,
And makest wisè folk fro me withdraw.
And of Cressid thou hast said as thee list;
That makest men to women lessè trist,[6]
That be as true as ever was any steel."

Against this charge the queen Alcestis is represented as interposing to the god a defense of the poet, in which occurs the following account of Chaucer's writings:—

"Albeit that he cannot well endite,
Yet hath he makèd lewèd[7] folk delight
To servè you, in praising of your name.
He made the book that hight[8] the House of Fame,
And eke the Death of Blanche the Duchess,
And the Parliament of Fowlès, as I guess,
And all the love of Palamon and Arcite
Of Thebes, though the story is knowen lyte[9];
And many an hymnè for your holy days
That highten[10] ballades, roundels, virelays;
And for to speak of other holiness,
He hath in prosè translatéd Boece,
And made the Life also of Saint Cecile;
He made also, gone sithen a great while,[11]
Origenes upon the Maudelain[12]:
Him oughtè now to have the lessè pain;
He hath made many a lay and many a thing."

This prologue is generally conceded to have been written between 1382 and 1385. Though it does not profess to furnish a complete list of Chaucer's writings, it can fairly be assumed that it included all which he then regarded as of importance either on account of their merit or their length. If so, the titles given above would embrace the productions of what may be called the first half of his literary career. In fact, his disciple Lydgate leads us to believe that 'Troilus and Cressida' was a comparatively early production, though it may have undergone and probably did undergo revision before assuming its present form. The 'Legend of Good Women'—in distinction from its prologue—would naturally occupy the time of the poet during the opening period of what is here termed the second half of his literary career. The prologue is the only portion of it, however, that is of distinctly high merit. The work was never completed, and Chaucer pretty certainly came soon to the conclusion that it was not worth completing. It was in the taste of the times; but it did not take him long to perceive that an extended work dealing exclusively with the sorrows of particular individuals was as untrue to art as it was to life. It fell under the ban of that criticism which in the 'Canterbury Tales' he puts into the mouth of the Knight, who interrupts the doleful recital of the tragical tales told by the Monk with these words:—