I. Geoffry Chaucer, the poet
| "That made first to dystylle and rayne The gold dewe dropys of speche and eloquence, Into our tunge thrugh his excellence."1 |
has ever stood first among the writers who have drunk at "the well of English undefiled."2 He has been called the father of English verse, and properly. He travelled several times into the countries of the south, and, as great minds are seldom idle ones, we might infer, without the proof which exists in so many shapes, that he became a pupil to the Italian masters.
1 Lydgate.
2 The term "well of English undefiled," was applied to Chaucer by Spenser, because he arranged and settled the language—stripping it of many barbarisms and foreign incumbrances. I am aware that he introduced as many foreign words as he cast out; but the rejected were corrupt fragments of the Norman French, which yet (though soft compared with the Saxon,) bore in part a mark of its parentage; and the selections made for the purpose of replacing them, were from the Langue D'Oc—the most beautifully musical of all tongues. He consequently did not defile the English language.
He was a student, and returned to England laden with the fruits of his study. It was his fate to come between the scholars of that and preceding ages, who worked their religious and scientific instructions into heavy Latin metre, and the court minions, who sang to their mistresses and patrons in Norman French, and lay a solid foundation out of the scattered fragments of real English poetry. With little fancy, less imagination, and the little of the first clipped, by his matter-of-fact employment as wool inspector, he has succeeded in story-telling better than any of his successors. In a tale, the more vivid the picture drawn, the more interesting the tale. To be minute and particular in description, is to beget a vivid picture: and this is the secret of Chaucer's popularity. He writes as if he were taking an inventory of, rather than describing, things around him. Ages after, when this same talent for descending skilfully into particulars, was used in the description of natural scenery and of the workings of the human breast, it gave Spenser's Pastorals, and the tragedies of Shakspeare and poor Shelly, a beauty which in the first two, men have long ago learned to appreciate, and which in the course of time, will place the last on the seat to which he is entitled. The whole secret of Chaucer's charm is, as I have said, particularity. If he had used this talent in describing the many workings of the human heart, he would probably have failed—for no man can describe that of which he is ignorant.3 If he had turned his attention to pastoral poetry, he might have succeeded; and indeed, in the descriptions of nature scattered throughout his various poems, he has succeeded admirably. But something more is wanting than this power of description, in the song of a shepherd. From his wild and unrestrained life among the hills of a legendary country—surrounded as he is, by "kids and lambs, and blithe birds," we not only look for minuteness of description, but affecting plaintiveness and imaginative imbodyings. This last is one great aid to Spenser's pastoral poetry. But I am anticipating my subject.
3 Chaucer has the reputation of being a great "painter of characters;" but he excels in describing manner, bearing, dress, &c.—not in picturing the workings of the "human heart."
Chaucer was the founder of a style which after poets have often attempted to imitate. Dryden and Pope have paraphrased his works; and Keates tells us that he is too weak to do other than "stammer where Dan Chaucer sung." The Canterbury tales were modelled after, and for the most part copied from the Decameron of Boccacio. The prologue to these is the most perfect thing of its kind extant. His satires are strong, and chiefly aimed against the enemies of Wickliffe, and his patron John of Lancaster. Chaucer was a philosopher too—a great one for his age. His treatise on the Astrolabe, intended for the benefit of his son, manifests more information than we would look for in the reign of Edward III. His satires against the opponents of Wickliffe are rather political than religious. In religious matters he seems to have possessed a praiseworthy spirit of toleration—a quality unknown for ages after to the "agents elect" of a peace-loving Christ.4 Altogether, Chaucer was a wonderful man, and certainly, for his time, a poet as "parfite" and as "gentil" as his own knight.5 His Canterbury tales are his great works: they gave a tone to English poetry. In these days, when all literature has lost its freshness, it would be a pleasant thing if we could
I should like to believe in the Pythagorean doctrine, if only for the pleasant consciousness that old Geoffry Chaucer had left his spirit behind him. He died on the 25th of October, (the same day of the same month on which died King Alfred,) in the year 1400; and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where for a long time these words were upon his tomb: