don bridge, which, all overhung with shops and houses, affords communication with the Surrey side of the Thames. A continuous throng of citizens and strangers pass and repass on this famous bridge. Southwark is on the southern bank, where are most of the places of amusement and resort. Here stood the noted Tabard Inn, "faste by the belle." Beyond the suburb lay green fields and open meadowland, over which wound the country highways through Surrey and Kent. Yonder the road to Canterbury might be traced. On the side of London away from the Thames, the city was protected by its medieval wall, pierced here and there by gates, through which visitors entered and left the town. Above these gates were heavy bastions, and in one of these somewhat sombre towers Geoffrey Chaucer was lodged for about twelve years. The streets of London were narrow and dirty beyond belief. The centre of the roadway was a running sewer; pigs wallowed in the mire, notwithstanding an earlier law which read, "And whoso will keep a pig, let him keep it in his own house." Such, in part, was the capital city of England in the fourteenth century, and such, allowing for increased population, it remained for a hundred years. IV. GEOFFREY CHAUCER: 1340(?)-1400. Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London about 1340. His father, John Chaucer, was a wine mer Youth. chant in Thames Street. He had been purveyor to the household of Edward III., and was evidently in excellent standing as a citizen, obtaining for his son a position much coveted for a youth in that age, an appointment as page in the royal household. It is in this connection that we first hear of Geoffrey Chaucer, a youth of seventeen, attached to the family CHAUCER'S EARLY WORKS 65 of Prince Lionel, Duke of Clarence, in the immediate service of Elizabeth his wife. Here the boy received his first glimpse of the life at court, his first lessons in courtly fashions and behavior. He waited on his mistress, did her errands, assisted in the table service, was taught music and the languages, associated with youths of a station more exalted than his own, and grew familiar with the habits and behavior of men of rank and note. In the fall of 1359 Edward invaded France, and Geoffrey Chaucer had some part in that campaign, falling as a prisoner into the hands of the French. In the following March he was ransomed, the king contributing sixteen pounds to the necessary sum. From this time on Chaucer appears to have been attached to the court, and is referred to in the records of 1367 as valet to the king, with a salary of twenty pounds. He was already married to Philippa, lady-in-waiting to the queen. It must not be supposed that during these years, from seventeen to twenty-seven or thirty, the scholar's tastes and instincts had been stinted. That he was ever a student of books and a lover of nature is clear enough from the literary material of which Chaucer was master; and this was the budding time of his genius. Chaucer had already found the power to express himself in rhyme, although, as we should ex- Early pect, it is in the conventional form of the only works. literature with which the young poet was then acquainted, the French. Three poems are extant which belong apparently to this first period: Chaucer's A. B. C., a prayer to the Virgin Mary, freely translated from the French of a Cistercian monk, and taking its title from the fact that its twenty-three stanzas begin consecutively with the various letters of the alphabet in order; The Compleynte to Pite, a love poem, melodious and graceful, though in the conventional manner of French love poems of the day; and The Dethe of Blaunche the Duchesse, a poem of 1334 lines, in honor of Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt. As this lady died in 1369, this elegy is assigned to that same year. Besides these poems, Chaucer composed also many songs and ballads, with which, according to John Gower, "the land ful filled was, over all." It is also true that Chaucer had made a translation of the most popular French poem of that age, a long allegory of love entitled Le Roman de la Rose. The English version of this work, known as The Romaunt of the Rose, although attributed to Chaucer for many years, is not regarded as his. Between the years 1370 and 1385 the poet's life was rather that of a man of action than that of a man of letters, and yet coincidently with the The Second Period. discharge of important public duties, Chaucer was introduced to a new world of art and culture, under the inspiration of which he accomplished his finest work. In December, 1372, he was sent by the king to the cities of Genoa and Florence on an important mission pertaining to commercial relations between those cities and London. He was absent on this errand about three months, returning to England in April, 1373. Precisely what Chaucer did in Italy at this time is all unknown to us, but we may well imagine the delight with which he looked on the beautiful works about him. Pisa was already famous for its marvelous tower of creamy marble, while in Florence, Giotto had completed the slender campanile now called by his name. Just where Chaucer walked or rode, with whom he conversed, and whom he went to see, we know not; but Francis Petrarch, the laureate of Italy, was still ITALIAN INFLUENCES 67 alive, and could be visited in his country retreat near Padua. Boccaccio was already famous as the author of romances and tales which were to gather new fame in the hands of this English poet. In the fall of that very year, 1373, Boccaccio was to commence in Florence a series of public lectures on the Divine Comedy of Dante, the great world-poet of medievalism, who had died some fifty years before. ences. Thus did Chaucer enter Italy, that country which was foremost in the great awakening of Italian thought and life, which we call the Renas- Influcence, or new birth of culture, the real beginning of the modern world. The impressions of this visit, undoubtedly profound, were intensified by a second journey in 1378, when Chaucer was intrusted by young King Richard with a mission to Milan, occupying some three months, as before. Chaucer was now an extremely busy man, with small leisure for literary work. In 1374 he was appointed comptroller of the customs and subsidies on wools, skins, and tanned hides, in the port of London, it being explicitly stated that the duties of this office should be performed by the comptroller in person, and not by deputy. The death of Edward, and the accession of the boy-king, Richard II., occurred in June, 1377. In 1382 Chaucer received a new appointment to the office of comptroller of the petty customs, which he held in addition to his first collectorship. In 1385 he was granted permission to employ a deputy, an arrangement which afforded much relief. In spite of the laborious days, these years of the poet's life were by no means unproductive or unimpor tant. Very early in this period, perhaps, belongs a prose version of the famous medieval essay by Boethius (died 525 A. D.), De Consolatione Philosophiæ, first translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred. It is unlikely that Chaucer wrote much during the interval between the two Italian journeys, but shortly after the second visit he produced what, next to The Canterbury Tales, is the poet's greatest success. This is the Troilus and Criseyde, a love romance based upon a much longer poem, Il Filostrato, or Love's Victim, by Boccaccio. Chaucer's poem contains over 8000 lines, and not more than a third of the whole is to be recognized as borrowed from its original. In this work the poet first reveals that wonderful story-telling power which has made him famous among all makers of imaginative literature. Troilus and Criseyde contains in great degree the spirit of the modern novel. Love and love's fickleness is the theme, and the characters of Troilus, Criseyde, and the wily, coarse-natured Pandar are developed with the finest art. Thus does the poem begin: "The double sorowe of Troilus to tellen That was the Kinge Priamus' sone of Troye, Besides this metrical romance, the most important poems of Chaucer's second period are two allegories: The Parlement of Foules, or As Chaucer's Allegories. sembly of Birds, and The Hous of Fame. The first has a political significance and celebrates the wooing of Anne of Bohemia in 1382 by the poet's master, Richard II. The other poem was a much longer work. It is somewhat in the spirit of Dante, and recounts the poet's visit, in his dream, to the glittering hall of Fame, whither a great golden eagle carries him. Here upon a mountain of ice are carved |