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CORNELL >
UNIVERSITY
| LIBRARY

   
 
   

 

WILLARD FIsKE
ENDOWMENT |

  

 

 
All books are subject to recall after two weeks.
Olin/Kroch Library

DATE DUE

 

GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A.

 

Cornell University Library
PR 1924.K62 1914
‘ willy,

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CHAUCER AND HIS POETRY

LECTURES DELIVERED IN I9QI4 ON THE
PERCY TURNBULL MEMORIAL FOUNDATION
IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

BY

GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

 

CAMBRIDGE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
Oxrorp UniversiTy Press
1915
S
rk
14a

K be
\4\4

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE

A.2979 50
PREFACE

THE six lectures that compose this volume were
delivered at the Johns Hopkins University in
April and May, 1914, being the nineteenth course
of lectures on Poetry on the Percy Turnbull
Memorial Foundation. They are printed as
delivered, except for such slight emendations
as naturally suggest themselves when one pre-
pares a manuscript for the press. Since the
plan of the book excludes footnotes, I wish to
make the fullest kind of general acknowledgment
to Chaucerian scholars in both hemispheres for
the help which their published writings have
CONTENTS

I. Tue Man anv uis TIMES eg x. ey
IL. Tue Boox or THE Ducuess‘* ; a7
Ill. Toe Houst or Fame ©... 73
IV. Trortus.4 . .. : : . 108
V. THE Canrersury Tates — Ly. . 146
VI. THe CanTEersury Tates—II. 181

INDEX » é : ‘ 5 . 219
CHAUCER AND HIS POETRY

I
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES

HERE is no great harm in the air of
patronage with which our times, in their
self-satisfied enlightenment, address the great
who were of old; but we do use droll adjectives!
If these great ancients show the simplicity of
perfect art, we call them aif, particularly when
their irony eludes us; if they tickle our fancy,
they are quaint; if we find them altogether sat-
isfactory, both in form and substance, we adorn
them with the epithet modern, which we somehow
think is a superlative of eminence. Naif, quaint,
modern,—a singular vocabulary! Add convincing,
and the critic has done his best, or his worst.
For it is we that are naif; quaintness is incom-
patible with art; and as for modernity, what we
mistake for that, is the everlasting truth, the en-
during quality that consists in conformity to
changeless human nature. “ The ancients,” said
a wise man, “never understood that they were
ancients.”
Chaucer lived in the middle ages, in the last
_sixty years, or thereabout, of the fourteenth
2 CHAUCER

century; but he is the most modern of English
poets, and one of the most popular) This is not a
paradox; it is.the sober, unrhetorical statement
of a truisat’ For he knew life and loved it, and
his specialty was mankind as it was, and is. Be-
sides, his age was vastly like our own, in every-
thing but costume and “the outward habit of
encounter.” The fourteenth century seems less
remote th than the eighteenth; Geoffrey Chaucer is
nearer to us us than Alexander Pope.
~~ It was an age of intense activity, —a singu-
larly ““modern” time. One is tempted to assert
that all the problems which vex the world to-day,
either sprang into existence or made themselves
especially troublesome in the sixty years of.
Chaucer’s life. For there is scarcely a political or
social catchword of the present (even “femin-
ism,” as I hope to show in due season) which
does not fit the fourteenth century.

Labor gave trouble in a dozen ways. The
Black Death cut down the supply of farm-hands
throughout the country. Those who were left,
once little better than slaves, asserted themselves
in a manner that terrified vested interests and
prompted futile legislation. France was con-
vulsed by the savage turmoil of the Jacquerie. In
England there were the uprisings of Wat Tyler,
John Ball, and Jack Straw, partly a revolt

against unjust taxation and tyrant landlords,

 

 
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 3

and partly, especially in London, an assault
upon the Flemings, who had been imported by
Edward III to establish the manufacture of cloth,
and of whom native workmen were insanely jeal-
ous. Theories of government that men had held
divine were boldly challenged, “antiquity forgot,
custom not known.” Anarchy borrowed the
language of democracy; and the great order of
the ages was to begin anew. Gower is our wit-
ness for the panic of conservatives in the face
of the mob, which had little humor, but much
rudimentary logic, and was eager to come by
its own.

The art of war was undergoing a profound and
alarming change. Chivalry, discredited as a
fighting method — for the man-at-arms on foot
had forced back the mounted knight — displayed
itself all the more splendidly as a social system,
decked with fine phrases and brilliant pageantry.

The Eastern Question took on a strangely
modern aspect. In 1343 the Turk first got a foot-
hold in Europe, and twenty years later began
the meteoric career of Tamerlane, infinitely pro-
phetic of barbarous possibilities from the Orient. —

The revolt against the Pope, which led to the
complicated movement known as the Reforma-
tion, began in the fourteenth century, with
Wyclif in England and John Huss in Bohemia.
There was a violent reaction in the period fol-
4 CHAUCER

lowing, but in Chaucer’s lifetime the Lollard
agitation, which involved the most startling

radicalism, gained immense headway. With the
political leaders of this party Chaucer was on

terms of intimate friendship, though there is no

‘evidence that he adopted any of their heresies.

The questions at issue seem, at first sight, remote
enough. In fact, however, they concerned that
vital matter, the relation between Church and
State, which, under one or another guise, is still
momentous in European politics.
century. . Petrarch and Bocc Boccaccio were his con-
temporaries; to both he was indebted, to the
latter in larger measure than to any poet but
Ovid. The interest in education was wide-spread.
A whole chain of universities, from Cracow to
Saint Andrews, was established between 1340
and 1410.

Imperialism was never a more vital question
than at this time. The armed assertion of Ed-

- ward’s claim to the crown of France, the war of

Richard II in Ireland, and the attempt of John

' of Gaunt to seize the kingdom of Castile, show

~ how far-reaching this movement was,

One can even see a forecast of the gold and
silver question. Edward’s gold nobles became
immediately famous. They were readily ac-
cepted by foreign merchants everywhete, as
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 5

sovereigns pass current to-day. The failure of
two great Florentine banking houses, the Bardi
and the Peruzzi, in 1345, when Chaucer was a
boy, does not sound particularly medieval. King
Edward, by the way, owed them a million and
a half of gold florins — a sum which I shall not
venture to compute in modern values.

any such details might be accumulated; but
I have said enough to indicate that Chaucer was
born in a time of great religious and political and
literary activity, not so much at the end of the
middle ages as at the beginning of the modern /

world.

aay fortunate that Chaucer was born
hig enough in ‘the.social scale not to. need holy
‘orders as a means of escape from cramping cir-
cumstances. Otherwise, a great poet would have
been spoiled to make an indifferent parson. He
would still have been a poet, and patrons would
not have failed him, but he could not have com-
prehended the world, or “had his life in his time.”
It is equally fortunate that Chaucer was not
born an aristocrat; for then he would not have
understood the lower orders, but would have
lived and died_ the poet of chivalric love. We
might have | had the Troilus, but we should lack
the Canterbury Tales.
; appy the destiny that plunged Chaucer into
‘public business, and the practical talents that
6 CHAUCER

brought him so many occupations in such great
variety! His family was of the burgher class,
but it had some kind of court connections or in-
fluence, so that he became page to the Countess
of Ulster, and was afterwards attached to the
royal household. All his life he had public em-
ployment. He served in the army, and was taken
prisoner and ransomed. He was Controller of
the Customs, Clerk of the King’s Works (or Com-
missioner of Buildings), Commissioner of what
we should now call the Thames Conservancy,
and M. P. for the County of Kent. At least
seven times he went abroad on diplomatic busi-
ness, — to France, to Italy, and to Flanders. His
missions were very various: they involved ques-
tions of war, of commerce, and of the king’s mar-
riage, with other negotiations ofwhich we know
only that they were secret. “As courtier, office-
holder, soldier, ambassador, legislator, burgher
of London, Chaucer knew everybody that was
worth knowing, high or low, Z hard to im-
agine a career so thoroughly adapted to fit him
for the great task for which he came into the
world. No man can have had a broader or more
intimate acquaintance with the life of the time.
Allthis did not make him a poet, for genius comes
only by the grace of God; but it trained him for
the appointed application of his powers —gwhich -
was, anae he should record the age, in itsMiabit as °
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 7

it lived, with every significant detail of its “form
ndpressure.”
inally, — and this was of prime importance,
v— Chaucer was born i in London. His native dia-
lect was t ‘was that v which was to become, in the na-
tural course of events, the English of literature. |
And it was a critical moment, when nothing was
needed to determine the tendency but a poet of
commanding genius. Chaucer did not make the
English language. His service was to write the
Midland dialect with an ease, a polish, and a | a rege
ularity which commanded immediate anid unan-—
imous admiration, and to use it as the vehicle for
first-rate poetry. Nothing more was needed.
Those who came after him had now an accepted
standard. Lydgate, in his fumbling fashion, tries
to express this great fact, which everybody ap-
preciated, when he says of Chaucer, “Dante in
English himself doth so express.” He means,
presumably, that Chaucer’s relation to the best
English was that of Dante to the best Italian.
The chief difference between the fourteenth
century and our own, in intellectual matters, lies,
I think, in a different attitude toward specializa
tion. Our tendency is to exhaust one subject, i
we can, and ignore the rest; theirs was to aspir
to an encyclopzdic grasp of the universe. Other
points of contrast are usually emphasized. We
hear, for instance, that our times are blessed
8 CHAUCER

with a critical or questioning spirit, whereas our
medizeval ancestors believed what they were

ever when applied to Chaucer’s lifetime. Then,
if ever, the spirit of radicalism was abroad in the

land. To describe as an era of dumb submissive-

ness the age of Wyclif, and John Huss, and the

Great Schism, of the Jacquerie in France and
Tyler and Ball in England, is to read both litera-
ture and history with one’s eyes shut. Equally
fallacious is the alleged contrast as to what is
called the scientific od. Wk with its appendage
the inductive method. |We_ have shifted our
ground, gece some pepertialay, BOE wehave

ee

perience, though we may apply fen rather to
politics and the social system than to the natural
sciences. And even there, one must not be too
confident of an actualized millennium now, or too
incredulous of enlightenment then. Empiricism |
was the sole guide, in practice, of the alchemical
brethren to whom the Canon’s Yeoman had at- ,
tached himself. It was not the calm precepts of
placid deduction that scattered their gold, and‘
blew up their laboratories, and poisoned them:
with the fumes of sulphur and antimony.

What strikes me, therefore, when I try to com-
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 9

prehend the second half of the fourteenth cen-
tury, is not st the strangeness, but the familiarity.
It was a scambling and unquiet.time, when no-
body was at rest but the dead. Ina word, it was
a good age to live in , and_so o Chatiger found “it.
But, as I have said, it differed from our own in
one regard:—the.man of intellect read every-
thing he could lay his hands on; he did_not.con-.
fine his interests to his specialty, even. if he had
one.

“Now Chaucer’s specialty was mankind. It is
not surprising, therefore, that his works show
great variety. “Learned Chaucer” people used
to call him, when learning was a title of honor;
and though the term sounds stilted, and has
been much assailed of late, as lacking in appro-
priateness, itwasnot ill-chosen. Of course, Chau-_
cer was not accurate; but accuracy concerns
scholarship rather than learning,.and the distinc-
tion is fundamental. Walter Burley corfused
Epaminondas with Epimenides, Socrates with
Tsocrates, Xenophanes with Xenophon, and Jau-
riger Horatius with Horatius Pulvillus. Titus
Livius appears in his pages as “historian and
writer of tragedies,” by amalgamation, one sees,
with Livius Andronicus. Yet Burley was a man
of learning and a professional teacher, engaged,
at the moment of blundering, in the compilation
of a biographical text-book for college students.
IO CHAUCER

What concerns us, then, is not the venial lapses
of Chaucer in his details, but the wide sweep of

his intellectual interests, eee
this writings ne SIME Ganka aih hu-
man interests, if we omit politics and diplomacy,
which were his profession. Science is represented
by the Astrolabe, high philosophy by Boethius,
practical ethics by the Melibee, eve
ogy by the Ts ale of the Parson. S6ciety, in ‘all i its
aspects, is’ ‘the continual ‘theme of Chaucer’s
verse. el eres
- “Paradoxical as it seems to us, Chaucer must
have ranked high as a religious writer. Not to
speak of his legends, he put forth his A B C, an
elaborate prayer to the Virgin, advancing through
all the letters of the alphabet. He translated a
famous work of mortification, Innocent on the
Wretched Condition of Mankind, and a famous
homily upon the Magdalen, ascribed to Origen.
Finally, he closed his great survey of human life
in the Canterbury Tales with a practical treatise
on Penitence and the Seven Deadly Sins, which
he appropriately assigned to the good priest, the
poor but learned parson of a town. Chaucer’s,
knowledge of theology, and his interest in some
of its highest problems, are evinced in countlesg|
passages, long and short, in his poetical works...)
- As to science, I have mentioned the Astrolabe.

 
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES II

Astrology, which implies astronomy, was at his
fingers’ ends. How far he credited its doctrines,
one is quite at a loss to determine. Astronomy,
however, was only one of the scientific subjects
that interested him. Medicine was much better
known to him than to his learned editors, as Mr.
Lowes has recently proved. The physiological
etiology of dreams, as well as their possible sig-
niffcanicé, was a subject to which “he-returned-
apanrand again.His acquaintance with atchemy
was the wonder of the adepts of the seventeenth
century. Elias Ashmole thought that Chaucer
was himself a disciple, a spagyric student, a
pyrotechnist, a philosopher by the fire. And
Ashmole was nearer right than those of us who
idly fancy that the poet worked up the terms of
the art in a perfunctory fashion, ad hoc, for the
sake of a tollicking satire. This is much like the

ingenious suggestion of an eminent scholar that
Chaucer had read a few romances in order to
parody them in Sir Thopas.

An eccentric notion prevails among the ignor-
ant revilers of medizvalism that the authors of
those times were unchastened by line or precept.
Lawless, amorphous, chaotic— such are the
adjectives to which our ears are habituated.
These are wild shots. Never, I suppose, was the
principle of law and order in literature more dom-
me than in the middle ages. Schematism held

 
12 CHAUCER

undisputed sway in the schools. Rules were ac-
cepted as if they came from heaven. Flowers of
thetoric were culled, classified, labelled, and
stored up in the herbarium. Law, not license,
was the watchword of the medizval writer. The
struggle of any original genius was not to dis-
cover fetters, but to break them, or rather, to
apply to his inspired use the consecrated formu-
las, without being cramped or paralyzed.

fT hat Chaucer was no untaught phenomenon,
but had studied rhetoric to good purpose, should
be obvious to the most precipitate of readers,
even if that masterpiece of eloguentia, the Tale
of the Man of Law, had not come down to us.
Again and again he mentions the formalities of
his art, now in his own person, now through the
medium of some fictitious character. It is a car-
dinal principle, he tells us, that the style should

be appropriate to the subject: “the _wordes mote
be cosyn to the dede.”! The knight rs The brazen.
horse, in the Squtre’s Tale, made his address of
presentation in due form, “‘withouten vyce of’
syllable or of lettre,” in the high style, which the
narrator cannot imitate, and with bearing, ges-
tures, and behavior that suited his words, in i

accordance with the precepts of oratory, or “art;
of speech, ”2 'The F ranklin, who regrets his owl

son’s lack of culture, praises the Squire bis
x Canterbury Tales, A. 741-742; cf. H. 207-208. 2 F, in
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 13

eloquence, using the term in its technical mean-
ing of elegance and elevation of phrase, the
Latin eloguentia. So impressed, indeed, is the
worthy vavasour that he disclaims all know-
ledge of “colors of rhetoric” (another technical
term) when he begins his own story, on the Host’s
impatient demand.' “High style” is a term
well known to Harry Bailly, who, as Chaucer ex-
pressly informs us, was wise and well-taught.?
He begs the Clerk to keep such diction for letters
meant for royalty.’ This same Clerk, indeed, is
a literary critic. He even ventures a modest cen-
sure on Petrarch’s Proem to Griselda, which
seems to him “a thing impertinent,” save that
it might help to get a hearing for the novel —
‘save that he wol conveyen his matere.” 4
Several of Chaucer’s references to things rhe-
torical are in his characteristic deprecatory man-
ner. It is certain, however, that he often embel-
lished his writing, consciously and deliberately,
with “flowers” or “colors.” Noteworthy, for
instance, is his frequent use of apostrophe, —not
casually, but with very definite purpose. 5ome-
times he is serious; sometimes, as in the tale of
the Nun’s Priest, the effect is that of parody..
This tale, by the way, would well repay the study
of atechnical rhetorician. It is, in form, anexem-.

plum, ¢ or _preacher’s illu illustrative anecdote, enor-

SP SCORN Cee MTOR Er eet =

1F, pe 2 AL 755. aE. ae. 4E. 41-55.
4 CHAUCER

mously developed until it swallows up the sermon.
But it is also — and this is the significant thing
—a mock heroic poem, perfectly constructed,
and finished to the last detail. Every trick of
style which the schools taught is utilized for
comic effect. It is here, we remember, that Geof-
frey de Vinsauf is apostrophized as “dere maister
sovereyn,” with an ironical aspiration to his
learning and sententiousness, and a particular en-
comium on his invective against the Friday that
was fatal to Richard of the Lion Heart,
Schematism is not beauty, but it is ay not
license. Chaucer is more than once impelled to
apologize for disregarding that regularity of ar-
rangement which his readers expected. With
his usual irony, of the Socratic sort, he ascribes
this breach of decorum to his feeble intellect. So,
in the person of the Monk, he begs pardon for
transgressing onology in the order of the
“tragedies.”* More amusing is the example in the
general Prologue, where pardon is asked, on the
plea of a “short wit,” for letting the pilgrims tell
ger tales without due heed to social ema A
et, after all, the Knight begins the series, riot
by appointment, but by the judgment of the
lots, which prove more deferential to rank and
station than the poet himself. Another apology,
for lack of method comes ‘from the Canon’s.

1 B. 3174-3180. 2 A. 743-746.
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 15

Yeoman, when he expounds the mysteries of
alchemy. “He is an ignorant man,” he avers,
“and that must be his excuse for disorder in the
rehearsal of things pertaining to the spagyric
art.”* His whole lecture, in truth, is made riot-
ously comic by haphazard enumeration. Ingre-
dients, utensils, processes, and miscellaneous
terms are jumbled together in a mad and merry
dance of technicalities: — verdigris, borax, vials,
crucibles, and alembics, the rubification of water,
bull’s gall, arsenic and brimstone, valerian and
lunary, lamps, furnaces, albification of water,
lime, chalk, the white of eggs, waxed bags, salt-
peter, wood and coal fires, sal tartar and alkali,
alum, glass and yeast, imbibing, citrinization,
ingots, test-tubes, and many more!

The passage is a veritable Aristophanic pnigos,
—only it is not (like that) an operatic tour de
force. The whole tumultuous farrago is the ex-
cited Yeoman’s “unpacking his heart with
words.” The terms are not half understood by
him — though he feels an ignorant man’s pride
in displaying so prodigious a vocabulary — and
they are quite unintelligible to the pilgrims. The
hopelessness of mastering such a jargon is, to
them, the best proof that the philosopher’s stone
is beyond the reach of human effort.

Every work of Chaucer’s is referable to some

1 G. 784-789.
16 CHAUCER

definite literary category which was recognized
as such by his educated contemporaries. Thus
we have the legend of a saint, in the Life of
Saint Cecilia (afterward gllotted, without revi-
sion, to the Second Nu; a miracle of the Virgin,
in the tale of the martyred little boy, certainly
written expressly for the Prioress, and exquis-
itely attuned to her character; romantic legend,
in the story of Constance id by the Man of
Law), full of fabulous materials, but subdued by
its edifying purpose to a consistent impression
of melancholy devoutness. Here should be men-
tioned the Legend of the Saints of Cupid (other-
wise called Good Women), in which, in accord-
ance with the medieval convention equating
Love’s service with our duty toward God, the
lives of Cleopatra, Dido, Phyllis, Medea, anid the
rest are collected, partly from Ovid’s Heroides,
into a strange reflex of the Legenda Aurea.
There is the love-vision — modified in various
ways and applied to divers ends — in the Book
of the Duchess, the Parliament of Fowls, the
House of Fame, and the Prologue to the Legend.
of Good Women. We have also long romances:
—the pure romance of adventure, in the Squire’s
Tale, and, by way of boisterous and affectionate
parody, in Sir Thopas; the Italianate romance, in
Palamon and Arcite; the same, developed into a
psychological novel, inthe Troilus. Of theshorter
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 17

forms of narrative, there is every variety, —the
episodical romance, in the Wife’s Tale; the lay
of Britain, in the Franklin’s; the tragedy, ancient
and modem, in the Tale of the Monk. Fabliaux
abound,— the purely jocose, as told by the
Reeve and the Miller; the jocose with clever in-
trigue and a touch of satire, in the Shipman’s
Tale; the satiric wonder-story, in the Friar’s
Tale; and the gross anecdote expanded and
transmuted into an exquisite satire, in the Sum-
ner’s. Finally, there is what may well pass for
a contemporary anecdote, in the tricks of the
alchemist as detailed by the Canon’s Yeoman.

In his best work Chaucer shows all the quali-
ties which, a modern authors, are accounted

“regular” or ““classical,” or whatever the fash-
ionable ee may be. His verse, though full of
variety, is always in exquisite tune. There never
was-a better or more finished metrician. His

sense Of r. ythm, indeed, is quite extraordinary,
even fora poet. The heroic couplet, which he
introduced into our language, he handles. with
a mastery that none but Dryden has ever
approached. The Troilus stanza, likewise his in-
vention, is, as he employs it, a perfect medium
of expression, — alike for narrative, for descrip-
tion, for reflection, and (what is most remarkable)
for easy and graceful dialogue. His diction has

an elegant simplicity which produces, i in its con-
18 CHAUCER

summate art, the deceptive effect of artlessness.
It achieves decorum without apparent effort
and with no suggestion of formality. Its freedom
from puns, conceits, jingles, and antithetic af-
fectations moved the admiration of Dryden, who
found in Chaucer a “continence,” so he calls it,
“which is practised by few writers, and scarcely
by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and

Horace.”

Dee. as a matter of course, could not rid
himself of the queer notion that Chaucer “lived
in the dawning of our language,” and he inferred,
with a singular kind of logic (to which some re-
cent critics are likewise prone) that the poet’s -
vocabulary must somehow be rude and inchoate.
“The words,” he says, “are given up [by me] as
a post not to be defended in our poet, because’:
he wanted the modern art of fortifying.” This
dictum rests, in the last analysis, on the odd as-
sumption that obsoleténess and crudity are one
and the same thing. Dryden, I fancy, knew
better; but he was arguing Chaucer’s case before
a prejudiced jury, and he felt the wisdom of waiv- °
ing an unessential point that it was dangerous to”
press. Besides, he was at a disadvantage from
his utter ignorance of Chaucer’s grammar, and.
therefore of his metre, which he compared to the
“rude sweetness of a Scotch tune.” Yet he says |
enough to show, if one attends, that he recog-»

|

in
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 19

nized the excellence of Chaucer’s style— its force, —
sy finished ease, its simplicity, and its purity of
ididm. _-
>” Conciseness is another of Chaucer’s “classi-
cal”virtues. The condensation of Boccaccio’s
Teseide into the Knight’s Tale is a truly marvel-
lous performance. Dryden saw this quality, but
could not free himself from the prejudices of his
age, and leaves upon our minds the impression —
intentionally or unintentionally — that frequent
excision is necessary to reduce the Canterbury
Tales to modern standards of proportion and
good judgment. In fact, however, Dryden hasex- |
panded the text materially in all his versions, —
about ten per cent in Palamon and Arcite, and
about one-third in the Cock and Fox and the Wife
of Bath’s Tale, while he has frankly increased the
Character of a Good Parson tonearly three times
its original length. The artistic economy of Chau-
cer, even in descriptive passages, where decora-
tion would be excusable, goes quite beyond all
Dryden’s power of self-control. Nor can the
modern master refrain from interpolating allu-
sions and reflections. They are apt and pointed,
I admit, but they tend to dissipate the attention,
which Chaucer’s art keeps focused on the thing
itself. So, for instance, in the famous description
of the Temple of Mars. One brief comparison
will suffice to illustrate the difference: — °
20 CHAUCER

The dores were alle of adamant eterne,
Y-clenched overthwart and endelong

With iren tough; and for to make it strong,
Every piler, the temple to sustene,

Was tonne-greet, of iren bright and shene.t

The gate was adamant, eternal frame,

Which, hewed by Mars himself, from Indian quarries
came,

The labor of a god; and all along

Tough iron plates were clenched, to make it strong.

A tun about was every pillar there, —

A polish ed mirror shone not half so clear.”
Chaucer’s sense of proportion is quite as re-
een rege a agi
is, mall these ways, sbachnele perfect. Observe,
in particular, the-extraordimary rapidity of the
resolution after the climax. Two of the rioters
guard the treasure, while the third, the youngest,
goes to town for food and drink. They plot to
kill him on his return. He, for his part, plans the
death of the two as he rides along, and he brings
back three leather bottles of wine, two poisoned.
Thus we reach the acme of the climax, which,
im this wonderful story, is a pomt of extreme
suspense, with crisscross ironies of circumstance
comparable to those at the end of Hamlet. Mark, |
now, the quiet, rapid, relentless march of the
resolution: — ten verses, with a six-line epilogue:
+ Knight's Tale, 1132-1136. * Palamon and Arcite, 1164-1169.
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 21

What nedeth it to sermone of it more?

For right as they had cast his deeth bifore,

Right so they han him slain, and that anon.

And when that this was doon, thus spak that oon:
“Now lat us sitte, and drinke, and make us merye,
And afterward we wol his body: burye.”

And with that word, it happed him, par cas,

To take the botel ther the poyson was,

And drank, and yaf his felawe drinke also,

For which anoon they storven, bothe two.

But certes I suppose that Avicen

Wroot never in no canon, ne in no fen,

Mo wonder signes of empoysoning

Than hadde these wrecches two er her ending.
Thus ended ben these homicydes two,

And eek the false empoysoiier also.

In studying the structure and proportions of
this matchless short-story, we must, of course,
disregard the long preachment against drink,
dicing, and oaths. The whole tale, as it lies be-
fore us, is one of the Pardoner’s sermons, consist-
ing of text (“the love of money is the root of all
evil”), brief introduction, illustrative anecdote
(or exemplum), and application. The exemplum
alone is narrative, and this is readily isolated.
The rest is admirable in its own way, and quite
amazing in its verisimilitude. The Pardoner is
an abandoned wretch, but he is truly a “noble
ecclesiast.” The cynical frankness of his confes-
sion in the prologue, contrasted with the eloquence
and apparent earnestness of the sermon, and
22 CHAUCER

with the beauty and impressiveness of the ex-
emplum he uses, produces a psychological situa-
tion of intolerable stress and strain.

His cynicism suddenly abandons him, and —
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye — he
becomes a changed man, reverting to the days
before he lost his soul. Then, on the instant, he
recovers his reckless bearing, and seems to be
past the crisis. But there is an explosion, after
all. Emotional forces like these cannot be qui-
etly dissipated. There comes the quarrel with
the,Host, and only the Knight can restore peace,
Chaucer's swiftness in the resolution has givén
rise to strange comments. Mr. Lounsbury, for
instance, in speaking of the Book of the Duchess
and the Parliament of Fowls, remarks that in.
both “the ending is so abrupt that it gives the
impression that the author left off, not because
he had got through with what he started out to
say, but because he was too tired to goon. There
is a sense of incompleteness about the two poems
which detracts from their perfection as works of
art.” 1 I am not concerned to defend the Parlia-
ment, which has met with quite as much appre-
ciation as it deserves. The conclusion, however}!
as well as that of the Duchess, is quite perfect;)
even masterly. In one case the dreamer is roused.
by the din that the birds make, in the other by.

1 Studies in Chaucer, III, 320.
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 23

the striking of the tower-clock. In both, the
vision is finished, and the fancied abruptness
is merely the instantaneous passage from sleep
to waking. What more there was to say, I
cannot imagine.
The general impression is that medizval writ-
ers are digressive — that they can seldom resist
the lure of any chance idea, no matter how far
afield it strays, particularly when such vagrancy
leads them into learned regions. This impression”
has, with the general run of critics, hardened into
a fixed idea. Whenever a poet ventures a clas-
sical or a scientific allusion, he is accused of ped-
antry, of a childish fondness for “showing off.”
Neither the interest of the digression nor the
pertinency of the allusion is taken into account.
The truth is, that medieval writers are not, in
general, more prone to digression than those of
other periods. Some digress, and some do not,
precisely as in modern times. The prevalent no-
tion admits of an easy diagnosis. It comes, in
_the first place, from the medizval habit of insert-
“ing illustrative stories. Frequently an author,
instead of making a touch-and-go allusion, will
pause to tell the tale. So, for example, with the
cream-anecdoves of Chanticleer, and with Midas’
ars in the Wife’s romance of the Loathly Lady.
This habit, however, is not due to lack of method.
The examples are almost always pertinent, and
24 CHAUCER

their insertion is a part of the author’s plan. He
tells the tale, instead of merely citing the inci-
dent, because he cannot assume, as a modern
may, that his readers are familiar with it.

In the second place, the critics are confused by
a class of medieval works published (like our
books of ana or dictionaries of phrase and fable)
for the express purpose of making information
accessible. To regard such miscellanies as char-
acteristic of the medieval mind, or to apply to
them the canons of methodical criticism, is ab-
surd. One might as well find fault with a cyclo-
peedia for changing the subject so often, or berate
Southey’s Commonplace Book for its violation
of the dramatic unities.

Finally, there are certain medizval works of
great distinction in which a tale or an allegory is
utilized by the author as a vehicle for his own
ideas on many subjects. Here the ostensible plan
or programme is of no moment or significance.
What we haveis a series of essays, long and short.;
Each should be judged by itself, as we judge the’
essays of Montaigne or Bacon. A famous in-
stance is Jean de Meun, in his continuation of.
the Romance of the Rose. Jean is quite as
interesting a personality as Montaigne, and he;
has things to say that are every bit as valuable.
We should not be misled because he wrote in
verse, and chose to string his observations on a
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 25

thread of allegory instead of dividing them into
books and chapters.

Most, if not all, of the so-called digressions in
the Canterbury Tales are made by the teller of
the story, not by the author. In other words,
they are, in each case, a definite part of the dra-
matic plan; they grow out of the character or the
situation. In the Wife of Bath’s Tale, for ex-
ample, the long curtain lecture which the loathly
lady delivers to her disconsolate husband, is in
perfect accord with the worthy Wife’s own argu-
mentative habits, as described and illustrated in
her prologue. Even the parade of learning is in
character. The Wife had heard much literature,
as we know, from her fifth husband, the clerk of
Oxford, who was never tired of reading aloud
to her, particularly from works that slandered
women.

Sometimes, indeed, the inserted occasional
matter is more valuable than the story itself. In
the Sumner’s Tale, a sordid comic anecdote is
made the occasion for a vivid and deliciously hu-
morous account of the methods of a begging
friar. In the Merchant’s Tale, a cynical fabliau
is expanded by discussion and comment into a
savage satire on husbands and wives, from the
point of view (be it always remembered) not of
Geoffrey Chaucer, but of the disillusioned Mer-
chant, who has been married but two months and
26 CHAUCER

7 seeking solace in a pilgrimage to St. Thomas.
In the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, a simple fable grows}
by characteristic insertions and development,
into a masterpiece of the mock heroic

It has long been the fashion to divide Chaucer’s
poetical activity into three periods, — the French,
the Italian, and the English. This plan has a
neat and almost epigrammatic symmetry which
commends it to orderly minds, and it is undeni-
ably convenient. The trouble is, that the three
adjectives — French, Italian, and English — do
not apply to their several periods with any-
thing like the same degree of descriptive accu-
racy.

In the French Period, Chaucer was literally
under the control of French methods and French
conventions, — a disciple of Guillaume de Lorris
and Guillaume de Machaut. He was, to all in-
tents and purposes, a French love-poet writing
(so it happened) in the English language.

In the Italian period, on the contrary, Chaucer
was nobody’s disciple. Dante and Petrarch and
Boccaccio did no
emancipators. They enlarged his horizon. They
awoke him to consciousness ower that was
his own. Boccaccio, in particular, did him the’
priceless service of stirring him to atiall
Here, in the Teseide and the Filostrato, were new
and fine and congenial things: not unapproachil

 
 
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 27

able masterpieces, like the ancient classics, but
‘works that he might hope to equal, that he might
even aspire to surpass. He had learned much
from the Frenchmen, and all that was of value
in what they taught him, he of course retained.
This second period, then, is not Italian in the
sense in which the first is French: It was a time
of originality. Chaucer had risen to the height of
his powers, though their full sweep, their scope
and compass, might be still in the future.

And finally, the third period is called “Eng-
lish ” (with still another shift in the application)
not because Chaucer was ruled by English fash-
ions (as by French fashions in the French period)
nor yet because he was inspired and emancipated
by English writers (as by Italians in the Italian
period), but because his genius turned to Eng-
lish life and English character.

Thus our three adjectives — pat as they seem
—are not at actual parity. Chaucer’s French
period is French in a sense in which his Italian
period is not Italian, and his English period is
English in still a different signification.

Besides, this neat triplicity obscures the whole
process of Chaucer’s career, which, of course,
was cumulative. Chaucer did not forget French
when he studied Italian, and he took with him
into the English period all the lessons he had ever
learned.
28 CHAUCER

There is one more objection to the sacred
number three: — it ought to be four. Between
the French and the Italian Period we must admit
Peto of Transition.

Chaucer first visited Italy in 1373. His jour-
ney (including the time spent in travel) occupied
exactly 174 days. Three or four months will
cover his residence in Italy, and, while there, he
was neither stationary nor at leisure: he went to
Genoa and Florence, and in both places was busy
with the king’s affairs. Doubtless he brought
home some. manuscripts; but it was not, in all
probability, until he reached London that he
gave them any studious attention. The Italian
Period, in all conscience, should not begin until
he undertook the Palamon or the Troilus, which-
ever came first: that is, not, I suppose, until
about 1380 or 1382. Meanwhile, after 1373,
Chaucer was assimilating Italian poetry, was
winning, under its guidance, more and more
emancipation from French fashions, and was
training himself for the full scope and exercise of
his native power. Within the Period of Transi
tion, likewise, came an enormous extension of
Chaucer’s general reading, particularly in Latinj
With Ovid he had long been familiar. But it was
in this period, apparently, — and certainly in
the decade following the writing of the Book of
the Duchess in 1369 — that he read Virgil and
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 29

Lucan and Statius. Here, too, must fall his read-
ing of the Consolation of Philosophy. Besides, he
broadened his knowledge of history and of the
great cycles of romance. The vision of Fame’s
Palace affords us a truly remarkable list of names
of authors, with many of whom Chaucer had be-
come familiar. How he did it, we learn from the
poem itself,—by shutting himself up in his
chamber, after his day’s work at the custom
house, and sitting ever “at another book” until
his eyes were dazed and dull.

Next tqShakspeére, Chaucer is the. greatest,

ae of character in our literature.

(édizeval characterization was almost purely"
typical. Chaucer vitalized the types. This great
feat he accomplished, first by his humorous and
pathetic realism, and, secondly, by his dramatic
power, — by which I mean, of course, his ability
to put himself into the place of various men and
women, and then to express their nature in
speech and action.

There is a vast difference — it is abysmal, even
— between reverting to the middle ages, and
living in them. It is no less than the difference
between romance and reality. Those critics, and
their name is legion, who cannot or will not see
this difference, had better shut their books,
which they have not the skill to read, and mingle
for a day or two with their fellow-creatures.
30 CHAUCER

They might not cease from troubling, even then,
but they would give the weary, rest.
| Chaucer lived a full life in a world of contem-
porary men and women, which he knew and
loved. It was not a fool’s paradise, nor yet a
Land of Cockayne, but a hard, practical, bus-
tling, struggling, delightful age — le siécle ou nous
vivons. And it had its conventional rules, in art,
in literature, in science, in religion (even as you
and I!), and five of them, I dare say, were wise,
and five were foolish. And Chaucer submitted
himself to the rules, and played the game as they
directed, and was all the better for it. Incident-
ally, he was endowed at birth with the splendid |
a of genius, but it did not poison his cup.
e saw the irony of circumstance, or fate, or
what you will, pervading human life, as no artic-
ulate-speaking man has ever seen it before or
since/ But he did not mistake himself for the
centre of the system. It was tragedy, no doubt,
that Cressida, at the very moment of her treason
to Troilus, should swear, in her heart, to oe
faith with her new lover: —

“To Diomede algate I wol be trewe!”

But it was comedy that Geoffrey Chaucer, prince;
of poets, should make his living by collectin:
the king’s customs and repairing the dykes at
Greenwich. This divine gift of humor prese
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 31

~

him from the abject vice of self-pity. He had too
sound a nature to “thank whatever gods there
were for his indomitable soul.*
Almost all Chaucer’s references to himself are
ironical. He is an outsider —so he tells us—
in the courts of love, the servus servorum of the
god. He invents nothing: all his work is that of
a faithful copyist. In the Troilus he follows Lol
lius humbly, neither adding nor subtracting: he
cannot help it, for he has no “sentiment” — no
feeling or perception in these matters; and there-
fore he asks no thanks, and hopes to escape cen-
Da for whatever faults the reader may discover.

n the Canterbury Tales, he is scrupulous to
report the stories word for word, exactly as the
Pilgrims told them, whether their style or sub-
stance was courtly or “churlish”” His wit is
thin. He cannot even marshal his travelling
companions in the order of their rank in society.
He has no skill in versification, and his English
is too crude to do justice to elevated themes.
When his turn comes, he can only rehearse an
ancient doggerel rhyme—a deal of skimble-
skamble stuff which makes poor Harry Bailly’s
ears ache. And when he is interrupted, he has
no more poetry to offer, but spins instead a long
prose allegory, which only a sturdy specialist can
rea

#Can we see the man, then? Yes, in all essen-
32 CHAUCER

tials, for the irony helps, not hinders, and there

ie Sadence in plenty
Chaucer had an immense enthusiasm for life
in this world; for the society of his fellow-crea-
tures, high and low, good and bad; for real men
and women — knights and sumners, millers and
parsons, monks and merchants, delicate cloistered
ladies and boisterous wives of Bath. Whatever
was good of its kind was a delight to him. And
he had such stupendous luck in always meeting:
nonpareils! There was no better priest than the
Parson anywheré? no such. ‘Pardoner from one
end of England to the other; never so great a
purchaser as the Man of Law. If you sought;
from Hull to Carthage, you could n’t find a mari-
ner to match the Shipman. The Wife of Bath,
was so excellent a cloth-maker that she actuall
beat the Dutch. The Sumner’s bass voice was
more than twice as loud as a trumpet. The Friar
was the best beggar in his convent / Why, when
the rascally alchemist came riding post-haste to
join the Pilgrims, whom he hoped to interest in
some of his confidence games, he was perspiring
so admirably that Chaucer gazed at him with
rapture. “Tt was joye for to seen him swete!”
cries the poet in high delight. A joy indeed, =
he did it in such a thoroughly competent way!
Let us not make the common mistake of think-
ing that Chaucer liked his scallawags better than
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 33

the respectable members of the company, or the
still grosser error of supposing that he satirized
the Church. He shows every bit as much power.
and personal interest in describing the good par-
son as in describing the worldly monk or the
merry friar. Chaucer took his religion seriously, |
and gives no hint of unsteadiness in his theo-
logical views. He was neither an ascetic nor a
"devotee: he was a man of the world, “of little
abstinence.” But he certainly regarded himself.
as a Christian, and I suspect he knew, for I have
a high opinion of his intelligence.

Of personal epistles, to friends or patrons,
Chaucer ave written many in the graceful
and fashionable¥erm of the balade. We can but
lament the loss o ieces, which, apart
from_their literary value, would.be priceless for .
the light they would throw upon Chaucer the
man. Only a few of them have come down to
us

  
 
   

One of these, the Balade of Good Counsel, has
recently been recognized, by a clever American
woman, as an address to Sir Philip la Vache, a
man of mark in his day; it is chArming, but tells
us nothing about the author./The Complaint
to his Empty Purse deplores’ a condition too
common with poets, and others, to be especially
significant, except of the easy terms on which
Chaucer stood with King Henry ae The Envoy
34 CHAUCER

to Bukton has been maltreated by biographers.
It is immensely interesting for its mention of
the Wife of Bath, with a plain allusion to her
heretical tenet about the sovereignty of wives
over their husbands. This great comic character,
we are permitted to infer, had become almost
proverbial among Chaucer’s friends and readers.
As to marriage, which is the ostensible subject
of the Envoy, the poem is no more significant of
Chaucer’s views or experiences than a comic
valentine now-a-days with regard to its sender’s
feelings on the subject of love. Bukton was soon
to take a wife, and Chaucer sent him a jocose
copy of verses, warning him of the traditional
woes of wedlock. The thing may well have been
read at a farewell dinner, amidst the inextin-
guishable laughter of the blessed bachelors.

The best of them all is the charming Envoy to
Scogan. Chaucer was at Greenwich, — a place
inhabited, according to Harry Bailly, by many a
rascal, — engaged in the responsible but unpoet-
ical task of overseeing the repairs on the dykes
and ditches which confined the Thames and
drained the vast marshes in the neighborhood: A
flood of rain had impeded his work and made his
situation pretty irksome. Scogan was a young
gentleman in high favor at court, and a humble
disciple of Chaucer in poetry. By a humorous
application of astrology to the principles of chivi
THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 35

alric love, Chaucer makes Scogan personally re-
sponsible for the rainy weather. Venus is weep-
ing, he avers, because Scogan is a renegade: he
has sworn to renounce allegiance to his lady at
Michaelmas, on account of her hardness of heart.
Then there is a sudden turn, which gives to this
clever bit of persiflage the value of a cri du cur.
“You will say, my friend, that all this is only old
Chaucer’s fashion of joking in rhyme. Far from
it, my dear fellow! I am in no mood for versing.
My Muse is rusty, and it is long since I have
taken her out of my pencase. Never mind, —
this is a transitory world —

Al shal passen, that men prose or rime, —
Take every man his turn, as for his tyme!

We poets come and go, and so do the writers
of prose, who take themselves so seriously. All
that we can expect is to have our turn, and mine,
I think, has gone by. Who can write poetry in
Greenwich, in the midst of the rascals and the
rain?” Then comes another change of mood, for
the poem is like an April day in England, or New
England either, for that matter. “Good-bye,
Scogan. Remember me at court! Perhaps a word
dropped in the proper quarter may give me a
better berth. But, whatever you do, see that you
never renounce love again, now that you know
how your misconduct affects the weather.”
36 CHAUCER

I have spent so much time on this trifle,
thrown off by the poet in a moment of comic ex-
asperation, because I believe it to be the only bit
of real autobiography, except the lines to Adam
Scrivener and a short passage in the House
of Fame, that we have from Chaucer’s pen.
What would you give, O critic, to have been the
rain-soaked Greenwich rascal who carried Chau- |
cer’s official report to Windsor, and along with it
this little letter, meant only for Master Henry
Scogan’s private eye?
II

THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS

OUR dreadful plagues laid England waste

in Chaucer’s lifetime. In the third of these,

in 1369, died Queen Philippa and her daughter-

in-law Blanche, the wife of John of Gaunt, Duke

of Lancaster. Chaucer and his wife, also named

Philippa, were both attached to the royal house-

hold, and they received an allowance of black
cloth for mourning.

So far as we know, Chaucer paid no tribute of
verse to the memory of the good queen, whom
all men loved. Probably none was expected.
King Edward had but slight acquaintance with
the English language, and no interest at all
in English literature. His son John, however, be-
longed to Chaucer’s generation, — they were of
almost exactly the same age, — and he doubtless
requested the poet to write an elegy: we should
rather say “commanded,” since we are speaking
of a prince of the blood. That the commission
was grateful to Chaucer’s feelings we may well
believe; for the Book of the Duchess is instinct
with sadness. True, Chaucer does not lament this
great lady in his own person, but that is due to
38 CHAUCER

his exquisite and admirable art. He detaches
himself completely, to concentrate our attention
on the theme, which is, as it ought to be, the
bitter grief of the despairing husband, who has
: lost the love of his youth, and can think of noth-
ing but her gracious perfections.
This artistic detachment, which becomes from
this time forward a marked feature of Chaucer’s
ethod, is achieved in the present instance by a
skilful use of familiar conventions. The elegy is
cast into the form of a vision. The poet tells the
story of a dream: how, wandering in a wood, he
fell in with a stranger knight in black garments,
and asked and received an explanation of his
sorrow. The poet expresses the deepest sympa-
thy. Though himself in trouble, as we learn
from the prologue, he ignores his own woes ut-
terly in his effort to console the stranger, and
does not remember them when he wakes, so pro-
found is the impression of the haunting dream.

Thoghte I, “This is so queynt a sweven,
That I wol, by proces of tyme,

Fonde to putte this sweven in ryme

As I can best, and that anoon.”

This was my sweven; now it is doon.

Thus, by a delicate and well-imagined fiction,,
the artist Chaucer can hold his attitude of de-
tachment, so vital to the effect of the compo“
sition, while, at the same time, Chaucer the
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 39

humble friend can suggest, without obtrusive-
ness, his respectful and affectionate sympathy.
with the ducal house.

The substance of the elegy, by this adjust-
ment, is spoken, not written merely; and it is
spoken by the lady’s husband, who can best
describe her beauty, her charm of manner, and
all her gracious qualities of mind and heart.
Thus we have in the Book of the Duchess, not a
prostrate and anxiously rhetorical obituary, from
the blazoning pen of a commissioned laureate,
but a tribute of pure love from the lady’s equal,
who can speak without constraint, — from her
husband, who has most cause to mourn as he has
best knowledge of what he has lost.

Let us follow the course of the story in brief,
preserving, if we can, that simplicity of language
which is one of its distinguishing traits. The
Dreamer is speaking, and he begins his prologue
with an ejaculation of artless astonishment: —

I have great wonder that I am still alive, for I have
had no sleep this long time. Hopeless love gives me no
rest. It amazes me that a man can live so long, and suf-
fer so much, and sleep so little. I should think he would
die. One night, a little while ago, weary from lack of
sleep, I bade my servant bring me a book to pass the
time away, and I began to read it, sitting up in my bed.
It was a volume of old stories, and one of them was
Ovid’s tale of Ceyx and Alcyone. It told how King
Ceyx was lost at sea, and how Queen Alcyone, in anxiety
and distress, prayed Juno to vouchsafe her a dream,
40 CHAUCER

that she might know whether her husband was alive or
dead. And Juno despatched her messenger to the God of
Sleep, and he, obeying her command, sent the drowned
Ceyx to Alcyone in a vision. He stood at the foot of her
bed, and called her by name, and told her of his fate, and
bade her bury his body, which she should find cast up on
the shore: —

“And far-wel, swete, my worldes blisse!
I praye God your sorwe lisse.
To litel whyl our blisse lasteth.”

Alcyone awoke, and mourned, and died ere the third
morrow.

I was astonished at this tale, for I had never heard
of any gods that could send sleep to weary men; and
straightway I made a vow to Morpheus, or Juno, or
whatever divinity it might be that had such power.
Scarcely had I finished speaking when I fell fast asleep
over my book, and I had a wonderful dream, which I do
not believe even Joseph or Macrobius could interpret.
I will tell you what it was.

So ends the prologue, which not only serves as
a felicitous introduction to the vision that is to .
follow, but gives us, in perfection, the atmo-
sphere, the mood, of the piece, — love and sor- ©
row and bereavement. It_shows us, too, the
Dreamer in complete psychic sympathy with the —
subject; for what could be more natural than
that he should dream of some bereavement or
other, when his mind was full of the piteous tale
of Alcyone, and the background of his thought
was his own suffering for hopeless love?
!

THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 41

I dreamt that it was May, and that I was awaked by
the singing of the birds upon my chamber roof. My
windows were of stained glass, figuring the tale of Troy,
and the walls were painted with the whole story of the
Romance of the Rose. The sun streamed in upon my
bed, for there was not a cloud i in the sky. And as I lay, I
heard a huntsman blow his horn, and the noise of men
and horses and hounds; and I arose, and took my horse,
and rode out into the field, and joined the hunters, who
were hastening toward the forest. Then I asked a fellow
who was leading a hound in a leash, “Who is hunting
here?” “Sir,” said he, “the emperor Octavian, and he is
close by.” So the hunt began. The hart was found, and
the dogs were uncoupled. But soon he stole away, and
the huntsman blew a “forloyn”’ at the last.

I left the tree where I had been posted; and a little
puppy, that had followed the hounds, but was too young
to keep up with them, came and fawned upon me, and
crept up humbly, with joined ears, as if he had known
me; but when I would have caught him, he ran away. I
followed down a grassy path, with flowers underfoot,
that led through the wood, till at last I was aware of a
young knight in black clothes, who sat under a tree, and
he was composing a bitter complaint —a kind of song —
of the death of his lady. I greeted him courteously, but
he neither heard nor saw me, so full of sorrow was he.
By-and-by he iooked up, and I asked his forgiveness for
disturbing him. But he took no offence, and was very
gracious, despite his sorrow, and seemed willing to talk
with me. So I begged him to tell me his grief, saying
that I would help him if I could, and that even to speak
of it might ease his heart.

Then he burst out into a piteous lament. Nothing, he
said, would do him any good. His laughter had turned
to weeping, his glad thoughts to heaviness, his day to
night, his valor to shame. For he had played at chess
with Fortune, and she had taken his queen, and check-
42 CHAUCER

mated him. But he could not blame her: he would have
done as much, had he been Fortune; for, said he, “I dare
well say she took the best! But by that game of chess, I
have lost all my happiness, and there is nothing left for
me but death.”

Now, when I heard this story, I could scarce stay
there longer, for pity. I besought him not to kill himself,
for then he would lose his soul. And I told him that no
man alive would make all this woe, just for losing a
queen at chess. “Why!” cried the knight, “you do not
understand me! I have lost more than you imagine.”

So I begged him to leave his riddles, and tell me
plainly what had plunged him into such distress. And

‘he assented, if I would promise to hear him to the end. I
swore to listen, and to understand, so far as I had wit.
Then he told me the story of his life. How from his ear-

ailest youth he had served the god of love. Yet it was
many a year before he set his heart on any lady. He had
always longed for the time to come, and prayed ever to
the god to vouchsafe that he might fall in love with one
that should be beautiful and gracious. And once upon
a time, so he said, he came into a place where there was
the fairest company of ladies ever seen. But one sur-
passed them all, as the summer’s sun outshines the
moon or the seven stars. And he took no counsel but of
her eyes and his own heart, for it seemed to him that
it would be far better to serve her in vain than to win the
love of any other woman in the world.

Then he told me of her beauty, and all her charming
ways. There was no dulness where she was: she was
neither too quiet nor too merry; and her speech — how
goodly it was, and how soft! She was never scornful; no
man or woman was wounded by her tongue, and her
word was as true as any bond, and she knew not how to
chide. Then the knight told me the lady’s name. It was
“good, fair White” [that is, Blanche], and well did it
accord with her loveliness.
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 43

“Truly,” said I, when the knight paused a moment,
“your love was well bestowed. I know not how you
could have done better.” “Better?” cried he. “Nay,
no wight so well!” “So I suppose,” was my reply, “Iam
sure you believe what you say.” [For of course, the
Dreamer, as a loyal lover, must not admit that any lady
can surpass his own amie.] “Why!” cried the knight,
“all that saw her said, and swore, that she was the best
and fairest. She was as good as Penelope of Greece or

the noble wife Lucretia. When I first saw her, I was’

young, and scarce knew what love meant; yet I gave all
my childish mind to the emprise. And still she sits in
my heart and verily I would not let her pass out of my
thought for all this world.”

Then I asked the knight to tell me how he first spoke
with the lady, and how she knew that he loved her, and
then to vouchsafe to explain what the loss was that he
had mentioned before. “Nay!” cried the knight again,
“you know not what you say. I have lost more than you
imagine.” “How so?” I asked. ‘What is your loss?
Does she refuse to love you? Or have you done aught
amiss, so that she has forsaken you? For God’s sake,
tell me the whole story!”

Then he told me how he first declared his love. Long
it was before he dared, and then he stammered, and for-
got his fine speeches, and hung his head for shame, and
could utter only one word “Mercy!” and no more. At
last his courage came again, and he besought her to
accept his humble service; but it was yet a long time
before she returned his love. Then his joy was perfect.
He was as one raised from death to life. “Thus we
lived,” said the knight, “for many a year in perfect har-
mony. Our hearts were so even a pair that neither
suffered nor rejoiced without the other.”

Once more I asked the knight a question: “Sir,” said
I, ‘where is she now?” “Now?” said he. “Alas that I
was born! That was the loss that I told you of. Remem-
44 CHAUCER

ber how I said, ‘You know not what you mean. I have
lost more than you imagine!’ God knows, alas! that
was she!”

Therwith he wex as deed as stoon,

And seyde, “Allas! that I was bore!

That was the los that her-before

I tolde thee that I had lorn.

Bethenk how I seyde her-beforn,
‘Thou wost ful litel what thou menest;

I have lost more than thou wenest.’

God wot, allas! right that was she!”
“Allas! sir, how? what may that be?”
““She is deed!” “Nay!” “Yis, by my trouthe!”
“Ts that your los? by God; it is routhe!”

And with that word, right anoon,

They gan to strake forth; al was doon,

For that tyme, the hert-hunting.

With that, me thoghte that this king

Gan hoomward for to ryde

Unto a place ther besyde

Which was from us but a lyte,

A long castel with walles whyte,

By seynt Iohan! on a riche hil,

As me mette; but thus it fil.

Right thus me mette, as I yow telle,

That in the castel was a belle,

As it had smiten houres twelve.

Therwith I awook my-selve,

And fond me lying in my bed;

And the book that I had red,

Of Alcyone and Seys the king,

And of the goddes of sleping, —

I fond it in myn hond ful even.

Thoghte I, “This is so queynt a sweven,

That I wol, by proces of tyme,

Fonde to putte this sweven in ryme
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 45

As I can best, and that anoon.”
This was my sweven; now it is doon.

re The first thing that strikes one in reading the

‘Book of the Duchess is the quality of artlessness.
( or naiveté, to which, indeed, the poem owes much
of its charm. This challenges instant attention,
for naiveté is often rated as one of Chaucer’s
permanent traits. As such, it holds a conspicu-
ous place in ten Brink’s classic inventory of his
literary characteristics, along with “fondness for
the description of psychological states or condi-
tions,” “effective pathos,” and “a tendency to
humorous realism.”

Now few facts of history, be it sacred or pro-
fane, are more solidly established than that
Geoffrey Chaucer, in his habit as he lived, was
not naif. Whatever one may think of our Ameri-
can practice in the appointment of diplomatists,
it is quite certain that, in the fourteenth century,
men were not selected by the English king to
negotiate secret affairs on the Continent because
they were innocent and artless. And even so, a
naif Collector of Customs would be a paradoxical

_monster. _ ;

Besides, whatever else he may have been,
Chaucer was admittedly a humorist, and naiveté
is incompatible with a sense of humor. If I am
artless, I may make you laugh; but the sense of
humor, in that case, is yours, not mine. The
46 CHAUCER

source of your amusement, in fact, will be your
keen perception of the incongruity between my
childlike seriousness and the absurdity of what
I have said or done. Hence, if I myself am a
humorist, I may assume naiveté, from my own
perception of the incongruous, in order to lend
my words additional effect. This, of course, is
the principle which underlies the rule that a
jester must look as grave as he can; or, to put the
precept in its crudely familiar guise, “Don’t
laugh at your own jokes!”

Real naiveté, as everybody knows, gives a per-
son an appearance of innocence and helplessness,
and will therefore be amusing, or pathetic, or
both at once, according to the subject or the situ-
ation. As a trick of art, therefore, we expect to
find the ingenuous manner adopted, now for pur-
poses of humor, and now for those of pathos.

I should apologize abjectly for parading these
truisms, were it not that they have been so con-
tinually overlooked in the literary criticism of
Chaucer as to lead to frequent confusion be-
tween the artist and the man. And this confu- _
sion is exhibited at its very worst in the ordinary
appraisal of the Book of the Duchess.

In this elegy, the device, I need not say, is em-
ployed to heighten the pathos. It deserves our
earnest attention. For we shall immediately dis-
cover that certain supposed flaws —not in the
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 47

main design, which is unassailable, but in this or
that detail— are due to Chaucer’s use of this
artistic expedient, and not to feebleness of grasp
or a wavering vision.

In the first place, the effect of artlessness in the
poem is produced by extreme simplicity in style
and versification. That the simplicity results
from lack of skill is, I fancy, a proposition that
nobody will maintain, though it has often been
taken for granted (may I say naively?) by critics
who ought to know better. Consider the follow-
ing passage, where Chaucer is describing, with
the swift and terse precision of his best narra-

tive art, the apparition of Alcyone’s drowned
husband: —

Anon this god of slepe a-brayd

Out of his sleep, and gan to goon,
And did as he had bede him doon;
Took up the dreynte body sone,
And bar it forth to Alcyone,

His wyf the quene, ther-as she lay,
Right even a quarter before day,
And stood right at her beddes fet,
And called hir, right as she het,

By name, and seyde: “My swete wyf,
Awak! let be your sorwful lyf!

For in your sorwe ther lyth no reed;
For certes, swete, I nam but deed;
Ye shul me never on lyve y-see.
But goode swete hert, that ye

Bury my body, at which a tyde

Ye mowe it finde the see besyde;
48 CHAUCER

And far-wel, swete, my worldes blisse!
I praye God your sorwe lisse.
To litel whyl our blisse lasteth!”

Whoever hugs the delusion that because the dic-
tion and the metre are simple, it is easy to write
like this, is humbly besought to try his hand at
imitating The Vicar of Wakefield, or Andrew
Marvell’s Song of the Emigrants in Bermuda.

Let us pass to a consideration a little more
denatabis, but equally certain in the upshot.

~'Fhere are two characters in the Book of the
~ Duchess — the—Dreamer, who-tells-the story,
and the Knight in Black. Now the Knight is not
naif at all. On the contrary, he is an adept in the
courtly conventions, which have become a part
of his manner of thought and speech. He is a
finished gentleman of a period quite as studied as
the Elizabethan in its fashions of conduct and
discourse. All the naiveté is due to the Dreamer,
whose character is sharply contrasted with that
of the Knight. The Dreamer speaks in the first
person. One might infer, therefore, that he is
Geoffrey Chaucer, but that would be an error: he
is a purely imaginary figure, to whom certain
purely imaginary things happen, in a purely
imaginary dream. He is as much a part of the
fiction in the Book of the Duchess as the Mer-.
chant or the Pardoner or the Host is a part of
the fiction in the Canterbury Tales.
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 49

The mental attitude of the Dreamer is that of
childlike wonder. He understands nothing, not
even the meaning of his dream. He can only tell
what happened, and leave the interpretation to
us. Let us revert to our summary: “I have great
wonder that I am still alive; for I cannot sleep for
sorrow and I am ever in fear of death. One night,
not long ago, I was reading an old book, and I
_ found a story in it about the God of Sleep. It

astonished me, for I had never heard of him be-
fore. And so I vowed to give hima feather bed
if he would send me slumber. And straightway
I fell asleep over my book; and I had a dream |
which makes me wonder whenever I think of it. |
IT will tell you what it was.” isaac
When we come to the Knight in Black and
his pathetic history, the Dreamer is true to his
nature of gentle simplicity — always wondering
and never understanding. He wonders what
makes the knight so sad; and when the knight
tries to tell him, he still wonders, and still ques-
tions. Hints and half-truths and figures of
speech are lost upon him, until at last the knight,
in despair, as it seems, at his questioner’s lack of
comprehension, comes out plainly with the bare
fact: “She is dead.” ‘‘No!” says the Dreamer,
still with his air of innocent surprise. “Yea, sir,”
replies the knight, ‘‘that is what I have all this
time been trying to tell you. That is the ‘loss’ I
50 CHAUCER

mentioned long ago.” Even then the Dreamer
has little to say. He can only speak the language
of nature and simplicity: “Is that your loss?
By God, it is a pity!”’ And then he dreamt that
the hunt was over, and a clock in a tower struck
twelve, and he awoke, and there he was — lying
in bed, with his book of ancient stories still in
his hand. And so he wonders more than ever.
He does not know what the dream means, or
whether it means anything at all. But it was a
strange dream, truly, and full of charm, and he
decides to write it out as well as he can, before
he forgets it.

»~This childlike Dreamer, who never reasons, but
only feels and gets impressions, who never knows
what anything means until he is told in the
plainest language, is not Geoffrey Chaucer, the
humorist and man of the world. He is a creat-
ure of the imagination, and his childlikeness. is
part of his dramatic character.

For almost half a century, by record, the
~fiteral-minded have rehearsed, over and over
again, their obvious censure on the construction |
of this beautiful elegy. Chaucer, they allege, is
ridiculously obtuse. He hears the knight com-
posing a dirge on his dead lady, and sees that he
is dressed in mourning; yet he keeps asking him
‘what he has lost,” and is thunderstruck at the
final revelation. Substitute for “Chaucer,” in
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS - 51

these strictures, “the Dreamer,” and they are
half-answered already. For the Dreamer is not
merely artless by nature; he is dulled, and almost
stupefied, by long suffering. So he tells us at the
very first: — “I am, as it were, a man in a maze.
I take heed of nothing, how it comes or goes.
Naught is to me either pleasant or unpleasant.
I have no feeling left, whether for good or bad.”

This is not all. The Knight in Black, unaware
that the Dreamer has overheard the dirge, takes
pains to mystify him at the outset with an alle-
gory of Fortune and the chess-play, and evades
his subsequent questions as long as evasion is
possible. For the knight, though eager to talk,
shrinks from uttering the bare and brutal truth:
— “She is dead!” Speech eases his soul. It is a
tender joy to describe his lady’s beauty, to dilate
on his own childish years and his innocent wor-
ship of love, to tell of their first meeting among
a goodly company, to remember how abashed he
was when he tried to reveal his devotion. It is
a relief to him that the Dreamer seems not-to
comprehend.

But what of the Dreamer? Is he really deaf
and blind to what he hears and sees? By no
means! Artless he is, and unsuspicious, and dull
with sorrow and lack of sleep; but the dirge is too
clear for even him to misunderstand. “‘My lady
is dead,” so ran the words, “and gone away from
52 CHAUCER

me. Alas, death! why did you not take me like-
wise when you took her?” The Dreamer knows
perfectly well that the lady is dead. What then?
Does Chaucer straightway make him forget?
The blunder would be incredible. Chaucer may
have been an immature artist when he devised
this situation, but he was not a fool; and if, in the
haste of writing, he had momentarily entangled
himself in such a confusion, all he had to do was
to strike out the dirge. The excision of thirteen
lines, without the change of a word beside, would
have removed the stumbling block — and there
are more than thirteen hundred verses in the
elegy! :

In fact, however, there is no confusion. The
Dreamer knows that the lady is dead, but he
wishes to learn more, not from idle curiosity, but
out of sympathetic eagerness to afford the knight
the only help in his power — the comfort of pour-
ing his sad story into compassionate ears. And
he tells us as much, in the plainest language.

Anoon-right I gan fynde a tale

To him, to loke wher I might ought

Have more knowing of his thought.!
He owes his knowledge of the lady’s death to
overhearing the knight, who was too much ab-.
sorbed to notice either his steps or his greeting.
With instinctive delicacy, therefore, he sup-

» Verses 536-538.
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 53

presses this knowledge, and invites the knight’s
confidence in noncommittal terms, on the ground
of pity for his obvious suffering. And when the
knight speaks eagerly, though not plainly, as we
have seen, and the Dreamer notes that words are
indeed a relief, as he had hoped, it is not for him
to check their flow. Let him rather hide his
knowledge still, and tempt the knight to talk on
and on. It is the artless artfulness of a kindly
and simple nature.

Thus, by the interplay of two contrasted char-
acters, — the naif and sympathizing Dreamer
and the mourning knight, who is not naif at all,
— brought together in a situation in which the
Dreamer, impelled by simple kindliness, conceals
his knowledge in order to tempt the knight to
relieve his mind by talking, Chaucer has effected
a climax of emotional suspense which culminates
in the final disclosure. The conclusion is beyond
all praise. “Where is she now?” the Dreamer
asks. “Oh!” says the knight, coming out at
last with the hideous fact that he could not bring
himself to utter before, “she is dead.” “Is that
yourloss? ByGod, it is ruth!” And with that the
hunt was: over, and a bell struck twelve in the
dream castle, — was it a real sound this time? — |
and he awoke and found his book of Ceyx and
Alcyone still in his hand.

This outburst is pure nature: it shows us the
54 CHAUCER

Chaucer that is to be when he shall break loose
from contemporary French fashions of allegory
and symbolism and pretty visions and dare to
speak the language of the heart. What can one
say in such a case but “(Good God, man, I am
sorry for you!” The rest is silence.

The Book of the Duchess belongs to Chaucer’s
early period, when his technique was almost
purely that of the French love-allegory. For his
leading conventions, and for a quantity of de-
‘tails, he is indebted to the Romance of the Rose,
which he had already translated, and to his dis-
tinguished contemporary Guillaume de Machaut.
In his use of this material, however, Chaucer
shows a high degree of originality, both in apply-
ing the dream convention to his specific purpose,
and in the imaginative control which he exercises
over the traditional phenomena.

Here, for the first time, whether in French or
English, we find the standard French conven-
tions — the love-vision, and the lover’s lament
— turned to the uses of a personal elegy. To dis-
cern their fitness for this particular purpose was
a considerable achievement; for they are, in fact,
quite as well adapted to that end as the pastoral
device, with which we moderns are more familiar,
and which, as in the Lycidas, we accept without
a scruple.

/ Let us first consider the Prologue, which in-
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 55

troduces us to the Dreamer and contains the
Ovidian story of Ceyx and Alcyone.

The situation comes from Le Paradysd’Amours,
a pretty poem by Chaucer’s contemporary, Frois-
sart the chronicler, who was no doubt his per-
sonal friend. Here,.as in the Duchess, the
Dreamer is a woful lover, whose melancholy
will not let him sleep. Froissart also gave Chau-
cer a suggestion for the mood of gentle sorrow, as
well as for what is so essentially bound up with
that mood — the Dreamer’s artlessness. In the
Paradys, however, this trait is not dramatic: it
is merely the reflection of the poet’s own nature.
Froissart was, in deed and truth, the most naif
of men. Intensely susceptible to impressions
from without, he reacted with all the grace of
infancy and all its innocent and subtle charm.
This Chaucer felt when he read the Frenchman’s
poem. His artistic instinct recognized its appro-
priateness to his own elegiac subject; and his
dramatic power enabled him to comprehend and
express. And so he created his Dreamer, and
entrusted the story to him to tell.

I have just said that Froissart gave Chaucer a
suggestion, also, for the mood of his elegy; but
here again it was only a suggestion. For the
Frenchman does not sustain the mood, which to
him was merely an introductory convention.
The Paradys is in no wise elegiac. It begins in a
56 CHAUCER

melancholy strain, but sorrow is not its theme.
It deals with the joy of love, with the comforts
and rewards which the god grants to his faithful
servants. In Chaucer, on the contrary, the
whole poem is developed out of the Dreamer’s
mood, which is constant, habitual, and not to be
separated from his character.

In Froissart, then, the situation and the mood
are alike momentary, external, evanescent, —
the only constant element is the writer’s own
naiveté. In Chaucer, both the situation and the
_ mood are involved in the Dreamer’s tempera-
ment, which, compulsive in its gentle innocence,
unifies the conception, and subdues the whole to
_ a tone of tender and wistful monody.

Chaucer’s indebtedness to Guillaume de
Machaut has long been recognized, but few crit-
ics seem to appreciate his skill in adapting the

borrowed material to his main design. Machaut,
in the Fontaine Amoureuse, hears a lover’s com-
plaint embodying the legend of Alcyone and
closing with an appeal to Morpheus: — “Let
him take my form, as he took that of Ceyx, and
visit my lady as she sleeps, and tell her how I
suffer. Then I am sure she will relent. I will re-
ward him with a nightcap of peacock’s feathers,
that he may sleep the sounder, and a soft bed
stuffed with the plumes of gyrfalcons.” The
singer is not speaking for himself. He had com-
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 57

posed the lament for a great lord, into whose
presence Machaut is straightway conducted.
This lord, who is reclining by the border of a crys-
tal fountain, takes the poet into his confidence.
Then they both go to sleep, and have a vision of
Venus. She promises the young lord her help,
and evokes the figure of his lady, who comforts
him with a smile and gracious words, and leaves
him full of hope.

This is a pretty fancy, and the use of Alcy-
one’s story in the lament is undeniably ingenious.
We may even discover a psychological link of
cause and effect between its presence there and
the vision vouchsafed to the lover. But the
psychology is feeble and the connection some-
what remote.

Froissart, at all events, saw no such link, for
when he imitated the Fontaine Amoureuse, as
he did in his Paradys d’Amours, he omitted the
story of Alcyone altogether. He retained the
vow to Morpheus, however, substituting a ring
for the nightcap and the feather bed, — which,
in his innocence, he thought undignified, — and
in one respect he made a felicitous alteration: his
dreamer prays only for sleep, which falls upon
him suddenly. But Froissart employs the dream
that slumber brings only to transport himself
into the conventional garden, whete he encoun-
ters certain personified abstractions, and is. reas-
58 CHAUCER

sured by the god of love, who grants him an
audience, and where he finally meets his lady,
with whom he has an eminently satisfactory con-
versation.

Chaucer’s procedure, with these two poems in
his mind, is in the highest degree illuminating.
Like Froissart, he makes his Dreamer pray to
Morpheus, but his sense of humor prompts him
to discard the ring in favor of the feather bed.
Machaut’s story of Alcyone he keeps, recurring
to Ovid for some details, but he brings it into
vital connection not only with the Dreamer’s
character, but with the substance of the dream
as well. The Dreamer sees the bereaved husband
because he has just been reading of a similar
bereavement. The lack of precise conformity
between the impression made upon his waking
mind and the image that recurs in slumber is true
to dream-psychology. We do not look for abso-
lute identity in such cases. Here Chaucer, unlike
his predecessors, shows himself in immediate
contact with the facts and experiences of human
life — even with the life of dreams. 2.

Undoubtedly Chaucer meant this carrying
over of the waking impression into the dream-
state to be inferred by his readers, though. the
naiveté of the Dreamer suppressed all mention
of the inference. The fact of such transmission
was commonly recognized, and Chaucer has
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 59

adverted to it more than once. In the Squire’s
Tale we are expressly informed that Canace’s
interest in the wonderful mirror was the direct
cause of her dream: —

In hir sleep, right for impressioun
Of hir mirour, she had a visioun — !

and there is a very illuminating case in the Par-
liament of Fowls. The poet has been reading
the Somnium Scipionis, and goes to bed in low
spirits : —

But fynally my spirit, at the laste,

For wery of my labour al the day,

Took rest, that made me to slepe faste,

And in my slep I mette, as I lay,

How African, right in that selfe aray

That Scipioun him saw before that tyde,
Was comen, and stood right at my beddes syde.

The wery hunter, slepinge in his bedde,

To wode ayein his minde goth anoon;

The iuge dremeth how his plees ben spedde,

The carter dremeth how his cartes goon;

The riche, of gold; the knight fight with his foon;
The seke met he drinketh of the tonne;

The lover met he hath his lady wonne.

Can I nat seyn if that the cause were

For I had red of African beforn,

That made me to mete that he stood there;

But thus seyde he, “Thou hast thee so wel born
In loking of myn olde book to-torn,

Of which Macrobie roghte nat a lyte,

That somdel of thy labour wolde I quyte!”

1 F. 371-372.
60 CHAUCER

Here the connection between the proem and
the story, though formally exact, is imaginatively
less close and rather more mechanical than in
the Book of the Duchess; but it is still quite sat-
isfactory. As Africanus once took his grandson
out of this world, and revealed to him the future
dwellings of the righteous and the wicked, so now
he conducts Chaucer to a park-gate with two
inscriptions, one indicating “the blisful place of
hertes hele and dedly woundes cure,” the other
the realm of Danger and Disdain. They enter
the park, which proves to be a lover’s paradise
with the regular landscape, and the usual con-
ventions follow. Africanus is heard of no more
— which is very like a dream. The rest of the
Parliament does not here concern us.
__—Passing from the prologue of the Book of the
Duchess to the Dream itself, we find that Chau-
cer uses his literary models with equal skill, and
shows a like felicity in converting the standard
forms to his immediate needs. His problem, we
remember, was to apply the conventional type of
“lover’s complaint” to the ends of a personal
elegy. Two recent poems by Guillaume de
Machaut lay ready at hand, the Judgment of
the King of Bohemia and the Remedy for For-
tune. Chaucer drew freely from both, as well
as from his old favorite, the Romance of the
Rose, which he had already translated, appar- '
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 61

ently entire, and long passages of which he must
have known by heart.

The plan of the Judgment of the King of Bo-
hemia shows an obvious similarity to that which
Chaucer adopted for the Book of the Duchess.
I may be allowed to repeat a very brief summary
which I have used on another occasion.

On a fine morning in spring, the poet wanders out into
a park where there is many a tree and many a blossom.
He sits down by a brook, near a beautiful tower, conceal-
ing himself under the trees, to hear the birds sing. A
lady approaches, accompanied only by a maid and a
little dog. She is met by a knight, who greets her po-
litely, but she passes on, without heeding. The knight
overtakes her, and addresses her once more. She apolo-
gizes for her inattention, remarking that she was buried
in thought. They exchange courtesies, and the knight
begs to know the cause of her pensive mood, promising
to do his best to comfort her. He himself, he avers, is
suffering from bitter grief. The lady consents, on con-
dition that the knight will reveal the origin of his own
sorrow. Accordingly, they exchange confidences, in the
hearing of the poet, whose presence remains unsus-
pected.

The lady, it appears, has lost her lover by death.
The knight’s amie, on the contrary, is living, but has
forsaken him. They dispute as to which case is the
harder. William reveals himself, and at his suggestion
the question is submitted to the King of Bohemia, who
decides that the knight has the best of the argument.

Such general resemblances, to be sure, are of
little significance. When, however, we study the
details of the Black Knight’s story, the obliga-
62 CHAUCER

tions of Chaucer to Guillaume de Machaut come
out in a way that is almost startling.

The knight, in response to the Dreamer’s ques-
tioning, goes back to the memories of his boy-
hood. As long ago as he could remember, he had
honored the god of love as his liege lord and sub-
mitted his spotless heart to his control. Love
was only a sentiment to him in those days, — an
aspiration, a vague dream of something beautiful
that might come to pass by-and-by.” And so, in
devout humility, he had ever besought the god to
be propitious, and to entrust his heart, at the ap-
pointed hour, to the keeping of some lovely and
gracious lady. His prayer was answered. He
chanced one day to come into an assembly of the
fairest ladies ever seen, and one among them sur-
passed the rest as the summer sun outshines the
moon and the seven stars. He “held no counsel
but with her eyes and his own heart,” and, thus
guided, he thought it was better to serve her in
vain than to win the favor of any other woman.
Long time he worshipped her.in secret, afraid to
speak; and when at last he took courage to reveal
his adoration, he stammered and forgot every-
thing he had to say. She was hard to win, but at
length she had pity upon him, and granted him
“the noble gift of her mercy.” And thus they
lived full many a year, in honorable love and
perfect harmony.

he
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 63

This part of the poem embodies the famous
description of the Duchess Blanche and of her
character, which Lowell admired so much and
declared “one of the most beautiful portraits of a
woman that were ever drawn.”

Now there is nothing new in the Black
Knight’s story, either in form or substance. The
experience he describes is typical, and he speaks
throughout in the settled language of the chival-
ric system. Love was the only life that became
the gently nurtured, and they alone were capable
of love. Submission to the god was their natural
duty; in his grace and favor was their only hope;
for no man’s heart was in his own control. It was
the god of love, not the man’s choice, that be-
stowed it, and none could withstand the god’s
decree.

It is not strange, therefore, that parallel pas-
sages may be found in both the Remedy for For-
tune and the Judgment of the King of Bohemia.
But the facts go far beyond the mere occurrence
of stock phrases. Comparison shows, in the
clearest manner, that Chaucer has borrowed
from these two poems with absolute freedom.
Many lines, both in the knight’s story and es-
pecially in the portrait, are literally translated,
and, when this is not the case, it is often manifest
that the language or the sentiments of Machaut
suggested the idea, or the particular turn, that

(glee
64 CHAUCER

Chaucer has adopted. Still other poems of
Machaut are laid under occasional contribution.
A close study of the relations here briefly indi-
cated is a remarkable lesson in literary crafts-
manship. It is also a good illustration of the fact
— well-known but continually forgotten, —
that there was no such thing as the crime of pla-
giarism in the middle ages, for every poet took
without hesitation “what he thought he might
require,” and nobody blamed him.

I have no wish to minimize the indebtedness
of Chaucer to his French predecessor. Indeed,
there is no temptation to err in that way. For
Chaucer uses his borrowings with the power of
a master, and nowhere in the poem does his origi-
nality appear more strikingly than in the descrip-
tion of the Duchess Blanche, — the very place
where his indebtedness is most conspicuous. In
Machaut, there is much grace and beauty, but
the schematism is complete. The lady utters her
lament, and the knight responds. There is no
genuine dialogue. In the description, Machaut
follows the enumerative method so dear to the
middle ages, as if he were, in Hamlet’s phrase,
“dividing” the lady “inventorially.” Hair, fore-
head, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, teeth,
chin, and complexion are catalogued in scientific
order, with some exquisite touches, but with a
total effect of absurd formality. The Elizabeth-
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 65

ans knew the method well. It was, in truth, in-
herited from their schematic forefathers, along
with many other legacies of thought and style
which the sciolists who decry the study of
“medievalism” do vainly misinterpret. Olivia
makes merry with such stilted accumulation of
details in her “Item, two lips, indifferent red.”
But Chaucer knew that one should not “make
so long a tale of the straw as of the corn,” and, in
the very act of borrowing from Machaut, he has
~avoided this fault, though it is one to which the
rapid and garrulous short couplet might well have
tempted him beyond resistance. In the Black
Knight’s description of his lady, we find the
same admirable selective art that distinguishes
the later work of the poet. Chaucer’s knight
declares that he cannot describe his lady’s face —
it passes his ability in expression; but he dwells
lovingly on her hair, and lingers over the descrip-
tion of her eyes, which were not too wide open :—

“Were she never so glad,
Her loking was not foly sprad,
Ne wildely, though that she pleyde;
But ever, me thoughte, her eyen seyde,
‘By God, my wrathe is al foryive!’”

This trait, one is surprised to discover, is taken
from Machaut. Yet we cannot doubt that it was

true to the life in the case of the Duchess
Blanche. Apparently it was the fashion for
66 CHAUCER

ladies to let their eyelids droop a little, with what
used to be called a languishing look. In his lady,
the knight protests, this was not an affectation: —
“Tt was her owne pure loking,
That the goddesse, dame Nature,

Hadde mad hem open by mesure,
And clos.”

This is not in Machaut, where also we miss the
exquisite couplet closing with “My wrathe is al
foryive!”’ The whole description is so broken up,
in Chaucer, as to produce precisely that effect of
artless inevitableness that the occasion requires.
The mourning knight is not describing his lady:
he is giving voice to his unstudied recollection —
now of her nature, now of her beauty, now of her
demeanor, now of her speech — spasmodically,
in no order, as this or that idea rises in his
agitated mind.

That Chaucer should adopt the fiction of a
dream, both here and elsewhere, needs no ex-
planation; for it was one of the favorite devices
of his age, as of the ‘age preceding and of that
which followed. What challenges attention is the
frequency with which he adverts to the philos- |
ophy of dreams. Not that he has anything new
to say. The subject had been exhausted by the
philosophers, and he could merely ponder over
their theories aad observations, at a loss for a
solution of problems that still puzzle some of the
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 67

‘best heads amongst us. He deals with the topic
in the Parliament of Fowls, at the beginning of
the House of Fame, with extraordinary vividness
in the last book of the Troilus,! and with all his
wit and humor in the discussion between Chanti-
cleer and Pertelote. Dreams play as large a rdle
in Chaucer as presentiments do in Shakspere.
We may guess, if we like, that Shakspere was in
his own person susceptible to presentiments and
that Chaucer, for his part, had uncommonly
vivid dreams. If so, this consideration reduces
the amount of convention and increases the pro-
portion of fact in Chaucer’s employment of the
device. All this not by way of apology, where
none is needed, but as an observation worth mak-
ing, whether it is valid or not — a point that is
none the less interesting because it can never
be decided. The world is well acquainted with.
inspiration that comes in sleep; and English lit-
erary history does not lack its examples, from
Czdmon at Whitby to Coleridge and his Kubla
Khan.

x Chaucer, then, in casting the Book of the
Duchess into the form of a dream, was faithful
to a prevalent fashion. When, however, we com-
pare his dream-poem with its predecessors, we
are at once aware of an essential difference.
Their dreams are a mere device to get the reader

1 v, 245-266, 316-322, 358-385.
68 CHAUCER

into a sort of fairyland, a medieval Arcadia,
peopled by personified abstractions — Hope and
Mercy and Desire and Jealousy and Despair —
or by typical lovers scarcely more concrete than
the abstractions themselves. The dream-
machinery is often handled with no little skill,
and there is at times an atmosphere of unreality
which appealed to our forefathers as a welcome
relief from the tumult and ugliness of every day.
But there is no attempt to reproduce the actual
phenomena of dreams. The author goes to sleep
at the beginning of his poem and wakes up at
the end. In the interim, he may be in a strange
country, perhaps, but he is not in any dreamland
that mortals know.

But Chaucer had a strong sense of fact, and his
Book of the Duchess is really like a dream. This
effect, which every reader must instantly admit,
is partly due to the naiveteé of the Dreamer’s tem-
perament, which we contemplate, as we read,
with something of that tolerant superiority with
which we remember, in our waking moments,
the innocent faith we have accorded to the irra-
tionalities of dreamland:/In part, however, this.
effect of dreaming is produced by a number of
delicate touches, almost too elusive to isolate,
but undeniably significant in their total impres-
sion.

The first of these touches, perhaps, is when the
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 69

Dreamer joins the chase. “Who is hunting
here?” he asks of a fellow who is leading a
hound in a leash. “Sir,” replies the huntsman,
“it is the Emperor Octavian.” “Good enough!”
is the Dreamer’s only comment, “let us make
haste!” This is surely like a dream. There is no
surprise at the news—no question who the
Emperor Octavian is, or how he happens to be
in that vicinity. Another point concerns the
Dreamer’s horse. What becomes of it after the
hunt? We suddenly find the Dreamer on foot,
walking away from the tree at which, though he.
has not said so, he has taken up his station, and
he never thinks of his horse again. This, too, is |
very like a dream. Then there is the little puppy
that has followed the hounds in its helpless
fashion, and is now astray in the woods. It comes
up to the Dreamer, and fawns upon him as if it
knew him, but runs away when he would take it
in his arms, and leads him down a grassy ride
into the depths of the forest. Like the horse,
the puppy drops out of the Dreamer’s vision as
other objects appear. Thus, we all remember,
do dreams behave.

I do not contend that Chaucer carried out his
dream-psychology in a thoroughgoing and con-
sistent manner. That would have destroyed the
continuity required in a narrative. But as-
suredly, in various details, he brought the experi-
70 CHAUCER

ences of the Dreamer, with admirable art, near
to the actual phenomena of the dream-life.
Never was there a more conventional situa-
tion — a dream, a paradise of trees and flowers
and birds, a lamenting lover, an incomparable
lady. We who wander through the middle ages
have seen and heard it all a hundred times. Yet
somehow the conventions are vitalized. The
artificiality of the situation is merged and lost in
the illusions of dreamland, which here are gen-
uine illusions, since the dream is really like a
dream. Two typical figures—the lover who
sighs in vain, and he who has loved and lost —
have come to life. First, the Dreamer, — in-
nocent, helpless, childlike, a veritable John-a-
dreams, — joining a dream-hunt which comes to
naught, pursuing a little dog which disappears,
and finding under a tree a mourning knight —
whom he cannot comprehend. And there are
greetings, and questions, and half-understood
replies. The ‘Dreamer has the curiosity of a
child, and a child’s yearning to comfort his in-
THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 71

haves like a dream. Things grow clearer and
clearer, until there is the shock of perfect revela-
tion: “She is dead, I tell you! Can’t you see what
I mean?” “Ts that your loss? By God, I am
sorry for you!” The intrusion of reality marks
the moment of waking. “A bell strikes twelve!
Do [hear it in my dream, or is it the clock in the
tower? Ah! I am awake, and here is my book of
Ceyx and Alcyone still in my hand!”

The Book of the Duchess, with all its defects,
is a very beautiful poem. There is a haunting
charm about it that eludes analysis, but subdues
our mood to a gentle and vaguely troubled pen-
siveness. The mind is purged, not by the trag- .
edy of life, with its pity and terror, but by
a sense of the sadness which pervades its
beauty and its joy. Ours is a pleasant world of
birds and flowers and green trees and running
streams, and life in such a world is gracious and
desirable, and nothing is so good as tender and
faithful love, which is its own reward. But the
glory of it all is fora moment. Alcyone prayed to
Juno to send her a dream, that she might know
whether her long-absent husband was alive or
dead. And the drowned Ceyx came while she
slept, and stood at her bed’s foot, and bade her
bury his body, which was cast up on the shore:—

“And far-wel, swete, my worldes blisse!

I praye God your sorwe lisse.
To litel why! our blisse lasteth!”
72 CHAUCER

Now this thought — that life and love and
happiness are transitory — is not, with Chau-
cer, a commonplace reflection, with which he has
only a concern that is conventional and imper-
sonal and external. Nor is it, again, a dogma of
experience, to which he has dispassionately ad-
justed his philosophic scheme. It is an element
in his nature: it beats in his heart, and flows in
his veins, and catches in his throat, and hammers
in his head. All men are mortal, no doubt, but
seldom do we find one in whom mortality is a
part of his consciousness. And such a man was
Chaucer — yet so sound of heart, so sane and
normal, so wholesome in his mirth, so delighting
in the world and in his fellow-creatures, that no
less a critic than Matthew Arnold, speaking with
limited sympathy and imperfect comprehension,
would exclude him from the fellowship of his

peers on the strength of a formula, because he
“lacked high seriousness.” Whether Chaucer

saw life whole, I do not know. One thing I know...

— he saw it steadily. .
Ill
“THE HOUSE OF FAME

‘NHAUCER’S Period of Transition, as de-
fined in my first lecture, falls between his,
first Italian journey (in 1373) and the writing of
the Palamon and Arcite or the Troilus, which-
ever of these two works came first. In this period
he was reading and assimilating Italian poetry,
was achieving emancipation from French fash-
ions under its guidance, was “finding himself,”
was getting ready for the full exercise of his
native genius. His leisure was scanty, and he
read far more than he wrote, enlarging his know-
ledge on every side. In particular, he gave much
time to the Latin classics, which must share with’
Dante and Petrarch and Boccaccio the honor of
setting him free from the bonds of French con-
vention. z
The chief concrete product of this interval of
rapid and virile development was the House of |
Fame, a poem not only of sufficient merit in it-
self to approach the rank of a masterpiece, but
also in the highest degree remarkable for what it
indicates. In design it is ambitious, far beyond
anything that Chaucer had heretofore attempted
74 CHAUCER
or conceived. In substance, it is a kind of epi-

tome of the author’s knowledge and culture in
science and art and philosophy, in French and
Italian and Latin. It is composed, in small and
great, with astonishing virtuosity. It is full of
spirit and originality, and instinct throughout
with conscious power.

The House of Fame is divided into three
Books. ‘The fist 1 40 an introduction; the second
describes the poet’ s marvellous j journey through
the upper air; the third” gives an account of
Fame’s palace, with its surroundings and _ad-
juncts, and of what i is to be seen and heard in
her domain.

The prologue to the First Book consists of two
distinct parts, the Discussion of Dreams and the
Invocation. Both will repay our study.

The Discussion begins with the pious wish,
“God turn us every dreem to goode!” but in-
stantly flies off at a tangent in a. characteristic
disclaimer. The poet can make nothing of
dreams, either as to their causes or their signifi-
cance. Some of them appear to be mere fancies}
others are oracles, revealing what is to come.
The causes he finds particularly obscure and
confusing. Are dreams merely reflexes of a
man’s own temperament? Or do they. y_spring
from physical fatigue and mental weariness, the
result, perhaps, of fasting, sickness, imprison-
THE HOUSE OF FAME 75

ment, over-study, devout contemplation, or, in
the case of lovers, of “the cruel life they lead’’?
Do Do spirits put dreams i into our heads? Or, finally,
in slumber, what is to happen to us, but in sym-
bols only, which our gross bodies forbid us to in-
terpret? “I know not,” cries the poet, “nor do
T care to risk an ignorant guess!”’ And so he re-
verts to the prayer with which he began: “May
the Holy: Rood grant us a favorable issue for
all our dreams!” and passes to his conclusion:
“For nobody, I believe, ever had so wonderful
ber. I will tEpEAh it to you, as exactly as I can
call it to mind.” The whole discussion, we note,
leads up to this final announcement, and works
as a powerful stimulus to the reader’s curiosity.
In pure technique it is a little masterpiece, for
the substance of it is run into one long, eager, -
and breathless sentence, extending to more than
fifty verses. 7 :
Equally remarkable is the pervasive air of
ironical detachment. This “sticks fiery off in-
deed” when one compares the Romance of the
Rose, in its exordium, of which Chaucer’s is a
kind of antiphrastic counterpart: — “Many men
say that dreams are nothing but lies; but I am
sure, for my part, that some of them are true.
Such was the dream that I myself had when I

 
76 CHAUCER

was nineteen years old; for it was all fulfilled in
due season.” The irony which prompts.Ghaucer
to disclaim all knowledge_of the philosophy ‘of

dreaming, b g, becomes. ; from_this_ time forward a

saadiguabete i

 

amend ATi

‘We may infer, if we like, that it i€ Gotrespondswith-

a fact of his temperament. There is a curious

relation between this ironic spirit in the House of

Fame and the naiveté of the dreamer in the Book

of the Duchess. Both poems belong in some sort

to the genre of the Old French vision of love. In

the Duchess, we have seen Chaucer applying the

conventions of this genre to a highly original

purpose, the writing of a personal elegy. In the

House of Fame he is applying them to an en-

tirely different but equally original end—a

humorous survey of the whole world of mortal

endeavor. There the mood was to be pathos;
here it is to be high-spirited fun, though with

a serious implication. There the dreamer was a

fictitious character. Here he is certainly the

poet himself; for the wise Eagle, whose acquaint-.
ance we shall make in a moment, calls him dis-
tinctly “Geoffrey.”

It is no accident that in the Invocation that
follows Chaucer puts up a to Morpheus. °
He is thinking of the Bock afte Dachiesar That |
‘the god, of whose existence he was so surprised
to learn, had served him well in sending him a
THE HOUSE OF FAME 77

dream. In other words, the Book of the Duchess
had been favorably received; it had established
Chaucer’s reputation-as-a- ‘traly originat poet; not
merely as a clever translator from the French.
So, therefore, he invokes the God of Sleep to help
him to make good use of this dream also, which
is far more wonderful than the former — indeed,
the most marvellous that ever man had. And he
attaches to his prayer a curse upon all hostile or
Malicious persons who shall make light of his
“work or attack it in any way: “Send them bad
dreams, O Lord, and worse fulfilments!” A per-
fect nightmare of an imprecation!

We must not take this outburst, which is
jocose to the verge of extravagance, as indicating
that Chaucer had suffered from the critic’s ser-
pent tongue. No irresponsible indolent reviewers
infested the English court.It is, in substance, a
pure convention; Chaucer got the idea from the
Anticlaudianus, which he had just been reading.
But he has turned the convention, as usual, to
his own purposes. Under cover of his irony, he
is proudly self-assertive. He knows that the
House of Fame is the best thing he has ever seen
in the vernacular, and well worthy of immortal-
ity. He defies his readers not to like it, for he is
sure they cannot help themselves. And so the
dream begins.

Chaucer finds himself, with no tiresome pre-

 
78 CHAUCER

liminaries of travel, in a huge temple of glass,
which he recognizes instantly as dedicated to
Venus. There is no living creature in the temple,
but the whole story of the /Eneid is represented
on the inner wall, and Chaucer recounts it at
some length. We are to imagine an elaborate
series of painted scenes, each explained by a title
or legend, which in some cases must have run to
several lines. -

This summary of Virgil’s epic is in no sense
digressive, nor is it merely a decoration. Wall-
paintings are, to be sure, a familiar feature in
Jove-visions, but Chaucer once more applies the
convention In a novel way, and with a definite
artistic purpose. Ihe Afneid, as he here con-
ceives it, is not the epic of Rome; it is the epic of

ae

enus. Her control is affirmed at the outset of

ZEneas’s wandérings, is emphasized continually,
and is reasserted, with a prayer, at the end: —

En wera

 

How, maugre Iuno, Eneas,

For al her sleighte and her compas,
Acheved al his aventure, —

For Iupiter took of him cure

At the prayer of Venus;

The which I prey alway save us,
And us ay of our sorwes lighte!

Thus we have the effect of a service in the empty
temple, with hymns and petitions, and with a

closing ascription of all praise to the power that
THE HOUSE OF FAME 79

governs both gods and men. In this regard, the
proportions of Chaucer’s summary, which have
been criticised, are easy to defend. He in-
cludes, it is true, the entire AEneid, but he gives
to the story of Dido twice as many verses as to,”
all the rest of the epic. In a word, he has com-

pletely shifted the em i serve-his—turn.

story.

~~ Chaucer has never visited this temple before;
but he supposes, of course, that the region is in-
habited, and goes out at the wicket, hoping to
fall in with somebody to tell him where he is. To
his consternation, he finds himself in a boundless
waste of sand, a veritable Lybian desert, with ~
no living being in view; and he raises his eyes to
heaven and prays Christ to save/ him from
“phantom and illusion.” As he gazes devoutly
upward, he catches sight of a great soaring eagle, —
with feathers of gold, hard by the sun, but, so it

 

earth.
Here, with the close of the First Book, the
introduction ends, and the action of the poem
* begins. The mighty golden bird swoops down
upon the poet, seizes him without alighting, and
bears him up to a monstrous height, so rapidly
that he loses consciousness and lies a dead weight
in the eagle’s talons. ,
80 CHAUCER ee

Before we accompany Chaucer in his aérial
flight, which is the subject of the Second Book,
we must dwell for a moment on Book Firgg,
which is the introduction. For the theory o:
Brink is a lion in the path. In the House of
Fame, according to this eminent scholar, we are
concerned with an allegorical picture of Chau-
cer’s life and Qf what may be called his literary
situation. I Brink is right at this point, he
may or may not be right in his development of
the theory; but if he is wrong here, we need
harass ourselves no further with his interpre-
tation.

Manifestly, we are bound to take account of
the readers whom Chaucer had in mind. If we
ignore these, and their stock of ideas, derived in
large part from the French poetry of the thir-
teenth and fourteenth centuries, we shall make a
mistake akin to that of reading Shakspere in for-
getfulness of the Elizabethan audience. Great
poets, no doubt, address themselves to posterity;
and posterity is free to interpret them, for its own
comfort and inspiration, in any terms that it
finds useful. But they address themselves, in the
first instance, to their immediate contempora-
ries. They may be for all time ultimately, but
that is by virtue of the eternal nature of the
things that really matter in human life. What
Chaucer meant to his contemporaries is, then, a
THE HOUSE OF FAME 81

pertinent question. It stands at the threshold.
If there is an inner shrine, we must enter it
through the portal of the obvious.

T Brink, the temple of glass is a figure
for the “ charmed circle of poetry in which Chau-
cer lives under the spell of his study of the great
masters.” ‘The paintings on the wall are “those
pictures of life which he sees in. his. beloved
authors, and which serve as the sole intermedi-
aries between him and the world of men.” The
sandy desert is ‘‘the loneliness that encompasses
him whenever he ventures beyond the four walls
of his little book-room.”

“Now these sentimental equations, we must
frankly admit, are quite unlike anything that
Chaucer’s contemporaries would have gathered
from the story. The announcement at the outset,
that he is to tell them a dream — accompanied
as it is by a discussion of dreams which recalls
the exordium of the Romance of the Rose, the
most popular of all poems with the courtly circle
of the time — meant to them, undoubtedly, that -
they were to hear one more variation on the
favorite theme of the love-vision. And this idea
was confirmed when they found the poet in a
Temple of Venus, admiring a love-tale painted
on the walls. The emptiness of the temple would
not surprise them, or lure them to far-fetched
guesses at a hidden meaning. There was nothing

 

 

 
82 CHAUCER

odd in strolling into an empty church, when it
was not the hour of service, and looking at the
works of art. Nor were they surprised at the
painted walls; for such things were common in
real life, and had become a familiar convention
in the genre. They felt, therefore, — these fortu-
nate knights and ladies of the middle ages, — no
such temptation as besets us ingenious moderns
to apply the temple, or the lack of worshippers,
or the poet’s interest in the decorations, to any-
thing in the actual circumstances of Chaucer’s
life, or to his relations, good or bad, with the
world about him.

Moreover, if we scrutinize the supposed alle-
gory a little, we shall perceive its ineptitude.
The temple in which Chaucer finds himself is
quite unfamiliar to him. He infers that it is dedi-
cated to Venus, because he sees portraits of her
and Cupid, but he has no idea in what country it
is. Indeed, he leaves the building in the express
hope of discovering somebody who can answer
this question.

Whan I had seyen al this sighte
In this noble temple thus,
“A, Lord,” thoughte I, “that madest us!
Yet saw I never swich noblesse
Of images, ne swich richesse,
As I saw graven in this chirche;
But not woot I who dide hem wirche,
Ne wher I am, ne in what contree.
THE HOUSE OF FAME 83

But now wol I go out and see,

Right at the wiket, if I can Me
See o-wher stering any man

That may me telle wher I am.”!

Obviously, this unknown temple cannot stand
for Cina febie ieee ee the
desert for his loneliness outside his book-room.
If so, we must infer that he used to go into the
London streets to ask the passers-by what his
own studies were, and that he felt disappointed
when no one could enlighten him. Moreover, the
sandy desert affects Chaucer not with a feeling of
personal lonesomeness, but with alarm. He is
lost in a desolate land, and there is no one to tell
him which way to go. What he needs is not sym-
pathetic companionship, but direction: a finger-
post would console him as well as a man. Ina
panic he prays Christ to save him “from phan-
tom and illusion.” He fears that he is taking
leave of his wits, or that he has wandered into
some enchanted region, like the knights errant in
romances. His suspicions embrace not only the
desert, but the marvellous temple, which now
seems equally uncanny. Such, plainly, is the sit-
uation, — certainly , not interpretable in the
terms proposed bole Brink .
In short, all atte to read personal allegory ./
into the First Book of the House of Fame break
1 Verses 468-479.
84. CHAUCER

- down completely when tested by comparison
with the actual narrative. And there is no neces-
sity to have recourse to personal allegory. The
temple and the desert are simply devices to trans-
port the poet into the fantastic regions of dream-
land, where the eagle can swoop down upon him
conveniently: Jove can hardly send his bird to
the custom house, or to Chaucer’s city lodgings.
We are now dispensed, I should hope, from fol-
lowing the allegorical school in its further explor-
ations, and equating the huge eagle that bears
Chaucer aloft with “philosophy,” or “poetic
-genius,” or “productive Phantasie.” The at-
tempt would only induce that state of mental
confusion which Chaucer himself experienced in
the eagle’s talons: —
“O God,” thoughte I, “that madest kinde!

Shal I non other weyes dye?

Wher Ioves wol me stellifye,

Or what thing may this signifye?

I neither am Enok, ne Elye,

Ne Romulus, ne Ganymede

That was y-bore up, as men rede,

To heven with dan Iupiter,
And maad the goddes boteler.”

Chaucer evinces a wide and exact acquaint-
ance with the aérial or celestial flights of many
personages, sacred and profane. In the verses
quoted he declines to identify himself with Enoch
or Elijah, with Romulus or Ganymede. Some- .
THE HOUSE OF FAME 85

what later he refers to the story of Dedalus and
Icarus, to Scipio’s Dream, and to the extraordi-
nary aviation of Alexander the Great; he remem-
bers Boethius and the flight of Thought, “with
feathers of Philosophy,” above the elements; he
cites the Anticlaudianus, in which Prudentia
rides through the sky in a car, with Reason as
her charioteer. Greatly daring, after the mediz-
val manner, even to the edge of blasphemy, he
allusively compares himself to Saint Paul in
Second Corinthians: —

Tho gan I wexen in a were,

And seyde, “I woot wel I am here;

But wher in body or in gost
I noot, ywis; but, God, thou wost!”’!

“Whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether
out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth.”
The inference is unescapable: “Men have
soared above the clouds at divers times and in
sundry manners and have seen amazing sights.
Some of these celestial journeys have been literal,
others by way of allegory, still others in the rap-
ture of a vision through the grace of God. I can-
not classify my own experiences. All I know is,
that I was dreaming; and, as I have told you, I
am ignorant of the causes of dreams, and by no
means expert in reading their signification. My
eagle was Jove’s messenger. He carried me

1 Verses, 979-982.
86 CHAUCER

without an effort, though I am no light weight.
He astonished me by his powers as a mind-
reader. There were no limits, so it seemed, to his
knowledge, and he was uncommonly generous in
imparting it.” How idle it is, in the face of this
exultant and characteristic irony, to rummage
for the eagle’s prototype in the junk-shops of an-
tiquity, or to guess at what he typifies, as if he
were a riddle witha specific answer! The office
of the eagle in the economy of the poem is simple
and unambiguous. Chaucer is to visit the Palace
of Fame. It is situated, so Ovid says, at the
central point

inter terrasque fretumque
caelestesque plagas, triplicis confinia mundi.}

Hir paleys stant, as I shall seye,
Right even in middes of the weye -
Betwixen heven, erthe, and see.”

He needs a conveyance. Jove’s bird, decked with
a feather or two from Dante, stands ready to per-
form this service at the god’s command. But
there is much that Chaucer needs to learn about
his destination, and there are strange sights along
the aérial road. A cicerone, then, is likewise re-
quisite, and the poet has the happy thought of let-
ting the eagle supplement the function of carrier
by assuming also the réle of guide, philosopher,
' Met., xii. 39-40. 2 House of Fame, 713-715.
THE HOUSE OF FAME 87

and friend. There is nothing particularly re-
markable about this device, for guiding animals
who can talk are common enough in popular
story; but one cannot sufficiently admire the re-’
sults of the combination. These are—to be cate- ~
gorical—a character, a situation, and a dia~-
logue, quite unified in their total impression, yet
indescribable except in contradictory terms.
The art is the same that Chaucer used, much
later, in his mock-heroic masterpiece of the Cock
and Fox. Chanticleer and Pertelote, when they ©
converse, are human beings, a lord and his lady,
with characters as true to human nature as that
of Harry Bailly or the Wife of Bath. Yet, in a
moment, when we are almost forgetting that
they are barnyard fowl, a touch brings back the
reality, — the beams on which they roost, or the
corn of wheat, or the lovely scarlet red about
Dame Pertelote’s eyes, or the diet of worms, or
““Pekke hem up right as they growe, and ete
hem in!”

The Second Book is taken up with an account
of Chaucer’s wonderful journey through the
heavens to the Palace of Fame. Through it all,
Chaucer is quite passive, having, indeed, nothing
to do but to keep still. The admirable eagle does
all the talking. He is a most interesting charac-
ter, and appeals especially to me and my aca-
demic brethren. For the eagle is a born lecturer,
88 CHAUCER

particularly strong in popular science. He owes

his knowledge, of course, not to books, but to

exceptional facilities for observation. These, |
unfortunately, are enjoyed in equal measure by

his associates at Jove’s court. Now, at length,

he has buttonholed or kidnapped an auditor.

Chaucer lies helpless in the lecturer’s talons, in

no condition to protest or disagree; and the

learned eagle holds forth, with all the gusto of

long repression. He shows the exuberance of an

autodidact and the condescending omniscience

of a discoursing specialist. Chaucer, who has no

wish to be dropped, is not contentious: he re-

plies in monosyllables, with a meek yes or no, as

the occasion requires. His reticence is not dimin-

ished by the alarming discovery that the eagle

can read his thoughts! This one-sided conver- —
sation lasts throughout the aérial journey, and is

intensely amusing.

The eagle, having felt the pulse of Chaucer’s.
heart with one talon, to make sure that he has
recovered consciousness, begins with a much-
needed explanation, which includes the famous
passage describing the poet’s retired and studi-
ous life. “Jupiter has taken pity on thy long
service in making books and songs and ditties in
honor of Love, in spite of Love’s disregard of
thee. And he also considers thy lack of all
tidings of Love’s folk.
THE HOUSE OF FAME 89

“Wherfor, as I seyde, ywis,
Iupiter considereth this,
And also, beau sir, other thinges;
That is, that thou hast no tydinges
Of Loves folk, if they be glade,
Ne of noght elles that God made;
And noght only fro fer contree
That ther no tyding comth to thee,
But of thy verray neyghebores,
That dwellen almost at thy dores,
Thou herest neither that ne this;
For whan thy labour don al is,
And hast ymad thy rekeninges,
In stede of reste and newe thinges,
Thou gost hoom to thy hous anoon;
And, also domb as any stoon,
Thou sittest at another bok,
Til fully daswed is thy lok,
And livest thus as an hermyte,
Although thyn abstinence is lyte.

“For these reasons, Jove has sent me to bear
thee to the House of Fame, where thou canst
hear every sort of love-news.” And the eagle
specifies the different kinds of tidings at some
length and with inimitable vivacity; for, though
a lecturer, he is far from being a bore. He winds
up with a question: “I suppose this account of
mine seems scarcely credible?” “‘Not credible at
all,” replies the poet with docility, for he knows
that this is the answer expected. “Why so?”
cries the eagle, delightedly. ‘Because I cannot
understand how all these reports should be

1 Verses 641-660.

94
90 CHAUCER

brought to Fame’s house from every quarter of
the world,” Chaucer answers, once more playing
into his interlocutor’s hand. “That is precisely
what I can explain to you,” rejoins the golden-
feathered lecturer, now in the best of spirits.
And then comes a long discourse on sound-
waves, ending with a palpable bid for a com-
pliment: —
“Telle me this feithfully:

Have I not preved thus simply,

Withouten any subtilte

Of speche, or gret prolixite

Of termes of philosophye,

Of figures of poetrye,

Or coloures of rethoryke?

Parde, it oghte thee to lyke;

For hard langage and hard matere

Is encumbrous for to here

At ones: — wostow not wel this?”
And I answerd and seyde, “Yis.”’?

“Aha!” cries the eagle, 1 in eager ei seas
tion, and with an air of generous patronage:—
“A ha!” quod he, “lo, so I can
Lewedly to a lewed man
Speke, and shewe him swiche skilles,

That he may shake hem by the billes,
So palpable they shulden be.”

Note this “shake them by the bills.” It is like

“pekke hem up” in the language of Dame

Pertelote. This is a learned lecture, but the
1 Verses 853-864.
THE HOUSE OF FAME gI

eagle, after all, is a bird, and here he drops unex-
pectedly into the bird-idiom. This is excellent
humor and first-rate psychology. “Haow?”
said Dr.“ Holmes’s theological student at the
breakfast table, in a moment of abstraction,
reverting to the vernacular of his rustic fore-
fathers.

Satisfied with Chaucer’s appreciation of his
didactics, the eagle inquires how his charge is
feeling. “Well,” replies the poet, laconically.
He is then bidden to look down at this earth, of
which he gets an excellent bird’s-eye view. Soon,
however, they have risen to such a height that
nothing terrestrial is any longer discernible, and
the eagle directs his pupil’s gaze upward to the
galaxy and the signs of the zodiac. Presently
even these “airish beasts” are below them.
Their destination is nigh at hand, but the eagle
sees a chance for one more lecture. He inquires
whether Chaucer wishes any instruction in
astronomy : —

“Wilt thou lere of sterres ought?”

But the poet, though much pleased with his in-
structor, has had almost enough. “Nay,” is his
unexpected answer, “I am too old for such
learning.” The eagle is comically insistent. “TI
would have told you their names,” he suggests,
“and also the names of the constellations.”
92 CHAUCER

“Never mind,” says Chaucer, encouraging no
further exposition. The eagle is true to his
character: “You are wrong;” he declares, —
“such information will be useful when you read
poetry.” Chaucer proves a bit recalcitrant. He
has recovered his poise, and has courage enough
to argue: “No matter! I am willing to trust the
writers who deal with this subject. Besides, the
stars are so brilliant that my eyes would suffer.”
“Perhaps you are right,” says the eagle, who
realizes that there are limits to the patience of
the most submissive audience.

They arrive in Fame’s precincts, and Chaucer
is set down in a street, safe and sound, and bid-
den to follow the road and he shall come to the
House of Fame. Feeling solid ground underfoot,
he suddenly gets back both his tongue and his
natural curiosity, and begs the eagle to explain
the noises that proceed from the palace. This
question is the eagle’s best reward for his for-
bearance in the matter of an astronomical lec-
ture. He explains, more briefly than usual but
with characteristic perspicuity, how the palace of
Fame is peopled: every speech that, by the laws.
of sound already detailed, arrives at the building,
takes instantly the shape of the person who
uttered it. With this he bids Chaucer farewell,
promising to wait for him, and the poet makes
his way to the House of Fame.
’ / ye

a

THE HOUSE OF FAME 93

Looking back on Book II, we observe that it
is not only written with extraordinary verve and
in the highest spirits, but that it is admirably

constructed. Everything is to the point and in

good proportion. The effect of a long, swift
journey through illimitable space is tellingly
brought out. Chaucer gradually recovers his
self-command as he gets accustomed to his
strange flight and better acquainted with the
bird of Jove. His recovery enables him to assert
himself when they near the journey’s end, and to

head off the only lecture that threatened to be

tedious. One passage, the treatise on sound-
waves, is often regarded as a digression after the
true medieval manner. In fact, however, the
passage is organically necessary to the realism
which the poet achieves in this the wildest of his
fictions, for it puts the whole structure upon a

_basis of genuine science. After hearing it, Chau-

cer feels quite satisfied, and so do his readers,
that all the news of the world must make its way
to the Palace of Fame. Then, too, the account'of
the laws of sound leads up directly to the explan-
ation that every speech takes human shape when
it enters Fame’s courts. We are thus prepared,
as Chaucer was, for the apparent reality of what-
ever is to be seen and heard in this region of
phantasmagoria. And, indeed, the verisimilitude
of the Third Book is complete.
94 CHAUCER

Fame’s House is an immense castle on the
summit of a hill of ice, and nearly two hundred
lines are devoted to its description. Within or
without are all manner of minstrels, with jug-
glers, witches, and sorcerers: Orpheus is there,
and the British Glascurion, and Marsyas, and
Virgil’s Misenus, and Circe, and Medea, and
Simon Magus. There are many pursuivants
and heralds, — everybody in short, who has to
do with news or with the laudation of the rich
and great. Fame herself sits enthroned in the
hall, a grandiose and ever-shifting figure, accord-
ing to the Virgilian description, and the Nine
Muses are singing a hymn in her honor: —

“Heried be thou and thy name.
Goddesse of Renoun or Fame.”

Chaucer has the luck to be present when
Queen Fame is holding audience. His account of
the proceedings is a transparent allegory, of uni-
versal application. In fact, this allegory of Fame’s
treatment of her suppliants is an enormous ex-
pansion and development of the Virgilian truism
which describes Fame as equally interested in the
_ dissemination of falsehood and of truth. Chau-
cer’s plan is a model of schematic precisiom All
men have some request to make of Fame, and
the whole world comes to her throne, in nine sep-
arate companies. The treatment they receive
THE HOUSE OF FAME 95

exhausts the possibilities of arbitrary freakish-
ness.

The first three companies are composed of
Meritorious persons who ask for good report as
their appropriate reward. Fame treats them
very differently. The first company is doomed
to oblivion, their names shall die; the second
company fares still worse, receiving world-wide
slander instead of honor; the third gets what it
asks, — the good renown that it deserves. The
fourth and fifth companies pray that their merits
may be forgotten: they have acted only for the
glory of God. In one case, Fame grants the peti-
tion; in the other, she rejects it, and Aolus
trumpets forth their praise to the ends of the
earth. The sixth company are do-nothings, who
have idled their life away, accomplishing neither
good nor ill. Yet they are eager for reputation, _
and their prayer is heard. The seventh are also
sluggards, who ask for the same favor, but re-
‘ceive derision and obloquy instead. The eighth
company are villains: they ask for good renown,
and are denied. The ninth consists of villains
also, who exult in their crimes, and receive the
evil reputation that they desire.

As thus condensed, the allegory seems cold and
formal. In the poem, however, we forget the
schematism in the liveliness of the narrative.
The scene is brilliantly fantastic, yet somehow
96 CHAUCER

real, with a piquant touch of the grotesque. The
conception is profoundly ironic, but leaves no
sting, for Chaucer’s humor has unrestricted play,
and he is manifestly enjoying himself to the top
of his compass. The types of good or bad, of
modest piety or vainglorious wickedness, are
huge Collective Masses, who offer their petitions
to a gigantic Abstraction. But they are handled
as deftly as if everything were concrete and indi-
vidual. Chaucer had not, to be sure, reached the
measure of his performance, but he was unques-
tionably in the full flush of matured power. .
When Chaucer has had abundant opportunity
to note the freakish and perverse decrees of the
goddess, he is accosted by an affable by-
stander: —

With that I gan aboute wende;
For oon that stood right at my bak,
Me thoughte, goodly to me spak,
And seyde: “Frend, what is thy name?
Artow come hider to han fame?”
“Nay, for-sothe, frend,” quod I;
“T cam not hider, graunt mercy!
For no swich cause, by my heed.
Suffyceth me, as I were deed,
That no wight have my name in honde.
I woot my-self best how I stonde;
For what I drye or what I thinke,
I wol my-selven al hit drinke,
Certeyn, for the more part,
As ferforth as-I can myn art.” !

* Verses 1868-1882.
THE HOUSE OF FAME 97

Here eminent critics have unveiled a mystery.
Chaucer, they imagine, depressed or disgusted
because he has won no reputation commensurate
with his merits, renounces fame altogether: it is a
vain thing, a shadow which no man can grasp. I
have no wish to follow the windings of this alle-
gorical interpretation. If ever Chaucer exulted
in his powers, if ever he felt the joy of writing,
the thrill of fluent expressiveness, the rapture of
an active intelligence working freely in a flexible
and responsive medium, it was in the House of
Fame. Nor is there a syllable in this little dia-
logue that suggests anything to the contrary.

“Who are you, friend?” asks the stranger.
“Are you come hither in pursuit of renown?”
“By no means, friend,” the poet answers. “I
came here for no such reason, — thank you very
much! Let my name die.” “What is your er-
rand, then?” says the stranger. “I will tell you,”
the poet replies; and he gives a straightforward
and accurate account of the purpose of his jour-
ney, — to learn new tidings, according to the
eagle’s promise.

Now what else, in all conscience, was Chaucer
to say? He has not come hither in quest of repu-
tation, and if he had, he must surely know, by
this time, the futility of such an errand. His re-
ply is the only one which a sensible man could
have made, whatever his aspirations, after noting
98 CHAUCER

the arbitrary unreason of the goddess. “Let my
name die” indeed! Why, he had just seen a
whole troop of modest worthies who begged
Fame to let them rest in obscurity, only to have
their self-effacement rewarded by the widest,
publicity! Take the passage in its context, and
the words of the poet lose all the esoteric signifi-
cance that theorists attach to them. “Are you
here for fame?” “No, thank you! I hope I am
too wise for that, after what I have seen. I prefer
to play the modest réle and take my chances.” I
suppose there is no clearer utterance in all the
works of Chaucer from end to end; but, like
everything he writes, it must be taken in its
context, with a feeling for the dramatic bearings
of the situation. Character and circumstances
should not be torn asunder.

Fame’s hall of audience, though full of interest
for the visitor, has disappointed him in one im-
portant respect. It has by no means kept the
eagle’s promise, for Chaucer has heard no tidings
of lovers there. He confides his disappointment
to his new friend, who straightway leads him out
of the palace and points to an extraordinary —
structure close by, in a valley at the foot of the
rock of ice. It is a vast house of wicker-work,
shaped like a birdcage, and whirls about inces-
santly. Doors and windows stand open day and
night, and tidings true and false pass in and out
THE HOUSE OF FAME 99

continually. The noise and confusion are terrific.
This huge wicker cage is the rendezvous of all the
rumors in the world, — their exchange, their
clearing house, their bank of issue. Each flies
forth again, modified, increased, compounded of
false and true. It wings its way to Fame, who
dwells in the castle nearby. She gives it a name
that fits its disposition, grants it a period of life,
and sends it off on its ambiguous errand.

Chaucer is eager to enter this House of Ru-
mors. He catches sight of his eagle, perched
demurely on a stone, and begs him to wait long
enough to afford him an opportunity. It now
appears that this is the precise destination of
the whole journey. “‘Of course I will wait for
you,” says the condescending bird. “ Jové has
brought you hither to comfort you with tid-
ings, and has instructed me to guide and assist
you with all my might.”

This speech of the eagle’s is in the main a
repetition of what he told Chaucer at the outset,
and is therefore of prime importance for the un-
derstanding of the whole design. The mention of
the poet’s condition — he is heartbroken, lan-
guishing, “desesperat of alle blisse’ — attaches
the story once more, in the plainest manner, to
the traditional machinery of the visions of love.
There is no basis whatever for a personal alle-
gory. Neither the tedium of the custom house,
100 CHAUCER

nor the languor that results from over-applica-
tion to books, has any status here. Least of all
can we refer the passage to lonesomeness, to
isolation in the crowd, or to the self-pity of neg-
lected literary merit. The convention does not
vary in any essential feature from that of the
melancholy and sleepless lover in the Book of the
Duchess. It is differently applied — to the pur-
poses of a wonder-journey of intense ironical
significance, not to those of an elegy — but in
itself, and in its freedom from personal implica-
tions, it remains the same.

To test the point we may glance at the Arca-
dian machinery of the pastoral which is utilized
by the poets in every conceivable fashion: — for
elegy, as in Lycidas; for religious controversy,
as in the Shepherds’ Calendar; for courtly com-
pliment, as in Herrick’s verses on the birth of
Prince Charles; for pure romance, as in Fletch-
er’s Faithful Shepherdess, for abusive satire, as
in Churchill’s Prophecy of Famine; and for
sportive humor, as in The Shepherd’s Week of
Gay.

The eagle has arranged a surprise for his
charge, and incidentally for the reader too.
Fame’s Hall is not their final goal, though it is an
important station in the itinerary. When Chau-
cer has seen enough of the goddess’s power, there
remains the House of Rumors, which will satisfy
THE HOUSE OF FAME IOI

his every wish and more than justify the promises
the eagle made him. But he cannot enter with-
out the bird’s assistance. The eagle picks him up
in his claws, which have lost their terrors by this
time, and darts in through an open window,
despite the rapidity of the revolutions.

Chaucer’s experiences in the wicker house can-
not be summarized. He had sinned against pro-
portion in dwelling at such length on Fame’s
Hall, but in the present scene there is not a super-”
fluous line. The whole is conceived and executed
in a spirit of riotous humor, yet without extrava-
gance and in perfect accord, in each detail, both
with the imagined situation and the underlying
allegory. The great magician rejoices in the gam-
bols of the spirits he has evoked, but they never
break loose from his control. Here are tidings
enough, and of every sort, “wingéd wonders,”
thousands of them. Yet there is plenty of room
for the purveyors of news; for men and rumors
can defy the laws of physics: both can be in the
same place at the same time.

And, Lord! this hous, in alle tymes,
Was full of shipmen and pilgrymes,
With scrippes bret-ful of lesinges,
Entremedled with tydinges,

And eek alone by hem-selve.

O, many a thousand tymes twelve
Saugh I eek of these pardoneres,
Currours, and eek messangeres,
102 CHAUCER

With boistes crammed ful of lyes
As ever vessel was with lyes.!

“Pilgrims, pardoners, and shipmen”! We can
almost descry the Canterbury Tales in the dis-
tance.

But such long looks ahead are dangerous.
They make “‘the sea and the aérial blue an indis-
tinct regard.” And we must not strain our eye-
sight, for here, at the very end of the poem, as it
lies before us, truncated as it is but at a point
not very far from the close, we reach the tidings
of love at last. Chaucer hears a great noise in a
corner of the building, where men are talking of
love-tidings. Everybody ran thither, calling out,
“What thing is that?” And they crowded to-
gether, and climbed up on each other’s shoulders,
and stamped on each other’s heels; and then —

Atte laste I saugh a man,

Whiche that I naught ne kan;

But he semed for to be

A man of greet auctorite —
And so the poem breaks off, in the middle of a
sentence apparently, and we are left to guess at
the conclusion. Probably Chaucer finished the
piece, and our manuscripts are defective. But
that consideration avails nothing. We must use
our wits—and with modesty; for, after all, we:
can do no more than cast the lots into the lap.

1 Verses 2121-2130.
THE HOUSE OF FAME 103

It seems evident that the “man of great
authority” is to tell some first-rate piece of news
concerning love. It cannot be a story out of a
book, for that is not the kind of thing that Chau-
cer has been brought hither to hear, nor, if so,
would it accord with the rumors and reports
with which the house is filled. Most likely it is
a contemporary affair, which would be of interest
to the English court.

Whatever the news may have been, it cannot
have taken long to tell, for the poem is nearing
its end. Yet it must have been of sufficient con-
sequence to come in effectively at the top of the
climax. We must suppose, at all events, that the
man told it, and that Chaucer listened. Then,
no doubt, the poet woke up suddenly, as in the
Book of the Duchess and the Parliament of
Fowls. Any other conclusion would have de-
parted too far from the regular programme of ,
the love-vision, which Chaucer has applied to his
purposes throughout, and which has determined’
the general structure of his work. 'To make the
eagle carry him back to the sandy desert or the
temple of Venus would be very tame. Going
home after an adventurous excursion is always
a dismal business.

Two features in the House of Rumors chal-
lenge our particular attention, its wicker frame-
work and its vertiginous motion. Both are trans-
104 CHAUCER

parent symbols in the allegory, but neither, so
far as we know, had ever been thus utilized be-
fore. Ovid, to whom Chaucer is here especially
indebted, constructs his House of Fame out of
sounding bronze, and does not make it whirl
about. Was Chaucer inventing, or was he, as
poets do, converting familiar material to novel
uses? This is not a trivial question, — no mere
frivolous conundrum for erudite and impertinent
pedantry. Its answer, if we can find it, will ex-
fend our knowledge of Chaucer’s horizon, both
literary and actual, and may enlighten us not a
little as to his methods as an artistic craftsman.
Fortunately the answer is at hand. The an-
cient houses of the Celts were made of wicker-
work, and such structures were familiar sights in
Chaucer’s time, in Ireland, in the Scottish High-
lands, and in Wales. Chaucer’s erstwhile master,
Prince Lionel, had lived in Ireland, and Chaucer
knew scores of Englishmen who were familiar
with Irish life. Wales was even nearer, and
Chaucer was sufficiently impressed by the Bret
Glascurion to assign him a conspicuous position
among the harpers at the court of Fame. The
poet knew plenty of Welshmen, and Sir John
Clanvowe, who had hereditary possessions in
Wales, was his friend and his poetical disciple.
So peculiar a trait of Celtic life as these wicker
houses was almost the first thing that would
THE HOUSE OF FAME 105

strike an Englishman’s eye. One odd feature of
the House of Rumors, then, is a transcript from
actual life. Chaucer the realist stands un-
masked before us.

But realism is only a fragment of life, or of
poetry. It needs its complement, or the world is
nothing but prose; and the complement of real-
ism is romance. To debate their comparative
excellence is the very pedantry of literary criti-
cism; to settle the question and fulminate against
the other side, is the crackling of thorns under a
pot. “ Which came first,” asked the ancient
schoolboy, “the hen or the egg?” Thanks to our
medizval ancestors, we are well provided with
ammunition when the critics storm. We can al-
ways appeal with confidence — those of us who
refuse to sell our birthright — to Buridanus, to
the ass and the bundles of straw.

Chaucer wrote romances, — the Squire’s Tale
is nothing else, — but he read romances first, all
that he could lay his hands on, whether French
or English. And it was in their enchanted regions
that he discovered the whirling castle, which the
errant knight can enter only by the help of a
guiding animal, — a creature that moves more
swiftly than the castle itself. The romances in-
herited this feature from the folk-tales, and in
some form or other, — the Symplegades, for
instance, or the door that slams constantly to
106 CHAUCER

and fro, or the sky that shuts down suddenly like
the jaws of a trap, — it goes back to the child-
hood of human thought. . Seis sccecettiie

Here, then, is, the whole history of Chaucer’s
building. The real and the romantic (which, in
the last analysis, is but an old, old way of inter-
preting phenomena) combine harmoniously in
his imagination, which Ovid’s allegory has set at
work. The result is altogether original, some-
thing unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

It remains to define, briefly, the relation of
the wicker house to Fame’s castle, for in that re-
lation is involved the true meaning of Chaucer's
parable.

Chaucer has by no means confused; the two
senses of the Latin fama. On the a he
has harmonized them. Fame, of course, is repu-
tation or renown. Its substance or material, how-
ever, is nothing but rumors. The whirling wicker
house, to which come all the words that are
spoken on earth, is the factory or laboratory
where rumors are compounded. These fly up to
the castle close by, where Fame holds court.
Thither all the world resorts, in continual
throngs, to take whatever reputation the freakish
goddess may assign them. This reputation is
blown throughout the world by AZolus. It con-
sists solely of the rumors just mentioned, for
these are the wind which /olus puffs from his
«. THE HOUSE OF FAME 107

trumpet.. No wonder Chaucer declines to join
the crowd of suppliants when he sees Fame’s
instability. He prefers to be silent and run his
risks. Men in genera: are not so wise, or not so
well-instructed.

The subject of the poem is, then, not Geoffrey
Chaucer, but the human race. The poem is a
humorous study of mankind from the point of
view of a Ruling Passion.

I am glad the House of Fame is unfinished, for
this gives me a chance to guess at the story that
should conclude it. I have a very pretty theory,
which, however, I shall not disclose, for I do not
quite believe in it myself. Besides, I like to imi-
tate Chaucer by stopping abruptly — checked,
as perhaps he was, by the striking of the clock.
IV

TROILUS

HAUCER is known to everybody as the
prince of story-tellers, as incomparably the
greatest of our narrative poets. Indeed, if we
disregard the epic, which stands in a class by it-
- self, I do not see why we should hesitate to call
him the greatest of all narrative poets whatso-_
ever, making no reservation of era or of language.
His fame began in his own lifetime, and was not
confined, even then, to the limits of his native
country. It has constantly increased, both in
area and in brilliancy, and was never so wide-
spread or so splendid as at the present day. Be-
sides, he is a popular poet, and this popularity —
more significant than meré reputation — has
grown steadily with the gradual extension of the
reading habit to all sorts and conditions of men.
To most readers, however, Chaucer means
only the Canterbury Tales; and even so, it is
with but half-a-dozen of the pilgrims that ie
are intimately acquainted. This is manifest de
tiny, which it would be ridiculous to deplisee:
““What wol nat be, mot nede be left.”? Nor
should we lament what Sir Thomas Browne calls
TROILUS 109

“the iniquity of oblivion”; for oblivion has
treated Chaucer generously. She has exempted
enough of the poet’s achievement to bring him
popularity, which the conditions of his own time
could neither afford nor promise, and she has
spared besides, for such of us as care to read it,
that masterpiece of psychological fiction

In which ye may the double sorwes here,

Of Troylus, in loving of Criseyde,

And how that she forsook him er she deyde.

The Troilus is not merely, as William Ros-

setti styles it, the most beautiful long narrative
poem in the English language: it is the first
novel, in the modern sense, that ever was written
in the world, and one of the best. Authorship is a
strange art: it is nearest akin to magic, which
deals with the incalculable. Chaucer sat down to
compose a romance, as many a poet had done
before him. The subject was to be love; the
ethical and social system was to be that of chiv-
alry; the source was the matter of Troy; the
material was Italian and French and Latin. His
readers were to be the knights and ladies of the
court, to whom the fame of the hero as a lover
and a warrior was already familiar. Psychology
it was to contain, or what passed for psychology
in the medieval love-poets, the analysis of emo-
tion in terms of Chrétien de Troyes and the
Roman de la Rose. Yet the work was not, in
Mo CHAUCER

Chaucer’s intention, to be a romance precisely.
He conceived it as what scholars then called a
“tragedy,” — though with a somewhat peculiar
modification of the standard term. Tragedies
described the malice of Fortune when she casts
down men of high estate and brings them to a
miserable end. This was to be a tragedy of love,
and the fall of the hero was to be from happy
union with his lady to the woe and ruin of her
unfaithfulness. And so Chaucer took his pen
in hand, and drew his quire of paper to him, and
wrote a prologue.

The magician has marked out his circle, and
pronounced his spells, and summoned his spirits.
He knows their names, and the formulas that
will evoke them, and the task that he shall re-
quire them to perform. And lo! they come, and
there are strange demons among them, and
when the vision is finished and the enchanter
lays down his wand, he finds on his desk — a ro-
mance, to be sure, which his pen has written; a
tragedy, in the sense in which he knew the word;
a love-tragedy, with a background of the matter
of Troy, and thousands of lines from Boccaccio,
with bits of Benoit and Guido delle Colonne, and
a sonnet of Petrarch’s, and a section out of Boe-
thius, and a closing prayer to the Christian God.
Everything is as he had planned it. But, when
he reads it over, he finds that he has produced a
TROILUS IIl

new thing. Nothing like it was ever in the world
before.

The Troilus is a long poem, extending to more
than eight thousand verses, but the plot is so
simple that it may be set forth in a dozen sen-
tences. ‘

Troilus, Priam’s son, and second in valor to
Hector only, is a scoffer at love and lovers. On a
high holiday, as he strolls idly about the temple
of Pallas, heart-free and glorying in his freedom,
his eye falls upon Cressida, daughter of Calchas.
Her father has fled to the Greeks, to escape the
doom of Troy; but Cressida remains in the city.
She is a widow, young, rich, and of surpassing
beauty. Troilus falls madly in love, but fears to
reveal his passion. Pandarus, Cressida’s uncle
and Troilus’ friend, coaxes the secret from him,
and helps him with all his might. Cressida
yields, after long wooing, and the lovers see
naught but happiness before them.

One day, however, during an exchange of
prisoners, Calchas persuades the Greeks to offer
Antenor for Cressida, whom he fears to leave in
the city of destruction. To resist is impossible.
The lovers are parted; but Cressida promises to
return in ten days, feeling sure that she can ca-
jole her aged father. Her woman’s wiles are
fruitless: she must remain in the Grecian camp,
where Diomede pays court to her assiduously.
112 CHAUCER

He wins her at length, though not without her
\bitter grief at the thought of her unfaithfulness,
Troilus is slain by Achilles.

This is the barest outline, but it suffices to.
show the simplicity of the story. The interest lies
in the details, which are told with much particu-
larity, and in the characterization, which is com-
plex and subtle in a high degree. Readers who
look for rapid movement and quick succession of
incident, are puzzled and thwarted by the delib-
eration, the leisureliness, of the Troilus. The con-
versations are too long for them; they find the
soliloquies languid; the analysis of sentiment and
emotion and passion fails to keep their minds
awake. But the Troilus is not a tale for a spare
hour: it is an elaborate psychological novel, in-
stinct with humor, and pathos, and passion, and
human nature. Condensation would spoil it.
Once yield to its charm, and you wish that it
might go on forever.

Fate dominates in the Troilus. The suspense
consists not in waiting for the unexpected, but in
looking forward with a kind of terror for the
moment of predicted doom. The catastrophe is
announced at the outset: we are to hear of “the
double sorrow of Troilus in loving Cressida, and
how she forsook him at the last.” Neither
Troilus nor Cressida suspects what is to come;'
but we know all about it from the beginning.
TROILUS 113

There is no escape for anybody. We are looking
on at a tragedy that we are powerless to check or
to avert.

Chaucer himself conveys the impression of
telling the tale under a kind of duress. Not, of
course, that there is any literal compulsion. It
is rather that he is entangled, somehow, in the
subject, and that, since he has begun, he is in
duty bound to finish his task.

Sin I have begonne,
Myn auctor shal I folwen, if I conne.!

There is no weariness, as in some of the tales in
the Legend of Good Women. His interest in the
matter is intense, and it never falters. But he
feels the burden of the ruin that is to come. At
times he even seems to struggle against the fate
which has allotted him so sad a duty. He would
change the tale if he could, but he must tell the
truth, though it is almost more than he can bear.
He would actually impugn the evidence if that
were possible: —

For how Criseyde Troilus forsook —

Or, at the leest, how that she was unkynde —

Moot hennesforth be mater of my book,

As writen folk thurgh which it is in minde.

Allas that they shulde evere cause fynde

To speke hire harm! and if they on hire lye,
Ywis hemself sholde han the vilenye.”

1 ij, 48-49; cf. i. 265-266, v. 1765-1769. 2 iv. 15-21.
114 CHAUCER

So mightily is he stirred by Cressida’s grief that
he would extenuate her guilt, or even excuse it
altogether, for sheer pity. She has been pun-
ished enough; and, after all, she was only a weak
woman, “tendre-herted, slyding of corage.”

Ne me ne list this sely womman chyde
Ferther than the story wol devyse.

Hir name, allas! is publisshed so wyde,
That for hir gilt it oughte y-now suffyse.
And if I mighte excuse hir any wyse, —
For she so sory was for hir untrouthe, —
I-wis, I wolde excuse hir yet for routhe.4

This extraordinary outburst works powerfully
upon our feelings. The case is hopeless. There is
no excuse but destiny, and destiny, though irre-
sistible, cannot be pleaded even in extenuation.
Such is the law, and Chaucer bows to its ever-
lasting antinomy, which, like Gidipus before him,
he does not pretend to reconcile.

Everywhere in the poem we find this idea of a
compelling destiny. It was Troilus’ fate to love; ?
he rode by Cressida’s palace on “his happy
d ay,” a

For which men say, may nought disturbed be
That shal betyden of necessite.?

“Swich is love,” so Cressida moralizes, “and eek
myn aventure.”* The oak topples over when it

1 vy. 1093-1099. 2 i. 520..
3 ii. 622-623. 4 ii. 742.
TROILUS II

receives “the falling stroke.”! Troilus apos-
trophizes the Parcze, who settled his life for him
before he was born: —
“O fatal sustren, which, er any clooth
Me shapen was, my destine me sponne!” 2

* says Pan-

és fall in the dice- "was
“Fortune that cast Troilus down, “and on her
wheel she set up Diomede,”’ but Fortune is only
the “executrix of weirds,” and the influences of
the stars govern us mortals as the herdsman
drives his cattle: —

“Pleasure comes and goes in love,’
ce

But O Fortune, executrice of wierdes,

O influences of thise hevenes hye!

Soth is that, under God, ye ben our hierdes,
Though to us bestes been the causes wrye.” 4

Most significant of all is the long meditation of
Troilus on foreknowledge and freedom of the
will in the Fourth Book.® This is from Boethius,
and Chaucer has been as much blamed for in-
serting it as Shakspere for making Hector quote
Aristotle. Doubtless the passage is inartistic
and maladjusted; but it is certainly not, as
some have called it, a digression. On the con-
trary, it is, in substance, as pertinent and oppor-
tune as any of Hamlet’s soliloquies. The situa-

a

|

1 ii. 1383. 2 iil, 733-734.
3 iv. 1098-1099. 4 iii. 617-620.
5 iv. 958 ff.
116 CHAUCER

tion is well-imagined. Cressida is to be sent to
the Grecian camp. Parliament has so decided,
and resistance would be vain. Troilus, in despair,
seeks the solitude of a temple, and prays to
almighty and omniscient Jove either to help him
or to let him die. Destiny, he feels, has overtaken
him, for there seems to be no likelihood that
Cressida, if once she joins her father, will ever
return to Troy. What can he do but pray? Per-
haps Jove will work a miracle to save him. And
as he meditates, in perplexity and distress, his
mind travels the weary maze of fate and free will,
and finds no issue, unless in the god’s omnipo-
tence.

All this, no doubt, is un-Trojan; but that is
a futile objection. We have already accepted
Troilus as a medieval knight and a medieval
lover, and we cannot take umbrage at his pray-
ing like a man of the middle ages, or arguing with
himself in the medizval manner. In details, to
be sure, the passage is open to criticism, and it
is undoubtedly too long; but in substance it is
dramatically appropriate, and it is highly signi-
ficant as a piece of exposition. For Troilus finds
no comfort in his meditation. Whatever clerks
may say, the upshot of the matter is that “all
that comth, comth by necessitee.” Whatever
is foreknown, must come to pass, and cannot
be avoided.
TROILUS 117

“And thus the bifalling
Of thinges that ben wist biforn the tyde,
They mowe nat been eschewed on no syde.”

The fate which darkens the loves of Troilus
and Cressida is strangely intensified (in our ap-
prehension of it) by the impending doom of '
Troy. This is no mere rhetorical analogue — no
trick of symbolism. Their drama is an integral
part of the great Trojan tragedy. They are :
caught in the wheels of that resistless mechan-
ism which the gods have set in motion for the
ruin of the Trojan race. This is a vital, deter-
mining fact in their history, as Chaucer under-
stands it, and he leaves us in no doubt as to its
intense significance. Calchas, we are told at the
outset, deserted Priam because Apollo had re-
vealed the doom of Troy: —

For wel wiste he, by sort, that ‘Troye sholde,
eee yes ben, ye, wolde whose ’nolde.

And again and again we are reminded, as the
tale proceeds, of the inevitable outcome of the
ten years’ war. Troilus is smitten with love
when he sees Cressida in the temple. It is the,
great festival of Palladion, a relic, Chaucer calls
it, in Christian phrase, in which the Trojans put
their trust above everything. They were cele-
brating “‘Palladion’s feast,” for they would not
intermit their devout observances, although
118 CHAUCER.

the Greeks had shut them in, “and their cite
biseged al aboute.” When Pandarus finds his
friend plunged in .a lover’s grief, despairing of
ever winning the least favor from the lady he
has seen in the temple, the gibe that he casts
at him, — for the nonce, to anger him and arouse
him from his stupor—is an accusation of
cowardice: — “Fear, perhaps, has prompted
you to pray and repent, as at the approach of
death.
“God save hem that biseged our toun;

And so can leye our iolitee in presse,
And bringe our lusty folk to hevinesse!”

When Pandarus first reveals‘ to Cressida_the
secret of Troilus’ love, he approaches the sub.
ject carefully, so as not to startle her. “I could
tell you something,” he cries, “that would make
you lay aside your mourning.” “Now, uncle
dear,” she answers, “tell it us, for love of God!
Is the siege over, then? I am frightened to death
of these Greeks.”

“As ever thryve I,”’ quod this Pandarus,

“Yet coude I telle a thing to do yow pleye

“Now, uncle dere,”’ quod she, “telle it us

For Goddes love! Is than thassege aweye?
I am of Grekes so ferd that I deye!’’!

Cressida felt the first thrill in her heart when she
saw Troilus riding through the street on his re-

yp
.

1 ii, 120-124.
TROILUS 119

turn from battle — his helm hewn to pieces, his
shield pierced with Grecian arrows and cut and
broken with the blows of swords and maces, —
and the people were all shouting in triumph as
he passed.

Always and everywhere we are oppressed by
the coming doom of the city. This it is that
prompts Calchas to beg the Greeks to give up
their prisoner Antenor in exchange for Cressida.
They need not hesitate, he argues; one Trojan
captive more or less is nothing to them, — the
whole city will soon be theirs. The time is near
at hand

“That fyr and flaumbe on al the toun shal sprede,
And thus shal Troye turne in asshen dede.”!

And, when Hector opposes the exchange, the
Trojan people, in a riotous parliament, shout
out their unanimous vote in its favor, and carry
the day. Hector was right, though he did not
know it for he was acting, not from policy
or superior foresight, but from an honorable
scruple: Cressida was not a prisoner, he con-
tended; and Trojans did not use to sell women.
And the people were fatally wrong. The “cloud
of error” hid their best interests from their dis-
cernment; for it was the treason of Antenor that
brought about the final catastrophe. It is, then,

1 iv, 118-119.
120 CHAUCER

the impendent doom of Troy that parts the
lovers; and from this time forward, there is no
separating their fate from the fate of the town.

When Cressida joins Calchas in the Grecian
camp, she means to return in a few days. She
has no doubt whatever that she can trick her
father, and she has won Troilus over to her
scheme. But she soon discovers that she has
matched her woman’s wit, not against her dotard
father merely, but against the doom of Troy. No
pretexts avail, not because Calchas suspects
her plot, but because he knows that the city is
destined to destruction. Nor does she dare to
steal away by night, lest she fall into the hands
of the savage soldiery. And finally, when Dio-
mede wooes her, and gets a hearing, though
little favor at first, his most powerful argument
is the certain and speedy fate of Troy. He does
not know that Cressida loves Troilus, — she
tells him that she is heart-whole, but for her
memory of her dead husband, — yet he cannot
believe that so fair a lady has left no lover behind
her, and he has seen her ever in sorrow. “Do
not,” he urges her, “spill a quarter of a tear for
any Trojan; for, truly, it is not worth while.
The folk of Troy are all in prison, as you may
see for yourself, and not one of them shall come
out alive for all the gold betwixen sun and sea!”

Thus, from first to last, the loves of Troilus
TROILUS I21

and Cressida are bound up with the inexorable
doom that hangs over the city. The fate of
Troy is their fate. Their story begins in the
temple of the Palladium; it is Calchas’ fore-
knowledge and the people’s infatuation that tear
them asunder; it is the peril of the town that
thwarts woman’s wit;- until Diomede subdues
the inconstant heart. The tragedy of character
grows out of the tragedy of situation. |

Yet, after all, the Troilus is a tragedy of
character — profoundly moving and profoundly
ethical. We must study the characters, therefore,
— Troilus, Cressida, Pandarus.

There is little to be said of Boccaccio’s Pan-\
daro, and almost as little of his Griseida. Both
are vivid and lifelike, but neither shows any
subtlety in the delineation. Pandaro is young,
careless, and loose in his morals. He appeals
for his justification to the code of love, but only
in a perfunctory way. Griseida is frankly amor-
ous, and her procrastination is quite pro forma:
it does not even amount to coquetry. Pandaro
sees through her pretences, and has slight rea-
son for treating them with respect. Troilo is
hardly distinguishable from Pandaro, except
in his misfortunes. Both are simply young men
about town, with the easy principles of their
class. If they changed places, we should not
know the difference. The winning of Griseida
122 CHAUCER

takes time, but requires slight craft or clever-
ness. Noman in his senses could expect her to
be faithful.

Let us not minimize Chaucer’s indebtedness
to Boccaccio. It is very great, in gross and in
detail. Without the Filostrato, the Troilus would
never have existed. But the characterization is
Chaucer’s own.

Nothing can be more absurd than to describe
Chaucer’s Troilus as a “lovesick boy.” On the
contrary, he is a gallant warrior, second only
to the unmatchable Hector in prowess. And he
is wise withal, except in scoffing at the god of
love. To have brought down such a victim with
a single shaft is convincing evidence of the might
of the god. “Take warning, all ye haughty
gentlemen who think you are your own masters.
Love can subdue you when he will. Wisdom is
no protection against his assaults. History is
full of examples ”: —

Men reden not that folk han gretter wit
Than such as han ben most with love ynome.

Troilus is jeering at lovers at the very moment
when the god smites him: —

“T have herd told,. pardieux, of your livynge,
Ye lovers, and your lewed observaunces,
And which a labour folk han in winnynge
Of love, and in the keping which doutances.
And when your prey is lost, wo and penaunces.
TROILUS 123

O verray fooles, nyce and blynd be ye!
Ther nis nat oon can war by othre be!”

And with that word, he gan caste up the browe,
Ascaunces, “Lo! is this nat wisly spoken?”

At which the God of Love gan looken rowe,
Right for despit, and shoop for to ben wroken.
He kydde anoon his bowe nas not broken;

For sodeynly he hitte him atte fulle:

And yet as proud a pekok can he pulle! 1

Here Chaucer is in full conformity with the doc-
trines of the chivalric system, and we must accept
the convention before we try to interpret the
character of his hero. Nothing is more axiomatic,
in this system, than the irresistible nature of
love. The god is perfectly arbitrary. The will
of a man has nothing to do with the matter. You
can no more explain why one person falls in love
with another than why this fish comes into the
weir rather than that. Such is Chaucer’s own
expressive comparison.”

The sufferings of Troilus are in complete
accord with the medieval system. Lovers were
expected to weep and wail, and to take to their
beds in despair. It was likewise an article of the
code that they should be afraid to declare their
passion. Humility was one of the cardinal virtues
of the chivalric system. The lover must feel
convinced of his unworthiness; he must regard

1 i, 197-210. ? iii, 33-35.
124 CHAUCER

it as inconceivable that his lady should stoop to
such as he.

Now all these dogmas are merely expressions,
in language different from ours, of facts that
no one challenges when couched in modern terms.
To ignore them is impossible; to translate them
into our conventions would be unendurably
prosaic. We must understand them in their

fourteenth-century attire, or refrain from judg-

ing the words or the actions of Chaucer’s drama-
tis personae. The convention is only the costume
in which emotion attires itself, and fashions
change. If Garrick were to come back, and play
Macbeth once more in knee-breeches and a tie-
wig, should we take the clothes for the char-
acter? We are preposterous when we laugh at a
medizval hero for his love-madness. One would
fancy that we never read the newspapers, or
that (like Chaucer in the House of Fame) we
had no tidings from our very neighbors. Give
me forty-eight hours, and I will translate every
medieval symptom into modern journalese,
and my version shall keep step with the daily
records.

Such madness, indeed, makes a definite cate-
gory among the kinds of insanity described by
the old physicians whom Chaucer specifies as
the masters of his Doctor in the Canterbury
Tales. It is what Burton calls “heroical love.”
TROILUS 125

The history of the term has very recently been
traced by Professor Lowes in a masterly essay.
It is the “‘lover’s malady of Hereos” which the
Knight mentions in his tale. There are two
points at issue, the medical and the chivalric.
What to the physician were symptoms — grief,
pallor, sleeplessness, incessant unmotivated ac-
tivity — became, in the chivalric system, du-
ties— ideals of emotion which the true lover must
live up to, and which the hypocrite takes pains
to counterfeit.

Chaucer’s mental attitude toward the whole
phenomenon is at once sympathetic and ironical.
He understood, for he was human, and human
nature was, to him, the most interesting and
moving subject in the world, — the only tangi-
ble thing, indeed, in a universe of mystery and
thwarted endeavor. There is a God, who gov-
erns us, and to whom we must submit; but he
is an object of faith. Human nature is the one
thing that we can comprehend; and to com-
prehend, with Chaucer, was to sympathize, for
he felt himself a part of all he saw. But Chaucer
was also the supreme ironist, the kindly man of
humor, with a touch of subtle melancholy which
is essential in such a temperament. If we could
imagine a being whose nature should be pure
reason, how absurd we should all appear to him!
“He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh:
126 CHAUCER

the Lord shall have them in derision.” But,
even to a mortal with keen perceptions, the
everlasting tangle of humanity, in its frenzied
pursuit of the unattainable, its undying hope,
uninstructed by experience, is a fit subject for
humorous contemplation. Otherwise, what shall
one do but despair and die?

Cressida is as lifelike as Boccaccio’s heroine,
but far more complex. Griseida is elemental:
her emotions are simple and straightforward,
and involve no problems. But Cressida is mar-
vellously subtilized, baffling alike to us and to her-
self. Quite as amorous as her prototype, she is of
a finer nature, and has depths of tender affec-
tion that no Griseida could fathom. Her love
for Troilus begins in that vague feeling of inter-
est, with a touch of sentiment, which is the
natural reflex of his love for her. Then, at the
moment of destiny, he rides by her window,
returning from battle, with the scars of conflict
on his shield and helmet, amid the shouts of the
exultant throng: —

His helm to-hewen was in twenty places —

That by a tissew heng, his bak bihynde.

His sheeld to-dasshed was with swerdes and maces,

In which men mighte many an arwe fynde

That thirled hadde horn and nerf and rynde.

And ay the peple cryde: “Here comth our ioye!
And, next his brother, holder-up of Troye!”!

1 ji, 638-644.
TROILUS 127

Something stirs in her soul,—too indistinct
for expression, even in thought. It is still sen-
timent, not passion; but it affects her strangely,
so that she asks herself in gentle wonder, “Am I
under a spell?”

That to hireself she seyde, “Who yaf me drinke?””

Here Chaucer is very explicit, for he is deter-
mined not to be misunderstood. “This was no
sudden passion,” he protests. “I do not mean
that she fell in love with Troilus all in a moment.
What I say is, that she began to like him, and
I have told you why; and thus, in time, and
by faithful service, he won her love, but in no
sudden way.”

Now mighte som envyous iangle thus, —
“This was a sodeyn love, how mighte it be

That she so lightly loved Troilus

Right for the firste sighte? ye, pardee!”

Now who-so seyth so, mote he never thee!

For every thing, a ginning hath it nede

Er al be wrought, with-outen any drede.

For I sey nought that she so sodeynly

Yaf him hir love, but that she gan enclyne
To lyke him first, and I have told yow why;
And after that, his manhod and his pyne
Maked love with-inne hir for to myne,

For which, by proces and by good servyse,
He gat hir love, and in no sodeyn wyse.

“Slowly, almost insensibly, under the sweet in-
128 CHAUCER

fluences of the stars in their courses, sentiment
develops into tender and passionate love. The
passion is inconstant; it shifts from Troilus to
Diomede: but the tenderness knows neither
chance nor change.

This softness of affection is, in truth, the
secret of Cressida’s enduring charm. Troilus
was never so dear as when she forsook him.
“Men say,” writes Chaucer, “that she gave
her heart to Diomede, but I cannot tell. She
was false, no doubt, for thus the record stands;
but she grieved so piteously that I would excuse
her sin, for very ruth, if that were possible!”
She makes no defence at the bar of her conscience,
— offers no plea in extenuation. Troilus is the
truest lover woman ever had, and, in the very
agony of her self-pity, looking forward to ever-
lasting shame, she lauds his faithfulness, and
vows to cherish his memory as’ long as she lives.
Infinite is the pathos of her valediction: —

But trewely, the storye telleth us

Ther made never woman moore wo
Than she, whan that she falsed Troilus.
She seyde, “Allas! for now is clene ago
My name of trouthe in love for ever-mo!
For I have falsed oon the gentilleste
That ever was, and oon the worthieste.

““Allas! of me, unto the worldes ende
Shal neyther ben ywriten nor y-songe
TROILUS 129

No good word; for thes bookes wol me shende.
O, rolled shal I ben on many a tonge!
Thurghout the world my belle shal be ronge.
And wommen moste wol haten me of alle.
Allas, that swich a cas me sholde falle!

“They wol seyn, in-as-much as in me is,
I have hem doon dishonour, weylawey!
Al be I not the firste that dide amis,
What helpeth that to doon my blame awey?
But sin I see ther is no betre wey,
And that to late is now for me to rewe,
To Diomede, algate, I wol be trewe.

“But, Troilus, sin I no better may,
And sin that thus departen ye and I,
Yet preye I God so yive you right good day,
As for the gentileste, trewely,
That ever I sey, to serven feythfully,
And best can ay his lady honour kepe.”
And with that word she brast anoon to wepe.

‘And, certes, you to haten shal I never;
And frendes love — that shul ye han of me,
And my good word, al mighte I liven ever;
And treweliche, I wolde sory be
For to seen you in adversite;
And giltelees, I woot wel, I you leve —
And al shal passe, and thus take I my leve.” 1

Everything passes, mutability is the order of the

world; and what is so deceitful as her own heart?
Yet she cannot quite despair. She has youth

and beauty, and Diomede is a gallant knight.

To him, at all events, she will be constant!

1 y. 1051-1085.
130 ~ CHAUCER

“But sin I see ther is no betre wey,
And that to late is now for me to rewe, —
To Diomede, algate, I wol be trewe!”’

Critics are strangely at variance in their judg-
ment of Cressida. The confusion results from a
failure to grasp, or to remember, the principles
of courtly love. Under this code, there was
nothing wrong in Cressida’s yielding to Troilus.
That, indeed, was a meritorious action. Her
sin consisted solely in her unfaithfulness, in
forsaking him for Diomede. On this point there
cannot be the slightest doubt. Courtly love, how-
ever it may be adorned with flowers of rheto-
ric, was not platonic. Its doctrines were never
thought to be reconcilable with Christian ethics.
It had its own morality, in which fidelity was
the highest virtue, infidelity the most heinous of
crimes. How far this code was a mere conven-
tion, and how far it was reduced to practice by
the ladies and gentlemen of the middle ages,
is a long and troublous debate, into which’ we
need not enter. The system was, at the very
least, sufficient basis for a novel; for it com-
manded a theoretical acceptance and was
closely connected with habits of conversation
and various social amusements. The moral
Gower, who was undeniably religious, adopted
the code for literary purposes in his Confessio
Amantis, with no thought of incongruity.
TROILUS 131

The theories of the chivalric code were known
to Chaucer’s readers, and they were immedi-
ately taken for granted on his announcement, in
the proem to the First Book, that the Troilus is
dedicated to love’s servants. However correct
their personal code of morals, they accepted
the ethics of chivalric love for the purposes
of this poem without demur, precisely as we
in modern times accept the barbarous and out-
worn code of revenge when we read Hamlet.
The lover must be violently affected by his pas-
sion. He must suffer torments and give way to
bitter grief. Yet he should not utterly despair,
for that would show lack of faith in the god.
As for the lady, she should not scorn her suitor,
but should regard his passion as entitling him
to consideration. Her self-respect requires her
to be distant, cold, and even cruel. She must not
yield too easily; but if she finds her lover cour-
teous, faithful, and discreet, she may properly
return his love when he has proved his fitness
for so great a reward.

These considerations clear up many diffi-
culties. Chaucer’s Cressida belonged to a social
system which accepted the chivalric code. She
knew its precepts well, and this knowledge is,
so to speak, the background on which her
thoughts and words and actions are all projected.
She is not easily won, but her surrender is con-
132 CHAUCER 7, 175
scious and voluntary; for she is neither ignorant

“nor ‘nor_unsophisticated. The dialect « of_chivalric

“love is as fa to her as it is -andarus, and and
she is never cajoled by by her her uncle’s high-f;

ne
, phrases. ‘To regard} her as an innocent girl, basely:

tric dious between, is to_mis-

         

      
   

ersonae. Pandarus uses plain language more
than once, and even his wiles are transparent

enough to one who understands the courtly doc-

trines. Cressida, though soft-hearted and of

a pliant disposition, is an uncommonly clever

woman, and she is mistress of her own actions.

Certainly she is in no sense the victim of a plot.

When Pandarus invites her to pay him a visit,

she asks, in a whisper, “if Troilus is there.”?

Pandar lies, of course, but it is perfectly clear

that she does not believe his protestations. And~
later, to clinch the matter, we have her answer

to Troilus: “Dear heart, if I had not yielded long

ago, I should not -now be here.”

“Ne hadde I er now, my swete herte dere,
Ben yolde, ywis, I were now not here!”’?
She glories in her love, and her happiness is
unclouded by regret. Shame and repentance
would have been unintelligible terms. She has
acted in obedience to her own code, and our

ethical system has no status in the case.
1 ii, 569. 2 iii, 1210-1211.
TROILUS 133

Cressida, then, is not a victim, as some have
thought. Just as little is she, as others hold, a
scheming adventuress. This view of her char-
acter is, indeed, so patently erroneous as to
need no refutation. True, she keeps her eyes
open, and takes no leaps in the dark. She has
also the excellent mental habit of looking at a
subject or a proposition from several points of
view. Finally, she is a lively conversationalist,
the best company in the world. These are good
traits, however, and, combined as they are
with a tender and affectionate heart, an emo-
tional nature, and a certain timidity in the face
of possible danger, they vastly increase her
feminine charm. It is ridiculous to accuse her
of insincerity in her love for Troilus. To be
sincere, it is not necessary to be either solemn
or stupid. The allegation that she encourages
Troilus because he is a prince, and with a view
to securing his protection,— in a word, from
selfish regard to her personal interests — rests
upon a strange misunderstanding. When she
turns her mind to these considerations of his
rank and her own precarious position as the
daughter of a traitor, she is merely seeking to
justify to her reason the interest she is beginning
to feel in her gallant lover, — for she knows full
well that it may ripen into love. The subter-
fuges by which, at a later time, she expects to
134 CHAUCER

induce her father to assent to her return, a
simply pathetic in their futility. They ser
the double purpose of proving her love fi
Troilus, since Chaucer says they were we
meant, and of displaying the weakness of
woman’s wit (or a man’s either, for that ma
ter) when it sets itself up in opposition to tl
decree of the gods.

Still another interpretation of Cressida’s cha
acter finds that it deteriorates suddenly in tt
latter part of the poem, and explains this chan;
either as the logical result of sin, or as the w
steadiness of Chaucer’s portraying hand.

To all this, the answer is a flat denial, bot
general and specific. First, there has been n
sin — that is, no sin against the god of lov
whose commandments alone are the ethics her
applicable. Let us test this judgment by a
hypothetical case. Suppose Cressida had a:
sented to Troilus’ plan to resist the parliament’
decree and had been slain in the insurrectior
Why, she would have been love’s martyr, -
she would have won a place in the Legen
of Cupid’s Saints! Sin begins when she wavei
in fidelity, when she lends an ear to the woc
ing of “this sudden Diomede.” And secondly
there is no deterioration; or, to take the othe
point of view, there is neither inconsistenc
nor unsteadiness in Chaucer’s portrayal of hi
TROILUS 135

heroine. As Cressida is at the beginning, such
is she to the end; amorous, gentle, affectionate,
and charming altogether, but fatally impres-
sionable and yielding. Her strength of will is
no match for her inconstant heart. “ Tendre-
herted,” Chaucer calls her, “slyding of corage.”
The Filostrato is the tragedy of Troilus; Chaucer
has made it the tragedy of Cressida also, —this
““sely woman,” who could not withstand her
nature, but who was so sorry for her untruth
that he would forgive her if he could. The re-
cord stands, punishment must follow; but there
shall be no rebuking words from the judge who
passes sentence.

Ne me ne list this sely woman chyde,

Forther than the story wil devyse!

Cressida is not a simple character, like the
elemental Griseida of Boccaccio; but her in-
consistencies are those of human nature. There
is one Cressida, not two; or rather, there are
two in one, — not a type, but an individual, uni-
fied by the interplay of her very contradictions.

This effect of complex unity in Cressida’s char-
acter is heightened, with extraordinary subtlety,
by a trait which I almost fear to touch, lest I
blur its delicate clearness with a critic’s clumsy
finger. It is the trait of religious skepticism.
Her father is Apollo’s priest, but she has scant
reverence for his sacred office, and little faith

é
136 CHAUCER

in the revelations that the deity vouchsafes.
Oracles, she protests, are ambiguous always;
the gods speak ever in crafty double meanings,
telling twenty lies for one truth. Perhaps, in-
deed, there are no gods at all, save those that
shape themselves in the dark corners of man’s
timid soul. “Primus in orbe deos fecit timor.”

“Ek drede fond first goddes, I suppose.” !

I am very anxious not to be misunderstood. This
is doubt, not dogma. Cressida is fighting with
fate, not laying down the law. Torn from her
lover by external forces that she cannot resist,
she swears to return, in vows that “shake the
thronéd gods,”’ but it is not to the gods that she
trusts in her exigency. A woman’s wit is to be
wiser than the powers that govern the world.

It is a very pregnant manifestation of Chau-
cer’s feeling for the irony of life and circum-
stance when he makes Pandarus the exponent of
chivalric love. Here we must walk circumspectly.
Before attempting analysis of character, we
should determine externals; for it is as easy to get
Pandarus wrong as to misconceive the position
of Polonius in the Danish state.

Pandarus is a Trojan nobleman, next in rank,
it appears, to princes of the blood and on in-
timate terms with the whole royal family. He

1 iv. 1408.
TROILUS 137

is the head of a powerful clan, which he offers
to rally to Troilus’ assistance in preventing the
exchange of Cressida for Antenor. _~
Boccaccio’s Pandaro is a young gallant, and
a cousin of Cressida’s; Chaucer’s Pandarus is her
uncle, and coumidecsbly olderthan Troilus. The
change is, of course, deliberate, and by its means
Chaucer is enabled to raise his Pandar from a
typical, though lifelike, figure to one of the
most remarkable of all comedy characters. We
must take care, however, not to exaggerate the
difference in age between the friends; for Troilus
is not a boy, and middle age in the fourteenth
century was ten years younger than it is to-day.
It will never do, with William Rossetti, to call
Pandar a “battered man of the world.” He likes
to talk, and with good reason, for he is the very
demon of expressiveness. He has wit at will and
humor inextinguishable. Mankind has been his
study; life is his delightful privilege. His con-
versation is full of point and spirit, shifting con-
tinually from grave to gay, from game to earn-
est, easy, graceful, alert, never flagging, always
at the highest tension, but with no sense of
strain. Man of the world he is, assuredly, but
the world has not “battered” him. He is
gallant and high-spirited, himself a lover and
a servant of the god with all his heart. He
might even be a sentimentalist, if he were not
138 CHAUCER

a humorist and a man of action. He is never
more sincere than when he jests most recklessly,
There is nothing cynical about him, except at
times the turn of his epigrams.

This Pandarus, the arch-humorist, who
preaches of the duties and the rewards of lovers
like a devotee, has had no luck in his own affair.
He has paid court for years to an obdurate lady,
and his notorious sufferings have made him the
laughingstock of his friends. Yet, despite his
own miserable failure, he is radiant with opti-
mism. “Many a man has served his lady for.
twenty years without so much as a kiss. Ought
he, therefore, to fall into despair, or to abandon
his allegiance to the god? No, no! He should
rejoice that he can serve the dear queen of
his heart, and he should count it a guerdon
merely to serve her, a thousandfold greater than
he deserves!”

“Thou mayst allone here wepe and crye and knele;
But, love a womman that she woot it nought,
And she wol quiten that thou shalt not fele.
Unknowe, unkist; and lost that is unsought.
What! many a man hath love ful dere ybought
Twenty winter that his lady wiste,

That never yet his lady mouth he kiste!

“What! shulde he therfore fallen in despeyr?
Or be recreaunt for his owne tene?
Or sleen himself, al be his lady fair?
Nay, nay! but ever in oon be fresh and grene,
TROILUS 139

To serve and love his dere hertes quene,
And thenke it is a guerdon hir to serve
A thousand fold more than he can deserve.” !

_Pandarus bears his affliction with a jaunty
air; “a jolly woe” he calls it, “‘a pleasant sor-
row”; and he never takes offence at jests. “Good
morning, uncle,” says Cressida roguishly, “how
far have you come forward in the dance of
love?” “By Jove!” he cries, catching up the
trope, “I always go hopping along in the rear;
I cannot keep up with the other dancers!” We
must not refuse, however, to take his passion
seriously. Chaucer saw the danger, and he has
put the facts beyond the reach of doubt.?

Pandarus has the distinctive quality of the
pure humorist: he perceives the true comic ele-
ment in himself, that is, in his own standing
toward his character and environment, his the-
ories and his acts. He has the gift to see him-
self, not, perhaps, as others see him, but as they
might see him if they were Pandarus; and he is,
therefore, the object of his own sympathetic
amusement. Thus he is a rare but perfectly hu-
man compound of enthusiasm and critical acu-
men. To take him for a cynic is a pretty flagrant
piece of critical aberration.

Pandarus is Troilus’ friend and Cressida’s
uncle. This double relation is the sum and sub-

1 i. 806-819. 2 ii. 50-70.
140 CHAUCER

stance of his tragedy, for it involves him in an
action that sullies his honor to no purpose. Since
Cressida is faithless, he not only labors in vain
but ruins his friend by the very success that his.
plans achieve. ‘This humorous worldly enthusi- ,
_“ast has two ideals, friendship and faith in love.
To friendship he sacrifices his honor, only, it
seems, to make possible the tragic infidelity of
Cressida, which destroys his friend. ‘The sys-
tem of courtly love had neither comfort nor
‘excuse for Pandarus. Though Cressida’s love for
Troilus was blameless, or even meritorious, under
the code, yet that same code, in its inconsistency, —
held no justification for the go-between. And,
after all, Cressida is not persuaded by Pandarus,
but by her own temperament. She reads her
uncle easily, and acts as she will, no matter ‘
what he may say. Herein consists the subtlest
of all the ironies in this amazing document.
“The fly sat on the chariot wheel, and cried,
‘What a dust do I raise!’”

andarus is Troilus’ friend. The middle ages
liked to exemplify virtues and vices to the last
gasp, as in the case of Griselda’s patience, even
if the conflict of duties was ignored. Pandarus,
however, is too individual and lifelike to take
sanctuary in a parable, though his conduct
might well entitle him to some such refuge. It
was an old theory, which Lelius repudiated
TROILUS 141

with horror, that friendly devotion should know
neither limit nor scruple: —si voluisset, paruis-
sem. ‘There was some excuse for this view in the
middle ages, when men changed sides with a
light heart and personal loyalty was much needed
as a steadying element in politics and society.
In Pandarus, no doubt, the ideal has gone astray
in the application, but there is something pa-
thetic in the intensity with which he errs. It is,
in truth, the monomania of personal devotion, ..
and that too on the part of a humorous ironist,
who cherishes few illusions. “I have,” he de-
clares, “in true or false report, in wrong and
right, loved thee all my life.” One should re-
member, too, that he feared Troilus would die
or go mad, and that the experience of every
day proves that his fear, though we scoff at it
as a literary convention, was by no means un-
reasonable. In his desperate fidelity to his pas-
Si friendshi arus cares nothing for
himself. “Resist the king and the parliament,”
he cries, “and carry Cressida off in spite of their
teeth. I will stand by you, though I and all my
kindred shall be slain and lie dead, like dogs, in
the street!”
“TI wol myself be with thee at this dede,
Though ich and al my kyn upon a stounde

Shulle in a strete as dogges liggen dede,
Thurgh-girt with many a wyd and bloody wounde!” *

1 iv. 624-627.
142 CHAUCER

This is not:rhetoric; it is stark realism. Chaucer
and all of his readers had seen slain men lying
in the street like dead dogs.

From the beginning, the Troilus professes to
be a poem in praise of the God of Love and in
celebration of his wondrous powers. Chaucer
is, so he avers, a mere outsider in such things;
but he is the serous servorum of the divinity,
and he hopes that his work may be of some use
to Love’s faithful disciples.

Troilus is a scoffer at first. He calls the de-
votees of the courtly system “fools,” and the
god of love “St. Idiot, the lord of fools.” ‘Your
order is well-ruled;” he cries in contempt, “you
get not good for good; but scorn for faithful ser-
vice.” Later he becomes a convert to love’s
religion, and the great exemplar to all who wor-
ship the god. Cressida, at the very moment of
renouncing him, calls him the most faithful of
lovers; and “‘as true as Troilus” was a proverb
for hundreds of years. .

But, as we read on, we become aware that
something is amiss. For there are no happy
. lovers in the story. Pandarus himself is a suf-
ferer from unrequited affection; CEnone has
been abandoned by Paris; Helen has brought’
the city to the edge of the abyss; Cressida is false
to Troilus, and Diomede, we foresee, will scarcely
be true to her.
TROILUS 143

The tone does not change. The faithful de-
votion of Troilus is represented as the highest
of virtues, and the treason of Cressida as the
most heinous of crimes, still from the point of
view of the chivalric code. Yet we come more
and more to suspect that Troilus was right in
his first opinion; that the principles of the code
are somehow unsound; that the the god of love i is

not a master whom his servants | can trust.
And then, suddenly, at the end of the ‘poem,
when the death of Troilus has been chronicled,
and his soul has taken its flight to the seventh
sphere, the great sympathetic ironist drops his

mask, and we find that he has once more been

studying human life from the point of view of a

ruling passion, and that he has no solution except

to repudiate the unmoral and unsocial system

which he has pretended to uphold.

“Such was the end of Troilus, despite his honor
and his royal estate. Thus began his loving of
Cressida, and in this wise he died at the hands
of Achilles. O ye young men and maidens,
in whom love grows with your growth, and
strengthens with your strength, leave the van-
ity of the world and cast up the visage of your
hearts toGod! Set your love upon Christ, who
died for love of you, for I dare well assure you
that he will never betray the heart that trusts
him.”
144 CHAUCER

Swich fyn hath, lo, this Troilus for love,

Swich fyn hath al his grete worthinesse;

Swich fyn hath his estat real above,

Swich fyn his lust, swich fyn hath his noblesse;
Swich fyn hath false worldes brotelnesse.

And thus bigan his lovinge of Criseyse,

As I have told, and in this wyse he deyde.

O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she,

In which that love up groweth with your age,
Repeyreth hoom from worldly vanitee,

And of your herte up-casteth the visage

To thilke God that after his image

Yow made, and thinketh al nis but a fayre —
This world, that passeth sone as floures fayre.

And loveth him, the which that right for love
Upon a cros, our soules for to beye,

First starf, and roos, and sit in hevene a-bove;
For he nil falsen no wight, dar I seye,

That wol his herte al hoolly on him leye.

And sin he best to love is, and most meke,
What nedeth feyned loves for to seke?!

This manifestly involves an utter abandon-
ment of the attitude so long sustained, and
therein lies its irresistible appeal. The Troilus is
not milk for babes; but it is a great work of art,
and as such, I believe, inevitably ethical. It is
our own fault, not Chaucer’s, if we miss the

application.
Yet, even after this parting, moving as it is,

and sincerely expressive of the poet’s nature,

1 vy. 1828-1848.
TROILUS 145

Chaucer cannot say farewell without turning his
irony upon himself.

Lo here, of payens corsed olde rytes,

Lo here, what alle hir goddes may availle;

Lo here, these wrecched worldes appetytes;

Lo here, the fyn and guerdon for travaille

Of Iove, Appollo, of Mars, of swich rascaille!

Lo here, the forme of olde clerkes speche
In poetrye, if ye hir bokes seche!

Who am I, that I should exhort you to turn aside
from the follies of love and the vanities of human
endeavor? A mere student, poring over my
ancient books and repeating, as so many have
done before me, the wonderful and transitory
things that they record; a versifier, humbly trac-
ing the footsteps of Virgil, and Ovid, and Homer,
and Lucan, and Statius: —

Lo here, the forme of olde clerkes speche
In poetrye, if ye hir bokes seche!

And so the Troilus closes, with a dedication to
Strodé and Gower and a prayer to the Triune

God: —

Thou oon, and two, and threé, eterne on lyve,.
That regnest ay in three, and two, and oon,
Uncircumscript, and al mayst circumscryve,
Us from visible and invisible foon

Defende, and to thy mercy, everichoon,

So make us, Iesus, for thy mercy digne,

For love of mayde and moder thyn benigne!
Vv

THE CANTERBURY TALES —I

HE Canterbury Tales exists in fragments,
which no one has ever succeeded in fitting
together. Different manuscripts arrange them in
different ways, and modern scholars have ex-
hibited much ingenuity in trying to make out the
right order of the several stories. Of late, there
has been a disposition amongst the learned to
believe either that Chaucer made more than
one tentative arrangement, or that he never
settled the matter in his mind at all. These are
questions, however, that need not now detain us.
The plan is clear enough for our immediate pur-
poses. We may profitably study the tales in
groups, without regard to saves problems of
order.
We know, at least, that the series begins with
' the Knight, the Miller, the Reeve, and the Cook,
- and ends with the Manciple and the Parson.
Within these extremities, we can make out sev-
eral groups, each of which holds together. One
of the longest of these begins with the Shipman’s
Prologue and ends with the Nun’s Priest’s
Epilogue, containing the tales of the Shipman,
THE CANTERBURY TALES 147

the Prioress, Chaucer himself (namely, two, Sir
Thopas and the Melibee), the Monk, and the
Nun’s Priest. This group is admirably organized.
Another, still longer, which is called the e Marriage)
Group, begins with the Wife of Bath’s Prologue
and _ends with the Franklin’s Tale: the order is
Wife, Eriat, Sumner, Clerk, Merchant, Squire,
F ‘ranklin, The Phy Physician’s Tale and the Par-
doner’s also form a group; so do the Second
Nun’s and the Canon’s Yeoman’s. The Tale of
the Man of Law stands, in a manner, by itself,
with an elaborate introduction which makes it
clear that it was to begin the day. By common
consent it is placed after the Cook’s fragment. It
will not be possible, in the limited time at my
disposal, to consider every group of tales [Lshall
make a selection, therefore, with a view to illus-
trate Chaucer’s art in the two main points of
character and dram2tic method.

There has been a rather active discussion, for
more than a hundred years, concerning the prob-
able source of Chaucer’s scheme of the Canter-
bury Pilgrimage. The result is a non liquet., Sev-
eral possible models have been pointed out, and
others are turning up continually. The pros and
cons in every case have been argued with learning
and ingenuity. So far as I can see, however, the
advocates of each new source, though they have
found it easy to demolish the arguments of their
148 CHAUCER

predecessors, have not been quite so successful in
constructing acceptable theories of their own.
There is, then, no single collection of tales to
which we can point, with any confidence, as
that which gave Chaucer the hinta

This condition of things should not surprise us.
It is what we ought to expect, and the inference
is easy. The plan of attaching stories together so -
as to make a collection is very old, very wide-
spread, and very obvious. It was a traditional
‘bit of technique, both in literature and in folk-
lore, ages before Chaucer was born, and in all
four quarters of the world. And furthermore, it
was a bit of technique that accorded with actual
practice. What could people do, in old times, but
tell stories, when they were assembled and had
plenty of leisure? The practice, indeed, has not
died out, even in these days of novels and news-
papers, and it was universal and inevitable,
under all sorts of circumstances, when these
time-killing but unsociable inventions did not
yet exist. Chaucer’s problem was not, to hunt
through literature for an idea which confronted
him, unsought, at every turn in life. That he
knew collections ef tales may be taken for
granted; that he often followed convention is a
matter of course? He had some knowledge of
the literary device, and much knowledge of the
immemorial habit of mankind.
THE CANTERBURY TALES 149

That the particular frame which Chaucer
adopted resembles this or that frame which pre-
ceded it in literary history, signifies nothing —
except that some things in life are more or less
like other things. Chaucer had nofneed to bor-
row or to invent: he needed only to observe. His
genius appears, in the first place, in making a
good choice among his several observations, in
perceiving the advantages of one particular
frame over all others. Pilgrims were as familiar
sights to Chaucer as commercial travellers are to.
us. There is not one chance in a hundred that he ©

‘had not gone on a Canterbury pilgrimage him-
self. And pilgrims did, for a fact, while away the
time in story-telling. Newton did not learn a
apples fall by reading treatises on pomology.

The most tantalizing of all the parallels, by the
way, is Sercambi’s Novelle, for which the frame.
is likewise a pilgrimage. But it is hard to get
an historical point of contact. Dates are right
enough, and geography does not interfere. It is
even conceivable that Chaucer and Sercambi
met in Italy, though there is no evidence either
way. The difficulties are less tangible than dates
and places; but, such as they are, they cannot
be surmounted. Yet, after all, Sercambi’s scheme
is a precious document in the ease, though not
in proof of imitation. What it does show, is that
it was possible for a writer of far less originality
150 CHAUCER

than Chaucer to hit upon the device of a pil-
grimage as a convenient frame for a collection
of stories.
Before the idea of a pilgrimage occurred to
_him, Chaucer had twice undertaken to compose.
a series of tales. The results lie before us in the
Tragedies, afterwards assigned to the Monk, and
the Legend of Cupid’s Saints, otherwise known
as Good Women. Both works exhibit, in the
most striking fashion, the orderly habits of
medieval literature. They likewise prove, be-
yond cavil, the docility of Chaucer himself, the
instinctive readiness with which he deferred to
‘technical authority and bowed his neck to the
rhetorical yoke. The lesson is salutary. We per-
ceive, in this great poet, not a vast, irregular,
untaught genius, — an amiable but terrible in-
fant, impatient of regulation, acknowledging no
laws of structure, guided by no canons of criti-
cism. Quite the contrary! Chaucer was a con-
*scientious student of literary form. He sub-
mitted with patient eagerness to the precepts of
his teachers. Schematism was the governing |
principle of their instruction, and he had no wish
to rebel. Thus he got the training which enabled
him, when the time came, to give free rein to his
vivacious originality without losing his self-
control.
From these considerations there emerges a rule
THE CANTERBURY TALES 151

of judgment that is of some value for our guid-
ance in interpreting Chaucer’s final masterpiece,
the Canterbury Tales. It may be stated in the_
simplest language: Chaucer always knew what he
was about. When, therefore, he seems tobe violat- |
ing dramatic fitness, — as in the ironical tribute of
the Clerk to the Wife of Bath, or the monstrous
Cynicism of the the Pardoner’ s confessions, — we
must look to our steps. Headlong inferences are”
_dangerous. We are dealing with a great literary
artist who had been through the schools. The
chances are that such details are not casual
flourishes. Somehow, in all likelihood, they fall
into decorous subordination to his main design.
This design, as we know, is a pilgrimage to
Canterbury. I have spoken of it, for convenience,
asa “frame.” That, indeed, is the light in which
it is commonly regarded. We read each tale by
itself, as if it were an isolated unit; often, indeed,
_as if Chaucer were telling it in his own person.
At most, we inquire, in a half-hearted fashion,
whether it is appropriate to the character of the
Knight, or the Sumner, or the Franklin. Very.
seldom do we venture to regard the several stor-
ies from the dramatic point of view. Yet that is
_manifestly our paramount duty. |
Many and great were the advantages that
Chaucer discerned in his plot of a Canterbury
pilgrimage. They stand out in sharp contrast
152 CHAUCER

against the monotonous background of his two
earlier experiments, the Tragedies and the
Legend, to which we may return for a moment.
Each of these is unified not by structure but
by subject matter. The unity, therefore, is not
organic, but mechanical. In the Tragedies, — for
the idea of which Chaucer was indebted in equal
measure to the Romance of the Rose and Boccac-
cio’s De Casibus, — we have a number of som-
bre sketches, rather declamatory than narrative,
of exalted personages whom Fortune brought
low. In the Good Women,—a singular cross
between the Legenda Aurea and Ovid’s Heroides,
with a charming prologue, which reverts for its
machinery to the French love-visions, — we
read the lives of famous ladies of ancient days
who suffered death, or worse, for love of faithless
men. In both works the plan is absolutely rigid.
Variety in form or matter is excluded by the con-
vention adopted (tragedy, in the one; legend in
the other) and by the limitations of the theme.
Movement is impossible, for there is no connec-
tion between the parts. Dramatic presentation
is not attempted, or even thought of, all the
stories being told by one person, the poet himself.
Turn now to the Canterbury Tales, and the
changeis startling. It results, in the last analysis,
from Chaucer’s adopting the scheme of a Canter-
bury pilgrimage. The stories are no longer alike
THE CANTERBURY TALES 153

in form or subject, nor are they all in one key.

There is infinite variety, because they are told by'
a variety of persons. Every reader may discover,
something to his taste, both in style and sub-
stance, as Chaucer himself protests in his apol-
ogy for the Miller, “who tolde his cherles tale in
his manere.” Those who do not fancy low com-
edy may find enough of polite history, as well as

of morality and religion.

 

 

And therfore, who-so list it nat yheere,

Turne over the leef, and chese another tale;
For he shal finde ynowe, both grete and smale,
Of storial thing that toucheth gentillesse,

And eek moralitee and holinesse.

Blameth nat me, if that ye chese amis!!

But this is not all. Chaucer’s adoption of a
Canterbury pilgrimage was not a mere excuse for
story-telling. Most readers, I am aware, treat:
this great masterpiece simply as a storehouse of
fiction, and so do many critics. Yet everybody
feels, I am sure, that Chaucer was quite as much
interested in the Pilgrims themselves as in their -
several narratives. This, no doubt, is what Dry-
den had in mind when he wrote, comparing
Chaucer with Ovid: “Both of them understood
the manners, under which name I comprehend
the passions, and, in a larger sense, the descrip-
tions of persons, and their very habits. For an

1 A. 3176-3181.
154 CHAUCER i
example, I see Baucis and Philemon as perfectly
before me, as if some ancient painter had drawn
them; and all the pilgrims in the Canterbury
Tales, — their humors, their features, and the
very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped with
them at the Tabard in Southwark; yet even there
too the figures in Chaucer are much more lively,
and set in a better light.”

I am much deceived if Dryden is not here
treading on the verge of the proposition that the
Canterbury Tales is, to all intents and purposes,

Human Comedy. Certainly he is calling our
attention to something that distinguishes Chau-
cer’s work from every collection of stories that
preceded it. It was much, as we have seen, that
Chaucer had the judgment, among the infinite
doings of the world, to select a pilgrimage, and to
parcel out his tales to the miscellaneous com-
pany that met at the Tabard on the way to Can-
terbury. It was more, far more, that he had the
genius to create the Pilgrims, endowing each of
them with an individuality that goes much be-
yond the typical. If we had only the Prologue,
we might, perhaps, regard the Pilgrims as types.
The error is common, and venial. But we must
not stop with the Prologue: we must go on to the
play. The Pilgrims are not static: they move and
live. The Canterbury Pilgrimage is, whether
Dryden meant it or not, a Human Comedy, and '
THE CANTERBURY TALES 155

the Knight and the Miller and the Pardoner and
the Wife of Bath and the rest are the dramatis
personae. The Prologue itself is not merely a
prologue: it is the first act, which sets the per-
sonages in motion. Thereafter, they move by’
virtue of their inherent vitality, not as tale-tell-
ing puppets, but as men and women. From,
this point of view, which surely accords with-
Chaucer’s intention, the Pilgrims do not exist
for the sake of the stories, but vice versa. Struc-
turally regarded, the stories are merely long.
speeches expressing, directly or indirectly, the:
characters of the several persons. They are more
or less comparable, in this regard, to the solilo-
quies of Hamlet or Iago or Macbeth. But they
are not mere monologues, for each is addressed
to all the other personages, and evokes reply and
comment, being thus, in a real sense, a part of
the conversation.

Further, — and this is a point of crucial signi-
ficance, — the action of the plot, however simple,
involves a great variety of relations among the
Pilgrims. They are brought together by a com-
mon impulse, into a casual and impermanent
association, which is nevertheless, for the time
being, peculiarly intimate. They move slowly
along the road, from village to village and inn to
inn, in groups that are ever shifting, but ever
forming afresh. Things happen to them. They
156 CHAUCER

come to know each other better and better.
Their personalities act and react. Friendships
combine for the nonce. Jokes are cracked, like
the Host’s on the Pardoner, which are taken
\amiss. Smouldering enmities of class or profes-
sion, like that between the Sumner and the Friar,
which was proverbial, blaze into flaming quar-
rels. Thus the story of any pilgrim may be af-
fected or determined, — in its contents, or in the
manner of the telling, or in both, — not only by
his character in general, but also by the circum-
stances, by the situation, by his momentary rela-
tions to the others in the company, or even by
something in a tale that has come before. We
lose much, therefore, when we neglect the so-
called prologues and epilogues, and the bits of
‘conversation and narrative that link the tales
together. Many more of these would have been
supplied if Chaucer had not left his work in so
fragmentary a condition; but such as we have
are invaluable, both for their own excellence, and
for the light they throw upon the scope and
details of the great design.

Chaucer’s contemporaries were quite aware
of the dramatic nature of the Pilgrimage and the
significance of the Pilgrims as characters in the
comedy. Their appreciation is put beyond a
peradventure by that highly interesting docu-
ment, the Tale of Beryn,— written not long
THE CANTERBURY TALES 157

after Chaucer’s death by an anonymous versi-
fier for insertion in the Canterbury scheme.
The Beryn itself, which is assigned to the Mer-
chant as the first story on the return journey,
need not detain us. The prologue, however, Be
worth a moment’s noticet=

This Asscribes the arrival of the party at
the Checker inn at Canterbury, and their pro-
ceedings, grave and gay, until they set out for
London. Much space is given to the adventures
of the Pardoner with a tapster, which result in
his losing some money and getting his head
broken. The scene in the cathedral is more edi-
fying, and equally vivid. Particularly diverting
is the behavior of the Miller and others of his
sort. While the Knight and his compeers go
straightway to the shrine of Saint Thomas to
pray and make offering, these idle fellows stroll
about the church, staring at the stained-glass
windows, misinterpreting the scenes therein de-
picted, and pretending, like gentlemen, to
blazon the coats of arms. The Host calls them
to order and directs them to the martyr’s tomb.
By-and-by the company scatter, to see the
sights of the town or to call upon their friends,
while the Wife of Bath and the Prioress walk
about the inn garden. They reassemble for sup-
per, at which the Host acts as marshal. “

All this is a poor substitute for what Chaucer
158 - CHAUCER

would have given us, if he had lived to finish
his work. But there is some merit in the per-
formance, and it certainly evinces a lively sense
of the actuality of Chaucer’s Pilgrims. The
author of Beryn did not mistake the Canter-
"bury Tales for a volume of disconnected stories.
He recognized the work for what it really is —
a micro-cosmography, a little image of the great
wworld..

Travel, as everybody knows, is for the time

eing a mighty leveller of social distinctions,
particularly when its concomitants throw the
voyagers together while at the same time iso-
ating them from the rest of the world. Think
f the smoking-room of a small steamship with
only three or four dozen passengers. These men
might live side by side in one row of brick houses
for a hundred years and scarcely know each
other’s faces. Break the shaft, kegp them at sea
for an extra week, and, if they are n’t careful and
if the cigars hold out, they will empty their
hearts to one another with an indiscretion that
may shock them to death when they remember
it ashore.

Now an organized company of Pilgrims — and
Chaucer’s Pilgrims had effected an organization
at Harry Bailly’s inn — were brought together
in a similar intimacy, which was made especially
close by the religious impulse that actuated them
THE CANTERBURY TALES 159

all in common. We must not be skeptical about
the genuineness of this impulse, merely because
some of the Pilgrims are loose fish, or because
they do not always act and speak with propriety.
If we let this consideration much affect us, it
must be either because we are uninstructed in
medizval manners, or because we apply our
own religion to life in a deplorably wooden
fashion. This score and a half of miscellaneous
Englishmen and Englishwomen were fulfilling
the vow they had made to St. Thomas in sick-
ness or danger or misfortune. However diverse
their stations in life, their moral codes, or the sin-
cerity of their religion in general, — and in all
these points there is variety so rich as almost to
bewilder, — here they were at one. The saint
had helped them, and they were gratefully doing
their duty in return.

But the occasion was not only religious, it .'
was social. Listen to the Host, who has enter- .
tained hundreds of such companies at the-
Tabagd Inn: —

Ye goon to Caunterbury — God yow speede!
The blisful martir quite yow your meede!
And, wel I woot, as ye goon by the weye,
Ye shapen yow to talen and to pleye;

For, trewely, confort ne mirth is noon,

To riden by the wey doumb as a stoon

The occasion, then, was both religious and
social; and the various Pilgrims, knowing that
160 CHAUCER

all men are equal in God’s sight, were not indis-
posed to sink their differences of rank for the
nonce, so far, at least, as to laugh and talk to-
gether without the stand-offish punctilio of
rigid etiquette.

Chaucer’s own birth and station, as I reminded
you in my opening lecture, had brought him
into easy contact with both high and low; and
his experiences as burgher, soldier, courtier, of-
ficeholder, and diplomatic agent had given him
unparalleled opportunities for observation, which
his humorously sympathetic temperament had
impelled him to use to the best advantage. Man-
kind was his specialty. He was now a trained
and practised writer, with a profound sense of
the joy and beauty, the sadness and irony, of
human life. He had already studied the whole
world from the point of view of two of the ruling

passions:— the desire for reputation (in the
‘House of Fame) and passi love (in the
Troilus). In both of eae en however,
his approach had been, so to speak, oblique or
indirect: by symbolism or allegory in the one;
in the other, by way of a return to the days of
old. Now, at length, in this Canterbury Pil-
grimage, with its nine-and-twenty contemporary
human creatures, “he has-recognized his crown-
‘ing opportunity. He will show life as it is; he
will paint “what he sees”! But I am wrong. It
THE CANTERBURY TALES 161

is not showing (or exhibition); it is not paint-
ing (or delineation): it is dramatic_action. And
so he makes himself one of the Pilgrims, in
order that we may understand that they are
as real as he is. Chaucer existed, thus we inS
stinctively syllogize, and therefore the Prior
existed, and the Reeve, and the Manciple, and
the Monk, and the Knight, and Harry Bailly,
the incomparable innkeeper, to whémi, and not.
to Geoffrey Chaucer, the conduct of the drama is
entrusted. Chaucer reports, but Harry Bailly
is the dynamic agent. The action of the piece
is largely due to his initiative, and to him are
referable the details again and again. Sometimes,
to be sure, the play gets out of hand, but not for
long; and usually, on such occasions, he is con-
tent to let go the reins, since the team is guiding
itself. *
The Host, as we know, is the appointed leader.
He nominates himself for the office, as many a
good politician has done before and since, but
not until after supper, when his social qualities
have been fully tested. He is well fitted for the
office —a fine large man, handsome after his

florid fashion, merry, afraid of nobody — “of

manhood.him_lakkede right nought” —Toud-
voiced and free-spoken. It is not by accident
that Chaucer calls him as fair a burgess as there
is in Cheap; for London was an imperium in
162 CHAUCER

imperio, and the citizens were persons of im-
portance, not merely in their own eyes, but in
the estimation of all orders and even of the king.
Chaucer himself, who was always in politics, —
would that we had his political autobiography!—
is a first-rate example of a “king’s man,” a sort
of courtier who was also a burgher by descent
and in actuality. Once a Londoner, always a
Londoner, no matter what else you might be-
come.

- But Harry Bailly was not only a fair and
seemly burgess, bold of his speech. He was “wise
and well ytaught”: that is, in modern parlance,
a discreet man, with plenty of tact, one who
“knew his way about”; he had some education
and was thoroughly versed in the usages of soci-
ety. His hearty and sometimes boisterous man-
ner must not deceive us. It is partly tempera-
‘ment, partly professional technique, and he
forces it a little now and then, for a very special
purpose — to see if he cannot irritate some_pil-

grim or other into revolt; ; for whoever. -gainsays..

his judgment must pay an enormous forfeit, no
less than the total travelling expenses of the
company.

“Whoso wol my iuggement withseye
Shal paye al that we spenden by the weye.”

Harry is the legitimate ancestor of many a jovial
and autocratic innkeeper in our literature; but

=<.
THE CANTERBURY TALES 163

we must not confuse him with such roaring eccen-
trics as Blague the landlord of the George at
Waltham in the Merry Devil of Edmonton, or
even mine Host of the Garter in the Merry
Wives. “Ha!” cries Blague, “I'll caper in my
own fee simple. Away with punctilios and orthog-
raphy! I serve the good Duke of Norfolk.
Bilbo! Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine
fagi.” Blague, it appears, is “well ytaught,” for
he can quote Virgil, with a prophecy, one is
tempted to conjecture, of the Tityre-tu’s of the
next generation; but after all he is only a kind of
substantial and well-esteemed buffoon. He is
not Harry Bailly — scarcely more so than Sir
John Falstaff (rest his soul!) is Chaucer’s Knight.
For Harry has his own dignity: he knows the
times and the manners. Here, as ever, Chaucer
is quite specific. The landlord of the Tabard, so

he tells us, o
f” a seemly man with-alle

For to han been a marshal i in a halle.

ARO or

Such as he had been master of ceremonies many
a time when our Knight had “begun the board,”
or sat at the head of the table, at high chivalric
festivals.

Yet, despite the Host’s autocracy, the ruler of
the company is actually the Knight. It is he that
asserts himself whenever the Case requires an
appeal to the controlling forces of the social

/
164 CHAUCER

world. One of these crises arrives when the Monk
gets halfway—a quarter, who can tell? —
\through his list of tragedies, or tales of men and
women fallen from their high estate. The Monk
belonged to the “‘gentles,” and the Host was not
so ready to interrupt him as in the case of
Chaucer, who. was a somewhat ambiguous per-
sonality, even to the omniscient Bailly. Not
altogether because Harry was considerate. He
stood in no awe of Dan Piers; the preliminaries
demonstrate that. He was simply at his wit’s
end. This roll of dismal biographies must close
sometime; but it is like many a sermon: at every
pause, one thinks the peroration has passed,
only to discover that the preacher has got his
second wind, or his thirteenth; and one feels a
certain reluctance to imitate the historic Scots-
woman and throw a footstool at the parson’s
head! Besides, Harry Bailly was well taught,
and he was rather a Saxon than a Celt. He did
agnizé a natural and prompt alacrity he felt in
boredom. It is all very well to be entertained;
but now then there is a time for edification, and
anything that’s stupid must be edifying. In my
part of the country we call this the New Eng-
land conscience. Hence Harry was hesitant.
“Lucifer, Adam, Zenobia, Croesus, Pedro of
Spain, Bernabd Visconti,” — these be good
words! Rusticus exspectat! Patience! the river
THE CANTERBURY TALES 16

will flow by if we wait a bit. In short, Harry
was “out of his epoch”; the situation was just
a trifle beyond his control; and so the natural
leader asserted himself, as many a time on the.
perilous edge of battle when it raged.

Chaucer, they tell us, is very modern. So he
is; this crisis proves it. You can translate his
situations into our own at any given moment.
Darken the theatre for a second — then turn up
the lights. Vanishes the road to Canterbury;
vanish the Pilgrims on their way to St. Thomas’s
shrine. Appear, at table, a party of gentlemen;
a helpless toastmaster, twirling his eyeglasses
and stealing glances at his watch. Time flies,
death urges— and thete are several speakers
left on the list which he has scribbled off upon
his cuff. And here, — intrenched, unassailable,
standing like Teneriffe, — is the lord of the as-
cendant, the after-dinner platitudinarian, dron-
ing on and on, his ten minutes elongated by
imperceptible gradations to five-and-twenty,
and still no sign that he is nearing the seamark
of his utmost sail! And this is precisely the ad-
dress that will be reported at greatest length in
the morrow’s newspaper, and that a grateful
constituency will hold it a precious privilege to
read.

Nowadays there is no help for it; but they did
things better in the fourteenth century. There)
166 CHAUCER

‘was the Knight! He had been at Alexandria
~when it was won; he had fought for our faith in
Tremezen; he had seen service with pagan
against pagan, with the lord of Palathia against
another heathen in Turkey.
“Hoo!” quod the Knight, “good sire! na-moore of this!
That ye han seyd is right ynough, ywis, —
And muchel moore; for litel hevynesse
Is right ynough to muche folk, I gesse.”

The toastmaster rallies; Harry Bailly is himself
again: —
“Sire Monk, namoore of this, so God you blesse!
Your tale anoyeth al this companye.

Swich talkyng is not worth a boterflye!
For therinne is no desport ne game.”

this is the first instance in which the Knight

saves the situation. There are but two. The sec-
ond is even more critical. For the toastmaster
has lost his self-control. This is the famous in-.
cident of the quarrel between the Pardoner .
and the Host, a comic interlude with a tragedy
{behind it, to which we shall return.

In earlier works, we have seen Chaucer yield-
ing with docility to medieval schematism. But
now, in the Canterbury Tales, by setting his
Pilgrimage in motion, he breaks definitively with
all such rigid notions of order. The Knight, to
be sure, begins the series of tales, by the com-
plaisance of the lots, Fortune showing herself
THE CANTERBURY TALES 167

deferential to rank and dignity. But this is the

poet’s valediction to the old-fashioned method.

Henceforth, it is dramatic considerations that

must govern order: tabular views give way to
human life in action.

With drastic realism, the boldness of which we
can hardly appreciate in these days of uncon-
ventionality, the drunken Miller thrusts himself
forward to tell a story as soon as the Knight has
finished his romance of Palamon and Arcite.
““He knows a noble tale,” he vociferates, “which
will fitly recompense the chevalier.”

Harry Bailly had intended a more decorous
procedure. He has already called upon the
Monk, an important personage, to follow the
Knight, and he expostulates with the Miller,
begging him to give way to “some better man,”
that is, some one of higher station. But the
Miller has a drunken man’s obstinacy, and the
Host assents, rather than break up the enter-
tainment with a vulgat quarrel. The Reeve
takes the Miller’s Tale as a personal insult, and
wishes to answer it. Hereafter there is no re-
turning to to any artifi artificial ssheme.

~"Two acts in Chaucer’s Human o_o are
so completely wrought that we may study their
dramatic structure with confidence. One of these
is the group of,tales beginning with the Wife of
Bath’s Prologue and ending with the story of the
168 CHAUCER

Franklin, of which I shall speak with some ful-
ness in my next lecture. The other is the group
that begins with the Shipman’s Prologue and
includes (besides the fabliau of that famous
master mariner) the Prioress’s Tale, Sir Thopas,
-the Melibee, the Monk’s dismal Tragedies, and
the Nun’s Priest’s masterpiece of the Cock and
Fox.

For some reason the Host thinks that time is
ripe for a serious discourse, and so he calls upon
the Parson; but in so doing he is guilty of an
infraction of the rules of good taste: he swears
like a pirate.

“Sir Parish Priest,” quod he, “for Goddes bones,

Tell us a tale, as was thy forward yore!
I see wel that ye lerned men in lore
Can moche good, by Goddes dignitee!” _
The Parson is accustomed fo reprove sinners
“ i ” scan gy
— “to snu m sharply,” the Prologue tells
us, “whenever the occasion seems to call for it”
— and he is not remiss now:.. :
The Persone him answerde: “Bendistee!
What eylth the man so sinfully to swere?”
This evokes a jocose reply from Harry Bailly,
in which he accuses the good priest of being a
Lollard, and bids the company lend their ears
to the impending sermon.

Our Hoste answerde “O, Jankyn, be ye there?
I smell a Loller in the wind,” quod he.
THE CANTERBURY TALES 169

“Now, good ‘2en,” quod our Hoste, “herkneth me.
Abydeth, for Goddes digne passioun,
For we shul han a predicacioun!
This loller here wol prechen us somwhat!”

“Not a bit of it!” cries the Shipman. “We'll
have no heretical preaching’ here! This priest,
wishes to sow tares among the clean wheat of
our orthodoxy. I will block his game by telling
a story myself.” Let us not misunderstand the
Captain. It is not Lollardry that he is in a panic
about, but a sermon. He is eager for mirth, and
desperately afraid of being bored. \

The Host, we remember, is the absolute ruler
of the company with respect to the order of
stories. There is a very large forfeit hanging
over any pilgrim who rebels against his judg-
ment, no less than the total of the travellin
expenses. To this the Pilgrims have not only
assented by unanimous vote, but they have
confirmed their suffrages by a solemn oath, after
the true medizval manner.

Technically, no doubt, the Shipman’s out-
break might be taken as insubordination. In
spirit, however, there is no revolt; and Harry
gives a tacit approval, in the interest of variety:
for it is well, after all, that the serious narrative
of a “learned man in lore” should be followed
by something humorous, and that is what the
mariner promises.
170 CHAUCER

‘And therfore, Host, I warne thee biforn,
My ioly body shal a tale telle,
And I shal clinken you so mery a belle,
That I shal wakyn al this companye.”

Perhaps there had been a tendency to somno-
lence in the “thrifty tale” that had gone before.
Certainly there was such a tendency if, as some
think, it was the Melibee, which is largely oc-
cupied with the pitilessly long-winded argu-
ments of the good wife Prudence. At all events,
the Shipman keeps his word. Nobody went to
sleep, I am sure, while he was talking. And the
Merchant, the Monk, and the Wife of Bath
must have paid him very particular attention.

_The Shipman’s Tale was originally intended,
for a woman; tor the Wife of Bath, beyond: 4
doubt. It accords with her character both in
style and in sentiment. Its tone is hers precisely,
frankly sensual, — unmoral, if you like, — but
too hearty and too profoundly normal to be un-
wholesome. And there are many expressions in
the story which were clearly written for her and
for her alone.

The tale turns upon a trick by which a rich
merchant was cheated out of a sum of money
by Dan John, a monk, with certain incidental -
deceptions which we may ignore. The Wife of
Bath knew many merchants. As a maker of
cloth, she had, quite possibly, recollections not
THE CANTERBURY TALES 171

altogether pleasant of her dealings with such
personages, though we may feel pretty confident
that they had seldom got ahead of her in a bar-
gain. But Chaucer changed his plan, and it is
vastly interesting to see his masterpiece gradu-
ally taking shape as he goes on with it. Even as
he wrote the tale of Dan John and the merchant,
the Wife of Bath’s character grew upon him.
He conceived the happy idea of devoting a whole
act of his Human Comedy to the discussion of
Marriage, and he saw that nobody could be so
well fitted as the Wife to precipitate such a dis-
cussion, and to control it while it lasted. With
this in view, he furnished her with a succession
of five husbands, and with a monstrously hereti-
cal tenet as to the Subjection of Men. ‘This de-
velopment of his plan released the story of Dan
John and the merchant, and Chaucer assigned
it to the Shipman, to whom it was almost as ap-
propriate. For our master mariner was engaged
in the foreign trade, and had no objection to
satirizing the merchants who chartered his
barge, the Maudlin. Indeed, he used to take
large toll from the cargo, when that consisted of
wipe: —
Ful many a draught of wyn hadde he ydrawe

From Bordeaux-ward, whil that the chapman sleep.
Of nice conscience took he no keep.

Of course, the presence of a substantial and very
172 CHAUCER

dignified merchant among the Pilgrims gave
special zest, for both Wife and Shipman, to the
, telling of this particular tale.

Here we have again a trait of Chaucer’s
method, or, let us rather say, another proof of
his fruitful observation of life. An anecdote al-
_Ways gains point if there is somebody present
Whom i it may be rioaioel anes to hit. Again and again

‘is this princi
buy Plein The The ‘Miller s Tale concerns a
carpenter, ‘and the Reeve, who is of that trade,
suspects that it is aimed at him: —
“This dronke miller hath ytold us heer
How that bigyled was a carpenter,

Peraventure in scorn, for I am oon;
But, by your leve, I shal him quyte anoon.”

And so the.saturnine Oswald returns the compli-
ment in a tale of a miller. The Cook’s Tale, for-
tunately a fragment, was to be of an innkeeper,
and was avowedly a reply to the Host’s attack
upon the artifices of chefs and caterers. The
Friar and the Sumner furnish a similar comic
‘interlude at each other’s expense. All these are
obvious and familiar instances; but what is ex-
pressly stated in these cases, we are left to extend,

when we see occasion, to other tales, as well as to
os conversation of the Pilgrims. And this story
of the Shipman’s is a case in point. Indications
are abundant, as any.one may see for himself by
THE CANTERBURY TALES 173,

comparing the character of the Merchant in the
general prologue with the words and demeanor of
the merchant in the Shipman’s Tale. One pas-
sage is enough for my purpose. Says the Ship-
man’s merchant:

“Wyf,” quod this man, “litle canstow devyne
The curious bisinesse that we have.
For of us chapmen, al-so God me save
And by that lord that cleped is Seint Yve!
Scarsly amonges twelve, ten shul thryve,
Continuelly, lastinge un-to our age.
We may wel make chere and good visage,
And dryve forth the world as it may be,
And kepen our estaat in privetee,
Til we be deed, or elles that we pleye
A pilgrimage, or goon out of the weye.
And therfor have I greet necessitee
Up-on this queinte world tavyse me;
For evermore we mote stonde in drede
Of hap and fortune in our chapmanhede.”

When this was uttered, did not every man and
woman in the company look at the Merchant? ,
“Perhaps,” they thought, “he too is playing a)
pilgrimage to dodge his creditors.” But they

. could not believe such a thing.

 

There wiste no man that he was in dette,

So estatly was he of his governaunce.
Chaucer does not know that he is in debt either.
He merely suggests it as a possibility, as some-
thing incident to a merchant’s life.
. Now the Shipman’s Tale is not merely a jest at
174. CHAUCER

ihe expense of merchants. It touches up the
monks as well. Dan John was, in rank and sta-
tion, just such a man as the Monk of the Pil-
grimage. Both were persons of position in their
order, often entrusted with important business
by their abbot. Chaucer’s Monk is expressly
called an “out-rider,”’ and the Shipman’s Dan
John received a commission from his superior to
“ride out” — that is, to make a tour of inspec-
tion in regard to the remoter farms and rented
properties of the monastery. The Host receives
the story with loud acclaim, and exhorts the
company to heed the moral: — “Aha, fellows! be
on your guard against such tricks. Don’t invite
any monks to visit your houses.” Naturally, he
points his remarks by a look or a gesture, so as to
raise a laugh at the stately Monk who is riding
among the Pilgrims on his berry-brown palfrey,
with bridle jingling as loud and clear as the
chapel-bell. And later, when he calls on him for
a story in his turn, he alludes with sufficient defi-
niteness to the Shipman’s fabliau, even asking
him if his name is not likewise Dan John. The
Prioress is listening, and when, in her tale of the
murdered little boy, she has occasion to mention
an abbot who.was true to his sacred office and
had the grace of God to work a miracle, she
cannot ignore the Host’s gibe. “This abbot,”
says the Prioress, —
THE CANTERBURY TALES 175

“This abbot, which that was a holy man,
As monkes ‘been — or elles oughten be.”

sud again: “This holy man, this abbot, him
mene I.” This is not satire; it is a tribute, rather,
which may serve to correct the Host for his flip- |
pancy without being precisely a rebuke. There
may be bad monks in the world; but the Prioress
has no personal knowledge of any such, and is
not disposed to lend an ear to current slander.
Of all the Canterbury Pilgrims none is mor
sympathetically conceived or more delicately\
portrayed than Madame Fglantine, the prioress.
The impression she has madé-upon the com-
pany is exquisitely suggested by the courtesy
with which the Host invites her to tell a story
after the Shipman has finished. His softness of
speech and manner contrasts strongly with the’
robust badinage that immediately precedes.

“Wel sayd, by corpus dominus!” quod our hoste,
“Now longe moote thou saile by the coste,
Sire gentil master, gentil marineer!
God yeve this monk a thousand last quad yeer
Aha, felawes! beth war of swich a iape.
The monk putte in the mannes hood an ape,
And in his wyves eek, by seynt Austyn.
Draweth no monkes more unto your in.
But now passe over, and lat us seke aboute,
Who shal now telle first, of al this route,
Another tale,” and with that word, he seyde,
As curteysly as it hadde been a mayde:
““My lady Prioresse, by your leve,
176 CHAUCER

So that I wiste I sholde you nat greve,

I wolde demen that ye tellen sholde

A tale next, if so were that ye wolde.

Now, wol ye vouchesaf, my lady deere?”
““Gladly,” quod she, and seyde as ye shal here.

The Prioress is of noble blood, and has been
brought up from youth in a religious order; but
it is a rich order, of the kind to which parents
of wealth and position entrusted, as they still
entrust, their daughters for care and education.
She travels in modest state, with a nun for her
secretary, and three attendant priests, who suf-

ce on occasion to guard her from unpleasant
contact with the rougher elements in the com-
pany. But her gentleness and sweet dignity are
her best protection. She lives, as it were, in a
cloister, even on the road to Canterbury. Yet
she does not hold herself aloof. She is fond of
society and shows no stiffness of demeanor. Her
conversational talents are particularly insisted
on. She is excellent company — “‘of great des-
port” — and very pleasant and amiable in her

emeanor.

f She peyned her to countrefete chere
Of court, and been estatlych of mange
This couplet is often sadly misunderstood, as if
the Prioress’s bearing were a labored and affected

imitation of polite behavior. It implies merely
that her manners were exquisitely courtly, with
THE CANTERBURY TALES 177

that little touch of preciseness and finish which,
shows that one regards such things as of some
concern. Her position in life required this of her,,
and it accorded with her nature as well. As to he

table manners, which often make the unin

structed laugh, they are simply the perfection of
medizval daintiness. Nothing is farther fron

Chaucer’s thought than to poke fun at them.
Her greatest oath (for in those days everybody
swore) was “by St. Loy.” Could there be a
sweeter or more ladylike expletive? It is soft
and liquid, and above all, it does not distort the
lips. Her little dogs went with her on the jour-
ney, an she watched over them with anxious

affecti

“Sore weep she if one of hem were deed,
Or if men smote it with a yerde smerte,

It is no accident that Chaucer makes her tell the
infinitely pathetic legend of the pious little boy
who was murdered for his childlike devotion to
the Blessed Virgin. “This little child,” she calls
him, “learning his little book, as he sat in the
school at his primer.”

This litel child, his litel book lerninge,

As he sat in the scole at his primer,

He Alma Redemptoris herde singe

As children lerned here antiphoner.

And, as he dorste, he drough him neer and neer,
And herkned ay the wordes and the note

Til he the firste vers coude al by rote,
178 CHAUCER

Noght wiste he what this Latyn was to seye,
For he so yong and tendre was of age.

But, on a day, his felawe gan he preye,

T’ expounen him this song in his langage,

Or telle him why this song was in usage:
This preyd he him to constrewe and declare
Ful ofte tyme upon his knowes bare.

His felawe, which that elder was than he,
Answerde him thus: “This song, I have herd seye,
Was maked of our blisful lady free,

Hire to salewe, and eek hire for to preye

To been our help and socour whan we deye: —
I can no moore expoune in this matere —

I lerne song — I can but smal grammere.”

“And is this song maked in reverence
Of Cristes moder?” seyde this innocent.
“Now, certeyn, I wol do my diligence
To conne it al, er Cristemasse is went:
Though that I for my prymer shal be shent,
And shal be beten thryes in an houre,
I wol it conne, our lady for to honoure

His mother looked for him at night, but he did
not come home, and she sought him everywhere
— “with modres pitee in her brest enclosed.”
What can the Prioress know of a mother’s feel-
ings? Everything, though she is never to have
children, having chosen, so she thought, the bet-
ter part. But her heart goes out, in yearnings
which she does not comprehend or try to analyze,
to little dogs, and little boys at school. Nowhere
is the poignant trait of thwarted motherhood so
affecting as in this character of the Prioress.

1)
THE CANTERBURY TALES 179

You do not care to hear from me that Geoffrey
Chaucer took pleasure in birds and flowers and
running brooks, that he loved the sunshine on
the grass or as it streamed through storied win-
dows, that it was a delight to him to walk in
the dewy rides of the king’s forest and see buck
and doe and fawn in the distance, or watch the
squirrels scamper up the beeches and spring
from branch to branch and sit looking at him
with their little beady eyes —

The many squirreles, that sete

Ful hye upon the trees, and ete,

And in here maner maden festes.
Nor do you care to hear of his worship of “these
flowers white and red, such as men callen daisies
in our town.”
_ These things are amiable and charming, but
they are matters of every day. The supreme
genius knows how to seize the moment of in-
_- tensest self-revelation for each of his characters;
and then, a phrase will do the business. It may
be Menelaus to Helen, in Euripides: — “‘Leave
you in Egypt! It was for you that I sacked
Troy.” Or Falstaff, musing as he grows old: —
“QO, it is much that a lie with a slight oath, and a
jest with a sad brow, will do with a fellow that
never had the ache in his shoulders.’’ Or Lady
Macbeth: — “Here’s the smell o’ the blood still.
All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this

a
180 CHAUCER

little hand.” And so in Chaucer — there is the
Wife of Bath, hugging to her tough old heart the
remembrance of her “world” that she has had
“in her time.” There is Cressida, false to the
matchless Troilus, but promising herself to be
faithful to her new lover — ‘“To Diomede, al-
gate, I wol be trewe”; and the Pardoner, the
one lost soul among the Canterbury Pilgrims:
“Christ Christ grant you his pardon! T will not deceive

eae IE EL EOE

Madame Eglantine e the holy nun, with her pious
legend of the little boy learning his little book.
VI

THE CANTERBURY TALES—II

IRACLES of the Blessed Virgin were a
favorite form of legend in the middle ages,
and no wonder! Every student will recall, at the
mere word, a score of these stories, delicately
beautiful and of a pathos almost beyond belief.
The Prioress, involuntarily expressive of her in-
most nature, had chosen to repeat the loveliest
and most touching of them all. Its effect upon
the Pilgrims is described by Chaucer in two
lines of utter simplicity, which. touch, so I think,
the skirts of Shakspere’s garment: — “Whan
seyd was this miracle, every man” — think what
that means: the jangling Miller, the trumpet-
voiced Sumner, the cynical and accursed Par-
doner, the irrepressible Wife of Bath, the merry
Friar, the Merchant, angry to the death under

his mask of sedate respectability —

““Whan seyd was this miracle, every man
As sobre was that wonder was to see.

Nobody can command his thoughts or trust his
voice. The whole troop is silent, till at last the
Host, to relieve the tension, falls a-jesting, for it
must be either laughter or tears; and the butt of
182 CHAUCER

Ais humor is Geoffrey Chaucer, who is some-
where in the background, riding along in appar-
ent abstraction with downcast eyes.

ee

Whan seyd was this miracle, every man

As sobre was that wonder was to see,

Til that oure Hoste iapen tho bigan,

‘And than at erste he looked upon me,

And seyde thus: “What man artow?” quod he;
“Thou lookest as thou woldest fynde an hare;

For ever upon the ground I se thee stare.

““Approche neer, and looke up merily!
Now war yow, sires, and lat this man have place;
He in the waast is shape as wel as I;
This were a popet in an arm tenbrace
For any womman, smal and fair of face.
He semeth elvissh by his contenaunce,
For unto no wight doth he daliaunce.

“Sey now somwhat, syn oother folk han sayd;
Telle us a tale of myrthe, and that anoon.”
“Hoste,” quod I, “ne beth nat yvele apayd,
For oother tale certes can I noon,
But of a rym I lerned longe agoon.”
“Ye, that is good!” quod he, “now shul we heere
Som deyntee thyng, me thynketh by his cheere.”

One thing is certain: we should not read this out-
burst of raillery without an attempt to visualize
the scene and imagine the action.

The Prioress’s legend is received in silence;
there is a hush throughout the company. The
Host wishes to discharge the emotional forces,
and he picks out a quiet-looking Pilgrim as the
THE CANTERBURY TALES 183 .

medium. The effect will be the greater, of course,
if some demure person is called on for a tale of
mirth. “And than at erste he looked upon me!”
Not that this was the first time that Harry had
seen Chaucer, but that he had not previously
taken any notice of him. Chaucer rides forward
at the summons, and is put on exhibition. The
others make room for him, and the Host com-
ments merrily upon his fulness of figure. Chau-
cer, then, has been effacing himself, riding with
his eyes lowered, and making little or no con-

versation.
“He semeth elvissh_by his contenaunce, »
For unto no wight doth he daliaunce.”

Contenaunce means not “visage” but “man-
ner,” and the aptest modern equivalent for
elvish is “shy.”

Are we to infer that Chaucer was, in real life,
a diffident and uncompanionable person? Was
he, like Addison, a man of no conversation, —
“without a guinea in his pocket, though he could
draw for a thousand pounds?” Possibly, but, in
that case, what are we to make of the state-
ment in the Prologue? “Once, when I had put
up at the Tabard and was about to proceed on
a pilgrimage to Canterbury, there arrived a
company of nine-and-twenty persons; by sunset
Thad spoken with them every one, and was in-
stantly admitted of their fellowship.”
184 CHAUCER

A and shortly, when the sunne was to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everychoon
That I was of here felaweship anoon.

Here there is no chance for a double meaning or
any ironical jocosity. Chaucer was a guest at the
Tabard when the Pilgrims arrived, and he at
once made himself so agreeable that they in-
vited him to join the party. He circulated
among them, and actually spoke to every one
of the nine-and-twenty. This, beyond question,
is the real Chaucer. His quiet and abstracted
manner on the road is for the nonce; he is keeping
in the background, not because he is by tempera-
ment averse to sociability, but because he wishes
to play the part of a listener. He has undertaken,
in his own mind, the duty of reporting the pil-
grimage, of rehearsing word for word every tale
that shall be told. That is why he effaces him-
self; and he rides with downcast eyes and ab-
stains from casual conversation, merely that he
may miss nothing of what is said. His staring
upon the ground does not prevent him from
noting every minutest detail of speech and
action. Let us banish, then, to the limbo of
fatuous ideas, the notion that Chaucer was shy,
along with the notion that he was naif.

We know, at all events, that Chaucer was an
ironist, and never more so than at this very
moment; for he informs the Host that he does n’t
1

THE CANTERBURY TALES 185

remember any tale except an old rhyme about —
Sir Thopas, and when Harry stops this doggerel
in full career, he begs to be informed, with an
injured air, why he alone should thus be inter-
fered with, since he is doing his very best!
“Why so?” quod I. “Why wiltow lette me
More of my tale than an othre man,
Syn that it is the beste rym I can?”
And he then proceeds to tell the Melibee, which
all men have agreed is prosy enough. The next
tale is the Monk’s, fand then comes the mock-
heroic narrative of the Nun’s Pris) Both of
these we have already considered.

One other act of Chaucer’s Human Comedy
is complete (but for the story of Cambuscan)
and highly finished. It begins with the Wife of
Bath’s Prologue and ends with the Tale of the,
Franklin. The subject is Marriage, which is dis-|
cussed from several points of view, as the most
important problem in organized society. The ~
solution of the problem brings the act to an end. —

The dominant figure in this act of the Comedy"
is the Wife of Bath. It is she who starts the de-
bate, and the participants keep her steadily in
mind, and mention her and her doctrines more
than once. Even the comic interlude which
breaks into the discussion is occasioned by her
prologue. Nowhere is the dramatic spirit of the
Canterbury Pilgrimage more evident than in

 
186 CHAUCER

this Marriage group of tales. Nowhere is it more
important to heed the relations of the Pilgrims
to each other. Neglect of this precaution has led
to a good deal of misunderstanding.
The Wife’s ostensible subject is Tribulation in
Marriage. On this, she avers, she can speak with
_the authority of an expert, for she has outlived
(five husbands, worthy men in their degree, and
\she i is ready to welcome a sixth when God shall
gend him.
* ©Yblest be God, that I have wedded fyve:
Welcome the sixte, whan that ever he shal!”
Somebody — was it one of the clerics in the
party? —has told her lately that she should
have married but once. This dictum rankles:
she finds no warrant for it in Scripture, and
certainly none in her inclinations. Accordingly,
she breaks forth in a vehement defence of her
own principles and practices. The celibate life,
she admits, may be a high and holy thing, well
fitted for the Apostle Paul and other saints. Out
of deference to them, she accords it the palm, for
form’s sake; but, at the same time, she makes
-,her own position perféctly clear. She despises
the ideal of the Church in this regard, and looks
down with contempt upon all who aspire to it.
Human nature is good enough for her. This is-
her first heresy; but she is so jovial in proclaim-
ing it that no one takes offence, however strongly
THE CANTERBURY TALES 187

some of the Pilgrims may reprobate her princi-
ples in their hearts.

The Pardoner interrupts, in high glee. The
dame has handled-her scriptural texts with such
skill, and set forth her doctrine so eloquently,
that he cannot withhold his tribute of praise.
“Ye ben a noble prechour!” he protests, “but
what you say is certainly enough to scare a man
away from marriage.” The compliment is not
without significance, for the Pardoner is a good
judge of preaching, being “‘a noble ecclesiaste”
himself.

The Wife replies with great good humor, jo-
cosely threatening further revelations.

* Abyd,” quod she, “my tale is nat bigonne.
Nay, thou shalt drynken of another tonne
Er that I go, shal savoure wors than ale;
And whan that I have told thee forth my tale
Of tribulacioun in mariage,
Of which I am expert in al myn age, — -
This to seyn, my-self have been the whippe, —
Than maystow chese whether thou wolt sippe
Of thilke tonne that I shal abroche.
Be war of it, er thou to ny approche,
For I shal telle ensamples mo than ten.”

The Pardoner urges her to continue. “Tell us
young men,” he begs, “some af your practical
precepts.” She consents, nothing loth, requesting
the company, however, to take her jokes in good

part.
188 CHAUCER

The Wife proceeds, with infinite zest, to give
the history of her married life, unfolding, as she
does so, another heretical doctrine of a startling
kind, which, in fact, is the real subject of her dis-
course. This is nothing less than the dogma that
. the wife is the head of the house. Obedience
is not her duty, but the husband’s. Men are no
match for women, anyway. Let them n sink back
to their proper level, and cease their ridiculous
efforts to maintain a position for which they
are not fit. Then marriages will all be happy.
Otherwise there is no hope for anything but
misery in wedlock. She supports her contention
with much curious learning, derived, of course,
from her fifth and latest husband, who was a
professional scholar; and she overbears opposition
by quoting her own experience, which is better
testimony than the citation of authorities. She
had always had her own way. Sometimes she
cowed her husbands, and sometimes she cajoled
them; but none of the five could resist her gov-
ernment. And it was well for them to yield.
This is happy marriage, Who should know so
well as she? Once, indeed, she rises almost to
sublimity, as she looks back on the joy of her
life:

“But Lord Crist! whan that it remembreth me
Upon my yowthe, and on my iolitee,
{t tikleth me about myn herte rote.
THE CANTERBURY TALES 189

Unto this day it doth myn herte bote

That I have had my world as in my tyme!”!
This is one of the great dramatic utterances of
human nature, as the Wife of Bath is one of the
most amazing characters that the brain of man
has ever yet conceived.

The Pilgrims, we may be sure, are not inat-
tentive to the Wife’s harangue. To the Prioress,
her complete antithesis, it means. little, either
good or bad. She does not understand the lan-
guage of the worldly widow. The Parson and the
Clerk of course are scandalized: such heresies
‘cannot pass unchallenged, even as a jest. Of the
two, the Clerk has the greater cause for resent-

ment, for the Wife has aimed her shafts at him
directly, not in malice, but in mischievous de-
fiance. Not only has she entered the lists as a
disputant in theology, but she has gone out of
her way to attack his order, railing at them es-
pecially for their satire on women. “No clerk,”
she declares, “‘can speak well of wives. It is an
impossibility.” And, worse than all, she has
told how she had married a clerk of Oxford, an
alumnus of our modest scholar’s own university,
and had reduced him to shameful subjection.
The Wife is an heresiarch after her own boister-
ous fashion. She is not to be taken too seriously,
but she deserves a rebuke; and who is so fit

" D. 469-473.
190 CHAUCER

‘to administer it as the Clerk himself, whose or-
‘thodoxy is unflinching, and whose every word is
*souning in moral vertu”? It is not our Clerk’s
way, however, to thrust himself forward. His
turn will come, and meanwhile he rides quietly
along, listening without comment, and biding
his time.

It is for the more talkative Pilgrims to speak
first. The Pardoner has already intervened, and
now the Friar, when the Wife declares that her
prologue is finished, and her story about to be-
gin, shows his interest by a laughing comment:
“Well, dame, this is a long preamble of a tale!”
The Sumner rebukes him angrily: —

“Lo,’”? quod the Somnour, “Goddes armes two!
A frere wol entremette him ever-mo.
Lo, goode men, a flye, and eek a frere,
Wol falle in every dyssh and eech matere.
What spekestow of ‘preambulacioun’?
What? amble, or trotte, or pees, or go sit doun!
Thou lettest oure disport in this manere.”

A bitter quarrel is well underway, when the Host
checks it sternly and bids the Wife go on. “Will-
ingly,” she answers, “if this worthy friar will
allow me.” “By all means,” says the Friar po-
litely, and the tale proceeds.

There is no dispute between the Wife of Bath
and the Friar. They understand each other per-
fectly. It was with women like her, wealthy and
THE CANTERBURY TALES Ig!

respectable citizenesses, that the Friar, as the
Prologue tells us, liked to cultivate an acquaint-
ance. He much prefers their society to that of
lazars and poor wretches in the suburbs. Their
interchange of courtesies, then, is amicable
enough, and the intrusion of the Sumner, in ap-
parent defence of the Wife, is quite uncalled-for.
His object, of course, is to snub the Friar, be-
tween whom and himself there is intense pro-
fessional jealousy. The Wife, for her part, has
no liking for sumners, who were quite as perva-
sive and unpopular in the middle ages as catch-
polls were in’ the eighteenth century, and she
ignores his unwelcome advocacy. Details like
this needed no footnotes for Chaucer’s contem-
porary readers. They are, indeed, to be taken for
granted as part of the setting or background.

The Wife’s tale of What Women most De-
sire is a famous old story, which is extant in
several versions. As she tells it, it becomes an
illustrative exemplum, to enforce the moral of
her sermon. Sovereignty over men is a woman’s
ambition, and the knight of the Round Table,
who found himself in a strange dilemma, sub-
mitted his judgment to his wife’s choice, with
the happiest result. He lived with her in perfect
joy till their life’s end, — and so “I pray,” con-
cludes the Wife of Bath, “that those may die
early who will not yield themselves entirely to

i
192 CHAUCER

petticoat government.” Medizval feminism has
had its say. The sermon is finished, and the
moral is driven home.

Thus far the Wife of Bath has had plain sail-
ing. She has proved her case to her own satis-
faction, by experience, by authority, and by an
illustrative story; and nobody seems inclined to
take her to task.

The Friar compliments her in a non-com-
mittal fashion, but turns off, with a clever transi-
tion, to assail the Sumner, at whom he had been
looking ‘“‘with a louring chere” even since that
worthy had reproved him for laughing at the
Wife’s preamble. What follows, then, is a comic
interlude, like that between Miller and Reeve
at an earlier stage of the pilgrimage. The Friar
tells a tale of a sumner who was carried off by
the devil, and the Sumner, so angry that he stood
up in his stirrups, retorts with an incomparable
satire on begging friars, worked up on the basis
of a trivial and sordid fabliau. Nowhere in the
pilgrimage is the dramatic interplay of character
more remarkable. For the Wife is the moving
cause of the quarrel, though quite involuntarily.
Harry Bailly, we note, has been content to drop
the reins. The drama guides itself, moving on by
virtue of the relations of the dramatis personae,
their characters, and the logic of the situation.
To all appearances the discussion of marriage has

 
THE CANTERBURY TALES 193

ended with the speaker who began it. The day’s
journey closes with the Sumner’s Tale. The
Host, at all events, has no thought of reopening
the debate on matrimony when he calls upon
the Clerk of Oxford to begin the entertainment
next morning.

The Clerk has made no sign. He is as demuré,
the Host remarks, as a bride at her wedding
breakfast. “Cheer up!” cries Harry, “this is no
time to study. Tell us some merry tale, not in
the high style, of which you are doubtless a
master, but in plain language, so that we may
all understand it.”

“Sire Clerk of Oxenford,” oure Hoste sayde,
“Ye ryde as coy and stille as dooth a mayde,
Were newe spoused, sittynge at the bord;
This day ne herd I of youre tonge a word.
I trowe ye studie aboute som sophyme;
But Salomon seith ‘Every thyng hath tyme.’
For Goddes sake, as beth of bettre chere!
It is no tyme for to studien here;
Telle us som myrie tale, by youre fey.
For what man that is entred in a pley,
He nedes moot unto the pley assente.
But precheth nat, as freres doon in Lente,
To make us for oure olde synnes wepe,
Ne that thy tale make us nat to slepe.
Telle us som merie thyng of aventures.
Youre termes, youre colours, and youre figures,
Keepe hem in stoor til so be ye endite
Hy style, as whan that men to kynges write;
Speketh so pleyn at this tyme, I yow preye,
‘That we may understonde what ye seye.”
194 . CHAUCER

The Oxford scholar yields a courteous assent,
and begins the tale of Griselda, taught him at
Padua by a noble clerk of Italy, one Francis
Petrarch, who is now dead and buried. God rest
his soul!

The story starts quite innocently. Not until
it is well underway do the Pilgrims perceive the
Clerk’s drift. He is telling the tale of a patient
and obedient wife, whose steadfast devotion to
her husband was proof against every trial. With
consummate art he is answering the Wife of
Bath without appearing to take any notice either
of her arguments or of her boisterous assault
upon his order. “Clerks,” she has declared,
‘cannot possibly speak well of wives.” Yet here
is one clerk, repeating the tale told him by an-
other, and its theme is wifely fidelity and
woman’s fortitude under affliction.

We should not forget that the Clerk’s Tale,
like the Wife’s long sermon, is addressed to the
Canterbury Pilgrims, not to us, though we are
privileged to overhear. We must not only listen,
but look. In our mind’s eyé; we must see the
Pilgrims, and watch their demeanor. Naturally,
they are interested, and, equally of course, they
understand what the Clerk is doing. He is re-
plying to the Wife of Bath, — confuting her
heresies, and at the same time vindicating his
own order from her abusive raillery.
THE CANTERBURY TALES 195

One can hardly conceive a more skilful method
of replying. Its indirectness and deliberation are
alike masterly. The Clerk is not talking about
the Wife of Bath. His tale contains no personal
allusions. It is, on the face of it, simply an affect-
ing narrative which he chanced to hear from a
learned friend in Italy, and which he supposes
may interest his fellow-travellers. But, as the
picture of Griselda grows slowly on the canvas,
no Pilgrim can fail to. recognize the complete
antithesis to the Wife of Bath. Besides, however
you and I may feel about it, to Chaucer’s con-
temporaries the story was infinitely pathetic.
One of Petrarch’s friends broke down while read-
ing it aloud, and could not continue, so deep was
his emotion, but had to hand the manuscript to
one of his retinue to finish. Another read it
through unmoved, but only because he did not
believe that there ever lived a wife so loving, so
submissive, and so patient under affliction.

This point, in truth, — the incredibility of the
example, — might have weakened its force as
an answer to the Wife of Bath, if she were logi-
cally in a position to take advantage of such an
objection. But this she cannot well do with-
out abandoning her main thesis, that women are
vastly superior to men. She might, to be sure,
retort that the story proves too much, that it
shows that men are unfit to have dominion over
196 CHAUCER

their wives, since they abuse it so abominably.
But, before she can frame any retort what-
ever, — if, indeed, she is not too much affected
by the pathos to be mistress of her argumenta-
tive faculties, — the Clerk, who is a professional
logician and a conscientious moralist, makes all
debate impossible by explaining, in Petrarch’s
words, the true lesson. “This story is not meant
as an exhortation to wives to be as patient as
Griselda, for that would transcend the powers
of human nature. It teaches all of us, men and
women alike, how we should submit ourselves
to the afflictions that God sends. The Marquis
Walter was a ruthless experimenter with souls.
God is not like that. The trials He sends are for
our good, and we should accept them with
Christian resignation.” ;
*This storie is seyd, nat for that wyves sholde

Folwen Grisilde as in humilitee,

For it were importable, though they wplde;

But for that every wight, in his degree,

Sholde be constant in adversitee,

As was Grisilde: therfor this Petrak writeth
This storie, which with heigh stile he enditeth.

For, sith a womman was so pacient

Unto a mortal man, wel more us oghte
Receyven al in gree that God us sent;

For greet skile is he preeve that he wroghte.
But he ne tempteth no man that he boghte,
As seith Seint Iame, if ye his pistel rede,
He preeveth folk al-day, it is no drede,
THE CANTERBURY TALES 197

And suffreth us, as for oure exercise,
With sharpe scourges of adversitee

Ful ofte to be bete in sondry wise,

Nat for to know oure wil, for certes he,
Er we were born, knew al oure freletee;
And for oure beste is al his governaunce.
Lat us than lyve in vertuous suffraunce.

Here is a remarkable situation. The Clerk has
vindicated his order by praising women, and he
has set up again the orthodox tenet of wifely
obedience. But he has not said a word to the
Wife of Bath, and, in the moral, he has ex-
pressly removed the story from the domain of
controversy by asserting, in the plainest terms,
that it is not a lesson for wives, but for Chris-
tians in general. If he drops the: subject now,
he has left the Wife of Bath unanswered after
all.

But he does not drop the subject. He has a
surprise in store for the would-be feminist heresi-
arch and for the whole company. Suddenly,
without a moment’s warning, he turns to the
Wife of Bath, and, with an air of serene and
smiling urbanity, offers to recite a song that he
has just composed in her honor, and in honor of
the sect which she represents and of which she
has proved herself so doughty a champion:—
““May God establish both her way of life and her
principles; for the world would suffer if they

should not prevail”: —
198 CHAUCER

“Whos lyf and al hir secte God mayntene
In hye maistrie, and elles were it scathe!”

And so he declaims his Envoy in praise of femi-
nism. It is an address to all wise and prudent
married women, exhorting them to follow the
precepts and the practice of the Wife of Bath.

But o word, lordyngs, herkneth, er I go:

It were ful hard to fynde now-a-dayes

In al a toun Grisildis thre or two;

For if that they were put to swiche assayes,
The gold of hem hath now so badde alayes
With bras, that thogh the coyne be fair at ye,
It wolde rather breste a-two than plye.

For which here, for the Wyves love of Bathe, —

Whos lyf and al hir secte God mayntene

In hye maistrie, and elles were it scathe, —

I wol, with lusty herte, fressh and grene,

Seyn yow a song, to glade yow, I wene;

And lat us stynte of ernestful matere:

Herkneth my song that seith in this manere.
Envol ,

Grisilde is deed, and eek hire pacience,

And bothe atones buryed in Itaille;

For which I crie in open audience,

No wedded man so hardy be tassaille

His wyves pacience, in hope to fynde

Grisildis, for in certein he shal faille.

O noble wyves, ful of heigh prudence, |
/ Lat noon humylitee youre tonge naille,
Ne lat no clerk have cause or diligence
To write of yow a storie of swich mervaille
As of Grisildis, pacient and kynde,
Lest Chichevache yow swelwe in hire entraille.

ya
THE CANTERBURY TALES 199

Folweth Ekko, that holdeth no silence,
But ever answereth at the countretaille.
Beth nat bidaffed for youre innocence,

But sharply tak on yow the governaille.
Emprenteth wel this lessoun in youre mynde
For commune profit, sith it may availle.

Ye archiwyves, stondeth at defence,

Syn ye be strong as is a greet camaille;

Ne suffreth nat that men yow doon offence;
And sklendre wyves, fieble as in bataille,
Beth egre as is a tygre yond in Ynde;

Ay clappeth as a mille, I yow consaille:

Ne dreed hem nat, doth hem no reverence;

For though thyn housebonde armed be in maille,
The arwes of thy crabbed eloquence

Shal perce his brest, and eek his aventaille.

In ialousie I rede eek thou him bynde,

And thou shalt make him couche as dooth a quaille.

If thou be fair, ther folk been in presence

Shewe thou thy visage and thyn apparaille;

If thou. be foul, be fre of thy dispence,

To gete thee freendes ay do thy travaille;

Be ay of chere as light as leef on lynde,

And lat him care, and wepe, and wringe, and waille.

The moment is completely dramatic. It is not
Chaucer who speaks, but the Clerk of Oxenford,
and every word is in perfect character. His
mock encomium is not only a masterpiece of
sustained and mordant irony; it is a marvellous
specimen of technical skill in metre, in diction,
and in vigorous and concentrated satire. None
200 : CHAUCER

but the Clerk, a trained rhetorician, could have
composed it. None but the Clerk, a master of
logic and a practised disputant, could have
turned upon an opponent so adroitly. The home
thrust comes when the guard is down. The Clerk
is a moral philosopher, and he has proved both
his earnestness and his competence. It is one of
the humors of literature that this Envoy is tradi-
tionally judged a violation of dramatic propriety,
as being out of accord with the Clerk’s character.
On the contrary, as we have seen, it is adjusted,
with the nicest art, not only to his character,
but also to the situation and the relations among
the dramatis personae. 5

Heedless criticism has thrown the Wife’s Pro-
logue into the huge heap of satires on woman
piled up by successive generations of medieval
poets. This indiscriminate procedure ignores the
essential element that distinguishes the Canter-
bury Tales from the ordinary narrative and
didactic poetry of the middle ages. The Wife of
Bath is an individual expressing herself in char-
acter, not a stalking horse for a satirist’s poisoned
arrows. Her revelations apply to herself. To
extend them to wives or women in general, is as
ludicrous as it would be to interpret Iago’s cyni-
cal speeches as Shakspere’s satire on men and
husbands. We may even take the Miller to
witness: —
THE CANTERBURY TALES 201

Ther ben ful goode wyves many oon,
And ever a thousand goode ayeyns oon badde:
That knowestow wel thyself, but if thou madde.?

Similarly, the ironical Envoy is not to be taken
as Chaucer’s revolt against the false morality of
Griselda’s parable, but as the utterance of the
Clerk, under quite particular circumstances. Nor
is it, even on the Clerk’s part, an attack on wives
or women. It is simply a satirical encomium on
a particular person, the obstreperous widow of
Bath, and on any others who may choose to
adopt her principles or join her heretical sect.

The dramatic connection between the Clerk’s
Envoy and the Merchant’s Tale is especially
close. The last line of the Clerk’s ironical advice
to wives — to let their husbands “ care and weep
and wring and wail” — is picked up by the Mer-
chant in a despairing echo: —

“Weeping and wailing, care, and other sorwe,
I know ynogh, on even and a-morwe,”

Quod the Merchaunt, “and so don othere mo
That wedded been.”

“There is no likeness between my wife and
Griselda! I have been married only two months,
and I have suffered more than any bachelor in a

lifetime!”
The tale that follows is one of the most re-
markable in the whole collection, — not for the

1 A, 3154-3156.
"

é

202 CHAUCER

plot, which is an old indecorous jest, but for the
savage and cynical satire with which the Mer-
chant has loaded the story. We need not respect
him, for he no longer respects himself; but we
cannot be angry. He is a stately and dignified
personage, the last man from whom so furious
an outburst would be expected; but his disillu-

; sion has been sudden and complete. Habitually

‘cautious, both in word and act, he has played the
‘fool by marrying the wrong woman, and, now
that excitement loosens his tongue, he goes all
lengths, for he is half-mad with rage and shame.
Let us not mistake the purpose of the Mer-
chant’s satire. May, the young wife, is not so
much its object as the dotard January, who has
not a single redeeming feature. Man’s folly is
the Merchant’s text, rather than woman’s
frailty; and all the time he is really castigating
himself. Yet the tale is also, in substance, an-
other reply to the Wife of Bath and her heresies.
It is as if one of her many husbands had come
back to earth to confute her by giving his own
side of the case. Above all things, we must avoid
the error of those critics who treat the Merchant
as if he were Chaucer. Here, if ever, it is vitally
necessary to bear the drama in mind.
The Host is somewhat startled at the Mer-
chant’s story. His own wife, he is glad to say, is
true as any steel, shrew though she may be. But
THE CANTERBURY TALES 203

he goes on jestingly to express, in strict confidence
— with all the Pilgrims listening — his wish that
he were out of wedlock bonds. He will not tell all
his wife’s faults, for fear some woman in the com-
pany may blab when they all get back to South-
wark. Besides, his wit would not suffice. The
list would ‘“‘dizzy the arithmetic of memory.”
Obviously, Harry Bailly, too, is having his little
fling at the Wife of Bath, who still holds the
centre of the stage as the only begetter of the

whole discussion.
“ “Ey, Goddes mercy,” seyde oure Hoste tho,

“Now swich a wyf I pray God kepe me fro!
Lo, whiche sleightes and subtilitees
In wommen been! for ay as bisy as bees
Been they, us sely men for to deceyve;
And from a soothe ever wol they weyve:
By this Marchauntes tale it preveth weel.
But doutelees, as trewe as any steel
I have a wyf, though that she povre be;.
But of hir tonge a labbyng shrewe is she;
And yet she hath an heep of vices mo.
Therof no fors, lat alle swiche thynges go;
But wite ye what? In counseil be it seyd,
Me reweth soore I am unto hire teyd;
For, and I sholde rekenen every vice
Which that she hath, y-wis I were to nyce.
And cause why, it sholde reported be,
And told to hire of some of this meynee;
Of whom, it nedeth nat for to declare,
Syn wommen connen outen swich chaffare;
And eek my wit suffiseth nat thereto,
To tellen al, wherfore my tale is do.”
204 CHAUCER

Now, at length, the Host feels sure that the
debate on matrimony has run its course. The
topic of Marriage has been long enough before
the Pilgrims. A tale of love, he thinks, would be
~ a welcome relief,! and for such a tale he calls upon
the Squire, who, as he suggests, must be well
acquainted with the subject: —

“Squier, com neer, if it youre wille be,
And sey somwhat of love, for certes ye
Connen theron as muche as any man.”’!

The Squire’s Tale is the justly celebrated
though fragmentary romance of Cambuscan
and the Brazen Horse, to finish which Milton
longed to call up Chaucer from the grave. It
rouses the admiration of the Franklin, not more
for its substance than for the eloquent style and
courtly bearing of the narrator. The Franklin
is a wealthy man, ambitious to found a family.
He has a son whose low tastes are a grief to him,
and he compliments the Squire on his “gentil-
lesse,”’ contrasting him rather piteously with the
ungracious heir, who will be rich some day, but
has no wish to grow up a gentleman. The Host
is impatient, or pretends to be. Perhaps he is
only trying to irritate the Franklin to recalci-
trancy, with a view to the huge forfeit agreed —
upon beforehand, the sum total of the company’s
expenditure on the road. “A straw for your

1 F, 1-3.
THE CANTERBURY TALES 205

‘gentillesse’!”” he exclaims. “Come on, and tell
us a story!”

“Straw for youre ‘gentillesse,”” quod our Host.
“What! Frankeleyn, pardee, sire; wel thou wost

That ech of yow moot tellen atte leste

A tale or two, or breken his biheste.”
“That knowe I wel, sire,” quod the Frankeleyn,
“TI prey yow haveth me nat in desdeyn

Though to this man I speke a word or two.”
*Telle on thy tale, withouten wordes mo!”
“Gladly, sire Host!” quod he, “I wol obeye

Unto your wyl; now herkneth what I seye.

I wol yow nat contrarien in no wyse

As fer as that my wittes wol suffyse;

I prey to God that it may plesen yow,

Than woot I wel that it is good ynow.”

The Franklin is not to be caught in any such
trap. He assents cordially, without a hint of
rebellion, and begins the tale of Arveragus and
Dorigen.

The Franklin, like the Clerk before him, has a
surprise ready for Harry Bailly and the Pilgrims.
He resumes the debate on Matrimony, which had
lapsed, to all appearances, with the Host’s calling
upon the Squire for a tale of love; and he not
only resumes it, but carries it to a triumphant
v v7 conclusion by solving the problem. He. solves it,

~ too, by an appeal to precisely that quality which

he so much admires in the Squire, and which the__
Host has scoffed at him for mentioning — the
quality of “gentillesse.”

ee
206 CHAUCER

This procedure on the Franklin’s part is mani-
festly deliberate; it is not accident, but belongs
to Chaucer’s plan.

The Franklin, as we have noted, feels a wistful
interest in “gentillesse” — a delightful old term
which includes culture, good breeding, and gen-
erous sentiments, or, to borrow Osric’s words to
Hamlet, “the continent of what part a gentle-
man would see.” Naturally, therefore, he selects
a story that illustrates this quality. It involves
a graceful compliment to two of the Pilgrims who
have held the stage in this act of Chaucer’s
Human Comedy, for the plot turns on the com-
peting generosity of a husband (who is a knight),
a lover (who is a squire), and a magician (who is
a clerk), the appraisal of merit being left to the
audience.

In itself, this tale, which is an old one, throws
no light on the problem of sovereignty in mar-
riage. At the outset, however, the Franklin
makes a definite application. Arveragus, a noble
knight of Brittany, wins the love of the lady
Dorigen, who “takes him for her husband and her
lord.” Out of pure gentillesse, he promises that
he will never assert his authority after they are
married, but will continue to be her humble serv-
ant, as a lover ought to be to his lady. In return
for this gentillesse, Dorigen vows never to abuse
her sway, but to be his true and obedient wife.
THE CANTERBURY TALES 207

Thus the married lovers dwell together in perfect
accord, each deferring to the other, and neither
claiming the sovereignty; and it is this relation of
mutual love and forbearance, the outcome of
gentillesse, that carries them safely through the-
entanglements of the plot and preserves their

wedded happiness unimpaired as long as they
live.

Love. and marriage, according to the courtly \

system, were held to be incompatible, since mar-
riage involves mastery on the husband’s part,
and mastery drives out love.

=
Non bene conveniunt, nec in una sede morantur,
Maiestas et amor.

This theory the Franklin utterly repudiates.
In true marriage, he argues, there should be no
assertion of sovereignty on either side. Love
must be the controlling principle, — perfect,

~~ gentle love, which brings forbearance with it.

Such is his solution of the whole problem, and
thus he concludes the long debate begun by that
jovial heresiarch, the Wife of Bath.

Thus been they bothe in quiete and in reste.
For o thyng, sires, saufly dar I seye,

That freendes everych oother moot obeye,
If they wol longe holden compaignye.

Love wol nat been constreyned by maistrye.
Whan maistrie comth, the god of love, anon,
Beteth his wynges and, farewel, he is gon!

x

——
208 CHAUCER

Love is a thyng as any spirit free.

Wommen of kynde desiren libertee,

And nat to been constreyned as a thral;

And so doon men, if I sooth seyen shal.

Looke who that is moost pacient in love,

He is at his avantage al above.

“{Pacience is an heigh vertu, certeyn,

For it venquysseth, as thise clerkes seyn,

Thynges that rigour sholde never atteyne;

For every word men may nat chide or pleyne.

Lerneth to suffre, or elles, so moot I goon,

Ye shul it lerne, wher-so ye wole or noon;

For in this world, certein, ther no wight is

That he ne dooth, or seith, som-tyme amys.

Ire, siknesse, or constellacioun,

Wyn, wo, or chaungynge of complexioun,

Causeth ful ofte to doon amys or speken.

On every wrong a man may nat be wreken;

After the tyme moste be temperaunce

To every wight that can on governaunce;

And therefore hath this wise, worthy knight, —

To lyve in ese, — suffrance hire bihight,

And she to him ful wisly gan to swere

That never sholde ther be defaut in here.
Heere may men seen an humble, wys accord;

Thus hath she take hir servant and hir lord, —

Servant in love, and lord in mariage, —

Than was he bothe in lordshipe and servage.

Servage? nay, but in lordshipe above;

Sith he has both his lady and his love;,

His lady, certes, and his wyf also,

The which that lawe of love acordeth to.

And whan he was in this prosperitee

Hoom with his wyf he gooth to his contree,

Nat fer fro Penmark, ther his dwelling was,

Wher-as he lyveth in blisse and in solas.

Who coude telle, but he hadde wedded be,
THE CANTERBURY TALES 209

The ioye, the ese, and the prosperitee
That is bitwixe an housbonde and his wyf? }

There is no mistaking Chaucer’s purpose in
this, the final scene of that act of the Canterbury
Pilgrimage which deals with the problem of hus-
band and wife. He does not allow the Franklin
to tell a tale without a moral expressed and to
leave the application to our powers of inference.
On the contrary, the Franklin’s discussion of the
subject is both definite and compendious. It
extends to nearly a hundred. lines, without a
particle of verbiage, and occupies a conspicuous
position at the very beginning of the story, so
that the tale is utilized to illustrate and enforce

the principle. And in the course of this discus-
sion the Franklin alludes, in a way that cannot
“have escaped his fellow-travellers, to the Wife of
Bath’s harangue on the thraldom of husbands,”
to the patience of Griselda * and the theories of
the Marquis Walter as described by the Clerk
of Oxford,* and to the grimly ironical praise of
wedlock which makes lurid the frenzied satire
of the disillusioned Merchant.® It is clear, there-
fore, that Chaucer means us to regard the Frank-
lin as “knitting up the matter,” as summarizing
the whole debate and bringing it to a definitive
1 F. 760-805. 2 F. 769-770.

3 F771. * F( 768-769)
5 F 803-805; cf. E. 1337-1341. 799-78
210 CHAUCER

conclusion which we are to accept as a perfect
rule of faith and practice.

In assigning to the Franklin this supremely
important office, Chaucer acted with his usual
perspicacity. Marriage, when all is said and
done, is an affair of practical life. Theorists may
talk about it,—divines, philosophers, men of
law, harpers harping with their harps, —but we
listen with a certain skepticism when they take
high ground, or shut their eyes to the weakness
of human nature. To the Franklin, on the con-
trary, we lend a credent ear./ He is no cloistered
rhetorician, but a ruddy, white-bearded vava-.
sour, a great man in his neighborhood, fond of the
good things of life and famous for his lavish hos-
pitality. He has been sheriff of his county and
Member of Parliament, and is perpetual presid-
ing justice at the sessions of the peace. Such a
man lies under no suspicion of transcendental.
theorism or vague heroics. When he speaks of
mutual forbearance and perfect gentle love be-
tween husband and wife, we listen with convic-
tion. The thing is possible. The problem need.
puzzle us no longer.

Who coude telle, but he hadde wedded be,
The ioye, the ese, and the prosperitee
That is bitwixe an housbonde and his wyf?
Chaucer has fared hard at the hands of some
of his biographers. They are determined to take
THE CANTERBURY TALES 211°

his jesting seriously, and his serious words in
jest. Let us try to be candid. We know that
Chaucer was married, but we know nothing
whatever of the happiness or unhappiness of his
married life. Not a single external fact has come
down to us that throws any light on this ques-
tion. We may believe as we list, but we should,
in all conscience, not pick up a word here and
a phrase there — now a joke about St. Leonard,
copied from the Romance of the Rose, and now
a comic address to Bukton, suited to the rough
jocosity of a farewell bachelor dinner — we
should not, I say, piece together these shreds and
patches of humor and call our motley fabric auto-
biography, while all the time we disregard the
significance of a whole act of Chaucer’s Human
Comedy of the Canterbury Pilgrimage contain-
ing more than six thousand verses of his very
best work! —

The most abandoned character among the
Canterbury Pilgrims is the Pardoner, and the
cynicism with which he boasts of his infamy has
often been cited as an example of Chaucer’s
heedless or defiant violation of dramatic pro-
priety. Some have tried to justify the poet on
the plea of in vino veritas. But the Pardoner is
quite sober. No draught of “moist and corny
ale” will account for his self-revelation. He
knows precisely what he is about when he exposes
212 CHAUCER

the horrid hypocrisy of his professional life. Why
does he do it?

The Doctor has just told the tragic story of
_ Virginia, by which the Host is profoundly af-
fected. He feels the need of a merry tale, and so
he calls upon the Pardoner: —

“Thou bel ami, thou Pardoner,” he seyde,

“Tell us som myrthe or iapes right anon!”

“Tt shal be don,” quod he, “by seynt Ronyon!

“But first,’ quod he, “here at this ale stake,

I wol both drink, and eten of a cake!”

What the host wants is a ribald story, and the
Pardoner is quite ready to accommodate him.
But the gentlefolk object, and call for a tale of
morality: —

“Nay! lat him telle us of no ribaudye!

Telle us som moral thing, that we may lere

Som wit, and thanne wol we gladly here.”
For this the Pardoner is equally ready, — but.
he is not to be cheated out of his refreshment: —

“T graunte ywis,” quod he, “but I moot thynke,

Upon som honest thyng whil that I drynke!”

Absurdity sometimes goes far in literary criti-
cism, but I think it has “made its masterpiece”
— in a small way, as one carves a grotesque out.
of a peach stone — in the notion that the Par-
doner is obliged to stop and think before he can
recollect an edifying story. Why! he is a “noble

-ecclesiast”’; his livelihood depends on his abili-
THE CANTERBURY TALES 213

ties as a popular preacher, and no sermon was
complete without an illustrative anecdote. True,
the Pardoner himself pretends to require a mo-
ment’s reflection in order to turn his mind away
from merriment to serious subjects. But he
merely continues the course of thought which
began at the moment when the Host called on
him for a tale (a merry one, be it remembered),
and the subject of his meditations is simply cakes
and ale, which he is determined to have before
telling any story whatsoever.

The company, we should remember, is just
passing one of the many roadside booths where
ale and wheaten wafers were dispensed to trav-
ellers, and we are not to imagine that the Par-
doner is the only member of the band who stands
in need of a little sustenance. Indeed, the first
suggestion comes from Harry himself, who thinks
that a tankard may relieve the spasm of heart-
ache that the Physician’s tragic story has brought
on.
Now this lively dialogue gives us the key to the
situation quite as satisfactorily, I should think,
as if it were one of Mr. Bernard Shaw’s inter-
minable stage-directions. The Pilgrims are well
acquainted with the Pardoner by this time, for
he is on a vacation, and has made no attempt to
hide his colors. This acquaintance is shown
clearly by the Host’s request for a “merry tale,”
214 CHAUCER

by the Pardoner’s hearty assent. ve
instant protest of the “gentles.” cs
change from the proposed ribald st: Jt

high morality is, then, the dramatic .. -casion of ~
the Pardoner’s long preamble, which contains
the cynical avowal that so worries the critics.
True, this prologue is cast into a conventional
form, — that of the Confession, in which some
typical figure is regularly made to satirize his
type by speaking in the first person. But here,
as ever in Chaucer, the convention is vitalized,
and it is an individual that speaks, not a type.
Our Pardoner is a famous pulpit orator, and he
is about to repeat one of his best sermons. He
knows that he shall preach with fervor, because
he has the histrionic temperament, and also
because the tale is so moving that no one could
tell it flippantly. Besides, he is proud of his elo-
quence, and has no mind to spoil his discourse
~- by slipshod delivery.

Under these circumstances, the cynical frank-
ness of the Pardoner is dramatically inevitable.
He is simply forestalling the reflections of his
fellow-pilgrims. “I know I am a rascal,” he says
in effect, “and you know it; and I wish to show
you that I know you know it!” Like many an-
other of us poor mortals, the Pardoner is willing
to pass for a knave, but objects to being taken
for a fool. To deceive mankind is his busines”
Missing Page
Missing Page
THE CANTERBURY TALES 217

holy order. Once he preached for Christ’s sake;
and now, under the spell of the wonderful story
he has told and of recollections that stir within
him, he suffers a very paroxysm of agonized sin-
cerity. It can last but a moment. The crisis
passes, and the reaction follows. He takes refuge
from himself in a wild orgy of reckless jesting: —
““But see here, my friends! I forgot to tell you
about my relics. Here they are — the best in
England — and first-rate pardons, too! It’s a
regular insurance policy to have a Pardoner like
me in the company. Come up, and make your
offerings. You first, Sir Host! for I’m sure you
are the worst sinner in the troop.”

Harry Bailly has no conception (how could
he?) of the Pardoner’s emotional crisis. He an-
swers with rough jocularity; but he means no
offence, and, under ordinary circumstances the
Pardoner would simply have paid him tit for tat.
But the moment is too intense for poise. With
another revulsion of feeling, the Pardoner be-
comes furiously angry, so angry that words
stick in his throat.

This Pardoner answerde him not a word;
So wroth he was, no word ne wolde he seye.

“Now,” quod oure Hoste, “I wol no lenger pleye
With thee, ne with noon other angry man!”

-“T won’t- joke,” cries the Host indignantly, “with
a man that cannot keep his temper.”
218 _ CHAUCER

Then the Knight interposes to make up the
quarrel. They are reconciled amidst the laughter
of the company. For nobody but Geoffrey
Chaucer divined the tragic face behind the
‘satyr’s mask, — Geoffrey Chaucer, poet, idealist,
burgher of London, Commissioner of Dykes and
Ditches, who loved his fellow-men, both good
and bad, and found no answer to the puzzle of
life but in truth and Lee and beauty and.
belief i in 1 God. ©

THE END
INDEX
INDEX

ABC, Chaucer’s, 10,

Achilles, 143.

Adam Scrivener, 36.

Addison, 183.

Aneid, 78 f.

Eolus, 95, 106.

Aérial flights, 84 f.

Alanus de Insulis, 77, 85.

Alchemy, 8, 11, 15, 32.

Alcyone. See Ceyx.

Alexander the Great, 85.

Allegory, 24 f., 51, 54, 80 f7., 94 f-;
97 f., 160. See Melibee.

Alma Redemptoris, 177.

Antenor, III, 119.

Anticlaudianus, 77, 85.

Apostrophe, 13.

Arcadian device, 100.

Aristophanes, 15.

Aristotle, 115.

Arnold, Matthew, 72.

Artistic economy, 19.

Arveragus and Dorigen, 205 ff.

Ashmole, Elias, 11.

Astrolabe, 10.

Astrology, 11, 34, 128.

Astronomy, II.

Autobiography, real and sup-
posed, 33f7., 48, 807, 89,
97 f., 183 f., 210f.

Bacon, 24.

Bailly, Harry. See Host.
Balade of Good Counsel, 33.
Balades, 33 #- =
Ball, John, 2, 8.

Bankers, 5.

 

Bardi, bankers, 5.

Bath. See Wife of Bath.

Baucis and Philemon, 154.

Benoit de Sainte Maure, 110.

Bermuda, Song of the Emigrants
in, 48.

Beryn, tale of, 156 7.

Black Death, 2, 37, 215.

Blague, 163.

Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster,
37 f.

Boccaccio, 4, 19, 26f., 73, 110,
121 f., 126, 135, 137, 152.

Boethius, 29, 85, 110, 115; Chau-
cer’s translation, 10.

Bohemia, 3.

Book of the Duchess, 16, 22f.,
37-72, 76 f., 100, 103; occasion
of, 37; outline of, 39 #.; naiveté,
45 #.; simplicity of style and
metre, 47 f.; characters in the
story, 48 #.; the Dreamer not
Chaucer, 48 #f.; his character,
48 f.; unfounded censure on
the construction, 50 #.; climax
of emotional suspense, 53 f.;
French conventions applied
with originality, 54 7.; Frois-
sart, Machaut, the Roman de
la Rose, 54.3; connection be-
tween the proem and the dream,
58 f.; the dream, 60 #.; adapta-
tion of materialsfrom Machaut,
60 f.; description of Blanche
the Duchess, 63 #.; the fiction
of a dream, 67 ff.; Chaucer’s use
of the actual phenomena of the
222 INDEX

dream-life, 68 #.; charm of the
poem, 71.
Brittany, 206.
Bukton, Envoy to, 33 f., 211.
Buridanus, 105.
Burley, Walter, 9.
Burton, Robert, 124.

Czdmon, 67.

Cambuscan, 185, 204.

Canace, 59.

Canon’s Yeoman, 8, 14 f., 17, 147.

Canterbury, scene at, 157.

Canterbury Tales, 10, 13 f#., 31,
48, 102, 124, 146-218; the sev-
eral groups or fragments and
their order, 146f.; no single
source for the general scheme,
147 f.; contrast with the Trage-
dies and the Legend of Good
Women, 150 ff.; advantages of
the design adopted, 151 #.; va-
riety, 153; dramatic element (a
Human Comedy), 153 #.; con-
temporary understanding of
this, 157 7.; Chaucer’s fitness
for the work, 160 f.; the Host as
leader, 161 f.; primacy of the
Knight, 163 #.; critical mo-
ments, 163 f7.; the Monk, 164 77.;
abandonment of schématism,
166 f.; two acts of the Comedy
complete, 167 f.; the Shipman’s
group, 168-185; the Shipman’s
Tale and its personal applica-
tions, 169 #f.; comic interludes,
172; the Prioress, 175-181;
Chaucer the pilgrim, 182-185;
the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, 185
(see 13 f.); the Marriage Group,
185-211; the Wife’s Prologue
and Tale, 185-192; her heresies,
186 f., 188 #.; comic interlude
of the Friar and the Sumner,
190-192; the Clerk’s Tale and

 

Envoy, 193-201; the Merchant,
201 f.; the Squire, 204; the
Franklin, 204 7.3 conclusion of
the debate on marriage, 206-
210; the Pardoner, his tale and
his quarrel with the Host, 211-
218. See also under the names
of the several pilgrims.

Castile, John of Gaunt’s invasion

of, 4.

Ceyx and Alcyone, 39f., 44,

47 f-5 55 f- 71-

Chanticleer and Pertelote, 87, go.

See Nun’s Priest.

Character of a Good Parson, 19.
Characterization, 29, 46 f., 87 f.,

1227, 130f, 147, 153 ff,
160f., 175 f., 1867, 202,
211 ff.

Charles II, 100.
Chaucer, the man and his times,

1-36; the problems of his cen-
tury (labor, art of war, the
Eastern question, relation be-
tween church and state, impe-
rialism, etc.) much like our own,
2-5; his social position, 5; occu-
pations*and experiences, 5f.,
160; service to our language, 7;
spirit and intellectual habits of
his age, 7 f.; his learning and
intellectual interests, 9 f.; vari-
ety of his interests as shown by
the variety of his performance,
10 f.; his religious writings, 10;
scientific knowledge, 10/f.;
training in rhetorical and liter-
ary technique, 11 #.; schema-
tism, 11f., 14f.3 categories of

this works, 15 f.; literary quali-

ties, particularly as to form and
regularity, 17 #.; the question
of digressions, 23-26, 78, 93,
115 f.; influence of foreign liter-
ature, 26 f.; four periods in his
INDEX

poetical activity, 26-29; the
Period of Transition, 28 f.; first
visit to Italy, 28; delineation of
character, 29 (see Characteriza-
tion); irony, 30 #. (see Irony);
nature of the man, 31 ff.; en-
thusiasm for life, 32; religion,
333 personal epistles and bits of
real or supposed autobiography,
33-36, 48, 80 f., 89, 97f.,
183 #., 210 f.; marriage, 34, 37,
211 (see Marriage); artistic de-
tachment, 38f., 75f., 142f.,
161, 184; supposed naiveté,
45 7.3 pathos, 46 (see Pathos);
dramatic quality, 48, 151,
153 f., 166 77., 185 #., 201 ff,
211 f.; obligations to Froissart,
Machaut, and the Roman de la
Rose, 54 f., 60 f.; originality
shown in use made of borrowed
material, 64 7.; descriptive
method, 647/.; interest in
dreams, 66 ff. (see Dreams);
love of nature, 71, 179; sense of
mortality, 71 f.; seriousness and
poetic rank, 72; supposed per-
sonal allegory, 80f., 97.5
romance and realism, 104 f.;
reputation and _ popularity,
108 f.; a narrative poet, 108 ff,
146 ff.; debt to Boccaccio, 121 f.
(see Boccaccio); use of chivalric
conventions, 122 f7., 136 ff. (see
Courtly love, Love-visions);
abandonment of the courtly
code at the end of the Troilus,
143 f.; observation of lifé and
manners, 148 f.; development
in narrative technique, 150 f7.;
variety and action, 153-/.; defi-
nitive break with medieval
schematism in the plan of the
Canterbury Tales, 166f.; the
Host’s description of Chaucer,

 

223

182 f.; caution necessary in
estimating it, 183 7.5 the solu-
tion of the problem of love and
marriage, 206-210; sympathe-
tic comprehension of human
nature, 218. See also under the
titles of the various works.

Chaucer, Philippa, 37.

Checker inn, 157.

Chivalric love. See Courtly.

Chivalry, 3.

Chrétien de Troyes, 109.

Church and state, 4; Chaucer and
the Church, 33.

Churchill, Charles, 100.

Cicero, 59, 85, 94, 140 f.

Clanvowe, Sir John, 104.

Classical qualities, 17.

Cleopatra, 16.

Clergy, 32 f., 146 f., 164 ff., 168 f.,
170, 174f., 189f., 193 f.
211 ff.

Clerk, the, and his Tale, 13, 147,
151,189 f., I .) 255™.

Cfinrax = resolution, 20].

Cloth manufacture, 3, 32.

Cock and Fox, Dryden’s, 19.
See Nun’s Priest.

Coinage of gold, 4.

Coleridge, 67.

Colonne. See Guido.

Colors or flowers of rhetoric, 12 #.,
90, 130, 193.

Comic interlude, Friar and Sum-
ner, 156, 172, 185, 190 ff.; Mil-
ler and Reeve, 167, 172.

Complaint, lover’s, 54, 60f., 70,
123.

Complaint to his Purse, 33.

Confessio Amantis, 130.

Confession, the, a form of satire,

214.

Consolation of Philosophy. See
Boethius.

Constance, 16.
224

Conversation. See Dialogue.

Cook, the, and his Tale, 146/f.,
172.

Corinthians, Second, 85.

Couplet, heroic, 17.

Courtly love, theories and con-
ventions of, 16, 26, 34 f., 48 #.,
61 f., 78 f., 100, 122 #., 130 fF.,
136 f7., 142f., 152, 206.3 re-
pudiated at the end of the
Troilus, 142 f., and by the
Franklin, 207 ff.

Cracow, university of, 4.

Critical spirit, 8.

Cressida, character of, 126 f.,
180.

Cupid’s saints, 16, 134, 150, 152.

Cynicism, 21 f., 138 f., 151; 200 f7.,
211 ff.

Dedalus and Icarus, 85. ‘

Dante, 7, 26, 73, 86.

De Casibus, 152.

Description, 19 f., 63 f7., 182 f.

Detachment, attitude of, 38/,,
75 f-. 142 f., 161, 184.

Dialect, Chaucer’s, 7.

Dialogue, 17, 64, 87 f., 133, 137.

Diction, 12 f., 17 f., 39, 47 f.

Dido, 16, 79.

Digression, 23 f., 78, 93, 115 f.

Diomede, 120 f., 128 #7., 134, 180.

Doctor. See Physician.

Dorigen and Arveragus, 205 ff.

Dramatic elements in the Canter-
bury Tales, 151, 153 #7., 166 f7.,
185 #., 201 f., 211 ff.

Dreams, discussed by Chaucer,
11, 66f., 74 7.3; convention of,
in love-poetry, 22f., 38 f.,
54f, 58H, 66F., 74H, 103;
convention vitalized by Chau-
cer’s sense of fact, 22 f., 58 f.,
66 f.

Dryden on Chaucer, 18 f., 153 f.;

 

INDEX

his imitations of Chaucer, 17 f.;
his heroic couplet, 17.

Eagle in the House of Fame, 79;
not allegorical, 84; his office in
the poem, 86f.; his lectures,
87 #.; his function as helpful
animal, 101, 105.

Eastern question, 3.

Education, interest in, 4.

Edward III, 3 #., 37.

Eglantine, Madame. See Prioress.

Elegy on the Duchess Blanche,
37-72; novel application of
French conventions to this pur-
pose, 54. See Book of the
Duchess.

Elijah, 84.

Eloquentia, 13.

Embassies of Chaucer, 6.

England in the fourteenth cen-
tury, 1 ff.

English language, Chaucer’s rela-
tion to the, 7. .

English Period, 26 f.

Enoch, 84.

Envoy to Bukton, 33 f.

Envoy to Scogan, 34 f.

Epaminondas, 9. -

Epimenides, 9. .

Errors in middle ages, 9 f.

Euripides, 179.

Exemplun, 13 f., 21 ff, 191, 213,
215.

Fable, 26.

Fabliaux, 17, 25, 168, 192.

Faithful Shepherdess, 100.

Falstaff, 163, 179.

Fame, her palace or castle, 94; an
audience of the goddess, 95 f.;
Chaucer’s attitude, 96 #.; the
materials of reputation, 106;
meanings of the word, 106.
See House of Fame.
INDEX

Farm laborers, 2.

Fate in the Troilus, 112 #.; medi-
tation of Troilus on the subject,
115 f.; the doom of Troy,
117 ff.

Feminism, medieval, 2, 188 ff.

Filostrato, 26, 121 f., 135.

Flanders, Chaucer in, 6.

Flee from the Press
Counsel), 33.

Flemings, 3.

Fletcher, John, 100.

Florence, 28; bankers of, 5.

Flowers of rhetoric. See Colors.

Folk-tales, 87, 105 f., 215.

Fontaine Amoureuse, 56 ff.

Foreknowledge and free will,
115 f.

Fortune, 51, 58, 110, 115.

Frame-stories, 147 ff.

France, Edward III’s claim to, 4;
Chaucer in, 6; the Jacquerie in,
8. See French.

Franklin, the, and his Tale, 12, 17,
147, 151, 168, 204 ff.

Free will, 115 7.

French influence on Chaucer,
26 f. See Courtly love, Love-
visions, Froissart, Machaut,
Romance of the Rose.

French Period, 26 f., 54.

Friar, the, and his Tale, 17, 32,
147, 156, 172, 185, 190 f.;
quarrel with the Sumner, 156,
172, 185, 190 ff.

Friars, begging, satirized by the
Sumner, 192.

Friendship, extreme view of,
139 f.

Froissart, 55 ff.

(Good

Ganymede, 84.

Garrick, 124.

Gaunt. See John of Gaunt.
Gay, John, 100.

 

225

Genoa, Chaucer in, 28.
Gentillesse, 204 ff.
Geoffrey de Vinsauf, 14.
Glascurion, 94, 104.

Gold and silver, 4.
Golden Legend, 16, 152.
Goldsmith, 48.

Good Counsel, 33.
Gower, 3, 130.
Greenwich, 30, 34 f.
Griseida, 121 f., 126, 135.
Griselda, 13, 194 #., 209.
Guiding animals, 87, 105.
Guido delle Colonne, 110.
Guillaume de Lorris, 26.
Guillaume de Machaut, 54, 56 f.,

61 ff.

Hamlet, 20, 115, 155.

Hector, 119.

Helen, 179.

Helpful animals. See Guiding.

Henry IV, 33.

Hereos, 125.

Heresies of the Wife of Bath,
186 ff.

Heroic couplet, 17.

Heroical love, 124.

Heroides, 16, 152.

Herrick, 100.

High style, 12 f., 193.

Holmes, O. W., 91.

Homer, 145.

Horace, 9, 18.

Horatius Pulvillus, 9.

Host, the, 13, 31,34, 48, 87, 156 #75
161 f., 168 f., 192 f., 203 ff., 212,
217 f. a

Hosts, in literature, 162 f.

House of Fame, 16, 29, 67, 73-107,
124, 160; belongs to the period
of Transition, 73; plan, 74 ff;
temple in the desert, 78 #.; the
eagle, 79, 85 f., 99 #.; fancied
personal allegory, 80 #., 97 f.
226
aérial flight, 84 7.; castle of the
goddess, 94 ff.; her audience,
94 ff; the House of Rumors,
98 77.3; the conclusion, 102 f7.; the
poem a study of mankind from
the point of view of a ruling
passion, 107, 160.

Human Comedy, 154 f., 167 7.
185 ff.

Humor, 30 f7., 76 f., 86, 88 #f., 107,
137 f., 167 F., 172 ff, 182 Ff.,
187 ff., 203; naiveté and humor,

45 f. See Irony.
Huss, John, 3, 8.

Tago, 155, 200.

Icarus, 85.

Imitations of Chaucer, Dryden’s,
19 f.3 prologue to the Tale of
Beryn, 157 f.

Imperialism, 4.

Innocent III, 10.

Inns, 157, 159, 162 f., 172, 184.

Insulis, Alanus de, 77, 85.

Ireland, 4, 104.

Irony, 14, 20, 30f., 76f., 136, 140,
‘143, 145, 184 f., 197 #-

Isocrates, 9.

Italian Period, 26 ff.

Italy, Chaucer in, 6, 28, 73.

Jacquerie, 2, 8.

Jean de Meun. See Meun.

John of Gaunt, 4, 37 ff.

Joseph, 40.

Judgment of the King of Bohemia
(Le Jugement dou Roy de Be-
haingne), 60 ff.

Juno, 39 f., 71, 78.

Jupiter, 78.

Knight, the, and his Tale, 14, 16,
19 f., 28, 73, 125, 146, 151, 155,
157, 163 f., 166 f.

Kubla Khan, 67.

 

INDEX

La Vache, Sir Philip, 33.
Lelius, 140.
Lancaster, Blanche, Duchess of,

37 #.

Lancaster, Duke of. See -John of
Gaunt.

Landlords, 2.

Language of Chaucer,7. See Eng-
lish language.

Latin, Chaucer’s reading in, 10,
28 f., 73 f., 77 f., 86, 94, 106,
TIO, 115, 145, 152.

Lay of Britain, 17.

Legend of Good Women, 16, 1133,
134, 150, 152.

Legenda Aurea, 16, 152.

Legends, 16, 152, 177 f., 180.

Lionel, Duke of Clarence, 104.

Livius Andronicus, 9.

Livy, 9.

Loathly lady, 23, 25.

Lollards, 3 f., 168 f.

Lollius, 31.

London, 161 f.; dialect of, 7.

Lorris, Guillaume de, 26.

Lounsbury, T. R., 22.

Love. See Courtly love.

Love and marriage, 206 ff.

Love, god of, 16, 42, 56, 63, 82,
122 f., 131, 137 f., 142 ff., 207.
See Cupid’s saints.

Love madness, 124 f.

Love-visions, 16, 22 f.,38 ff, $4 f+
59 f., 66 f., 76f., 81, 103, 99 f.
152.

Lover’s complaint, 54, 60 f., 70,

123.
Lowell, J. R., 63.
Lowes, J. L., 11, 125.
Lucan, 29, 145.
Lycidas, 54, 100. ,
Lydgate, 7.

Macbeth, 124, 155, 179.
INDEX

Machaut, Guillaume de, 54, 56 f7.,
61 ff.

Macrobius, 40, 59.

Magdalen, Origen on the, 10.

Man of Law’s Tale, 12, 16, 32, 147.

Manciple, 146.

Marriage, humorous treatment of,
in the Envoy to Bukton, 34,
211; discussion of, in the Mar-
riage Group of the Canterbury
Tales, 147, 171, 185-211; Chau-
cer’s, 34, 37, 211.

Mars, temple of, 19 f.

Marsyas, 94.

Marvell, Andrew, 48.

Medea, 16, 94.

Medieval times, etc. See Middle
Ages.

Medicine, 11, 124 f.

Melancholy, 125.

Melibee, 10, 147, 170, 185.

Menelaus, 179.

Merchant, the, and his Tale, 25,
48, 147, 157,.170, 173, 201 ff.

Merry Devil of Edmonton, 163.

Merry Wives of Windsor, 163.

Metre, Chaucer’s, 17, 18.

Meun, Jean de, 24 f.

Midas, 23.
Middle ages, the times and their
problems, 2 f.; intellectual

traits and methods, 7 7.; liter-
ary dogmas and practices,11 f7.;
literary types and categories,
15 #.; supposed digressiveness,
23 f.; characterization by types,
29; conventions in love-poetry,
54 f. (see Love-visions); fond-
ness for personification, 68;
realism and romance, 105 f.;
fate and fortune, 112 f7.; chival-
ric or courtly love, 123 ff. (see
Courtly); collections of stories,
148 f.; travel, pilgrimages, inns,
155 #.; table manners, 177; mi-

 

237

racles of the Virgin, 181; satire
on women, 200; ideals of gen-
tillesse, 206 77.

Midland dialect, 7.

Miller, the, and his Tale, 17, 146,
153, 155, 157, 167, 172, 192,
200 f.

Milton, 54, 100, 204.

Miracles of the Virgin, 16, 177 f.,
181 f.

Misenus, 94.

Mock encomium, 197 ff.

Mock heroic, 14, 26, 87.

Modernity of Chaucer, 1 f., 165.

Monk, the, and his Tale, 14, 150,
164 f., 167 f., 170, 174 f., 185.

Monologue. See Confession.

Montaigne, 24.

Morpheus, 40, 45, 56 #7., 76 f.

Naiveté, 45 7.

Nature, love of, 71, 179.

Nobles coined by Edward III, 4.

Novel, psychological, 16, 109 ff.

Novelle of Sercambi, 149.

Nun’s Priest, the, and his Tale,~
13f., 23, 26, 67, 87, 99, 146, i 68,
185. }

Obsolete words, 18.

Octavian, 41, 69.

Qdipus, 114.

Oratory, 12.

Origen, homily on the Magdalen,
ascribed to, 10.

Orpheus, 94.

Ovid, 4, 16, 28, 39f., 44, 47/f.,
54f., 71, 86, 104, 106, 145,
152 ff.

Palamon and Arcite. See Knight.

Palamon and Arcite, Dryden’s,
19 f.

Palladium, 117, 121. 7

Pandaro, 121, 137.

we
228

Pandarus, character of, 136 ff.
Paradys d’Amours, 55 ff.
Pardoner, the, a

his Tale, 294
gan <oy
190, 211-218; in the pro-
gue to Beryn, 157.
Pardoners in the House of Ru-
: mors, 101 f.
“s Parliament of Fowls, 16, 22, 59 f.,
67, 103.
Parody, 16. See Sir Thopas.
Parson, the, and his Tale, 10, 19,
32 f., 146, 168 f., 189; Dryden’s
Character of a Good Parson, 19.
Pastoral convention, 54, 100.
Pathos, 45 f., 76, 128 f., 177 #.,
181, 195 f.
Peasants’ revolt, 2, 8.
Periods in Chaucer’s literary ca-

reer, 26 ff.; French Period, 26, |

54; Italian, 26 f., 108 7.; Eng-
lish, 27, 146 #f.; Period of Tran-
sition, 28 f., 73.

Personified abstraction, 60, 68.

Peruzzi, bankers, 5.

» Petrarch, 4, 13, 26, 73, I10, 194,

196.

Philemon and Baucis, 154.

Philippa, Queen, 37.

Phyllis, 16.

Physician, the, and his Tale, 124,
147, 212.

Pilgrimage in the
Tales, 147 ff.

Pilgrims in the House of Rumors,
1or f.

Plagiarism, 64.

Plagues, 37.

Pnigos, 15.

Politics, 4.

Polonius, 136.

Pope, Alexander, 2.

Prayers, 10, 39 f., 57f., 71 f., 76f.,
79, 94 f., 116, 145.

Presentiments, 67.

Canterbury

 

INDEX

Prioress, the, and her Tale, 16,
147, 168, 174-182, 189. ~

Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,
14, 155, 158-163, 183 f.

Prophecy of Famine, Churchill’s,
100.

Prudentia in the Anticlaudianus,
85.

Psychological novel, 16, 109 #7.
Psychology of dreams. See
Dreams.

Realism, 45; and romance, 105 f.

Reeve, the, and his Tale, 17, 146,
167, 172, 192; his quarrel with
the Miller, 167, 172.

Reformation, the, 3.

Relics, 117, 216 f.

Religion, 3 f., 8, 16, 33, 95, 100,
130, 143 f., 145, 158 f., 168 f,,
174,f., 177 f., 181, 189, 196 f.,
216 f., 218. ‘

Remedy for Fortune (Remede de
Fortune), 60, 63.

Revival of Learning, 4.

Rhetoric, medieval, 11 #.; Chau-
cer’s training in, 12 #f.; colors
or flowers of, 12 f., 90, 130,
193.

Rhythm, 17.

Richard I, 14.

Richard II, 4.

Romance and realism, 105 f.

Romance of the Rose, 24 f., 54,
60, 75, 81, 109, 152, 211.

Romances, Chaucer and the, 11,
16, 23, 105, III, 204.

Romulus, 84.

Rossetti, W. M., 109, 137.

Ruling passion, 107, 143, 160.

Rumors, House of, 98 ff.

Saint. See Legends.
Saint Andrews, university of, 4.
Saint Cecilia, 16.
INDEX

Saint Leonard, 211.

Saint Loy, 177.

Saint Paul, 85.

Saint Thomas of Canterbury, 157,
159.

Sainte Maure, Benoit de, 110.

Satire, 17, 200, 214; on Sumner by
Friar and vice versa, 192; on
Wife by Clerk, 197 #.; on mar-
tiage by Merchant, 201 f.

Schematism in medizval litera-
ture and Chaucer, 11-15, 64 f.,
94 f., 150 #.; Chaucer breaks
with the principle in the Canter-
bury Tales, 152, 166 f.

Schism, the Great, 8.

Science in Chaucer, 10. See Medi-
cine.

Scientific temper, 8.

Scipio Africanus, 59 f.

Scipio’s Dream, 59 f., 85.

Scogan, Henry, 34 f.

Scottish Highlands, 104.

Second Nun’s Tale, 16, 147.

Sercambi, 149 f.

Sermons, 10, 13 f., 21, 187, 191,
212 ff.

Seven Deadly Sins, 10.

Shakspere, 65, 67, 80, 115, 124,
136, 155, 163, 179, 200.

Shaw, G. B., 213.

Shepherds’ Calendar, 100.

Shepherd’s Week, Gay’s, 100.

Shipman, the, and his Tale, 17,
1o1 f., 146, 168 #7.

Simon Magus, 94.

Sir Thopas, 11, 16, 31, 147, 168,
184 f.

Skepticism of Cressida, 135 f.

Sleep, god of. See Morpheus.

Socrates, 9.

Socratic irony, 14.

Soliloquies, 115 f., 155.

Somnium Scipionis, 59 f., 85.

Somnour. See Sumner.

 

229

Song of the Emigrants in Ber-
muda, 48.

Sound-waves, 90, 93.

Southey, 24. a

Southwark, 154. |

Spenser, 100. mo

Squire, the, and his Tale, 12, 16,
59, 147, 185, 204 f.

Stanza, the Troilus, 17.

Statius, 29, 145.

Straw, Jack, 2.

Strode, Ralph, 145.

Style. See High style, Diction.

Sumner, the, and his Tale, 17, 25,
32, 147, 151, 156, 172, 190 #3
quarrel with the Friar, 156, 172,
185, 190 ff.

Symplegades, 105.

Tabard inn, 154, 159.

Table manners, 177.

Tamerlane, 3.

Temple. See Venus.

Ten Brink, 80 f.

Teseide, 19, 26.

Theology, Chaucer’s, 10.

Thopas, Sir, 11,31, 147, 168, 184 f.

Tityre-tu’s, 163.

Tragedies, 14, 17, I10, 150, 152,
164 f., 168.

Transition, Period of, 28 f., 73.

Troilo, 121.

Troilus, 16 f., 28, 30 f., 67, 73, 108-
145, 160, 180; nature of the
work, 109 f.; simplicity of plot,
111 f.; interest in details and
characterization, 112; sense of
impending fate, connected with
the doom of Troy, 112-121;
a tragedy of character, 121; the
characters in Boccaccio, 121 f.;
the characters in Chaucer, 122
#.; character of Troilus, 122 77.5
doctrines of the chivalric sys-
tem of courtly love, 123 #.;char-
230

acter of Cressida, 126 ff.; na-
ture of her sin, 130 #.; her skep-
ticism, 135 f.; character of Pan-
darus, 136 #.; his rank, 136 f.;
his supposed cynicism, 137 ff.;
his attitude toward love, 138 #.;
his humor, 138 f.; his ideal of
friendship, 140 7f.; Chaucet’s
abandonment of the doctrines
of courtly love at the end, 142 f.;
a study of human nature from
the point of view of a ruling pas-
sion, 143; the prayer in conclu-
sion, 145.
Troy, matter of, 41, 109 f.
Troyes, Chrétien de, 109. f{
Turks in Europe, 3.
Tyler, Wat, 2, 8. /

Ulster, Countess of, 6. /
Universities, 4.

Vache, Sir Philip la, 33. ~~
Venus, 57; temple of, 78 ff.
Verse, Chaucer’s, 17. w

 

INDEX

Verses on the Birth of.Prince °
Charles, Herrick’s, 100.

Vicar of Wakefield, 48.

Villeinage, 2.

Vinsauf, Geoffrey de, 14.

Virgil, 18, 28, 78 f., 94, 145.

Virgin, miracles of the, 16, 177 f.,
181 f.; prayer to, 10.

Virginia, 212.

Visions. See Dreams, Love-visions.

Wales, 104.

Wall-paintings, 41, 78, 81 f.

War, art of, 3.

‘Wars in the fourteenth century, 4.

Whirling castles, 103, 105 f.

Wicker house, 98 #.

Wife of Bath, the, and her Tale,
17, 19, 23, 25, 32 34, 87, 147,
I51, 1555 | 170, 180, 185 #7.

209.
Wyclif, John,/3, 8.

Xenophanes, 9.
Xenophon, 9.
 

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