wards the king conferred on him a fresh pension of twenty pounds a year for life, to which Henry IV. in the first year of his reign (1399) added a pension of forty marks. Except these dry facts, we have absolutely no certain knowledge respecting the last ten years of Chaucer's life; but it is satisfactory to reflect that the last days of the father of English poetry were at least spent in external comfort, and free from the troubles of poverty. · Thus far no mention has been made of Chaucer's writings, the composition of most of which there is no means of accurately assigning to this or that year of his life. These must now be considered, but historically only, not critically. All that will be attempted here is, after enumerating his principal works, to determine so far as possible their approximate dates, to describe the various literary materials which he had at his disposal, and to show the different degrees in which the use of those materials, and his own genius as developed through the circumstances which surrounded him, influenced his work. For reasons presently to be mentioned, we have arranged the poet's chief works in the following order: 1 For some critical remarks on "The Canterbury Tales," see p. 406. Legende of Good Women The Prologue, and many of the Canter- The Astrolabie (1391) The Testament of Love 1 Fourth period. The works of the first period are by general consent assigned to Chaucer's youth. It is usual to reckon "The Court of Love" as the earliest of all, and to assign it to his eighteenth year, because the seventh stanza begins, "When I was yonge, at eighteen yeres of age." But the direct inference from these words, as Mr. Bell remarks, is that the poem was written some time after the poet's eighteenth year. Mr. Bell, however, considers the modest, self-depreciating tone in which the poem opens, as conclusive of the fact, that it was composed in early youth. But this test is fallacious, since similar protestations of ignorance and unskilfulness in his art are of constant occurrence all through Chaucer's works. They occur, for instance, in "The Testament of Love," one of the very latest. On the other hand, the smoothness of the versification, the perfect command over the resources of the language, and the finish of the poem generally, seem to bespeak the master's rather than the tyro's hand. A passage in "The Assembly of Foules," implying that the poet had as 1 Since this was written, the genuineness of several of the works in the list given above has been discussed or denied by Mr. Bradshaw, Professor Ten Brink, Mr. Furnivall, and others. However, it is a subject which has been stirred but not yet settled; the dust of the controversy has not subsided; adhuc sub judice lis est. I prefer, therefore, while admitting the inadequacy and possible inaccuracy of much that I have written here, to defer re-casting it to a future opportunity. 2Certes I wote wel, there shall be made more scorne and jape of me, that I, so unworthily clothed altogither in the cloudie cloude of unconning, will putten me in prees to speke of love.' yet no personal experience in love, is a more unequivocal evidence of early composition. For this reason we have placed that poem the first on the list. The link of connection between the poems of the first period is this: that they all betray in the strongest manner the influence of the ideas and language of the Provençal poets. This influence need not, as Warton. remarks, have been direct; it may have come to Chaucer, not immediately from the Troubadours, but mediately through the Trouvères; but of its Provençal origin there can be no doubt. It was in Provence that the strange practice arose among the poets, of parodying the theologians; for the sacred names of religion, they had their god of Love, and his mother Venus; for disputations in the schools upon theological theses. they had their "tensons" in knightly or royal halls upon various knotty points in love; and, for the solemn tribunals of ecclesiastical councils, their regularly organized "Courts of Love," to decide the debate between rival troubadours. All these characteristics are copiously illustrated in those of Chaucer's works which we have here grouped together. The works of the second period indicate not Provençal, but Norman-French influences. They are all written in that short eight-syllable metre which the Trouvères usually employed for their romances and fabliaux. "The House of Fame," evidently the production of Chaucer's mature age, a poem showing much thought and learning, is quite in the style, no less than in the metre, of the fabliaux. "The Romaunt of the Rose" is a translation of the long allegorical 6 1 For al be that I knowe not Love in dede, Ne wot how that he quiteth folk hir hire, Of his myracles, and of his cruel ire.' poem bearing that title, Begun by Guillaume de Lorris (died 1260), and continued by Jean de Meun. Chaucer translated the whole of Lorris's portion, extending to more than four thousand lines, and about three thousand six hundred out of the eighteen thousand lines which form Jean de Meun's continuation. 66 The poems classed under the third period are marked by the influence of Italian literature. "Troylus and Creseide" is a free translation from the "Filostrato" of Boccaccio; "The Knight's Tale" is a version of the same author's "Theseide;" and the general plan of the Canterbury Tales" was clearly suggested by that of the "Decameron." The ten friends assembled, during the prevalence of the plague, in a country-house outside the walls of Florence, and beguiling the tedium of a ten-days' quarantine by each telling a story daily, are represented in the English poem by the thirty-two pilgrims bound to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, each of whom (except the host) binds himself to tell a story for the amusement of the company, both going and returning. Several others of the "Canterbury Tales," besides "The Knight's Tale," are from Italian sources. The clerk says expressly, in his prologue, that he learned the tale of Grisilde from Petrarch, who made in 1373 a Latin translation of the original story, as it stands in the "Decameron." In the works of the fourth period, though extraneous influences may of course be detected, Chaucer's original genius is predominant. The "Legende of Good Women was written to make amends for the many disparaging reflections which Chaucer had cast in former works on woman's truth and constancy in love. Alcestis, the self-sacrificing wife of Admetus, whom in "The Court of Love" he names as queen and mistress under Venus in the castle of Love, imposes the following task upon her poet : ―――― "Now wol I seyne what penance thou shalt do In making of a glorious legende Of good wymmen, maydenes, and wyves, That weren trewe in loving all hire lyves. The late date of the composition of the poem is ascertained by the mention in it of most of his principal works: "Thou hast translated the Romaunce of the Rose, And, "And of Cresyde thou hast seyde as the lyste." Again, "He made the boke that hight the Hous of Fame, And al the Love of Palamon and Arcite "The Love of Palamon and Arcyte" is "The Knight's Tale," the first and longest of the series. The mention of this as a separate work confirms the opinion that many of the "Canterbury Tales " were in circulation independently, before they were brought together and fitted into the general framework of the poem. The prologue to the Tales was probably the latest or nearly the latest part of the work. It consists of sketches, drawn with a spirit, life, and humor inexpressible, of the thirty-two Canterbury pilgrims. The "Astrolabie" is a treatise on astronomy, composed in 1391, for the use of Chaucer's second son, Louis. It opens thus: "Lytel Lowys my sonne, I perceive well |