Chaucer

Anne of Bohemia, daughter of the great Emperor Charles IV, and sister of King Wenceslas, had been successively betrothed to a Bavarian prince and to a Margrave of Meissen, before--after negotiations which, according to Froissart, lasted a year--her hand was given to the young King Richard II of England. This sufficiently explains the general scope of the "a.s.sembly of Fowls," an allegorical poem written on or about St. Valentine"s Day, 1381--eleven months or nearly a year after which date the marriage took place. On the morning sacred to lovers the poet (in a dream, of course, and this time conducted by the arch-dreamer Scipio in person) enters a garden containing in it the temple of the G.o.d of Love, and filled with inhabitants mythological and allegorical. Here he sees the n.o.ble G.o.ddess Nature, seated upon a hill of flowers, and around her "all the fowls that be," a.s.sembled as by time honoured custom on St. Valentine"s Day, "when every fowl comes there to choose her mate." Their huge noise and hubbub is reduced to order by Nature, who a.s.signs to each fowl its proper place--the birds of prey highest; then those that eat according to natural inclination--

--worm or thing of which I tell no tale;

then those that live by seed; and the various members of the several cla.s.ses are indicated with amusing vivacity and point, from the royal eagle "that with his sharp look pierceth the sun," and "other eagles of a lower kind" downwards. We can only find room for a portion of the company:--

The sparrow, Venus" son; the nightingale That clepeth forth the fresh leaves new; The swallow, murd"rer of the bees small, That honey make of flowers fresh of hue; The wedded turtle, with his hearte true; The peac.o.c.k, with his angels" feathers bright, The pheasant, scorner of the c.o.c.k by night.

The waker goose, the cuckoo, ever unkind; The popinjay, full of delicacy; The drake, destroyer of his owne kind; The stork, avenger of adultery; The cormorant, hot and full of gluttony The crows and ravens with their voice of care; And the throstle old, and the frosty fieldfare.

Naturalists must be left to explain some of these epithets and designations, not all of which rest on allusions as easily understood as that recalling the goose"s exploit on the Capitol; but the vivacity of the whole description speaks for itself. One is reminded of Aristophanes" feathered chorus; but birds are naturally the delight of poets, and were befriended by Dante himself.

Hereupon the action of the poem opens. A female eagle is wooed by three suitors--all eagles; but among them the first, or royal eagle, discourses in the manner most likely to conciliate favour. Before the answer is given, a pause furnishes an opportunity to the other fowls for delighting in the sound of their own voices, Dame Nature proposing that each cla.s.s of birds shall, through the beak of its representative "agitator," express its opinion on the problem before the a.s.sembly.

There is much humour in the readiness of the goose to rush in with a ready-made resolution, and in the smart reproof administered by the sparrow-hawk amidst the uproar of "the gentle fowls all." At last Nature silences the tumult, and the lady-eagle delivers her answer, to the effect that she cannot make up her mind for a year to come; but inasmuch as Nature has advised her to choose the royal eagle, his is clearly the most favourable prospect. Whereupon, after certain fowls had sung a roundel, "as was always the usance," the a.s.sembly, like some human Parliaments, breaks up with shouting;

(Than all the birdis song with sic a schout That I annone awoik quhair that I lay Dunbar, "The Thrissil and the Rois.")

and the dreamer awakes to resume his reading.

Very possibly the "a.s.sembly of Fowls" was at no great interval of time either followed or preceded by two poems of far inferior interest--the "Complaint of Mars" (apparently afterwards amalgamated with that of "Venus"), which is supposed to be sung by a bird on St. Valentine"s morning, and the fragment of "Queen Anelida and false Arcite." There are, however, reasons which make a less early date probable in the case of the latter production, the history of the origin and purpose of which can hardly be said as yet to be removed out of the region of mere speculation. In any case, neither of these poems can be looked upon as preparations, on Chaucer"s part, for the longer work on which he was to expend so much labour; but in a sense this description would apply to the translation which, probably before he wrote "Troilus and Cressid,"

certainly before he wrote the Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women,"

he made of the famous Latin work of Boethius, "the just man in prison,"

on the "Consolation of Philosophy." This book was, and very justly so, one of the favourite manuals of the Middle Ages, and a treasure-house of religious wisdom to centuries of English writers. "Boice of Consolacioun" is cited in the "Romaunt of the Rose"; and the list of pa.s.sages imitated by Chaucer from the martyr of Catholic orthodoxy and Roman freedom of speech is exceedingly long. Among them are the ever-recurring diatribe against the fickleness of fortune, and (through the medium of Dante) the reflection on the distinction between gentle birth and a gentle life. Chaucer"s translation was not made at second-hand; if not always easy it is conscientious, and interpolated with numerous glosses and explanations thought necessary by the translator. The metre of "The Former Life" he at one time or another turned into verse of his own.

Perhaps the most interesting of the quotations made in Chaucer"s poems from Boethus occurs in his "Troilus and Cressid," one of the many medieval versions of an episode engrafted by the lively fancy of an Anglo-Norman trouvere upon the deathless, and in its literary variations incomparably luxuriant, growth of the story of Troy. On Benoit de Sainte-Maure"s poem Guido de Colonna founded his Latin-prose romance; and this again, after being reproduced in languages and by writers almost innumerable, served Boccaccio as the foundation of his poem "Filostrato"--i.e. the victim of love. All these works, together with Chaucer"s "Troilus and Cressid," with Lydgate"s "Troy-Book," with Henryson"s "Testament of Cressid" (and in a sense even with Shakespere"s drama on the theme of Chaucer"s poem), may be said to belong to the second cycle of modern versions of the tale of Troy divine. Already their earlier predecessors had gone far astray from Homer, of whom they only know by hearsay, relying for their facts on late Latin epitomes, which freely mutilated and perverted the Homeric narrative in favour of the Trojans--the supposed ancestors of half the nations of Europe. Accordingly, Chaucer, in a well-known pa.s.sage in his "House of Fame," regrets, with sublime coolness, how "one said that Homer" wrote "lies,"

Feigning in his poetries And was to Greekes favourable.

Therefore held he it but fable.

But the courtly poets of the romantic age of literature went a step further, and added a mediaeval colouring all their own. One converts the Sibyl into a nun, and makes her admonish Aeneas to tell his beads.

Another--it is Chaucer"s successor Lydgate--introduces Priam"s sons exercising their bodies in tournaments and their minds in the glorious play of chess, and causes the memory of Hector to be consecrated by the foundation of a chantry of priests who are to pray for the repose of his soul. A third finally condemns the erring Cressid to be stricken with leprosy, and to wander about with cup and clapper, like the unhappy lepers in the great cities of the Middle Ages. Everything, in short, is transfused by the spirit of the adapters" own times; and so far are these writers from any weakly sense of anachronism in describing Troy as if it were a moated and turreted city of the later Middle Ages, that they are only careful now and then to protest their own truthfulness when anything in their narrative seems UNLIKE the days in which they write.

But Chaucer, though his poem is, to start with, only an English reproduction of an Italian version of a Latin translation of a French poem, and though in most respects it shares the characteristic features of the body of poetic fiction to which it belongs, is far from being a mere translator. Apart from several remarkable reminiscences introduced by Chaucer from Dante, as well as from the irrepressible "Romaunt of the Rose," he has changed his original in points which are not mere matters of detail or questions of convenience. In accordance with the essentially dramatic bent of his own genius, some of these changes have reference to the aspect of the characters and the conduct of the plot, as well as to the whole spirit of the conception of the poem. Cressid (who, by the way, is a widow at the outset--whether she had children or not, Chaucer nowhere found stated, and therefore leaves undecided) may at first sight strike the reader as a less consistent character in Chaucer than in Boccaccio. But there is true art in the way in which, in the English poem, our sympathy is first aroused for the heroine, whom, in the end, we cannot but condemn. In Boccaccio, Cressid is fair and false--one of those fickle creatures with whom Italian literature, and Boccaccio in particular, so largely deal, and whose presentment merely repeats to us the old cynical half-truth as to woman"s weakness. The English poet, though he does not pretend that his heroine was "religious" (i.e. a nun to whom earthly love is a sin), endears her to us from the first; so much that "O the pity of it" seems the hardest verdict we can ultimately pa.s.s upon her conduct. How, then, is the catastrophe of the action, the falling away of Cressid from her truth to Troilus, poetically explained? By an appeal--pedantically put, perhaps, and as it were dragged in violently by means of a truncated quotation from Boethius--to the fundamental difficulty concerning the relations between poor human life and the government of the world. This, it must be conceded, is a considerably deeper problem than the nature of woman. Troilus and Cressid, the hero sinned against and the sinning heroine, are the VICTIMS OF FATE. Who shall cast a stone against those who are, but like the rest of us, predestined to their deeds and to their doom; since the co-existence of free-will with predestination does not admit of proof? This solution of the conflict may be morally as well as theologically unsound; it certainly is aesthetically faulty; but it is the reverse of frivolous or commonplace.

Or let us turn from Cressid, "matchless in beauty," and warm with sweet life, but not ign.o.ble even in the season of her weakness, to another personage of the poem. In itself the character of Pandarus is one of the most revolting which imagination can devise; so much so that the name has become proverbial for the most despicable of human types.

With Boccaccio Pandarus is Cressid"s cousin and Troilus" youthful friend, and there is no intention of making him more offensive than are half the confidants of amorous heroes. But Chaucer sees his dramatic opportunity; and without painting black in black and creating a monster of vice, he invents a good-natured and loquacious, elderly go-between, full of proverbial philosophy and invaluable experience--a genuine light comedy character for all times. How admirably this Pandarus practises as well as preaches his art; using the hospitable Deiphobus and the queenly Helen as unconscious instruments in his intrigue for bringing the lovers together:--

She came to dinner in her plain intent; But G.o.d and Pandar wist what all this meant.

Lastly, considering the extreme length of Chaucer"s poem, and the very simple plot of the story which it tells, one cannot fail to admire the skill with which the conduct of its action is managed. In Boccaccio the earlier part of the story is treated with brevity, while the conclusion, after the catastrophe has occurred and the main interest has pa.s.sed, is long drawn out. Chaucer dwells at great length upon the earlier and pleasing portion of the tale, more especially on the falling in love of Cressid, which is worked out with admirable naturalness. But he comparatively hastens over its pitiable end--the fifth and last book of his poem corresponding to not less than four cantos of the "Filostrato." In Chaucer"s hands, therefore, the story is a real love-story, and the more that we are led to rejoice with the lovers in their bliss, the more our compa.s.sion is excited by the lamentable end of so much happiness; and we feel at one with the poet, who, after lingering over the happiness of which he has in the end to narrate the fall, as it were unwillingly proceeds to accomplish his task, and bids his readers be wroth with the destiny of his heroine rather than with himself. His own heart, he says, bleeds and his pen quakes to write what must be written of the falsehood of Cressid, which was her doom.

Chaucer"s nature, however tried, was unmistakeably one gifted with the blessed power of easy self-recovery. Though it was in a melancholy vein that he had begun to write "Troilus and Cressid," he had found opportunities enough in the course of the poem for giving expression to the fresh vivacity and playful humour which are justly reckoned among his chief characteristics. And thus, towards its close, we are not surprised to find him apparently looking forward to a sustained effort of a kind more congenial to himself. He sends forth his "little book, his little tragedy," with the prayer that, before he dies, G.o.d his Maker may send him might to "make some comedy." If the poem called the "House of Fame" followed upon "Troilus and Cressid" (the order of succession may, however, have been the reverse), then, although the poet"s own mood had little altered, yet he had resolved upon essaying a direction which he rightly felt to be suitable to his genius.

The "House of Fame" has not been distinctly traced to any one foreign source; but the influence of both Petrarch and Dante, as well as that of cla.s.sical authors, are clearly to be traced in the poem. And yet this work, Chaucer"s most ambitious attempt in poetical allegory, may be described not only as in the main due to an original conception, but as representing the results of the writer"s personal experience. All things considered, it is the production of a man of wonderful reading, and shows that Chaucer"s was a mind interested in the widest variety of subjects, which drew no invidious distinctions, such as we moderns are p.r.o.ne to insist upon, between Arts and Science, but (notwithstanding an occasional deprecatory modesty) eagerly sought to familiarise itself with the achievements of both. In a pa.s.sage concerning the men of letters who had found a place in the "House of Fame," he displays not only an acquaintance with the names of several ancient cla.s.sics, but also a keen appreciation, now and then perhaps due to instinct, of their several characteristics. Elsewhere he shows his interest in scientific inquiry by references to such matters as the theory of sound and the Arabic system of numeration; while the Mentor of the poem, the Eagle, openly boasts his powers of clear scientific demonstration, in averring that he can speak "lewdly" (i.e. popularly) "to a lewd man."

The poem opens with a very fresh and lively discussion of the question of dreams in general--a semi-scientific subject which much occupied Chaucer, and upon which even Pandarus and the wedded couple of the "Nun"s Priest"s Tale" expend their philosophy.

Thus, besides giving evidence of considerable information and study, the "House of Fame" shows Chaucer to have been gifted with much natural humour. Among its happy touches are the various rewards bestowed by Fame upon the claimants for her favour, including the ready grant of evil fame to those who desire it (a bad name, to speak colloquially, is to be had for the asking; and the wonderful paucity of those who wish their good works to remain in obscurity and to be their own reward, but then Chaucer was writing in the Middle Ages. And as pointing in a direction which the author of the poem was subsequently to follow out, we may also specially notice the company thronging the House of Rumour: shipmen and pilgrims, the two most numerous kinds of travellers in Chaucer"s age, fresh from seaport and sepulchre, with scrips brimful of unauthenticated intelligence. In short, this poem offers in its details much that is characteristic of its author"s genius; while, as a whole, its abrupt termination notwithstanding, it leaves the impression of completeness. The allegory, simple and clear in construction, fulfils the purpose for which it was devised; the conceptions upon which it is based are neither idle, like many of those in Chaucer"s previous allegories, nor are they so artificial and far-fetched as to fatigue instead of stimulating the mind. Pope, who reproduced parts of the "House of Fame" in a loose paraphrase, in attempting to improve the construction of Chaucer"s work, only mutilated it. As it stands, it is clear and digestible; and how many allegories, one may take leave to ask, in our own allegory-loving literature or in any other, merit the same commendation? For the rest, Pope"s own immortal "Dunciad," though doubtless more immediately suggested by a personal satire of Dryden"s, is in one sense a kind of travesty of the "House of Fame,"--A "House of Infamy."

In the theme of this poem there was undoubtedly something that could hardly fail to humour the half-melancholy mood in which it was manifestly written. Are not, the poet could not but ask himself, all things vanity; "as men say, what may ever last?" Yet the subject brought its consolation likewise. Patient labour, such as this poem attests, is the surest road to that enduring fame, which is "conserved with the shade;" and awaking from his vision, Chaucer takes leave of the reader with a resolution already habitual to him--to read more and more, instead of resting satisfied with the knowledge he has already acquired. And in the last of the longer poems which seem a.s.signable to this period of his life, he proves that one Latin poet at least--Venus"

clerk, whom in the "House of Fame" he behold standing on a pillar of her own Cyprian metal--had been read as well as celebrated by him

Of this poem, the fragmentary "Legend of Good Women," the "Prologue"

possesses a peculiar biographical as well as literary interest. In his personal feelings on the subject of love and marriage, Chaucer had, when he wrote this "Prologue," evidently almost pa.s.sed even beyond the sarcastic stage. And as a poet he was now clearly conscious of being no longer a beginner, no longer a learner only, but one whom his age knew, and in whom it took a critical interest. The list including most of his undoubted works, which he here recites, shows of itself that those already spoken of in the foregoing pages were by this time known to the world, together with two of the "Canterbury Tales," which had either been put forth independently, or (as seems much less probable) had formed the first instalment of his great work. A further proof of the relatively late date of this "Prologue" occurs in the contingent offer which it makes of the poem to "the Queen," who can be no other than Richard II"s young consort Anne. At the very outset we find Chaucer as it were reviewing his own literary position--and doing so in the spirit of an author who knows very well what is said against him, who knows very well what there is in what is said against him, and who yet is full of that true self-consciousness which holds to its course--not recklessly and ruthlessly, not with a contempt for the feelings and judgments of his fellow-creatures, but with a serene trust in the justification ensured to every honest endeavour. The princ.i.p.al theme of his poems had hitherto been the pa.s.sion of love, and woman who is the object of the love of man. Had he not, the superfine critics of his day may have asked--steeped as they were in the artificiality and florid extravagance of chivalry in the days of its decline, and habituated to mistranslating earthly pa.s.sion into the phraseology of religious devotion--had he not debased the pa.s.sion of love, and defamed its object? Had he not begun by translating the wicked satire of Jean de Meung, "a heresy against the law" of Love, and had he not, by cynically painting in his Cressid a picture of woman"s perfidy, encouraged men to be less faithful to women

That be as true as ever was any steel?

In Chaucer"s way of meeting this charge, which he emphasises by putting it in the mouth of the G.o.d of Love himself, it is, to be sure, difficult to recognise any very deeply penitent spirit. He mildly wards off the reproach, sheltering himself behind his defender, the "lady in green," who afterwards proves to be herself that type of womanly and wifely fidelity unto death, the true and brave Alcestis.

And even in the body of the poem one is struck by a certain perfunctoriness, not to say flippancy, in the way in which its moral is reproduced. The wrathful invective against the various cla.s.sical followers of Lamech, the maker of tents, wears no aspect of deep moral indignation; and it is not precisely the voice of a repentant sinner which concludes the pathetic story of the betrayal of Phillis with the adjuration to ladies in general:--

Beware ye women of your subtle foe, Since yet this day men may example see And as in love trust ye no man but me.

(Lamech, Chaucer tells us in "Queen Annelida and the false Arcite," was the

first father that began The love of two, and was in bigamy.

This poem seems designed to ill.u.s.trate much the same moral as that enforced by the "Legend of Good Women"--a moral which, by-the-bye, is already foreshadowed towards the close of "Troilus and Cressid," where Chaucer speaks of

women that betrayed be Through false folk, (G.o.d give them sorrow, amen!) That with their greate wit and subtlety Betray you; and "tis this that moveth me To speak; and, in effect, you all I pray: Beware of men, and hearken what I say.)

At the same time the poet lends an attentive ear, as genius can always afford to do, to a criticism of his shortcomings, and readily accepts the sentence p.r.o.nounced by Alcestis that he shall write a legend of GOOD women, both maidens and also wives, that were

true in loving all their lives.

And thus, with the courage of a good or at all events easy conscience, he sets about his task which unfortunately--it is conjectured by reason of domestic calamities, probably including the death of his wife--remained, or at least has come down to us unfinished. We have only nine of the nineteen stories which he appears to have intended to present (though indeed a ma.n.u.script of Henry IV"s reign quotes Chaucer"s book of "25 good women"). It is by no means necessary to suppose that all these nine stories were written continuously; maybe, too, Chaucer, with all his virtuous intentions, grew tired of his rather monotonous scheme, at a time when he was beginning to busy himself with stories meant to be fitted into the more liberal framework of the "Canterbury Tales." All these ill.u.s.trations of female constancy are of cla.s.sical origin, as Chaucer is glad to make known and most of them are taken from Ovid. But though the thread of the English poet"s narratives is supplied by such established favourites as the stories of Cleopatra the Martyr Queen of Egypt, of Thisbe of Babylon the Martyr, and of Dido to whom "Aeneas was forsworn," yet he by no means slavishly adheres to his authorities, but alters or omits in accordance with the design of his book. Thus, for instance, we read of Medea"s desertion by Jason, but hear nothing of her as the murderess of her children; while, on the other hand, the tragedy of Dido is enhanced by pathetic additions not to be found in Virgil. Modern taste may dislike the way in which this poem mixes up the terms and ideas of Christian martyrology with cla.s.sical myths, and as "the Legend of the Saints of Cupid" a.s.sumes the character of a kind of calendar of women canonised by reason of their faithfulness to earthly love. But obviously this is a method of treatment belonging to an age, not to a single poem or poet. Chaucer"s artistic judgment in the selection and arrangement of his themes, the wonderful vivacity and true pathos with which he turns upon Tarquin or Jason as if they had personally offended him, and his genuine flow of feeling not only FOR but WITH his unhappy heroines, add a new charm to the old familiar faces. Proof is thus furnished, if any proof were needed, that no story interesting in itself is too old to admit of being told again by a poet; in Chaucer"s version Ovid loses something in polish, but nothing in pathos; and the breezy freshness of nature seems to be blowing through tales which became the delight of a nation"s, as they have been that of many a man"s, youth.

A single pa.s.sage must suffice to ill.u.s.trate the style of the "Legend of Good Women"; and it shall be the lament of Ariadne, the concluding pa.s.sage of the story which is the typical tale of desertion, though not, as it remains in Chaucer, of desertion unconsoled. It will be seen how far the English poet"s vivacity is from being extinguished by the pathos of the situation described by him.

Right in the dawening awaketh she, And gropeth in the bed, and found right naught.

"Alas," quoth she, "that ever I was wrought!

I am betrayed!" and her hair she rent, And to the strande barefoot fast she went, And criede: "Theseus, mine hearte sweet!

Where be ye, that I may not with you meet?

And mighte thus by beastes been y-slain!"

The hollow rockes answered her again.

No man she sawe; and yet shone the moon, And high upon a rock she wente soon, And saw his barge sailing in the sea.

Cold waxed her heart, and right thus said she: "Meeker than ye I find the beastes wild!"

(Hath he not sin that he her thus beguiled?) She cried, "O turn again for ruth and sin, Thy barge hath not all thy meinie in."

Her kerchief on a pole sticked she, Askance, that he should it well y-see, And should remember that she was behind, And turn again, and on the strand her find.

But all for naught; his way he is y-gone, And down she fell aswoone on a stone; And up she rose, and kissed, in all her care, The steppes of his feet remaining there; And then unto her bed she speaketh so: "Thou bed," quoth she, "that hast received two, Thou shalt answer for two, and not for one; Where is the greater part away y-gone?

Alas, what shall I wretched wight become?

For though so be no help shall hither come, Home to my country dare I not for dread, I can myselfe in this case not rede."

Why should I tell more of her complaining?

It is so long it were a heavy thing.

In her Epistle Naso telleth all.

But shortly to the ende tell I shall.

The G.o.ddes have her holpen for pity, And in the sign of Taurus men may see The stones of her crown all shining clear.

I will no further speak of this matter.

But thus these false lovers can beguile Their true love; the devil quite him his while!

Manifestly, then, in this period of his life--if a chronology which is in a great measure cojectural may be accepted--Chancer had been a busy worker, and his pen had covered many a page with the results of his rapid productivity. Perhaps, his "Words unto his own Scrivener," which we may fairly date about this time, were rather too hard on "Adam."