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CHAPTER VI.

THE WELL OF ENGLISH.

METRE-CHAUCER'S YOUTH—THE BOKE OF THE DUCHESSE -CHAUCER AND THE GREAT ITALIANS-PROSE TRANSLATIONS-THE INFLUENCE OF BOETHIUS-THE 'HOUSE OF FAME' THE LEGENDE OF GOODE CANTERBURY TALES-JOHN GOWER.

WOMEN-THE

In England, as in Spain, the second half of the fourteenth century is marked by a new poetic blossoming. Consecrated Such a phenomenon has often, and perhaps metres. usually, its consecrated metre. In Italy it was endecasillabi, in Spain the arte mayor. Chiefly through Chaucer's example, a characteristic decasyllabic verse was destined to supplant in English favour the heretofore fashionable short-rhymed couplets. This verse was not Chaucer's by invention. It had appeared in France as early as the Song of Roland, though, in couplets, probably not much before Machault. Such couplets appear stragglingly in Hampole's English, but perhaps by accident only. Chaucer, too, employs the "heroic couplet," but associates with its use a

stanza of seven lines-"rhyme royal." The mastery Chaucer obtained over this form-albeit it had been adopted before his time by both Provençal and North French poets-renders it in a sense his own. The arte mayor is found mostly in stanzas; and the growing use of the stanza, of which evidence has already appeared in the case of Boccaccio, and which will culminate hereafter in the poems of Ariosto and Tasso, is typical of the age.

The Craftsman.

It is to be remarked that Chaucer's verse differs from the arte mayor, on which more will be said later, in its strictly syllabic, or perhaps one should say iambic, character. On the other hand, he dispensed with the observance of the fixed casura, which in French and Provençal poetry invariably coincided with the conclusion of a foot, and so introduced greater variety in the rhythms. Another point is the order of the rhymes. Chaucer regularly follows the system ababbee, whereas his predecessors had commonly preferred ababbaa. The employment of a new rhyme, accentuating the close of the stanza, is a peculiarly English craving, of which we find evidence in the transformation of the sonnet. It is desirable to emphasise here and elsewhere the subject of Chaucer's metres, because, though Chaucer himself is much more than a master of rhyme and rhythm, the distinguishing quality of the verse of which he was at any rate in England-both inaugurator and most finished craftsman, is the art. Like Dante, Chaucer not only dreamed but studied. He has

indeed bequeathed no treatise De Vulgari Eloquentia, but his grasp of the mysteries of verse is shown by the application of his ideas in practice. We have to do no more with ignorant minstrel or stupid monk, composing, as it were, by rote, but with a highly educated courtier who knew Latin, who knew French, and whose understanding was quickened by early and unbroken commerce with the world. Such a person was naturally fitted to act a leading part in a revolution-political, linguistic, literary-which, with the breakdown of royal and aristocratic prejudice, restored to the English race its place in the comity of nations.

The precise year of Chaucer's birth is unknown. It is conceivable that he himself did not know the date, since, in a deposition made by him

Birth and training.

at Westminster in October 1386, he stated that he was then "forty years and upwards," and "had been armed twenty-seven years." The word "upwards" is elastic, but, supposing it to represent "six," this would tally with other dates that have been ascertained, and make him, at his entry upon military service, nineteen years of age. His father and grandfather were wine - merchants in Thames Street, and it is not by any means unlikely that his early associations were to some extent revived in the realism of his maturer writings. The name Chaucer is Norman (chaucier stockinger). In 1357, when he was sixteen or seventeen, he served as "squier" (or page) to the Princess Elizabeth, first

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wife of Lionel Duke of Clarence; and, two years later, he accompanied the expedition to France. There, taken prisoner, he was ransomed by the king for sixteen pounds. He was afterwards appointed "Valet of the King's Chamber," and married Philippa, stated to have been daughter to Sir Payne Roet, and one of the "demoiselles in attendance on the Queen. Chaucer's connection with the Court easily explains the panegyrising and sentimental tone of his early poems, and their dependence on fashionable French models.

Appertaining to this first phase is the Boke of the Duchese, or The Dethe of Blanche. The source of the The Boke of poem is Machault's Dit de la Fontaine the Duchesse. Amoureuse, which has been expanded by means of allegorical accretions and learned allusions in imitation of the Romance of the Rose. The metre is the short couplet, as in the Dit, but the characteristic defect of this metre, its noisy monotonousness,1 is reduced, as Chaucer handles it, by frequent enjambement. It is noteworthy that the English poet acknowledges no obligation, an omission partly accounted for by his borrowing from Machault rather the hint than the actual development of the theme. The poem commences with a personal note. Chaucer complains of sleeplessness, due, he believes, to a malady from which he has suffered these eight years, and which only one physician can remedy. To "drive the night away," he takes a book. Though he does

1 To realise this, one has only to read the first dozen lines of The Lady of the Lake.

not name the work, we know it to be Ovid's Metamorphoses, and what he reads is the piteous tale of Ceyx and his true spouse Halcyone. This story Chaucer, following Machault's precedent, but writing with greater detail, narrates as a prologue and parallel to the more significant sequel.

Hardly has he finished reading this tale when he falls asleep and has a wondrous dream. It is May. His chamber is flooded with sweet bird-music, and transformed into a palace of delight. Windows and walls are all painted o'er with the Story of Troy and the Romance of the Rose. This changes to a huntingscene, and that to the vision of a young man clad in black and sitting with his back against a huge oak. The poet greets him, and attempts to learn his thoughts, at first without success, but, persevering, draws from him an elaborate description of one whom he calls "the goode faire White." The disconsolate knight dwells on her personal charms, her accomplishments, the freshness and innocence of her character, but does not state their relationship. Moreover, it is only at the close of the poem that the fact of her death is distinctly conveyed. The vision concludes rather abruptly. On awaking the poet finds that he has still in hand the book of "Alcyone and Seys the Kynge," and mentally resolves to put the quaint dream in rhyme, and that soon.

It would be possible to read this poem without the slightest suspicion of its real intention. The dream appears to have grown, quite in accordance with what we know of dreams, out of the tale; but, in point of

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