CHAUCER.

      In the chronology of our poetical collectors, Gower takes precedence of Chaucer unjustly, for Chaucer had composed many of his works in the only language which he has written before the elder claimed the honours of an English vernacular poet, and, probably, then only emulating the success of him who first set the glorious example. Nor less in the rank of poetry must Chaucer hold the precedence. The first true English poet is Chaucer; and notwithstanding that the rhythmical cadences of his unequal metre are now lost for us, Chaucer is the first modeller of the heroic couplet and other varieties of English versification. By the felicity of his poetic character, Chaucer was not only the parent, but the master, of those two schools of poetry which still divide its votaries by an idle rivalry, and which have been traced, like our architecture, the one to a Gothic origin, and the other to a classical model.

      The personal history of Chaucer, poetical and political, might have been susceptible of considerable development had the poet himself written it, for his biographers had no life to record. Speght, one of the early editors, in the good method of that day, having set down a variety of heads, including all that we might wish to know of any man, when this methodiser of commonplaces came to fill up these well-planned divisions concerning Chaucer, he could only disprove what was accepted, and supply only what is uncertain. The “Life of Chaucer” by Godwin is a theoretical life, and, as much as relates to Chaucer himself, a single fatal fact, when all was finished, dispersed the baseless vision.1 The whole rested on the unauthenticated and contradictory statements of Leland, who, writing a century after the times of Chaucer, hastily collected unsubstantial traditions, and, what was less pardonable in Leland, fell into some anachronisms.

      This defective chronology in the life of the poet has involved the more important subject of the chronology of his works. Posterity may be little concerned in the dates of his birth and his burial—his unknown parentage—his descriptive name—and, above all, his suspicious shield, which the heralds opined must have been blazoned out of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth propositions of the first book of Euclid, from the poet’s love of geometry, or, more obviously, from having no coat-of-arms to show of “far more ancient antiquity.” But posterity would have been interested in the history of the genius of Chaucer, who having long paced in a lengthened circuit of verbal version and servile imitation, passed through some remarkable transitions, kindling the cold ashes of translation into the fire of invention; from cloudy allegory breaking forth into the sunshine of the loveliest landscape-painting; and from the amatory romance gliding into that vein of humour and satire which in his old age poured forth a new creation. All this he might himself have told, or Gower might have revealed, had the elder bard who lauded the lays and “ditties” of the youth of “the Clerk of Venus” loved him as well in his old age. But elegant literature, as distinguished from scholastic, was then without price or reward. The few men of genius who have written at this early period are only known to us by their writings, and probably were more known to their contemporaries by the station which they may have occupied, than by that which they maintain with posterity.

      By royal patents and grants to the poet, we trace his early life at court, his various appointments, and his honourable missions to Genoa and to France—we must not add as confidently his visit to Petrarch.

      Chaucer, in his political life, was bound up with the party of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and, by a congenial spirit, with the novel doctrines of his friend, Dr. Wickliffe. The sister of his lady finally became the third Duchess of Lancaster, and the family alliance strengthened the political bond. How the Lancastrian exploded in the poet, something we know, but little we comprehend; and those who have attempted to lift the veil have not congratulated themselves on their success. The poet himself has not entrusted his secret to posterity, except, as is usual with poets, by eloquent lamentations. The exposition of a political transaction is never without some valued results; and though deprived of names and dates, we are not without some dim lights: the palpable truth may not be obvious, but it may happen that we may stumble on it.

      Chaucer himself has stated, “In my youth I was drawn in to be assenting to certain conjurations and other great matters of ruling of citizens, and those things have been my drawers in and exciters in the matters so painted and coloured, that first to me seemed then noble and glorious for all the people.”

      Here the tale is plain, for this is the language of one who early in life had engaged in some popular scheme, and these early indications of the temper of the Wickliffite or the Lancastrian, or both, had subsequently led to some more perilous attempts. They were, like all reforms, something “noble and glorious for the people,” and as sometimes happens among reformers, what at first appeared to promise so well, ended in disappointment and “penance in a dark prison.”

      The locality of this patriotic act was the city of London. He alludes to “free elections by great clamours of much people,” for great disease of misgovernment in the hands of “torcentious citizens.” When the fatal day arrived that he openly joined with a party for “the people,” against those citizens whom he has so awfully denounced, it is evident, though we have no means to discriminate factions in an age of factions,2 that he and his “conjurors” discovered that “all the people” were not of one mind. This votary or this victim of reform suddenly flings his contempt at “the hatred of the mighty senators of London or of its commonalty,” and closes with a painful remembrance of “the janglings of THE SHEEPY PEOPLE!” The style of Chaucer bears the stamp of passionate emotions; words of dimension, or of poignant sarcasm. The “torcentious citizens” is an awful bolt, and “the sheepy people” is sufficiently picturesque.

      In dismay the whole party took flight. Chaucer, in Zealand, exhausted his means to supply the wants of his political associates, till he himself found that even the partnership of common misery does not always preserve men from ingratitude. Returning home, potent persecutors cast him into a dungeon. Was the Duke of Lancaster absent, or the Duke of Gloucester in power? Let us observe that in all these dark events the loyalty of the poet is never impeached, for Chaucer enjoyed without interruption the favour of both his sovereigns, Edward III. and Richard II.; and we discover that once when dismissed from office, Richard allowed him to serve by deputy, which was evidence that Chaucer had never been dismissed by the king himself. The whole transaction, whatever it was, was a political movement between two factions. Chaucer indeed pleads that whatever he had done was under the control of others, himself being but “the servant of his sovereign.” At that period the factions in the state were more potent than the monarch. In the convulsive administration of a youthful prince, they who oppose the court are not necessarily opposing the sovereign.

      It was behind the bars of a gloomy window in the Tower, where “every hour appeared to be a hundred winters,” that Chaucer, recent from exile, and sore from persecution, was