CHAUCER'S MINOR WORKS 169 Valentine's Day to choose their mates. The invention here frequently brings to mind a celebrated work later by a century, Francesco Colonna's Polifilo. Some poems inferior in merit and importance to the above are still of con- Minor works. siderable interest for special reasons. The Book of the Duchess is Chaucer's earliest work that has come down to us; it records his attachment to the House of Lancaster, and is remarkable for a bright picture of bonny English girlhood. The Complaint of Mars is an interesting example of the treatment of contemporary circumstances under a veil of allegory, as we have already seen "shadowing forth" the institution of the Order of the Garter in The Green Knight. The Complaint unto Pity is eloquent and of moment if it really expresses Chaucer's personal feelings. Anelyda and Arcite seems to indicate that Chaucer did at one time propose to tell the story of Palamon and Arcite in another metre than the heroic, though it remains uncertain whether the intention was completely carried out. Chaucer's strictly lyrical poems are not numerous. Though a master of tuneful versification, he seems to have rarely felt the lyrical impulse; he can prolong the flow of music indefinitely, but has no snatches of melody. It does indeed appear that he wrote many balades, virelays, and the like, which have not come down to us, but these pieces would in general be anything rather than spontaneous gushes of song. The good fortune of Professor Skeat has recently retrieved one, which may follow as an example. The music of the writer's verse and his mastery of his complicated form are admirable, but when we find him comparing his immersion in love to the immersion of a pike in a sauce made of sopped bread and spices, we must suspect that "Rosemounde's" chains were but lightly worn by him : BALADE TO ROSEMOUNDE. Madame, ye ben of al beauté the shryne, And lyké ruby ben your chekés rounde. Though ye to me ne do no daliaunce. Far though I wepe of teres full a tyne, Yet may that wo myn herté nat confounde; So curteisly I go, with lové bounde, That to myself I say, in my penaunce, Nas never pyke walwéd in galantyne As I in love am walwed and y-wounde ; That I am trewe Tristram the secounde; Do what you lyst, I wyl your thral be founde, Significance Chaucer's significance could not be appreciated by himself or his contemand perennial poraries. It might even then be seen how greatly he excelled all preceding freshness of Chaucer poets in command of language and metre, in felicity of subject and treatment, in all things relating to the poetic art. But it is only on looking back from afar that it could be discerned how completely he personified the union of the Norman and the Saxon in the Englishman, or with what authority he ushered in the new period of our language. Nor could contemporaries have foretold that perennial freshness which is perhaps the most extraordinary of his attributes. While many other writers of great name and much nearer to our times 1 Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony. CHAUCER'S SUPPOSITITIOUS POEMS 171 have become more or less obscure and unsympathetic with the spirit of the age, Chaucer, with the disadvantages of partly obsolete diction and a state of society widely differing from our own, remains almost as fresh as when he wrote, and a permanent source of inspiration to his successors from Spenser and Dryden down to Keats and William Morris. This can only denote great simplicity of character, and a spontaneity of utterance remarkable in one so rarely visited by poetical inspiration in its purest form, the lyrical. The same freshness characterises the other most illustrious literary productions of the age, Froissart's Chronicles, Petrarch's Canzoniere, and the Decameron of Boccaccio, and may be regarded as the accompaniment of the youth of an age of letters. Several poems incorrectly attributed to Chaucer have found their way into Supposititious the collected editions of his writings, where they ought always to remain as poems an appendix, although their spuriousness has been satisfactorily demonstrated by Bradshaw, Skeat and Ten Brink. The most important are The Flower and the Leaf, so widely known from the brilliant rifaccimento of Dryden, The Court of Love, The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, and Chaucer's Dream. It is difficult to determine whether it be more mortifying to be compelled to deprive Chaucer of so beautiful a poem as The Flower and the Leaf, or more satisfactory to find that he had so excellent a disciple as the anonymous author at that very dul Aids to the study of Chaucer period of English literature, the fifteenth century. That this is its date the diction leaves no doubt, and it was probably written late in the century, as the Order of the Garter is spoken of as an ancient institution. Its rules of rhyming, too, are not Chaucer's. It is nevertheless not unworthy of him, and in particular contains one stanza, which, while it continued to be attributed to him, was frequently quoted as an example of his merit as a landscape-painter, and which is, in fact, more strikingly true to nature than most pieces of description in his genuine writings : To a pleasaunt grove I gan to passe, In which were okes greate, streight as a line, Some very red, and some a glad light grene. There is more description than character in the poem, which may be defined as a vision with affinity to a Masque. The writing is throughout very beautiful; and if inferior in splendour to Dryden's renowned imitation, it has more of the spirit of courtly chivalry. The versification is excellent. It professes to be the work of a lady, but probably merely for reasons of dramatic propriety. Professor Skeat's argument that the assumption of the female character by a man would have seemed ridiculous, if it has any weight at all, cannot apply to an anonymous poem. It is rather surprising that The Court of Love should ever have been attributed to Chaucer. The poem is only found in one manuscript of the early period of the sixteenth century, and there is no reason why this may not be the date of composition. It is an elegant poem, rehearsing a youth's pilgrimage to the Court of Love, and, although differing from Chaucer in diction and metrical rules, clearly the work of one who had read him to good purpose. The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, also a very pretty poem, has been ascertained by Professor Skeat to be the composition of a writer named Clanvowe, plausibly identified with Sir Thomas Clanvowe, who died in 1410. Chaucer's Dream, a long narrative poem, has considerable poetical merit, but, as Professor Skeat remarks, is more like the romance of Sir Launfal than anything of Chaucer's. It does not follow that by representing Chaucer as the subject of the vision, the writer meant to imply that he was the author of the poem. The Canterbury Tales was one of the first English books to be printed, Caxton probably putting the first edition in hand as soon as he set up his press in England. The first complete edition of Chaucer's works was 1 Although The Court of Love is certainly not Chaucer's, there is no force in Professor Lounsbury's argument against its authenticity that such names as “ Philogenet" could not have been used by a Western writer until after the fall of Constantinople; Boccaccio has "Filocopo" in the first half of the fourteenth center. THE STUDY OF CHAUCER 173 William Thynne's in 1532, but the first really critical edition of any portion was Tyrwhitt's edition of The Canterbury Tales in 1775-1778, a masterpiece of learning and acumen. In 1845 Sir Harris Nicolas placed the biography of Chaucer on an authentic basis. In 1866 Henry Bradshaw took up the study of Chaucer with a vigour and acuteness which, if he had not allowed his attention to be diverted to other subjects, would have left little to be performed by others, although the rhyme test, so invaluable in ascertaining the authenticity of the writings attributed to Chaucer, was independently applied by Bernard Ten Brink, whose labours upon Chaucer in all departments are most important. About the same time an immense impetus was given to Chaucerian study by Dr. Furnivall's foundation and energetic direction of the Chaucer Society, whose numerous publications prepared the way for the standard library edition of Professor Skeat, and the one-volume edition by Mr. A. W. Pollard and his coadjutors, the most convenient for general readers. The authenticity of Chaucer's doubtful poems is fully investigated from the philological and metrical points of view in Professor Skeat's Chaucer Canon (1900). Professor Lounsbury's three volumes of Chaucerian essays are invaluable aids to the study of almost all questions connected with his writings. For Chaucer's grammar and metre in general, see the treatise by Bernard Ten Brink, recently translated into English, and, for his pronunciation, the works on the subject by Alexander J. Ellis and R. F. Weymouth. |