To him the world and human character are no simple things, nor are actions to be judged as the fruit of one motive alone. Who can wonder if, possessed with this new sense of the complexity of human destiny, he should sometimes have failed to render it with the clearness of an artist dealing with a simpler theme? Those critics are probably right who pronounce the Troylus inferior to the Filostrato in point of literary form; but their criticism, to be complete, should add that it is far more interesting in the history of poetry. The first of a poet's gifts is to feel; the second is to express. Chaucer possesses this second gift as abundantly as he possesses the first. The point which contemporary and later poets almost invariably note in him is, not his power of telling a story, not his tragedy, his humour, or his character-drawing, but his language. To Lydgate he is The noble rethor poete of Britayne;' his great achievement has been 'Out of our tongue to avoyde all rudenesse, To Occleve he was 'the floure of eloquence,' The firste fynder of our faire langage.' Dunbar, at the end of the fifteenth century, speaks of his 'fresh enamel'd termës celical'; and long afterwards Spenser gave him the immortal epithet of 'the well of English undefiled.' Chaucer, like Dante, had the rare fortune of coming in upon an unformed language, and, so far as one man could, of forming it. He grew up among the last generation in England that used French as an official tongue. It was in 1362, when Chaucer was just entering manhood, that the session of the House of Commons was first opened with an English speech. Hence it is easy to see the hollowness of the charge, so often brought against him since Verstegan first made it, that 'he was a great mingler of English with French,' that 'he corrupted our language with French words.' Tyrwhitt long since refuted this charge; and if it wanted further refutation, we might point to Piers Plowman's Vision, the work of a poet of the people, written for the people in their own speech, but containing a greater proportion of French words than Chaucer's writings contain. And yet Chaucer is a courtier, a Londoner, perhaps partly French by extraction; above all, he is a translator, and some influence from the language he is translating passes into his own verse. The truth is that in his hands for the first time our language appears as it is; in structure of course purely Germanic, but rich, assimilative, bold in its borrowings, adopting and adapting at its pleasure any words of any language that might come in its way. How Chaucer used this noble instrument is not to be demonstrated; it is to be felt. De sensibus non est disputandum; it is vain to discuss matters of personal experience, to point to qualities in a poet's verse which must really be judged by the individual ear. Otherwise we might dwell on Chaucer's use of his metre, which varies in such subtle response to his subject and his mood; or on his skill in rhyming, though, as he says, 'ryme in Englisch hath such skarsetë'; or on the 'linked sweetness' of the love-passages in the Troylus; or on the grandeur of his tragic descriptions, where the sound gives so solemn an echo to the sense : 'First on the wal was peynted a forest, In which ther dwelleth neither man ne best, These qualities come into view at a first reading of Chaucer; and why should the pleasure to be gained from them be kept for the few? How few there are who can read Chaucer so as to understand him perfectly,' says Dryden, apologising for 'translating' him. In our day, with the wider spread of historical study, with the numerous helps to old English that the care of scholars has produced for us, with the purification that Chaucer's text has undergone, this saying of Dryden's ought not to be true. It ought to be not only possible, but easy, for an educated reader to learn the few essentials of Chaucerian grammar, and for an ear at all trained to poetry to tune itself to the unfamiliar harmonies. For those who make the attempt the reward is certain. They will gain the knowledge, not only of the great poet and creative genius that these pages have endeavoured to sketch, but of the master who uses our language with a power, a freedom, a variety, a rhythmic beauty, that, in five centuries, not ten of his successors have been found able to rival. EDITOR. THE BOKE OF THE DUCHESSE. [The following passage is given as a specimen of Chaucer's earliest or French period. The date is 1369.] Me thoghtë thus, that hyt was May, Upon my chambre roof wythoute, Upon the tylës al aboute; And songen everych in hys wyse The mostë solempnë servise By noote, that ever man, Y trowe, Had herd. For somme of hem songe lowe, Was never herd so swete a steven, Was no-wher herd yet half so swete, For ther was noon of hem that feynede 1 I dreamed. 2 took trouble. To fynde out mery crafty notys; TROYLUS AND CRISEYDE. [Troylus sees Criseyde in the Temple, and loves her at first sight.] But though that Grekës hem of Troye in shetten1, Hire olde usagës wolde thai noght letten, 1 shut. And so byfel, whan comen was the tyme With newë grene, of lusty Veer the prime, The folk of Troye hire observaunces olde, And to the temple, in alle hire bestë wise, And namely so mony a lusty knyght, So many a lady fresshe, and mayden bryght, Among thise other folk was Criseyda, As was Criseyde, as folk seyde everychon, And neygh the dore, ay under schames drede, This Troylus, as he was wont to gyde 1 matchless. VOL. I. 2 dearer. 3 a little way. |