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, 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 century. 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. Decline of English poetry CHAPTER VI THE SUCCESSORS OF CHAUCER-THE BEGINNINGS OF CULTIVATED PROSE CHAUCER'S position in our literary history is, in one respect, ambiguous; he does and he does not make an era. No great author is more utterly dissimilar to his predecessors among his own countrymen. His position is perfectly unique in his absolute unindebtedness to any preceding English poet. All his innovations, in so far as they are not suggested by his own genius, are importations from foreign literatures. So far he is, indeed, an epoch-making poet. But, whereas the new era introduced by authors of his significance is in general signalised by crowds of imitators and disciples, silence, broken only by the feeble accents of Lydgate and Hoccleve, gathers around Chaucer. The after Chaucer antiquated styles of poetry which he has superseded die out. We hear little of rom, ram, ruf in the fifteenth century, and though chivalric fiction stood at the threshold of a marvellous development in prose, metrical romances of chivalry after the pattern which he parodied in Sir Thopas are few and far between. But the new forms of poetry seem as dead as the old, or are cultivated with dismaying inefficiency. One elegant poet, indeed, the anonymous author of The Flower and the Leaf, might have continued Chaucer's work on the fanciful and romantic side, and probably would have done so if he had been a professed man of letters. He most likely belonged to the patrician class and wrote merely for amusement. But even he makes no approach to the greater and more truly national qualities of Chaucer, his humour, his perception of character, and his skill in depicting the life around him. Reversing the Apostolic truism, it might almost seem that, having first of Englishmen brought these qualities into the world with him, he had also carried them out. Tennyson, who justly calls him "The morning star of song," admits that two centuries elapsed before his beams awoke the Memnon of English literature: Dan Chaucer, our first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious blasts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth It is far from Richard II. to Elizabeth! We shall have to examine into the causes which rendered the fifteenth CHAUCER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 175 century so exceedingly barren a period in the literature, not merely of England but of Europe. For the present our attention must be given to the contemporaries and successors who actually formed a circle of which Chaucer might be termed the centre, but not a sphere of which he could be regarded as the nucleus. The points of dissimilarity between Chaucer and his contemporaries are entirely to his advantage. Compared with the most distinguished rivals of his own day he may be chiefly characterised as more of a national poet. Layamon had attempted to write what in his day really passed for the Chaucer the poet of his national epic of England, but the substance of his poem was borrowed from nation the French. The metrical romancists, often genuine poets, were almost invariably translators or adapters. Two considerable poets remain, the anonymous author of Pearl and The Green Knight, and the author of Piers Plowman. It is a remarkable instance of the illusive power of style that Langland should appear to us so much more ancient than Chaucer. They were in fact contemporaries. Piers Plowman dates in its first recension from 1362, and Chaucer's first poem must have been composed within the six or seven years following. They depict the society of the same period, and each portrait bears the impress of spirit and truth. Yet, whereas the general effect of historical perspective is to cause persons and things to appear in closer proximity than was really the case, Langland appears as though he preceded Chaucer by a century. The main reasons must be that his poetical form is obsolete, while Chaucer's is as fresh as ever; that its employment constrained him to a cramped and uncouth method of expression, which to us, though unjustly, seems affectation, while Chaucer's verse glides smoothly along; above all, perhaps, that by resorting to Italy, Chaucer had placed himself in connection with the great traditions of classical art, imperfectly as these were then known or understood. There is every reason to believe that Langland might have done as much if he had enjoyed Chaucer's advantages, and that the difference between the two poets is chiefly that between the town mouse and the country mouse—one a courtier at a brilliant court, enjoying the most refined society and the keenest intellectual stimulus his age could afford; the other, though he spent much of his life in London, a provincial, picking up his training as he could, and looking upon the life of courts and cities as an external though highly intelligent observer. It is to the immortal honour of Chaucer that he did. not under these circumstances become the mere court poet, but retained that living interest in English life in all its phases which made him its incomparable delineator. The gap between the two poets is partly filled up by a third, who, like John Gower Chaucer, combined the scholar with the courtier. The time has been when the name of JOHN GOWER seemed hardly less conspicuous than Chaucer's own in the record of English literature. The history of Gower is imperfectly known, but this probably arises from the uneventful character of his life. Like Chaucer, he was a scholar and a courtier, but not a courtier to the same extent, although of better birth and connections. Notwithstanding Caxton's assertion that he was a Welshman (probably founded on some erroneous connection of his name with the peninsula of Gower in Pembrokeshire) and Leland's statement of his relationship to the Yorkshire family of Gower, the identity of armorial bearings leaves little doubt of his having belonged to the family of Sir Robert Gower, of Brabourne, Kent, who died about 1349 possessed of property in Kent and Suffolk, one of whose Suffolk manors was afterwards made over by his daughter and son-in-law to their kinsman, John Gower, whose arms are the same as the poet's and who was in all probability the same person. Gower undoubtedly had property both in Kent and Suffolk, but was almost certainly a native of the former county. The lateness of his appearance as a poet, and his apparent attachment to the City, suggest that he may have been a merchant and made a fortune in business before addicting himself to study. There is no ground for identifying him with an Essex incumbent of the name. He was, in fact, married, and not before but long after the time at which he could have taken holy orders. The marriage took place in 1397, when Gower was living, as he continued to do until his death, in the priory of St. Mary Overies, Southwark. Three years afterwards he speaks of himself as old and blind, and it seems a reasonable inference that both the marriage and the residence were connected with the state of his health. He died in 1408, bequeathing considerable property. From the mention of his old age in 1400, he may be supposed to have been born |