Chaucer's Works. 31 with the consideration of such questions, which can only be profitably discussed by those who have a very ripe knowledge of the literature of the period. It shows the versatility of Chaucer's intellect that he was the author of a translation of Boëthius on the "Consolation of Philosophy," a very popular book in the Middle Ages, and that he wrote in 1391 a treatise "On the Astrolabe" for the use of his little son Lewis. Having thus enumerated the chief minor works of Chaucer, we pass on to the consideration of the "Canterbury Tales,” to which alone we propose to confine our attention. Chaucer's other writings, excellent though many of them are, and interesting though they all are, partly for philological reasons, partly as indicating his mental growth, may be passed over by readers whose time is short; but the "Canterbury Tales" is of perennial importance, invaluable alike to the student of poetry, to the historian who aspires to delineate the social life of the period, and to the philologer. The plan of the "Canterbury Tales," a series of stories prefixed by a prologue and linked together by a framework, was probably derived by Chaucer from Boccaccio's "Decamerone," though there are other sources from which he might have borrowed the scheme. But there is a wide difference, greatly in favour of the English writer, between the "Decamerone" and the "Canterbury Tales." Boccaccio's connections between the stories might have been omitted and his book have been none the worse; there is no dramatic propriety in the tales which he puts in the mouth of the several speakers. One of the great attractions of the "Canterbury Tales," on the other hand, is that Chaucer, with the true instinct of genius, took care that each of the stories should be such as the speaker would naturally have told. In the "Prologue" he has hit off the points of the several characters with unrivalled grace and dexterity. "I see all the pilgrims in the 'Canterbury Tales,'" said Dryden, "their humours, their features, and their very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped with them at the Tabard in Southwark." A strangely mixed and jocund company they were who set forth on the pilgrimage, then a very common one for Londoners, to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. see before us the chivalrous Knight; the young Squire, "embroidered as a mead," and "as fresh as is the month of May;" the Yeoman, so careful of his accoutrements; the tenderhearted Prioress, who spoke French "after the school of Strat ford-atte-Bowe;" the Monk, who was so fond of hunting, and whose bridle "jingled in the air as clear and eke as loud as doth the chapel bell;" the Friar, who thought that instead of weeping and of prayers "men ought to give silver to the poor friars ;" the Merchant, who sedulously attended to his business, and "spoke his reasons full pompously;" the Clerk of Oxford, who preferred books to any other earthly pleasure, and who would gladly learn and gladly teach; the Sergeant of Law, who " ever seemed busier than he was;" the Franklin, at whose house it "snowed of meat and drink;" the Shipman, who "of nice conscience took no keep;" the Doctor of Physic, whose "study was but little in the Bible;" the gailyattired buxom Wife of Bath; the poor Parson and his brother the Ploughman, who, if it lay in his power, was always ready to work for the poor without hire; the stout Miller, who was not over honest, and who carried with him a bagpipe which he could "blow and sound ;" the Reeve, "a slender, choleric man;" the Summoner, with his "fire-red cherubim's face;" the Pardoner, with his wallet full" of pardons come from Rome all hot;" and a good many other equally typical specimens of humanity, notably the jovial host of the Tabard, a fit predecessor to "mine host of the Garter" and to Boniface. "It is the first time in English poetry that we are brought face to face, not with characters, or allegories, or reminiscences of the past, but with living and breathing men, men distinct in temper or sentiment as in face, or costume, or mode of speech; and with this distinctness of each maintained throughout the story by a thousand shades of expression and action. It is the first time, too, that we meet with the dramatic power which not only creates each character, but combines it with its fellows, which not only adjusts each tale or jest to the temper of the person who utters it, but fuses all into a poetic unity. It Pilgrimage to Canterbury. 33 is life in its largeness, its variety, its complexity, which surrounds us in the 'Canterbury Tales.' In some of the stories, indeed, composed no doubt at an earlier time, there is the tedium of the old romance or the pedantry of the schoolman; but, taken as a whole, the poem is the work not of a man of letters, but of a man of action. He has received his training from war, courts, business, travel-a training not of books, but of life. And it is life that he loves-the delicacy of its sentiment, the breadth of its farce, its laughter and its tears, the tenderness of its Griseldis, or the Smollett-like adventures of the miller and the schoolboy. It is this largeness of heart, this wide tolerance, which enables him to reflect man for us as none but Shakespeare has ever reflected it, but to reflect it with a pathos, a shrewd sense and kindly humour, a freshness and joyousness of feeling, that even Shakespeare has not surpassed."1 Pilgrimages to Canterbury seem to have been joyous affairs, in which merriment and not devotion held the foremost place in the minds of those who took part in them. "They will ordain with them before," says an old writer indignantly, "to have with them both men and women that can sing wanton songs, and some other pilgrims will have with them bagpipes; so that every town they come through, what with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their Canterbury bells, and with the barking out of the dogs after them, that they make more noise than if the king came thereaway with all his clarions and many other minstrels. And if these men and women be a month in their pilgrimage, many of them shall be a half year after great janglers, tale-tellers, and liars." The "gentle" portion of Chaucer's company must have been not a little scandalised by the riotous behaviour of such "roistering blades" as the Miller, the Summoner, and the Cook, and by the grossly indecorous nature of some of the stories 1 Green's "Short History of England," chap. v. ? The Miller carried his bagpipes with him. told. For this indecorousness Chaucer makes a characteristic apology: "And, therefore, every gentle wight I pray, And eke men shall not maken earnest of game." It is easy to see that Chaucer is here laughing in his sleeve. The excuse he gives will not hold water. But we can forgive much to the man who, whatever his occasional license of language, was capable of delineating the finer qualities of human nature and the most tender of human feelings as none but one who really deeply sympathised with them could have done. A man who had seen much of the world, and had taken part in several of these diplomatic transactions which are not supposed to raise one's estimate of humanity, Chaucer yet preserved, amid all his frolicsome gaiety, a childlike simplicity of spirit which made him prompt to reverence worth, and gentleness, and mercy. There was nothing of the cynic in his composition. He took the world as he found it, and was very well contented with it. He was not a "good hater;" there is no trace of bitterness in his satire, nothing at all akin to the fierce misanthropy of Swift. Yet perhaps his sly touches of satire are none the less pungent on that account. There are few people who would not prefer being bitterly railed at to being good-humouredly laughed at. His penetrating accuracy of observation is perhaps best shown in what he says about women. Though, as many passages prove, he had a high and Chaucer's Religious Opinions. 35 chivalrous estimate of women, he was well aware of their weak points, and from his works a choice anthology might be compiled of innuendoes or open sarcasms directed against the sex. This must be partly attributed to the custom of age; very probably it is in greater measure to be attributed to Chaucer's experience of married life, which is thought to have been far from a happy one. A pleasing feature in Chaucer is his want of all exaggerated reverence for rank and his total freedom from cant. Sprung from the people himself, he knew that it is neither long descent, nor high position, nor great wealth, that constitutes a gentleman : "Look, who that is most virtuous alway, His freedom from cant, and his contempt for those poetical commonplaces which form the stock-in-trade of minor versifiers, are shown by such passages as the following: "Till that the brightë sun had lost his hue, For th' orison had reft the sun his light, (This is as much to sayen as 'it was night")." What were Chaucer's religious views? The question is not very easy to answer. That he was fully aware of the abuses of the prevailing ecclesiastical system is conclusively proved by his pictures of the Monk, the Friar, the Pardoner, and others. On the other hand, his fine portrait of the "Poor Parson of a Town," who 66 has every appearance of being a representation of a Wiclifite priest. Hence some have rashly inferred that Chaucer himself was a Wiclifite. Chaucer," wrote John Foxe, "seems to have been a right Wyclevian, or else there never was any; and that all his works almost, if they be thoroughly advised, will |
