ment, and made his pursuit of the rose a model of courteous behaviour; but Jean was keen, observant, and cynical, a freethinker and a free speaker, and made the work a vehicle for sharp satire on women and on the Church. All the more for this difference of spirit, Jean de Meun increased the reputation of the Romance of the Rose.'

One of Chaucer's first poetical efforts was a translation of the 'Romance of the Rose;' and when we keep in view that French could hardly have been less familiar to him than English was to Scotchmen of the seventeenth century, we cannot fail to see how much the Trouvères must have had to do with the awakening of his genius. Some patriotic Englishmen have strongly resented the endeavour of M. Sandras to consider Chaucer as an imitator of the Trouvères; and they are probably justified in taking offence at the word "imitator." It is too much to say that Chaucer produced nothing but imitations of G. de Lorris or other Trouvères, till he conceived the plan of the 'Canterbury Tales; and that the Canterbury Tales,' though so far original in form, are animated throughout by the spirit of Jean de Meun. To say this is to produce a totally false impression as regards the decided individuality and pronounced English characteristics of Chaucer. He undoubtedly belongs to the line of the Trouvères. He was a disciple of theirs; he studied in the school of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. He adopted their poetical machinery of vision and allegory. By them he was set upon making his elaborate studies of colour and form. From them he received the stimulus to his minute observation of character. It was emulation of them that kindled his happy genius for story-telling the inspiring beat of their bright movement would not let him rest. The relation between Chaucer and the Trouvères is much closer than the relation between Shakespeare and the foreign originals that supplied him with plots, or than the relation between Mr Tennyson and the Arthurian legends. Making allowance for differences

1 Etude sur G. Chaucer considéré comme imitateur des Trouvères, 1859. See, in particular, Mr Furnivall's 'Trial-Forewords,' Chaucer Society.

of national character, Chaucer owed as much to Guillaume de Lorris as Shakespeare to Marlowe, or Tennyson to Wordsworth; and in spite of national character, there was probably more affinity between pupil and master in the one case than in the others. At the same time, we should keep clear of such a word as imitation, which would imply that Chaucer had no character of his own. He received his impulse from the French: he made liberal use of their forms and their materials; yet his works bear the impress and breathe the spirit of a strong individuality; and this individuality, though most obvious in the 'Canterbury Tales,' is throughout all his works distinctively English. Finally, to add one word on the comparative extent of Chaucer's obligations to Italian sources: while he translated largely from Boccaccio, and while it may be possible to trace an expansion of his poetic ideals coincident with the time. when he may be supposed to have made his first acquaintance with Italian poetry, it is not to be questioned that he was most deeply indebted for general form, imagery, and characterisation to the Trouvères, whose language and works he must have been familiar with from boyhood.

The facts of Chaucer's early life are so uncertain that one must not use them without caution; but if our antiquarians are right in supposing Chaucer to have been the son of a London vintner,1 we may say that Chaucer received from the Continent another benefit hardly less important than poetic impulse-viz., poetic status. To the Troubadours, who numbered among them men of all degrees, he was indebted for having raised the practice of poetry above the level of rhyming ecclesiastics and minstrels, retained to celebrate the exploits of their patrons, and having secured to the poet as such a larger hold on public attention and respect. One may imagine that the son of a vintner, even with the genius of Chaucer, might have settled in a monastery, and spent his powers on religious hymns in Latin; with now and then a ballad or an alliterative poem, for the

1 This has at last been settled by Mr Furnivall.

amusement or instruction of the neighbouring vulgar. Or he might have drifted into wandering - minstrelsy, and roamed from patron to patron, eking out the attractions of his songs by tricks of legerdemain, and supplementing the praises of the past by flattering prognostications of the future. But, fortunately for himself and for the world, he came at a time when the cultivation of poetry by men of the highest degree had elevated the poet's standing, and secured for genius of humble birth a claim to more respectful patronage.

The balance of opinion has of late inclined to 1340 as the approximate date of Chaucer's birth; and this, suggested by the description of Chaucer in 1386 as "forty years and upwards," is rather confirmed by the discovery that Richard Chaucer, who died in 1349, was his grandfather, and not his father. As yet, we are left uncertain as to what start in life Chaucer received from his father, and what he owed to the patronage of Edward III., or his son, John of Gaunt. It may have been, as Professor Morley supposes, that the vintner was wealthy, and able to send his son to Cambridge. Or, if Chaucer's father was the John Chaucer who accompanied Edward on his French expedition in the twelfth year of his reign, probably in connection with the commissariat, he may have been brought under the notice of the king, or the king's son, at a very early age. There are many possible ways in which such a youth as Chaucer, in such a position as a vintner's son, may be supposed to have been taken into royal service. At any rate, it is ascertained that Chaucer began to bear arms—not the puissant pike, but the arms of a gentleman-in 1359. He accompanied Edward III.'s unfortunate army of invasion in that year, and was taken prisoner by the French, probably in the course of the disastrous retreat from Paris. And Mr Furnival has ascertained that the king paid £16 for his ransom in 1360.

At Michaelmas in 1367, Chaucer received from the Ex1 The date 1328 rests on the authority of the monument in Westminster Abbey put up in 1556 by Nicholas Brigham.

chequer his first half-yearly payment of a pension of twenty marks, granted him as one of the king's "valetti," for good service rendered to the king, to be continued for the whole of his life, or until he should be otherwise provided for. From that date onwards, the Issue Rolls of the Exchequer afford significant indications of the fact that Chaucer had a powerful friend at Court. Up to 1386, fortune would seem to have been uniformly kind to him. He was several times sent abroad on secret affairs of state. Among other places, he had an opportunity of visiting Italy while Petrarch was still alive, and Boccaccio was in the height of his fame. In 1372 he was appointed one of the commissioners for arranging a commercial treaty with the Genoese, and visited Florence and Genoa in the following year. Unless royal favourites were then intrusted with very unsuitable posts, our poet must have had a decidedly commercial turn. In 1374 he was appointed Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidy of Wools, Skins, and Tanned Hides in the Port of London; and he had to perform his duties in person, without the option of a deputy. In his "House of Fame," perhaps with a reference to these duties, he speaks of going home when his reckonings were made up and poring over books till his eyes were dazed; and, doubtless, between business and poetry, he must have been closely occupied. For several generations before Chaucer's time, the successful poets of France had been in the habit of receiving munificent presents, which enabled them to give their whole time to poetry. Chaucer was not so fortunate, or unfortunate; his patron, instead of handing over to him jewels, horses, houses, or lands, obtained a moderate pension for him from the Crown, and the privilege of discharging the dry duties of a moderately lucrative office- an arrangement which may, perhaps, be considered peculiarly English, and which probably combined a certain amount of leisure with a solid feeling of independence. Besides his pension and his salary, he seems to have had an allowance for robes as one of the king's esquires; and he received the custody of a 1 Mr Furnivall has discovered an entry about him in 1366.

wealthy minor, which brought him something equivalent to about £1000 of our money. The accession of Richard II. did not injure his position: his pension was confirmed, and he received, besides, another annuity of twenty marks, in lieu of a daily pitcher of wine. The Issue Rolls contain further entries of money paid to him for his expenses abroad on the king's service. In 1382 he was appointed Comptroller of the Petty Customs of the Port of London, with the privilege of appointing a deputy. In 1385 he was allowed to name a deputy for his other comptrollership. In 1386 he sat in Parliament as a Knight of the Shire of Kent. This was the zenith of his fortunes. In that year John of Gaunt lost his authority at Court. A commission was issued for inquiring, among other alleged abuses, into the state of the subsidies and customs, and Chaucer was superseded in his two comptrollerships. The new brooms had probably little difficulty in finding an excuse for sweeping away the protégé of the fallen Minister. As is often the manner of poets, he had saved little of his pensions and salaries as a royal favourite and a public officer; if, at least, we may draw the natural inference from his two years afterwards getting both his annuities transferred to another man. The revival of John of Gaunt's influence in 1389 again brightened his prospects. He was appointed Clerk of the King's Works. In 1394 he obtained an annuity of £20; but the decay of his fortunes is too plainly indicated by the fact that he was several times under the necessity of applying for small portions of this pension in advance. It is pleasing, however, to know that the last year of his life was made happy by the accession of his patron's son, Henry Bolingbroke, who immediately more than doubled his annuity by the additional grant of forty marks. He would seem to have retired to a tenement in the garden of the chapel of the Blessed Mary, of Westminster. According to the inscription on his tomb. in Westminster Abbey, confirmed by the cessation of the minutes of his pension, he died on the 25th October 1400.

Chaucer being the poet of love, special interest attaches to his matrimonial relations. From an entry in the Ex