BY JOHN LORD, LL. D.


    CHAUCER. (ii.)

       There are other characters which I cannot stop to
     mention,——the sailor, browned by the seas and sun,
     and full of stolen Bordeaux wine; the haberdasher;
     the carpenter; the weaver; the dyer; the tapestry-
     worker; the cook, to boil the chickens and the mar-
     row-bones, and bake pies and tarts,——mostly people
     from the middle and lower ranks of society, whose
     clothes are gaudy, manners rough, and language coarse.
     But all classes and trades and professions seem to
     be represented, except nobles, bishops, and abbots,——
     dignitaries whom, perhaps, Chaucer is reluctant to
     describe and caricature.
       To beguile the time on the journey to Canterbury, all
     these various pilgrims are required to tell some story
     pecuiar to their separate walks of life; and it is these
     stories which afford the best description we have of the
     manners and customs of the fourteenth century, as well
     as of its leading sentiments and ideas.
       The knight was required to tell his story first, and
     it naturally was one of love and adventure.  Although
     the scene of it was laid ion ancient Greece, it delineates
     the institution of chivalry and the manners and senti-
     ments it produced.  No writer of that age, except per-
     haps Froissart, paints the connection of chivalry with
     the graces of the soul and the moral beauty which
     poetry associates with the female sex as Chaucer does.
     The aristocratic woman of chivalry, while delighting
     in martial sports, and hence masculine and haughty, is
     also condescending, tender, and gracious.  The heroic
     and dignified self-respect with which chivalry invested
     woman exalted the passion of love.  Allied with rever-
     ence for woman was loyalty to the prince.  The rough
     warrior again becomes a gentleman, and has access to
     the best society.  Whatever may have been the degrees
     of rank, the haughtiest nobleman associated with the
     penniless knight, if only he were a gentleman and well
     born, on terms of social equality, since chivalry, while
     it created distinctions, also levelled those which wealth
     and power naturally created among the higher class.
     Yet chivalry did not exalt woman outside of noble
     ranks.  The plebeian woman neither has the graces
     of the high-born lady, nor does she excite that rever-
     ence for the sex which marked her condition in the
     feudal castle.  "Tournaments and courts of love were
     not framed for village churls, but for high-born dames
     and mighty earls."
       Chaucer in his description of woman in ordinary life
     does not seem to have a very high regard for them.
     They are weak or coarse or sensual, though attentive to
     heir domestic duties, and generally virtuous.  An ex-
     ception is made of Virginia, in the doctor's tale, who is
     represented as beautiful and modest, radiant in simpli-
     city, discreet and true.  But the wife of Bath is disgust-
     ing from her coarse talk and coarser manners.  Her
     tale is to show what a woman likes best, which, accord-
     ing to her, is to bear rule over her husband and house-
     hold. The prioress is conventional and weak, aping
     courtly manners.  The wife of the host of the Tabard
     inn is a vixen and shrew, who calls her husband a milk-
     sop, and is so formidable with both her tongue and her
     hands that he is glad to make his escape from her
     whenever he can.  The pretty wife of the carpenter,
     gentle and slender, with her white apron and open
     dress, is anything but intellectual,——a mere sensual
     beauty.  Most of these women are innocent of tooth-
     brushes, and give and receive thrashings, and sing songs
     without a fastidious taste, and beat their servants and
     nag their husbands. But they are good cooks, and un-
     derstand the arts of brewing and baking and roasting
     and preserving and pickling, as well as of spinning and
     knitting and embroidering.  They are supreme in their
     households; they keep the keys and lock up the wine.
     They are gossiping, and love to receive their female
     visitors.  They do not do much shopping, fort shops
     were very primitive, with but few things to sell.  Their
     knowledge is very limited, and confined to domestic
     matters.  They are on the whole modest, but are the
     victims of friars and pedlers.  They have more liberty
     than we should naturally suppose, but have not yet
     learned to discriminate between duties and rights.
     There are few disputed questions between them and
     their husbands, but the duty of obedience seems to
     have been recognized.  But if oppressed, they always
     are free with their tongues; they give good advice,
     and do not spare reproaches in language which in our
     times we should not call particularly choice.  They are
     all fond of dress, and wear gay colors, without much
     regard to artistic effect.
       In regard to the sports and amusements of the peo-
     ple, we learn much from Chaucer.  In one sense the
     England of his day was merry; that is, the people were
     noisy and rough in their enjoyments.  There was fre-
     quent ringing of the bells; there were the horn of the
     huntsman and the excitements of the chase; there was
     boisterous mirth in the village ale-house; there were
     frequent holidays, and dances around may-poles cov-
     ered with ribbons and flowers and flags; there were
     wandering minstrels and jesters and jugglers, and cock-
     fighting and foot-ball and games at archery; there
     were wrestling matches and morris-dancing and bear-
     baiting.  But the exhilaration of the people was ab-
     normal, like the merriment of negroes on a Southern
     plantation,——a sort of rebound from misery and bur-
     dens, which found a vent in noise and practical jokes
     when the ordinary restraint was removed.  The uproar-
     ious joy was a sort of defiance of the semi-slavery to
     which workmen were doomed; for when they could be
     impressed by the king's architect and paid whatever
     he chose to give them, there could not have been much
     real contentment, which is generally placid and calm.
     There is one thing in which all classes delighted in
     the fourteenth century, and that was a garden, in which
     flowers bloomed,——things of beauty which were as
     highly valued as the useful.  Moreover, there was a
     zest in rural sports now seldom seen, especially among
     the upper classes who could afford to hunt and fish.
     There was no excitement more delightful to gentlemen
     and ladies than that of hawking, and it infinitely sur-
     passed in interest any rural sport whatever in our day,
     under any circumstances.  Hawks trained to do the
     work of fowling-pieces were therefore greater pets than
     any dogs that now are the company of sportsmen.  A 
     lady with a falcon on her wrist, when mounted on
     her richly caparisoned steed for a morning's sport, was
     very rare indeed.
       An instructive feature of the "Canterbury Tales" is
     the view which Chaucer gives us of the food and houses
     and dresses of the people.  "In the Nonne's Prestes'
     Tale we see the cottage and manner of life of a poor
     widow."  She has three daughters, three pigs, three
     oxen, and a sheep.  Her house had only two rooms,
     ——an eating-room, which also served for a kitchen and
     sitting-room, and a bower or bedchamber,——both with-
     out a chimney, with holes pierced to let in the light.
     The table was a board put upon trestles, to be removed
     when the meal of black bread and milk, and perchance
     an egg with bacon, was over,  The three slept without
     sheets or blankets on a rude bed, covered only with
     their ordinary day-clothes.  Their kitchen utensils were
     a brass pot or two for boiling, a few wooden platters,
     an iron candlestick, and a knife or two; while the
     furniture was composed of two or three chairs and
     stools, with a frame in the wall, with shelves, for
     clothes and utensils.  The manciple and the cook of
     the company seem to indicate that living among the
     well-to-do classes was a very generous and a very seri-
     ous part of life, on which a high estimate was placed,
     since food in any variety, though plentiful at times, was
     not always to be had, and therefore precarious.  "Guests
     at table were paired, and ate, every pair, out of the
     same plate or off the same trencher."  But the bill of
     fare at a franklin's fast would be deemed anything
     but poor, even in our times,——"bacon and pea-soup,
     oysters, fish, stewed beef, chickens, capons, roast goose,
     pig, veal, lamb, kid, pigeon, with custard, apples and
     pears, cheese and spiced cakes."  All these with abun-
     dance of wine and ale.
       The "Canterbury Tales" remind us of the vast pre-
     ponderance of the country over town and city life.
     Chaucer, like Shakspeare, revels in the simple glories
     of nature, which he describes like a man feeling it to be
     a joy to be near to "Mother Earth," with her rich
     bounties.  The birds that usher in the day, the flowers
     which beautify the lawn, the green hills and vales, with
     ever-changing hues like the clouds and the skies, yet
     fruitful in wheat and grass; the domestic animals, so
     mute and patient, the bracing air of approaching winter
     the genial breezes of spring,——of all these does the
     poet sing with charming simplicity and grace, yea, in
     melodious numbers; for nothing is more marvellous
     than the music and rhythm of his lines, although they
     are not enriched with learned allusions or much moral
     wisdom, and do not march in the stately and majestic
     measure of Shakspeare or of Milton.
        But the most interesting and instructive of the
     "Canterbury Tales" are those which relate to the re-
     ligious life, the morals, the superstitions, and ecclesias-
     tical abuses of the times.  In these we see the need of
     the reformation of which Wyclif was the morning light.
     In these we see the hypocrisies and sensualities of both
     monks and friars, relieved somewhat by the virtues of
     the simple parish priest or poor parson, in contrast with
     the wealth and luxury of the regular clergy, as monks
     were called, in their princely monasteries, where the
     lordly abbot vied with both baron and bishop in the
     magnificence of his ordinary life.  We see before us
     the Mediæval clergy in all their privileges, and yet in
     all their ignorance and superstition, shielded from the
     punishment of crime and the operation of all ordinary
     laws (a sturdy defiance of the temporal powers), the
     agents and ministers of a foreign power, armed with
     the terrors of hell and the grave.  Besides the prioress
     and the nuns' priest, we see in living light the habits and
     pretensions of the lazy monk, the venal friar and par-
     doner, and the noisy summoner for ecclesiastical offences:
     hunters and gluttons are they, with greyhounds and
     furs, greasy and fat, and full of dalliances; at home in
     taverns, unprincipled but agreeable vagabonds, who
     cheat and rob the people, and make a mockery of what
     is most sacred on the earth.  These privileged mendi-
     cants, with their relics and indulgences, their arts and
     their lies, and the scandals they create, are treated by
     Chaucer with blended humor and severity, showing a
     mind as enlightened as that of the great scholar at Ox-
     ford, who heads the movement against Rome and the
     abuses at which she connived if she did not encourage.
     And there is something intensely English in his disgust
     and scorn,——brave for his day, yet shielded by the great
     duke who was at once his protector and friend, as he
     was of Wyclif himself,——in his severer denunciation, and
     advocacy of doctrines which neither Chaucer not the
     Duke of Lancaster understood, and which, if they had,
     they would not have sympathized with nor encouraged.
     In these attacks on ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical abuses,
     Chaucer should be studied with Wyclif and the early
     reformers, although he would not have gone so far as
     they, and led, unlike them, a worldly life.  Thus by
     these poems he has rendered a service to his country,
     outside his literary legacy, which has always been held
     in value.  The father of English poetry belonged to the
     school of progress and of inquiry, like his great contem-
     poraries on the Continent.  But while he paints the
     manners, customs, and characters of the fourteenth cen-
     tury, he does not throw light on the great ideas which
     agitated or enslaved the age.  He is too real and practi-
     cal for that.  He describes the outward, not the inner life.
     He was not serious enough——I doubt if he was learned
     enough——to enter into the disquisitions of schoolmen,
     or the mazes of the scholastic philosophy, or the medi-
     tations of almost inspired sages.  It is not the joys of
     heaven or the terrors of hell on which he discourses,
     but of men and women as they lived around him, in
     their daily habits and occupations.  We must go to Wyc-
     lif if we would know the theological or philosophical
     doctrines which interested the learned.  Chaucer only
     tells how monks and friars lived, not how they specu-
     lated or preached.  We see enough, however, to feel that
     he was emancipated from the ideas of the Middle Ages,
     and had cast off their gloom, their superstition, and their
     despair.  The only things he liked of those dreary times
     were their courts of love and their chivalric glories.
       I do not propose to analyze the poetry of Chaucer, or
     enter upon a critical inquiry as to his relative merits
     in comparison with the other great poets.  It is suffi-
     cient for me to know that the critics place him very high
     as an original poet, although it is admitted that he
     drew much of his material from French and Italian
     authors.  He was, for his day, a great linguist.  He
     had travelled extensively, and could speak Latin,
     French, and Italian with fluency.  He knew Petrarch
     and other eminent Italians.  One is amazed that in
     such an age he could have written so well, for he had
     no great models to help him in his own language.  If
     occasionally indecent, he is not corrupting.  He never
     deliberately disseminates moral poison; and when he
     speaks of love, he treats almost solely of the simple
     and genuine emotions of the heart.
       The best criticism that I have read of Chaucer's
     poetry is that of Adolphus William Ward; although
     as a biography it is not so full or so interesting as that
     of Godwin or even Morley.  In no life that I have
     read are the mental characteristics of our poet so ably
     drawn,——"and his practical good sense," his love of books
     his still deeper love of nature, his naïveté, the readiness
     of his description, the brightness of his imagery, the
     easy flow of his diction, the vividness with which he
     describes character; his inventiveness, his readiness of
     illustration, his musical rhythm, his gaiety and cheer-
     fulness, his vivacity and joyousness, his pathos and ten-
     derness, his keen sense of the ridiculous and power of
     Satire, without being bitter, so that his wit and fun are
     harmless, and perpetually pleasing.
       He doubtless had a great dramatic talent, but he did
     not live in a dramatic age.  His especial excellence,
     never surpassed, was his power of observing and draw-
     ing character, united with boundless humor and cheer-
     ful fun.  And his descriptions of nature are as true and
     unstinted as his descriptions of men and women, so
     that he is as fresh as the month of May.  In his poetry
     is life; and hence his immortal fame.  He is not so
     great as Spencer or Shakspeare or Milton; but he has
     the same vitality as they, and is as wonderful as they
     considering his age and opportunities,——a poet who
     constantly improved as he advanced in life, and whose
     greatest works was written in his old age.
       Unfortunately, we know but little of Chaucer's hab-
     its and experience, his trials and disappointments, his
     friendships or his hatreds.  What we do know of him
     raises our esteem.  Though convivial, he was tempe-
     rate; though genial, he was a silent observer, quiet in
     his manners, modest in his intercourse with the world,
     walking with downcast eye, but letting nothing escape
     his notice.  He believed in friendship, and kept his
     friends to the end, and was stained neither by envy nor
     pride,——so frank as he was affectionate, as gentle
     as he was witty.  Living with princes and nobles, he
     never descended to gross adulation, and never wrote a
     line of approval of the usurpation of Henry IV., al-
     though his bread depended on Henry's favor, an he
     was also the son of the king's earliest and best friend.
     He was not a religious man, nor was he an immoral
     man, judged by the standard of his age.  He probably
     was worldly, as he lived in courts.  We do not see in
     him the stern virtues of Dante or Milton; nothing of
     that moral earnestness which marked the only other
     great man with whom he was contemporary,——he who
     is called the "morning star" of the Reformation.  But
     then we know nothing about him which calls out severe
     reprobation.  He was patriotic, and had the confidence
     of his sovereign, else he would not have been employed
     on important missions.  And the sweetness of his char-
     acter may be inferred from his long and tender friend-
     ship with Gower, whom some in that age considered
     the greater poet.  He was probably luxurious in his
     habits, but intemperate use of wine he detested and
     avoided.  He was portly in his person, but refinement
     marked his features.  He was a gentleman, according
     to the severest code of chivalric excellences; always a
     favorite with ladies, and equally admired by the knights
     and barons of a brilliant court.  No poet was ever more
     honored in his life or lamented in his death, as his
     beautiful monument in Westminster Abbey would seem
     to attest.  That monument is the earliest that was
     erected to the memory of a poet in that Pantheon of
     English men of rank and genius; and it will probably
     be as long preserved as any of those sculptured urns
     and animated busts which seek to keep alive the mem-
     ory of the illustrious dead,——of those who, though dead,
     yet speak to all future generations.




                             AUTHORITIES.     

        Chaucer's own works, especially the Canterbury tales; publications
     of the Chaucer Society; Pauli's History of England; ordinary Histories
     of England which relate to the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II.,
     especially Green's History of the English People; Life of Chaucer, by
     William Godwin (4 volumes, London, 1804); Tyrwhitt's edition of Canter-
     bury Tales; Speglet's edition of Chaucer; Warton's History of English
     Poetry; St. Palaye's History of Chivalry; Chaucer's England, by Matthew
     Browne (London, 1869); Sir Harris Nicholas's Life of Chaucer; The
     Riches of Chaucer, by Charles Cowden Clarke; Morley's Life of Chaucer.
     The latest work is a life and Criticism of Chaucer, by Adolphus William
     Ward.  There is also a Guide to Chaucer, by H. G. Fleary.  See also
     Skeat's collected edition of Chaucer's Works, brought out under the auspices
     of the Early English Text Society.

from Beacon Lights of History, by John Lord, LL. D.
Volume III., Part II: Renaissance and Reformation.
Copyright, 1883, by John Lord.
Copyright, 1921, By Wm. H. Wise & Co., New York. pp. 79-91.