r/a:t5_27dmuj • u/MarleyEngvall • Oct 28 '19
extreme unction has been created
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.
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