the challenge; and he threw himself into the work of translating and adapting stories which he found in the Italian dress. He paid homage again and again to Dante, whose Commedia he imitated in his unfinished vision of the Hous of Fame; he paid homage to Petrarch, and when the Clerk in a prologue to the tale of patient Griselda says that he learnt it in Padua of a learned clerk, "Francis Petrarch the laureate poëte," Chaucer is probably assigning to the clerk what was his own good fortune. But the tale is taken by Chaucer only from Petrarch's Latin version of Boccaccio's Italian; and this, like Troilus and Criseyde, the tale of Palamon and Arcite, and more besides, is really a plundering from the rich storehouse which Boccaccio's work has afforded to greater writers than himself.

What Chaucer borrowed he made his own; for when he translated he enriched, and when he borrowed a scheme or story he amplified and altered. Thus, in the Troilus and Criseyde only some 2500 lines of 8500 can be traced to Boccaccio's Filostrato. But the fact remains that up to a certain period Chaucer was at best a fine derivative poet. He was certainly over forty before his full originality displayed itself in the great scheme of the Canterbury Tales. We can

see him in the Hous of Fame and the Legende of Good Women (both left unfinished) feeling his way to some large structure; and when he abandoned the latter design, meant to consist of a prologue and twenty stories of women who were true to love, he abandoned it in favour of a scheme which should admit the display of his most characteristic quality, as yet excluded from his work - his rich English humour.

The scheme at last conceived was in fact an

expedient that enabled him to employ several
long independent poems previously completed,
which he now proposed to set like decorative
panels in a great sculptured chest.
We may
be sure that the Lyf of Seinte Cecile (the Second
Nun's Tale), the Story of Grisilde (the Clerk's
Tale), the Story of Custance (the Man of Law's
Tale), and the Monk's Tale, which contains twelve
Tragedies' of Great Men and Women, were com-
pleted before he began upon his more characteristic
work. And a comparison between any of these
and the Prologue is the simplest way to realise
how great is the difference between Chaucer the
creative artist and Chaucer the adapter of other
men's writing. Yet even in these, and especially
in the Clerk's Tale, we recognise a great narrative
poet. The excellences, however, of this part of
the Canterbury Tales are surpassed in the Troilus
and Cressida, where Chaucer probably attained
his highest pitch in the beauty of sustained and
purely poetic narrative.

The fact that Chaucer was well on in middle life before he wrote a poetry that was entirely his own, gives a special stamp to his work. He is among the least lyrical of all English poets; and he writes always as the observer rather than as the man impelled to utter his inmost feelings. Even the thoughts which he expresses are the common thoughts of men who know the world, and in this as in other matters he resembles the other courtier poet, Horace. The framework of the Canterbury Tales recalls the journey to Brundusium.

For the poem, as a whole, describes the gathering and the progress of a company of pilgrims, gentle and simple, who journeyed together from London to Canterbury, and recites in verse the stories, comic and tragic, by which they beguiled

1

the way. Whether an actual pilgrimage suggested to Chaucer the scheme of the poem, or vice versa, we cannot say ; but we may be sure that somewhere about 1386 Chaucer made the journey, saw the pilgrims gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwark one evening in April, and set out with them next morning under the guidance of Mr. Harry Bailey, the host of the Tabard, who was a historical person and a member of Parliament. Moreover, though Chaucer probably got no more than a suggestion, and added types and incidents, we may believe that some such motley gathering did actually shorten the road by telling stories each in his turn. The uncompromising realism of his method in this framework leads one to infer a basis of fact.

At all events, the poem - which encloses in itself a whole array of independent poems, comic and tragic begins by telling how in April, when the sap stirs, folk are visited with a longing to go on pilgrimages. And these first lines curiously typify the whole blending of new and old, which makes the poem what it is. For the description of spring and the singing of birds which opens is conventional and obligatory by the usages of mediaeval poetry, but like all such descriptions in Chaucer it is pervaded by a freshness of feeling that gives life to the hackneyed form and certainly the observation that the desire for travel wakens with the stirring of buds is entirely unconventional and individual. Then we go straight to the description of the company, extending over a matter of seven hundred lines, in which, by Chaucer's art, the whole pageant of mediaeval England passes before our very eyes. Here are two of the portraits :

:

With hym ther was his sone, a yong Squier,
A lovyere and a lusty bacheler,

With lokkes crulle as they were leyd in presse.
Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse.

Of his statúre he was of even lengthe,

space,

And wonderly delyvere, and greet of strengthe;
And he hadde been somtyme in chyvachie,
In Flaundres, in Artoys and Pycardie,
And born hym weel, as of so litel
In hope to stonden in his lady grace.
Embrouded was he, as it were a meede
Al ful of freshė flourės, whyte and reede;
Syngynge he was, or floytynge all the day;
He was as fressh as is the month of May.
Short was his gowne, with slevės longe and wyde;
Well koude he sitte on hors and faire ryde;
He koudė songės make and wel endite,

Juste and eek daunce and weel purtreye and write.
So hoote he lovede that by nightertale

He sleep namoore than dooth a nyghtyngale.
Curteis he was, lowely and servysáble,

And carf biforn his fader at the table.

The Millere was a stout carle for the nones,
Ful byg he was of brawn, and eek of bones;
That provèd wel, for over al, ther he cam,
At wrastlynge he wolde have awey the ram,
He was short sholdred, brood, a thikke knarre,
Ther nas no dore that he nolde heve of harre,
Or breke it at a rennyng with his heed.
His berd, as any sowe or foxe, was reed,
And therto brood, as though it were a spade.

His nosėtherlės blakė were and wyde;
A swerd and a bokeler bar he by his syde;
His mouth as wyde was as a greet forneys,
He was a janglere, and a goliardeys,
And that was moost of synne and harlotries.
Wel koude he stelen corn and tollen thriës,
And yet he hadde a thombe of gold, pardee,
A whit cote and a blew hood wered he.

A baggepipe wel koude he blowe and sowne,
And therwithal he broghte us out of towne.

Now it is obvious that these two personages will not tell the same sort of story, and while the Squire's Tale, which Chaucer "left half-told," is a high romance of marvels and enchantments, the

Miller's is a gross ribaldry. And since the company consists of thirty-four in all, each type in it no less distinctly sketched than those quoted, and since on the whole Chaucer maintains a consonance between the narrator and the tale, it follows that there is a great variety of narrative: the gentlefolk on the whole inclining to romantic tragedy, the commoners to lewd jesting. Whatever tendency there may be among such folk as the man of law to gloomy themes is counteracted by the jolly host, who interposes constantly, sometimes to keep the peace, but always in the interest of jollity. It is this framework that keeps the Canterbury Tales imperishable, for in it Chaucer is entirely himself, unhampered by any convention and its realism makes an admirable foil to the quaint and ceremonious stiffness of the mediaeval romance which figures so largely in the tales.

Take for example the Knight's Tale, which is the story of two young Theban warriors captured by Theseus, and imprisoned in Athens. But Theseus is a knight with mail and lance, and their dungeon is a mediaeval tower looking on to a mediaeval pleasance. In this pleasance one of the friends, Palamon, espies from his prison a lady wandering, and suddenly cries out under the dart of love. Arcite, at his complaint, looks out to see the cause of such woe, and he too cries out :

The fresshe beautee sleeth me sodeynly

Of hire that rometh in the yonder place.

At this Palamon rages. Are they not brothers in arms "y sworn ful depe neither in love to hindre other?"

I loved hire first and toldė thee my wo

As to my conseil and my brother sworn.

But Arcite answers with subtle pleading, such as