The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems
Chaucer is supposed to have passed them in retirement,
probably devoting them principally to the composition of The
Canterbury Tales. In February 1394, the King conferred upon
him a grant of L20 a year for life; but he seems to have had no
other source of income, and to have become embarrassed by
debt, for frequent memoranda of small advances on his pension
show that his circumstances were, in comparison, greatly
reduced. Things appear to have grown worse and worse with
the poet; for in May 1398 he was compelled to obtain from the
King letters of protection against arrest, extending over a term
of two years. Not for the first time, it is true — for similar
documents had been issued at the beginning of Richard’s reign;
but at that time Chaucer’s missions abroad, and his responsible
duties in the port of London, may have furnished reasons for
securing him against annoyance or frivolous prosecution, which
were wholly wanting at the later date. In 1398, fortune began
again to smile upon him; he received a royal grant of a tun of
wine annually, the value being about L4. Next year, Richard II
having been deposed by the son of John of Gaunt <11> —
Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster — the new King, four
days after hits accession, bestowed on Chaucer a grant of forty
marks (L26, 13s. 4d.) per annum, in addition to the pension of
L20 conferred by Richard II. in 1394. But the poet, now
seventy-one years of age, and probably broken down by the
reverses of the past few years, was not destined long to enjoy
his renewed prosperity. On Christmas Eve of 1399, he entered
on the possession of a house in the garden of the Chapel of the
Blessed Mary of Westminster — near to the present site of
Henry VII.’s Chapel — having obtained a lease from Robert
Hermodesworth, a monk of the adjacent convent, for fifty-three
years, at the annual rent of four marks (L2, 13s. 4d.) Until the
1st of March 1400, Chaucer drew his pensions in person; then
they were received for him by another hand; and on the 25th of
October, in the same year, he died, at the age of seventy-two.
The only lights thrown by his poems on his closing days are
furnished in the little ballad called “Good Counsel of Chaucer,”
— which, though said to have been written when “upon his
death-bed lying in his great anguish, “breathes the very spirit of
courage, resignation, and philosophic calm; and by the
“Retractation” at the end of The Canterbury Tales, which, if it
was not foisted in by monkish transcribers, may be supposed the
effect of Chaucer’s regrets and self-reproaches on that solemn
review of his life-work which the close approach of death
compelled. The poet was buried in Westminster Abbey; <12>
and not many years after his death a slab was placed on a pillar
near his grave, bearing the lines, taken from an epitaph or
eulogy made by Stephanus Surigonus of Milan, at the request of
Caxton:
“Galfridus Chaucer, vates, et fama poesis
Maternae, hoc sacra sum tumulatus humo.” <13>
About 1555, Mr Nicholas Brigham, a gentleman of Oxford who
greatly admired the genius of Chaucer, erected the present
tomb, as near to the spot where the poet lay, “before the chapel
of St Benet,” as was then possible by reason of the “cancelli,”
<14> which the Duke of Buckingham subsequently obtained
leave to remove, that room might be made for the tomb of
Dryden. On the structure of Mr Brigham, besides a full-length
representation of Chaucer, taken from a portrait drawn by his
“scholar” Thomas Occleve, was — or is, though now almost
illegible — the following inscription:—
M. S.
QUI FUIT ANGLORUM VATES TER MAXIMUS OLIM,
GALFRIDUS CHAUCER CONDITUR HOC TUMULO;
ANNUM SI QUAERAS DOMINI, SI TEMPORA VITAE,
ECCE NOTAE SUBSUNT, QUE TIBI CUNCTA NOTANT.
25 OCTOBRIS 1400.
AERUMNARUM REQUIES MORS.
N. BRIGHAM HOS FECIT MUSARUM NOMINE SUMPTUS
1556. <15>
Concerning his personal appearance and habits, Chaucer has not
been reticent in his poetry. Urry sums up the traits of his aspect
and character fairly thus: “He was of a middle stature, the latter
part of his life inclinable to be fat and corpulent, as appears by
the Host’s bantering him in the journey to Canterbury, and
comparing shapes with him.<16> His face was fleshy, his
features just and regular, his complexion fair, and somewhat
pale, his hair of a dusky yellow, short and thin; the hair of his
beard in two forked tufts, of a wheat colour; his forehead broad
and smooth; his eyes inclining usually to the ground, which is
intimated by the Host’s words; his whole face full of liveliness, a
calm, easy sweetness, and a studious Venerable aspect. . . . As
to his temper, he had a mixture of the gay, the modest, and the
grave. The sprightliness of his humour was more distinguished
by his writings than by his appearance; which gave occasion to
Margaret Countess of Pembroke often to rally him upon his
silent modesty in company, telling him, that his absence was
more agreeable to her than his conversation, since the first was
productive of agreeable pieces of wit in his writings, <17> but
the latter was filled with a modest deference, and a too distant
respect. We see nothing merry or jocose in his behaviour with
his pilgrims, but a silent attention to their mirth, rather than any
mixture of his own. . . When disengaged from public affairs, his
time was entirely spent in study and reading; so agreeable to
him was this exercise, that he says he preferred it to all other
sports and diversions.<18> He lived within himself, neither
desirous to hear nor busy to concern himself with the affairs of
his neighbours. His course of living was temperate and regular;
he went to rest with the sun, and rose before it; and by that
means enjoyed the pleasures of the better part of the day, his
morning walk and fresh contemplations. This gave him the
advantage of describing the morning in so lively a manner as he
does everywhere in his works. The springing sun glows warm in
his lines, and the fragrant air blows cool in his descriptions; we
smell the sweets of the bloomy haws, and hear the music of the
feathered choir, whenever we take a forest walk with him. The
hour of the day is not easier to be discovered from the reflection
of the sun in Titian’s paintings, than in Chaucer’s morning
landscapes. . . . His reading was deep and extensive, his
judgement sound and discerning. . . In one word, he was a great
scholar, a pleasant wit, a candid critic, a sociable companion, a
steadfast friend, a grave philosopher, a temperate economist,
and a pious Christian.”
Chaucer’s most important poems are “Troilus and Cressida,”
“The Romaunt of the Rose,” and “The Canterbury Tales.” Of
the first, containing 8246 lines, an abridgement, with a prose
connecting outline of the story, is given in this volume. With the
second, consisting of 7699 octosyllabic verses, like those in
which “The House of Fame” is written, it was found impossible
to deal in the present edition. The poem is a curtailed translation
from the French “Roman de la Rose” — commenced by
Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, after contributing 4070
verses, and completed, in the last quarter of the thirteenth
century, by Jean de Meun, who added some 18,000 verses. It is
a satirical allegory, in which the vices of courts, the corruptions
of the clergy, the disorders and inequalities of society in general,
are unsparingly attacked, and the most revolutionary doctrines
are advanced; and though, in making his translation, Chaucer
softened or eliminated much of the satire of the poem, still it
remained, in his verse, a caustic exposure of the abuses of the
time, especially those which discredited the Church.
The Canterbury Tales are presented in this edition with as near
an approach to completeness as regard for the popular character
of the volume permitted. The 17,385 verses, of which the
poetical Tales consist, have been given without abridgement or
purgation — save in a single couplet; but, the main purpose of
the volume being to make the general reader acquainted with
the “poems” of Chaucer and Spenser, the Editor has ventured to
contract the two prose Tales — Chaucer’s Tale of Melibœus,
and the Parson’s Sermon or Treatise on Penitence — so as to
save about thirty pages for the introduction of Chaucer’s minor
pieces. At the same time, by giving prose outlines of the omitted
parts, it has been sought to guard the reader against the fear
that he was losing anything essential, or even valuable. It is
almost needless to describe the plot, or point out the literary
place, of the Canterbury Tales. Perhaps in the entire range of
ancient and modern literature there is no work that so clearly
and freshly paints for future times the picture of the past;
certainly no Englishman has ever approached Chaucer in the
power of fixing for ever the fleeting traits of his own time. The
plan of the poem had been adopted before Chaucer chose it;
notably in the “Decameron” of Boccaccio — although, there, the
circumstances under which the tales were told, with the terror
of the plague hanging over the merry company, lend a grim
grotesqueness to the narrative, unless we can look at it
abstracted from its setting. Chaucer, on the other hand, strikes
a perpetual key-note of gaiety whenever he mentions the word
“pilgrimage;” and at every stage of the connecting story we
bless the happy thought which gives us incessant incident,
movement, variety, and unclouded but never monotonous
joyousness.
The poet, the evening before he starts on a pilgrimage to the
shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury, lies at the Tabard Inn, in
Southwark, curious to know in what companionship he is
destined to fare forward on the morrow. Chance sends him
“nine and twenty in a company,” representing all orders of
English society, lay and clerical, from the Knight and the Abbot
down to the Ploughman and the Sompnour. The jolly Host of
the Tabard, after supper, when tongues are loosened and hearts
are opened, declares that “not this year” has he seen such a
company at once under his roof-tree, and proposes that, when
they set out next morning, he should ride with them and make
them sport. All agree, and Harry Bailly unfolds his scheme: each
pilgrim, including the poet, shall tell two tales on the road to
Canterbury, and two on the way back to London; and he whom
the general voice pronounces to have told the best tale, shall be
treated to a supper at the common cost — and, of course, to
mine Host’s profit — when the cavalcade returns from the saint’s
shrine to the Southwark hostelry. All joyously assent; and early
on the morrow, in the gay spring sunshine, they ride forth,
listening to the heroic tale of the brave and gentle Knight, who
has been gracefully chosen by the Host to lead the spirited
competition of story-telling.
To describe thus the nature of the plan, and to say that when
Chaucer conceived, or at least began to execute it, he was
between sixty and seventy years of age, is to proclaim that The
Canterbury Tales could never be more than a fragment. Thirty
pilgrims, each telling two tales on the way out, and two more
on the way back — that makes 120 tales; to say nothing of the
prologue, the description of the journey, the occurrences at
Canterbury, “and all the remnant of their pilgrimage,” which
Chaucer also undertook. No more than twenty-three of the 120
stories are told in the work as it comes down to us; that is, only
twenty-three of the thirty pilgrims tell the first of the two stories
on the road to Canterbury; while of the stories on the return
journey we have not one, and nothing is said about the doings
of the pilgrims at Canterbury — which would, if treated like the
scene at the Tabard, have given us a still livelier “picture of the
period.” But the plan was too large; and although the poet had