The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems
some reserves, in stories which he had already composed in an
independent form, death cut short his labour ere he could even
complete the arrangement and connection of more than a very
few of the Tales. Incomplete as it is, however, the magnum
opus of Chaucer was in his own time received with immense
favour; manuscript copies are numerous even now — no slight
proof of its popularity; and when the invention of printing was
introduced into England by William Caxton, The Canterbury
Tales issued from his press in the year after the first English-
printed book, “The Game of the Chesse,” had been struck off.
Innumerable editions have since been published; and it may
fairly be affirmed, that few books have been so much in favour
with the reading public of every generation as this book, which
the lapse of every generation has been rendering more
unreadable.
Apart from “The Romaunt of the Rose,” no really important
poetical work of Chaucer’s is omitted from or unrepresented in
the present edition. Of “The Legend of Good Women,” the
Prologue only is given — but it is the most genuinely Chaucerian
part of the poem. Of “The Court of Love,” three-fourths are
here presented; of “The Assembly of Fowls,” “The Cuckoo and
the Nightingale,” “The Flower and the Leaf,” all; of “Chaucer’s
Dream,” one-fourth; of “The House of Fame,” two-thirds; and
of the minor poems such a selection as may give an idea of
Chaucer’s power in the “occasional” department of verse.
Necessarily, no space whatever could be given to Chaucer’s
prose works — his translation of Boethius’ Treatise on the
Consolation of Philosophy; his Treatise on the Astrolabe,
written for the use of his son Lewis; and his “Testament of
Love,” composed in his later years, and reflecting the troubles
that then beset the poet. If, after studying in a simplified form
the salient works of England’s first great bard, the reader is
tempted to regret that he was not introduced to a wider
acquaintance with the author, the purpose of the Editor will
have been more than attained.
The plan of the volume does not demand an elaborate
examination into the state of our language when Chaucer wrote,
or the nice questions of grammatical and metrical structure
which conspire with the obsolete orthography to make his
poems a sealed book for the masses. The most important
element in the proper reading of Chaucer’s verses — whether
written in the decasyllabic or heroic metre, which he introduced
into our literature, or in the octosyllabic measure used with such
animated effect in “The House of Fame,” “Chaucer’s Dream,”
&c. — is the sounding of the terminal “e” where it is now silent.
That letter is still valid in French poetry; and Chaucer’s lines can
be scanned only by reading them as we would read Racine’s or
Molière’s. The terminal “e” played an important part in
grammar; in many cases it was the sign of the infinitive — the
“n” being dropped from the end; at other times it pointed the
distinction between singular and plural, between adjective and
adverb. The pages that follow, however, being prepared from
the modern English point of view, necessarily no account is
taken of those distinctions; and the now silent “e” has been
retained in the text of Chaucer only when required by the
modern spelling, or by the exigencies of metre.
Before a word beginning with a vowel, or with the letter “h,”
the final “e” was almost without exception mute; and in such
cases, in the plural forms and infinitives of verbs, the terminal
“n” is generally retained for the sake of euphony. No reader
who is acquainted with the French language will find it hard to
fall into Chaucer’s accentuation; while, for such as are not, a
simple perusal of the text according to the rules of modern
verse, should remove every difficulty.
Notes to Life of Geoffrey Chaucer
1. “Edmund Spenser, a native of London, was born with a Muse
of such power, that he was superior to all English poets of
preceding ages, not excepting his fellow-citizen Chaucer.”
2. See introduction to “The Legend of Good Women”.
3. Called in the editions before 1597 “The Dream of Chaucer”.
The poem, which is not included in the present edition, does
indeed, like many of Chaucer’s smaller works, tell the story of a
dream, in which a knight, representing John of Gaunt, is found
by the poet mourning the loss of his lady; but the true “Dream
of Chaucer,” in which he celebrates the marriage of his patron,
was published for the first time by Speght in 1597. John of
Gaunt, in the end of 1371, married his second wife, Constance,
daughter to Pedro the Cruel of Spain; so that “The Book of the
Duchess” must have been written between 1369 and 1371.
4. Where he bids his “little book”
“Subject be unto all poesy,
And kiss the steps, where as thou seest space,
Of Virgil, Ovid, Homer, Lucan, Stace.”
5. See note 1 to The Tale in The Clerk’s Tale.
6. See note 1 to The Man of Law’s Tale.
7. “Written,” says Mr Wright, “in the sixteenth year of the reign
of Richard II. (1392-1393);” a powerful confirmation of the
opinion that this poem was really produced in Chaucer’s mature
age. See the introductory notes to it and to the Legend of Good
Women.
8. The old biographers of Chaucer, founding on what they took
to be autobiographic allusions in “The Testament of Love,”
assign to him between 1354 and 1389 a very different history
from that here given on the strength of authentic records
explored and quoted by Sir H. Nicolas. Chaucer is made to
espouse the cause of John of Northampton, the Wycliffite Lord
Mayor of London, whose re-election in 1384 was so
vehemently opposed by the clergy, and who was imprisoned in
the sequel of the grave disorders that arose. The poet, it is said,
fled to the Continent, taking with him a large sum of money,
which he spent in supporting companions in exile; then,
returning by stealth to England in quest of funds, he was
detected and sent to the Tower, where he languished for three
years, being released only on the humiliating condition of
informing against his associates in the plot. The public records
show, however, that, all the time of his alleged exile and
captivity, he was quietly living in London, regularly drawing his
pensions in person, sitting in Parliament, and discharging his
duties in the Customs until his dismissal in 1386. It need not be
said, further, that although Chaucer freely handled the errors,
the ignorance, and vices of the clergy, he did so rather as a man
of sense and of conscience, than as a Wycliffite — and there is
no evidence that he espoused the opinions of the zealous
Reformer, far less played the part of an extreme and self-
regardless partisan of his old friend and college-companion.
9. “The Commissioners appear to have commenced their
labours with examining the accounts of the officers employed in
the collection of the revenue; and the sequel affords a strong
presumption that the royal administration [under Lancaster and
his friends] had been foully calumniated. We hear not of any
frauds discovered, or of defaulters punished, or of grievances
redressed.” Such is the testimony of Lingard (chap. iv., 1386),
all the more valuable for his aversion from the Wycliffite
leanings of John of Gaunt. Chaucer’s department in the London
Customs was in those days one of the most important and
lucrative in the kingdom; and if mercenary abuse of his post
could have been proved, we may be sure that his and his
patron’s enemies would not have been content with simple
dismissal, but would have heavily amerced or imprisoned him.
10. The salary was L36, 10s. per annum; the salary of the Chief
Judges was L40, of the Puisne Judges about L27. Probably the
Judges — certainly the Clerk of the Works — had fees or
perquisites besides the stated payment.
11. Chaucer’s patron had died earlier in 1399, during the exile
of his son (then Duke of Hereford) in France. The Duchess
Constance had died in 1394; and the Duke had made reparation
to Katherine Swynford — who had already borne him four
children — by marrying her in 1396, with the approval of
Richard II., who legitimated the children, and made the eldest
son of the poet’s sister-in-law Earl of Somerset. From this long-
illicit union sprang the house of Beaufort — that being the
surname of the Duke’s children by Katherine, after the name of
the castle in Anjou (Belfort, or Beaufort) where they were born.
12. Of Chaucer’s two sons by Philippa Roet, his only wife, the
younger, Lewis, for whom he wrote the Treatise on the
Astrolabe, died young. The elder, Thomas, married Maud, the
second daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Burghersh, brother
of the Bishop of Lincoln, the Chancellor and Treasurer of
England. By this marriage Thomas Chaucer acquired great
estates in Oxfordshire and elsewhere; and he figured
prominently in the second rank of courtiers for many years. He
was Chief Butler to Richard II.; under Henry IV. he was
Constable of Wallingford Castle, Steward of the Honours of
Wallingford and St Valery, and of the Chiltern Hundreds; and
the queen of Henry IV. granted him the farm of several of her
manors, a grant subsequently confirmed to him for life by the
King, after the Queen’s death. He sat in Parliament repeatedly
for Oxfordshire, was Speaker in 1414, and in the same year
went to France as commissioner to negotiate the marriage of
Henry V. with the Princess Katherine. He held, before he died
in 1434, various other posts of trust and distinction; but he left
no heirs-male. His only child, Alice Chaucer, married twice;
first Sir John Philip; and afterwards the Duke of Suffolk —
attainted and beheaded in 1450. She had three children by the
Duke; and her eldest son married the Princess Elizabeth, sister
of Edward IV. The eldest son of this marriage, created Earl of
Lincoln, was declared by Richard III heir-apparent to the
throne, in case the Prince of Wales should die without issue; but
the death of Lincoln himself, at the battle of Stoke in 1487,
destroyed all prospect that the poet’s descendants might
succeed to the crown of England; and his family is now believed
to be extinct.
13. “Geoffrey Chaucer, bard, and famous mother of poetry, is
buried in this sacred ground.”
14. Railings.
15 Translation of the epitaph: This tomb was built for Geoffrey
Chaucer, who in his time was the greatest poet of the English. If
you ask the year of his death, behold the words beneath, which
tell you all. Death gave him rest from his toil, 25th of October
1400. N Brigham bore the cost of these words in the name of
the Muses. 1556.
16. See the Prologue to Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas.
17. See the “Goodly Ballad of Chaucer,” seventh stanza.
18. See the opening of the Prologue to “The Legend of Good
Women,” and the poet’s account of his habits in “The House of
Fame”.
THE CANTERBURY TALES.
THE PROLOGUE.
WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot*, *sweet
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour,
Of which virtue engender’d is the flower;
When Zephyrus eke with his swoote breath
Inspired hath in every holt* and heath *grove, forest
The tender croppes* and the younge sun *twigs, boughs
Hath in the Ram <1> his halfe course y-run,
And smalle fowles make melody,
That sleepen all the night with open eye,
(So pricketh them nature in their corages*); *hearts, inclinations
Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers <2> for to seeke strange strands,
To *ferne hallows couth* in sundry lands; *distant saints known*<3>
And specially, from every shire’s end
Of Engleland, to Canterbury they wend,
The holy blissful Martyr for to seek,