34 The Complaint of Chaucer to his Empty Purse 



Dieux absoille le bon Roy trespasse ! 

 Et Dieux consault cellui qui est en vie! 

 II me donna rente le temps passe 

 A mon vivant ; laquelle je n'ay mie. 



The Envoy has but six Hnes, though the stanzas have eight; 

 similarly, Chaucer's Envoy has but five lines (rimed a a b b a), 

 though the stanzas have seven. Chaucer's Envoy is in a very 

 unusual metre, which was copied by the author of the Cuckoo 

 and the Nightingale' [cf. Oxford Chaucer 7. 347-358]- 



This opinion of Skeat is not very convincing. In the first 

 place, Chaucer's envoy, which, if we adopt Skeat's view, would 

 be the link between Chaucer's ballade and that of Deschamps, 

 has the air of being an afterthought, and. in tone, as well as in 

 construction, is quite difi^erent from the body of the poem. Like 

 Steadfastness and Truth, this poem has an envoy; but while in 

 the former it is a rhyme-royal stanza, on the same rhymes as the 

 three preceding stanzas, in this it has five lines, on entirely new 

 rhymes.^ 



But not only is the envoy different from the body of the poem ; 

 the latter is quite different, in tone and diction, from the ballade 

 of Deschamps. Deschamps' ballade is not light and humorous, 

 nor is its language that of an amatory poem.*^ Chaucer's ballade 

 has the air of being a genial parody of a love-lyric, perhaps a 

 well known one — or, at least, of employing some of its phraseol- 

 ogy. Such a love-lyric exists — famous, too, in its period. It 

 was written by Guy de Coucy, who was castellan of the castle 

 of that name from 1186 to 1203.' and of whom Villehardouin^ 

 relates that he was lost at sea in 1203'' on the way from the island 

 of Andros, south-east of Euboea, to Constantinople : 'Et rentrer- 

 ent en lor vaissiaus et corrurent par mer. Lors lor avint uns 

 granz domaiges ; que uns halz hom de I'ost, qui avoit nom Guis 

 li chastelains de Coci, morut et fu gitez en la mer.' 



The Chatelain de Coucy, as he is generally designated, was an 

 imitator of the troubadours, belonging to the same general 



^ Cf. Ten Brink, Chancers Sprache und Vcrskunst, p. 213 ; Schipper, 

 AltengUsche Mctrik 1. 335. 

 "Cf. Oeuvres 2. 81-2. 

 '' Encyc. Brit., nth ed., 7. 307. 

 'Ed. Natalis de Wailly, § 124; cf. § 114. 

 "Not 1201, as Lanson would have it (IJist. dc la Lift. Fr.. p. 85). 



