138 



CHAUCER 



CHAUMETTE 



it was the Legend of Good Women. The Prologue 

 to this famous fragment is an admirable piece of 

 writing ; but the theme was soon felt to be weari- 

 somely monotonous, and was abandoned. His 

 second choice was happier, as it provided full 

 scope for his various powers for his humour and 

 his dramatic faculty, as well as for his pathos 

 and more purely poetical gift. This was the Can- 

 terbury Pilgrimage. 



But before that final choice was made, having 

 been suggested probably by an actual journey to 

 St Thomas's shrine, some strange reverses of fortune 

 had befallen Chaucer. About the close of the year 

 1386 he was deprived of both his places in the civil 

 service ; and from this time to very nearly the end 

 of his life, with slight intermissions, things went 

 ill with him. The cause of his dismissal is obscure ; 

 possibly he was involved in the intrigues that 

 disturbed and disordered the court in the reign 

 of King Richard II. ; possibly also there was some 

 genuine dissatisfaction with the way in which his 

 official work had been or was being performed. In 

 1389 he received a new appointment he was ap- 

 pointed Clerk of the King's Works at the palace of 

 Westminster, Tower of London, castle of Berk- 

 hamstead, the king's manors of Kennington, 

 Eltham, Clarendon, Sheen, Byfleet, Langley, and 

 Feckenham, and elsewhere, in this case, too, being 

 allowed to nominate a deputy ; but his previous 

 fate seems to have pursued him. Two years after- 

 wards we find him superseded by one John Gedney. 

 It was during this term of office that he went 

 through the odd experience of being robbed twice 

 in one day. What glimpses we have of him in the 

 succeeding years show him in perpetual impecuni- 

 osity and distress. It seems fairly clear that thrift 

 was not one of his virtues. No sort of provision 

 seems to have been made against a ' rainy day ; ' and 

 now came many rainy days. For some two years 

 he had to subsist as best he might on John of 

 Gaunt's pension of 10, his salary as one of the 

 foresters of North Petherton Park, Somersetshire, 

 and whatever wages, if any, were paid him as a 

 king's esquire. In 1394 King Richard granted him 

 a pension of 20 for life ; but the advances of pay- 

 ment he applies for in the following year, and again 

 and again later on, and other signs, such as the 

 issue on his behalf of letters of protection from 

 arrest for debt, sufficiently indicate his unpros- 

 perous condition. An improvement came with the 

 accession to the throne 01 the son of his old friend 

 and patron John of Gaunt. In October 1399, King 

 Henry IV. granted him a pension of 40 marks 

 ( 26, 13s. 4d. ). This would raise his income to at 

 least 500 a year of our money. And we may 

 believe his few remaining months were spent in 

 comfort. The following Christmas he took a lease 

 for 53 years, at an annual rent of 2, 13s. 4d., 

 of a house situated in the garden of the Lady 

 Chapel, Westminster, the site now of what is 

 commonly known as Henry VII. 's Chapel. But 

 the end was near. Our last trace of him is the 

 payment of a pension instalment in June 1400, 

 made not to him personally, but to one Henry 

 Somers in his behalf. Before the close of the cen- 

 tury, of which he was in England the supreme 

 literary glory, he was laid in that part of the abbey 

 which through his burial there came afterwards to 

 be called the Poet's Corner. His tombstone says 

 he died October 25, 1400 ; and though the present 

 tomb dates only from the 16th century, it probably 

 perpetuates some older inscription. 



In spite of all his reverses and troubles, it was 

 during this last period of his life that Chaucer's 

 genius shone brightest. 



A merry heart goes all the day ; 

 Your sad tires in a mile-a. 



Having formed a design that permitted the full 



expression of his abundant and many-sided genius, 

 he vigorously pursued it amidst the darkness that 

 overclouded him. The design was indeed too huge 

 for completion ; and no doubt for all his vigour and 

 buoyancy his troubles interfered with his progress. 

 Moreover he was approaching or had reached what 

 amidst the unhealthy ways and conditions of medi- 

 eval life was accounted old age. Hence his work 

 remains but a fragment ; but it is a fragment of 

 large and splendid dimensions, consisting of parts 

 that are admirably finished wholes, each one of 

 which illustrates some special feature of the poet's 

 versatile mind and art, and justifies and insures 

 his fame. His greatest achievement is the Pro- 

 logue to the Canterbury Tales, which for its variety, 

 humour, grace, reality, and comprehensiveness is, 

 as a piece of descriptive writing, unique in English 

 literature unique in all literature indeed. It por- 

 trays for us the society of the later middle ages in 

 unfading colours, and historically as well as artistic- 

 ally is ofinestimable excellence and value. Chaucer 

 is in order of time the first great poet of the English 

 race, if the term English may oe used as distin- 

 guished from Anglo-Saxon ; and in order of merit 

 he is amongst the first of all our poets. It might 

 indeed be disputed whether he does not deserve the 

 place next to Shakespeare. In the middle ages in 

 England he stands supreme. 



See Skeat's edition of Chaucer's works ( Oxford, 6 vols. 

 1894-95, vol. vii. the doubtful works ), and his one-volume 

 edition (1895); Pollard's Canterbury Tales (1894); his 

 ' Globe ' Edition of Chaucer's Works ( 1899 ) ; Lounsbury's 

 Studies on Chaucer ( 1892 ) ; Tyrwhitt's Introductory Dis- 

 course to the Canterbury Tales ( 1775-78 ) ; Nicolas' Life 

 of Chaucer in the Aldine Edition ; the magnificent Kelm- 

 scott Edition ( ed. Ellis, folio, 1896 ) ; Ten Brink's Chaucer- 

 Studien ( 1870 ) ; Child On Chaucer's Language ( in Ellis's 

 Early English Pronunciation). As to Chaucer's lan- 

 guage the East Midland variety of Middle English 

 much will be found in the Clarendon Press volumes of Dr 

 Morris and of Professor Skeat ; editions of the Prologue 

 and three of the tales, issued by ~W. & R. Chambers ; 

 Sweet's Middle English Primers ; and in Ten Brink's 

 Chaucer's Sprache und Verskunst (1884). Invaluable to 

 the Chaucer student is Dr Furnivall's Six-text Print of 

 the Canterbury Tales, and the other issues of the 

 Chaucer Society. A Concordance has been prepared 

 by members of the same society. It must be noted that 

 many works have been ascribed to Chaucer, and are still 

 printed in popular editions, that are certainly not his 

 e.g. The Court of Love, Chaucer's Dream, The Complaint 

 of the Slack Knight, The Cuckoo and Nightingale, The 

 Flower and the Leaf, and in all probability the extant 

 Romaunt of the Hose. 



For criticism of the poetry, see Ward's Chaucer in the 

 ' English Men of Letters' series ; Morley's English Writers 

 (vol. iv. in new ed.); Warton's History of English 

 Poetry ; and a fine essay by J. R. Lowell in My Study 

 Windows. 



Chaudes-AigllCS, a town in the French de- 

 partment of Cantal, 90 miles S. of Clermont, with 

 four mineral springs, which vary in temperature 

 from 135 to 177 F. They have the property of 

 discharging grease from sheep's wool, and vast 

 numbers of fleeces are sent hither annually to be 

 washed. The waters are also useful in rheu- 

 matism and cutaneous diseases. Pop. 1182. 



Chaildfontaine, a Belgian village charmingly 

 situated in the valley of the Vesdre, 5 miles SSE. 

 of Liege by rail, with mineral springs ( 92 F. ). Pop. 

 1552. 



Chaildi&re, a river and lake of Canada. The 

 river joins the St Lawrence from the south 7 miles 

 above Quebec, and, 2J miles from its mouth, forms 

 the celebrated falls of Chaudiere. The lake 

 merely one of the many expansions of the Ottawa 

 has on its right the city of that name, the capital 

 of the Dominion. 



Cliaumette, PIERRE GASPARD, one of the 

 French Revolutionists, was born a shoemaker's son 



