CHAUCER. 



759 



them with that inverted tonn of rhyme which was 

 ' borrowed from the French and Italians. Tin- < 

 <>/' Lotr seems to have derived its name from a cus- 

 tom peculiar to the days of early chivalry, viz. courts 

 or parliaments of love. These institutions, whimsi- 

 cal as they appear to a serious age, decided questions 

 of gallantry and attachment that were proposed to 

 them, in the flame manner as modern academies pre- 

 tend to determine questions of literature. The obe- 

 dience that was paid to them was voluntary, the re- 

 sult of public respect for the arbiters; but the ques- 

 tions argued before them were commonly fanciful. 

 Chaucer's poem reminds us of the institution. It is 

 an allegorical dream, in which the poet supposes him- 

 self summoned by Mercury to visit the court of love 

 at Mount Citheron, where he meets with a number 

 of votaries, is introduced to a mistress, and sworn 

 to observe the twenty statutes of the god. These 

 include fidelity to his mistress, implicit belief in her 

 virtues, promptitude to fight, to swear either truth 

 or falsehood for her honour, to say that the crow is 

 white if she says so, and to do the duties of love 

 seven times in a night. The poet objects to this sta- 

 tute alone, and pleads his inability. Among the at- 

 tendants at the court are placed, with a bold impro- 

 priety, but evidently for the sake of contrast, a crowd 

 of monks and friars, and those who lament their 

 obligation to celibacy from other causes. The poet 

 does not leave the court till he forms an assignation with 

 his mistress, and with the celebration of that meeting 

 the poem concludes, " The season is May," and 

 the birds sing a service in concert to the god of love, 

 which, strange to say, is from the Roman Catholic 



ritual. ! ingalo sings, Domiue tatiai the 



possinjay, Ccrli enarrant \ and the turtle dove, '/'* a*~ 

 IMS. The materials of the piece are meagre, 

 travagant, and ill united. We see, however, in the 

 lover's refusal to the hardest statute of love, and in 

 the deplorable picture of the monks, some promise of 

 the arch and salacious humour which sports so mdul. 

 gently in the Canterbury Tales. We have been thai 

 particular in noticing the earliest production of our 

 earliest poet.* 



His next production, in order of time, is the story 

 of Troilus ami Crestfide, in which Chaucer has claims 

 on our curiosity, were it only for being the precursor 

 of Shakespeare and Dryden, in telling, though dif- 

 ferently, an interesting tale. It is, however, the best 

 of Chaucer's productions next to the Canterbury 

 J 'rtics, and was for ages the favourite of the English 

 nation, f Troilus, one of the sons of Priam, is sup- 

 posed, during the siege of Troy, to fall in love with 

 a beautiful widow, J Cresseide, whose father, the 

 poet, in defiance of antique story, makes a Trojan 

 and supposes to have deserted from his native city to 

 the camp of the Greeks. The Trojan prince sees 

 her in the temple of Minerva, and is irrecoverably 

 smitten with her appearance, naturally lovely, but 

 made more interesting by the grief for her father's 

 desertion. The uncle of Cresseide is the bosom- 

 friend of Troilus ; he visits him, finds him in despair, 

 and, sacrificing duty to friendship, obtains, by a long 

 train of artifices, the happiness of Troilus from the 

 yielding virtue of Cresseide. Calchas, however, sends 

 for his daughter from Troy ; she is exchanged for a 

 Greek prisoner ; after bidding a secret and fender 



* A specimen of the best part of it may not be unacceptable to those who arc little invited by lii* obsolete language l 

 explore an almost unintelligible author. In describing the life of lovers, he thus proceeds : 



This is the life of joy that we ben in, 

 Resembling life of heavenly paradise; 

 Love is elixir aye of vice and sin, 

 Love makith hcrtis lustie || to devise; 

 Honour and grace have they in every wise, 

 That ben to lovis law obedient. 



Aye stirring them to dreadin vice and ihamc ; 

 In their degree it makith them honourable, 

 And sweet it is of love to hear the name. 

 So that his love be faithful, true, and stable. 

 Love prunith hyin to seemin amiable. 

 Love hath no faulte there it is exercised. 



Love makith folke benigne and diligent, But sole with them that have oil love despised. 



f- The poet pretends to have borrowed this story from the Latin, which is exceedingly improbable. But should we ateribe 

 its origin, as Mr Tyrwhitt has done, to Boccaccio, still the merit of much originality in point of manner would remain to 

 Chaucer. Chaucer himself professes, that he was indebted for the tale of Troilus and Cre*tr>J, < li Auctor Loliitu: he 

 declares, 



" That of no sentiment I thus cnditc 



But out of Latin in my tongue I write." 



Of the writings of this Lollius nothing is known. He certainly was not the Lollius Urbicus of the 3d century ; and though 

 mentioned again by Chaucer in his House of Fame, his existence as a real writer seems still to be questionable, Mr Warton 

 lays no stress on Chaucer's mention of his Avctor, but from having seen some of the name Italiani/i-d in a MS. of the poem 

 which he had perused, he pronounces its origin to have been Italian. Mr Tynvhitt directly charges Chaucer with forging the 

 name of Lollius, and concludes, that he borrowed it from the J'hilostrato of Boccaccio. Mr Godwin again quotes the evidence 

 of Lydgate to controvert Tyrwhitt's opinion ; but Mr Godwin has not observed that Lydgate's evidence goes no way to prove the 

 authenticity of Lollius. Lydgate says, that Chaucer borrowed it from a book called Tn'pke, in the Lombard tongue. The 

 two assertions of Chaucer and of Lydgate are indeed direct, but they go in opposite directions. 



J Mr Warton, when he speaks of this character in Chaucer's poem, does not seem to have attended to several circum- 

 stances which, at the outset of the story, distinctly point out Cresseide to have been a widow, not a virgin. Mr Godwin, from 

 the same misapprehension, though he dwells on the real intrigue of the story with great equanimity, is indignantly shocked 

 at a passage which he denominates brutal, in which the poet declares his uncertainty whether Crcsseide had ever been mo- 

 ther before her affair with the Trojan prince. There is, however, nothing brutal iu this powage; the poet only ife*ta 

 doubt whether or not the young widow had been left with a few small children. Cresscide speak ;,.whoodu>eerl 



places. She says on one occasion, when invited to a public amusement, " Ltt maidens gon to dantc andyt>ngt n'rc." .And to 

 Diomcd, she speaks in direct terms of her former lord, evidently not alluding to Troilus, (with whom all h 

 been stolen,) but of a plain lawful partner. 



" But as to^speak of love I wis, she said, 



I had a lorde to whom I wedded was, 



The whose mine heart was all till that he died." 



! i 



\\ Pleasure. 



