230 CHAUCER. 



life since Sir Harris Nicholas, with the help of original 

 records, weeded away the fictions by which the few facts 

 were choked and overshadowed. We might be sorry that 

 no confirmation has been found for the story, fathered 

 on a certain phantasmal Mr. Buckley, that Chaucer was 

 '' fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in 

 i^eet Street," if it were only for the alliteration ; but we 

 refuse to give up the meeting with Petrarch. All the 

 probabilities are in its favor. That Chaucer, being at 

 Milan, should not have found occasion to ride across so 

 far as Padua, for the sake of seeing the most famous lit 

 erary man of the day, is incredible. If Froissart could 

 journey on horseback through Scotland and Wales, surely 

 Chaucer, whose curiosity was as lively as his, might have 

 ventured what would have been a mere pleasure-trip in 

 comparison. I cannot easily bring myself to believe that 

 he is not giving some touches of his own character in 

 that of the Clerk of Oxford : 



" For him was liefer have at his bed's head 

 A twenty booke's clothed in black and red 

 Of Aristotle and his philosophic 

 Than robes rich, or fiddle or psaltriS : 

 But although that he were a philosopher 

 Yet had he but a little gold in coffer: 

 Of study took he moste care and heed ; 

 Not one word spake he more than was need : 

 All that he spake it was of high prudence, 

 And short and quick, and full of great sentence; 

 Sounding in moral virtue was his speech 

 And gladly would he learn and gladly teach." 



That, himself as plump as Horace, he should have 

 described the Clerk as being lean, will be no objection to 

 those who remember how carefully Chaucer effaces his 

 own personality in his great poem. Our chief debt to 

 Sir Harris Nicholas is for having disproved the story that 

 Chaucer, imprisoned for complicity in the insurrection of 

 John of Northampton, had set himself free by betraying 



