54 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



vintners, and when his mother after his father's death in 136^ 

 married another vintner, their son, Thomas Heyroun, was also 

 a vintner. 



Where Chaucer was educated is uncertain. The short 

 hfe, written in Latin, by Leland more than a hundred years 

 after Chavicer's death, is nearest of the biographies to the poet's 

 lifetime. It says : Chaucer studied at Oxford ; was taught 

 mathematics by John Some, and Nicolas, friar of Lynn, and 

 also studied in France about the last year of Richard II. On 

 the other hand, Speght says : he studied at Cambridge ; a view 

 some think is favoured by touches of local colour in the first 

 lines of the Reeve's tale : — 



'• At Trumpington not far from Canterbrigge, 

 There goeth a brook and over that a brigge. " 



The time for his studies in France is an error, as Chaucer 

 died but a year after the King. And the poems abound in 

 touches which in the most realistic way hit off numerous places 

 mentioned, leaving no ground to infer the poet knew Cam- 

 bridge better than Oxford. And though Leland stood nearer 

 in time to Chaucer than his other biographers, he cites no 

 evidence vmknown to them, while later writers have found 

 documents unknown to him, all of which are silent on this 

 subject. Indeed, so far as records go, it is not shewn that he 

 studied at any university. In olden times not all men of dis- 

 tinction had that advantage, and in our day Mill, and Beacons- 

 field, both noted for their acquirements, were not university 

 men, though both had special advantages from their fathers' 

 teaching. 



If it be doubtful whether Chaucer attended these universi- 

 ties, it is certain he was a diligent student in what Carlyle calls 

 the university of books. All his works bear witness to his 

 fondness for, and use of these. In the opening stanzas of his 

 '■'■ Legende of Good Women " he says : if books were gone, the 

 kev of remembrance were lost, and though he knows but little : 



" On bokes for to rede I me delyt, 

 And to hem give I feyth and full credence, 

 And in myn herte have hem in reverence. 



