58 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



though written after a French model, does not lack originality, 

 and concludes in a strain of true pathos. It is one of the poet's 

 earliest pieces, and serves as the surest chronological starting 

 point of his works. After this, little trace of Chaucer is found 

 until 1366, when his name appears on the list of esquires of the 

 King. His relation to the Royal household, made known to 

 Chaucer many celebrities of that day, as Philippa, the Queen, 

 by the poets, minstrels, and notables she assembled in her train, 

 added to the distinction of the Court. In the reign of Edward 

 III, pestilence, war, and civil tumult, reduced the population of 

 England to about four millions. But for all such a combination 

 of horrors, national spirit was neither retrograde nor stationary. 

 Socially there was an effort to improve the lot of the people, 

 and to make devotion to truth, honour, freedom, and courtesy 

 — the ideals of chivalry — something more than high sounding 

 words. The arts too made advancement despite such difficult- 

 ies. Mural paintings, richly coloured windows, and elaborate 

 foliated ornamentation, became a fashion, and enhanced the 

 beauty of public buildings, whose stateliness the w^est front of 

 York Minster, and the spire of Salisbury Cathedral make 

 known to this day. 



Chaucer went to France twice with the army, and between 

 1370 and 1379 he crossed the channel several times, on peace- 

 ful missions for the Government. On his second tour in 1372 

 he visited Genoa and Florence. Landor makes that visit the 

 setting for an imaginary conversation at Arezzo, Petrarch's 

 birthplace, between the three poets Chaucer, Boccaccio, and 

 Petrarch. The meeting was of course entireh* suppositious,, 

 although it might have taken place. The firmer ground on 

 which belief of a meeting between Chaucer and Petrarch rests 

 is : The Clerk of Oxford's Tale is Petrarch's Latin story of 

 Griselda, taken from Boccaccio's story in the Decameron. The 

 Clerk in his prologue says, he learned that tale at Padua, of 

 Frances Petrarch the lauriet poet, whose poetry shed light over 

 all Italy. And giving force and reality to that statement he adds :. 



"He is now dead and nayled in his chaste, 

 I prey to God so yeve his soule rest." 



