pleted, and the great English nation, in its modern form, had its beginning a nation that in its type of character is second to none in the history of the world.

But many evils still existed. The nobility lived in luxury and extravagance, while the peasants lived in squalor and want. The public taste was coarse, and the state of morals low. Highwaymen rendered travel unsafe. Through gross abuses of its power and the extensive corruption of its representatives, the church had in large measure lost its hold upon the people. Immense revenues, five times greater than that of the crown, were paid into the coffers at Rome. Half the soil of England was

in the hands of the clergy. The immorality of the friars was notorious, and provoked vigorous denunciation and resistance. Yet there were faithful pastors and prelates, who, like Chaucer's poor parson, taught "Christes lore" and followed it themselves; and magnificent cathedrals were built to stand as objects of admiration for succeeding ages.

The substantial element in all literature is knowledge. This was not lacking in the fourteenth century. Various agencies contributed to the general increase of knowledge. The Crusades had opened up the Orient and brought new ideas into vogue. The literature of France the long narrative poems of the trouvère and the short love ballads. of the troubadour introduced a new taste and furnished improved models of style. The legends that had gathered about the names of Charlemagne, Alexander, and King Arthur, appealed strongly to the imagination of the age. The monasteries had multiplied in their scriptoria the writings of the ancients. Through Arabic influence and

the general awakening in Europe, learning was held in greater esteem and prosecuted with more vigor. It was no longer confined to the representatives of the church. Ecclesiastical and secular schools were greatly multiplied for the instruction of the young. Universities and colleges were founded in considerable numbers, some of the most illustrious colleges at Oxford and Cambridge being established at this time. Along with scholasticism, which rigidly applied the logic of Aristotle to the development of theology, the ancient classics of Greece and Rome were beginning to receive attention. The nobility began to take interest in letters. In Italy brilliant writers - Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio - made permanent contributions to the literature of the world. Thus a great store of material was accumulated in the fourteenth centurymaterial that awaited the master-workman soon to appear.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

ABOVE all his contemporaries of the fourteenth century stands the figure of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is called by Tennyson

He owes his pre-eminence to several facts. First of all, he was gifted by nature with extraordinary poetic genius, which embodied itself in a number of imperishable works. He is justly called by Dryden "the father of English poetry." Besides, he was peculiarly favored in the circumstances of his life. In the field, at the court, in his business relations, he acquired a wide range of knowledge, which lent support to his great natural abilities. His culture exhibited, for the age in which he lived, almost a cosmopolitan completeness. And lastly, beyond any other man of his time, he fixed the fluctuating language of the age in a permanent form, and laid a firm basis for the English of the present day. Like Homer in Greece, Chaucer stands pre-eminent in the early literature of England; and among the great English poets of subsequent ages, not more than three or four - Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, and Tennyson - deserve to be placed in the same rank.

As with some other great authors, comparatively little is known of Chaucer's life. The most painstaking investigations have been comparatively fruitless. The time of his birth is a matter of dispute the two dates given for that event being 1328 and 1340. His father, as well as his grandfather, was a