London wine-dealer. Nothing definite is known in regard to his education. The opinion formerly held that he studied at Cambridge or Oxford is without any satisfactory foundation. In the year 1357 an authentic record shows him attached to the household of Lady Elizabeth, wife of Prince Lionel, in the capacity of a page. In 1359 he accompanied Edward III. in an invasion of France; and having been captured by the French, he was ransomed by the English king for sixteen pounds. The time and circumstances of his marriage are involved in obscurity, though it is tolerably certain that his domestic life was not happy. He subsequently served on embassies to Genoa, Flanders, and France, and acquitted himself to the satisfaction of the Crown. He filled the office of comptroller of customs in the port of London; and like many others of strong literary bent, he appears to have felt the irksomeness of his routine duties:

. . . When thy labor done all is,

And hast y-made reckonings,
Instead of rest and newe things

Thou go'st home to thine house anon,
And there as dumb as any stone

Thou sittest at another book."

In 1386 Chaucer was elected a member of Parliament, where he did not distinguish himself. In 1387, as well as can be determined, he lost his wife. After some vicissitudes of fortune, in which he found it necessary at one time to address a "Complaint to his Purse," he died in circumstances of comfort and peace, Oct. 25, 1400. His body lies in Westminster Abbey, where his tomb is an object of tender interest in the famous Poets' Corner.

Chaucer was small and slender in stature, looked upon the ground as he walked, and seemed absent or distracted in manner. This much is brought out in the few graphic touches with which the host of the Tabard and leader of the Canterbury pilgrims draws the poet's portrait. After a most pathetic

tale related by the prioress, Harry Bailly, as was meet, was the first to interrupt the silence:

"And then at first he looked upon me,

And saide thus: What man art thou?' quoth he;

'Thou lookest as thou wouldest find a hare,

For ever upon the ground I see thee stare.

Approach more near, and looke merrily!

Now 'ware you, sirs, and let this man have space.

He in the waist is shaped as well as I;

This were a puppet in an arm to embrace
For any woman, small and fair of face.
He seemeth elfish by his countenance,

For unto no wight doth he dalliance.'"

While the outward circumstances of Chaucer's life are so imperfectly known, we have abundant means to judge of his character and attainments. He is revealed to us in his writings. He was familiar with the court life of his time, but we cannot believe that he surrendered himself entirely to its vices and empty formalities. While he was not indifferent to the enjoyments of social life, he set his heart on higher things. He recognized true worth wherever he found it, regardless of the accident of birth or wealth. He seems in no small measure to have embodied the integrity and gentleness which he fondly ascribes to the character of the gentleman:

"Look, who that is most virtuous alway
Privy and open, and most intendeth aye
To do the gentle deedes that he can,
Take him for the greatest gentleman.

Christ wills we claim of Him our gentleness,

Not of our elders for their old riches."

Chaucer was a diligent student, with a passionate fondness

for books:

"And as for me, though I have knowledge slight,

In bookes for to read I me delight,

And to them give I faith and full credence,

And in my heart have them in reverence."

He was familiar with the scholastic learning of his time. He was acquainted with French, Latin, and Italian, and drew upon the literature of all these languages for the material of his writings. Unlike his contemporary Gower, he was not overborne by the weight of his learning. His native intellectual strength was exhibited in his extraordinary power of assimilation. In common with many other great poets, he was a prodigious borrower, using his lofty genius, not in the work of pure invention, but in glorifying materials already existing. He is a striking illustration of the personal element in literature. Gower and Langland worked in the presence of the abundant literary materials of the fourteenth century; but only Chaucer had the ability to lay hold of it and to mould it into imperishable forms.

Chaucer's love of nature was remarkable. It rivalled his passion for books. He tells us that there is nothing that can take him from his reading,

"Save, certainly, when that the month of May

Is come, and that I hear the fowles sing,
And see the flowers as they begin to spring,
Farewell my book, and my devotion."

His poetic nature responded to the beauties of the morning landscape, the matin carols of the birds, and the glories of the rising sun. The May-time was his favorite season; and long before Burns and Wordsworth, he loved and sang of the daisy. The sight of this flower, as it opened to the sun, lightened his

sorrow:

"And down on knees anon right I me set
And as I could this freshe flower I grette,

Kneeling always till it unclosed was

Upon the small, and soft, and sweete grass."

He

But he was a sympathetic and keen observer of men. has never been excelled in portraiture. No other literature possesses such a portrait gallery as is contained in the Prologue

to the Canterbury Tales. The various pilgrims at the Tabard can be seen and painted. Observe, for example, the fine touches in the picture of the friar: —

"Somewhat he lisped for his wantonness

To make his English sweet upon his tongue;
And in his harping, when that he had sung,
His eyen twinkled in his head aright,

As do the starres in a frosty night."

Though Dryden and Goldsmith have imitated Chaucer in describing an ideal pastor, they have both fallen below their master. Yet with this keenness of observation, this power to detect the peculiarities and foibles of men, there is no admixture of cynicism. There is satire, but it is thornless. Chaucer's writings are pervaded by an atmosphere of genial humor, kindness, tolerance, humanity. He says of the lawyer,

"No where so busy a man as he there n'as,

And yet he seemed busier than he was."

He does full justice to the doctor of physic's various attainments, and then adds,

"His study was but litel on the Bible."

Chaucer's treatment of woman in his works is full of interest. He is fond of satirizing the foibles supposed to be peculiar to the sex. But he is not wholly lost to chivalrous sentiment, and nowhere else can we find higher and heartier praise of womanly patience, purity, and truth. He appears to have written the "Legend of Good Women" as a kind of amends for the injustice done the sex in the rest of his writings. After all, his real sentiments, let us hope, are found in the following lines:

"Alas, howe may we say on hem but well,
Of whom we were yfostered and ybore,
And ben all our socoure, and trewe as stele,
And for our sake ful oft they suffre sore?
Without women were al our joy ylore."

To many other admirable traits, Chaucer added that of courage in misfortune. His cheerful humor never deserted him. In his latter years he was sometimes without money; but instead of repining, he made a song to his empty purse :

"I am sorry now that ye be so light,

For certes ye now make me heavy cheer."

There are passages in his works that are very offensive to modern taste; but they are not to be charged so much to Chaucer's love of indecency, as to the grossness of his age and to his artistic sense of justice. This is his own apology; and in the prologue to one of the most objectionable tales, he begs his gentle readers

"For Goddes love, as deme not that I say

Of evil intent, but that I mote reherse
Hir tales alle, al be they bettre or werse,
Or elles falsen some of my matere."

Then he adds the kindly warning:

"And therefore who so list it not to here,

Turn over the leef, and chese another tale."

Upon the whole, the estimate of James Russell Lowell seems discriminating and just: "If character may be divined by works, he was a good man, genial, sincere, hearty, temperate of mind, more wise, perhaps, for this world than the next, but thoroughly human, and friendly with God and man.”

Chaucer's literary career may be divided into three periods. The first period is characterized by the influence of French models. He began his literary life with the translation of the Roman de la Rose· a poem of more than 22,000 lines, composed in the preceding century by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung. In the original works that followed this translation among which may be mentioned "The Court of Love” and "Chaucer's Dream' the influence of French models is clearly apparent.