The other poems of this period were the Parlament of Foules, the Compleynt of Mars, Anelida and Arcite, Boece, and the Former Age, all between 1374 and '76, the Lines to Adam Scrivener, 1383, and the Hous of Fame, 1384 (?). In the passion with which Chaucer describes the ruined love of Troilus and Anelida, some have traced the lingering sorrow of his early love affair. But if this be true, it was now passing away, for, in the creation of Pandarus in the Troilus and in the delightful fun of the Parlament of Foules, a new Chaucer appears, the humorous poet of the Canterbury Tales. In the active business life he led during this period, he was likely to grow out of mere sentiment, for he was not only employed on service abroad but also at home. In 1374 he was Comptroller of the Wool Customs, in 1382 of the Petty Customs, and in 1386 Member of Parliament for Kent.

CHAUCER'S ENGLISH PERIOD.-It is in the next period, from 1384 to 1390, that he left behind Italian influence as he had left French, and became entirely himself, entirely English. The comparative poverty in which he now lived, and the loss of his offices, for in John of Gaunt's absence he lost Court favor, may have given him more time for study and the retired life of a poet. At least in his Legende of Good Women, the prologue to which was written in 1385, we find him a closer student than ever of books and of nature. His appointment as Clerk of the Works in 1389 brought him again into contact with men. He superintended the repairs and building at the Palace of Westminster, the Tower, and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, till July, 1391, when he was superseded, and lived on pensions allotted to him by Richard and by Henry IV., after he had sent the King in 1399 his Compleint to his Purse. Before 1390, however, he had added to his great work the tales of the Miller, the Reeve, the Cook, the Wife of Bath, the Merchant, the Friar, the Nun's Priest, the Pardoner, and perhaps the Sompnour. The Prologue was probably written in 1388. In the humor of these, in their vividness of por

traiture, in their ease of narration, and in the variety of their characters, Chaucer shines supreme. A few smaller poems belong to this best time, such as Truth and the Moder of God.

During his last ten years, he wrote some small poems, and along with the Compleynte of Venus and a prose treatise on the Astrolabe, four more tales, the Canon's-yeoman's, the Manciple's, the Monk's, and the Parsone's. The last was written the year of his death, 1400. Having done this work, he died in a house under the shadow of the Abbey of Westminster. Within the walls of the Abbey Church, the first of the poets who lie there, that sacred and happy spirit' sleeps. CHAUCER'S CHARACTER.-Born of the tradesman class, Chaucer was in every sense of the word one of the finest of gentlemen: tender, graceful in thought, glad of heart, humorous, and satirical without unkindness; sensitive to every change of feeling in himself and others, and therefore full of sympathy; brave in misfortune, even to mirth, and doing well and with careful honesty all he undertook. His first and great delight was in human nature, and he makes us love the noble characters in his poems and feel with kindliness towards the baser and ruder sort. He never sneers, for he had a wide charity, and we can always smile in his pages at the follies and forgive the sins of men. He had a true and chivalrous regard for women, and his wife and he must have been very happy if they fulfilled the ideal he had of marriage. He lived in aristocratic society, and yet he thought him the greatest gentleman who was most vertuous alway, privé, and pert (open), and most entendeth aye to do the gentil dedës that he can.' He lived frankly among men, and, as we have seen, saw many different types of men, and in his own time filled many parts as a man of the world and of business.

Yet, with all this active and observant life, he was commonly very quiet and kept much to himself. The Host in the Tales japes at him for his lonely, abstracted air. Thou lookest as

thou wouldest find a hare, And ever on the ground I see thee stare.' Being a good scholar, he read morning and night alone, and he says that after his (office) work he would go home and sit at another book as dumb as a stone, till his look was dazed. While at study and when he was making of songs and ditties, 'nothing else that God had made' had any interest for him. There was but one thing that roused him then, and that too he liked to enjoy alone. It was the beauty of the morning, and the fields, the woods, and streams, and flowers, and the singing of the little birds. This made his heart full of revel and solace, and, when spring came after winter, he rose with the lark and cried, Farewell my book and my devotion.' He was the first who made the love of nature a distinct element in English poetry. He was the first who, in spending the whole day gazing alone on the daisy, set going that lonely delight in natural scenery which is so special a mark of the later poets. He lived thus a double life, in and out of the world, but never a gloomy one. For he was fond of mirth and good-living, and, when he grew towards age, was portly of waist, no poppet to embrace.' But he kept to the end his elvish countenance, the shy, delicate, half-mischievous face which looked on men from its grey hair and forked beard, and was set off by his dark-colored dress and hood. A knife and an inkhorn hung on his dress, we see a rosary in his hand, and, when he was alone, he walked swiftly. THE CANTERBURY TALES.-Of his work it is not easy to speak briefly, because of its great variety. Enough has been said of it, with the exception of his most complete creation, the Canterbury Tales. It will be seen from the dates given above that they were not written at one time. They are not and cannot be looked on as a whole. Many were written independently, and then fitted into the framework of the Prologue in 1388. At that time a number more were written, and the rest added at intervals till his death. In fact, the whole thing was done much in the same way as Mr. Tennyson has written his Idylls of the King. The manner in which he

knitted them together was very simple and likely to please English people. The holiday excursions of the time were the pilgrimages, and the most famous and the pleasantest pilgrimage to go, especially for Londoners, was the three or four days' journey to see the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. Persons of all ranks in life met and travelled together, starting from a London inn. Chaucer seized on this as the frame in which to set his pictures of life. He grouped around the jovial host of the Tabard Inn men and women of every class of society in England, set them on horseback to ride to Canterbury, and made each of them tell a tale.

No one could hit off a character better, and in his Prologue, and in the prologues to the several Tales, the whole of the new, vigorous English society which had grown up since Edward I. is painted with astonishing vividness. I see all the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales,' says Dryden, their humors, their features, and the very dress as distinctly as if I had supped with them at the Tabard in Southwark.' The Tales themselves take in the whole range of the poetry of the middle ages—the legend of the saint, the romance of the knight, the wonderful fables of the traveller, the coarse tale of common life, the love story, the allegory, the satirical lay, and the apologue. And they are pure tales. He has been said to have had dramatic power, but he has none. He is simply the greatest English story-teller in verse. All the best tales are told easily, sincerely, with great grace, and yet with so much homeliness that a child can understand them. Sometimes his humor is broad, sometimes sly, sometimes gay, sometimes he brings tears into our eyes, and he can make us smile or be sad as he pleases.

He had a very fine ear for the music of verse, and the tale and the verse go together like voice and music. Indeed, so softly flowing and bright are they that to read them is like listening in a meadow full of sunshine to a clear stream rippling over its bed of pebbles. The English in which they are written is almost the English of our time; and it is literary

English. Chaucer made our tongue into a true means of poetry. He did more, he welded together the French and English elements in the language and made them into one English tool for the use of literature, and all prose writers and poets in English since his day derive their tongue from the language of the Canterbury Tales. They give him honor for this, but still more for that he was the first English artist. Poetry is an art, and the artist in poetry is one who writes for pure pleasure, and for nothing else, and who desires to give to others the same fine pleasure by his poems which he had in writing them. The thing he most cares about is that the form in which he puts his thoughts or feelings may be perfectly fitting to the subject, and as beautiful as possible-but for this he cares very greatly; and in this Chaucer stands apart from the other poets of his time. Gower wrote with a moral object, and nothing can be duller than the form in which he puts his tales. The author of Piers the Plowman wrote with the object of reform in social and ecclesiastical affairs, and his form is uncouth and harsh. Chaucer wrote because he was full of emotion and joy in his own thoughts, and thought that others would weep and be glad with him, and the only time he ever moralizes is in the tales of the Yeoman and the Manciple. He has, then, the best right to the poet's name. He is the first English artist."

"The English writers of the fourteenth century had an advantage which was altogether peculiar to their age and country. At all previous periods, the two languages had co-existed, in a great degree independently of each other, with little tendency to intermix; but in the earlier part of that century, they began to coalesce, and this process was going on with a rapidity that threatened a predominance of the French, if not a total extinction of the Saxon element. That the syntax should be English national feeling demanded; but French was so familiar and habitual to all who were able to read that probably the scholarship of the day would scarcely have been able to determine, with respect to a large proportion of the words in common use, from which of the two great wells of speech they had proceeded.