Chaucer And His Times Part 17

The whole story teems with technical terms, with descensories, and sublimatories, and cucurbites, with bole armoniak and orpiment, and the like. It shows an intimate knowledge of the laboratory work of the day, of vessels and retorts, of chemicals and minerals and their various properties. At the same time, it proves that Chaucer was well aware of the ease with which a very little knowledge combined with a great deal of a.s.surance would enable a quack to impose on the absolute ignorance of the uninitiated. The charlatan who tried to impose upon the author of the _Chanouns Yemannes Tale_ would soon have found out his mistake.

And yet, with all his shrewdness, Chaucer was not wholly exempt from the superst.i.tion of his age. Such vulgar trickery as that just described would never have imposed on him, but he is too truly fourteenth century in his point of view always to distinguish between astronomy and astrology. The thought that a man's destiny may be written in the stars appealed to this lover of dreams. In the _Man of Lawes Tale_ he breaks away from his original, to speculate on this subject:--

Paraventure in thilke large book Which that men clepe the heven, y-writen was With sterres, when that he (_i. e._ the Soldan) his birthe took That he for love shulde han his deeth, allas!

For in the sterres, clerer than is glas, Is writen, G.o.d wot, who-so coulde it rede, The deeth of every man, withouten drede.

And again, after describing the grief of Constance at parting from her parents, he vehemently exclaims against the unfortunate conjunction of constellations which wrought such havoc, and asks if there were no "philosophre" to advise the emperor to consult some astrologer as to which was the auspicious time for him to marry.

Certain aspects of Chaucer's character stand out with unmistakable clearness in his works. The most careless reader could hardly fail to be struck by his wide sympathies, ready humour, keen observation, and honesty of mind. His idealism, his poetic sensitiveness to the more imaginative side of life, are perhaps less often insisted upon, but are no less real.

He is no visionary, afraid to face the facts of life, dwelling in a world of beauty and delight which has no counterpart on earth, but a poet who takes no shame in human nature, whose eyes see so clearly that they are not blinded by evil, who dares to say, with his Creator, that the world is good. In the _Book of the d.u.c.h.esse_ is a pa.s.sage which explains much of Chaucer's so-called worldliness. He is speaking of Blanche's innocent kindliness, and how he never knew one less

Harmful, than she was in doing;

and he adds, in words as bold as Milton's own,

I sey nat that she ne had knowing What was harm; or elles she Had coud[207] no good, so thinketh me.

He has little respect for a fugitive and cloistered virtue. But if he is, perhaps, over-ready to plunge into the dust and din of ordinary life, he never forgets the wonder and mystery that lie behind the commonplace.

CHAPTER VIII

CHAUCER'S INFLUENCE

Few poets have received more immediate and widespread recognition than Chaucer. Fifteenth-century poetry almost wholly dominated by his influence, and one united chorus of praise and admiration rises from the lips of his successors. s.h.i.+rley, who edited the _Knightes Tale_ (amongst other works of Chaucer's) in the first half of the fifteenth century, speaks of him as "the laureal and most famous poete that euer was to-fore him as in th' embeliss.h.i.+ng of oure rude modern englisshe tonge...."

Lydgate and Occleve, the most noted poets of the period, invariably refer to him as their master. As has already been mentioned, a large number of poems were written in close imitation of his style, and echoes of his verse are to be heard on every side.

It is usual to divide his followers into two groups: English Chaucerians and Scottish Chaucerians.

The English Chaucerians, with all their admiration for their master, show but scant understanding of his real greatness. Having little ear for rhythm themselves, they only mangle his verse when they try to imitate it; and while they fully recognise the debt which English versification owes him, it is but rarely that their own lines show any hint of his sweetness and melody. Lydgate is by far the greatest of them, and of him Professor Saintsbury justly remarks: "It is enough to say that, even in rime royal, his lines wander from seven to fourteen syllables, without the possibility of allowing monosyllabic or trisyllabic feet in any fas.h.i.+on that shall restore the rhythm; and that his couplets, as in the _Story of Thebes_ itself, seem often to be unaware whether they are themselves octosyllabic or decasyllabic--four-footed, or five-footed." Instead of the suppleness and endless variety of Chaucer's verse, we have a treatment of metre which at its best is apt to be dull and stiff, and at its worst is intolerably slipshod. Only by some rare chance does a momentary gleam of beauty flicker across these pages, and a flash of poetic feeling raise the trite and conventional language to such a level as:--

O thoughtful herte, plonged in dystresse, With s...o...b..r of slouthe this longe winter's night-- Out of the slepe of mortal hevinesse Awake anon! and loke upon the light Of thilke starr.

(Lydgate, _Life of Our Lady_.)

Nor is the matter much more inspiring than the form that clothes it. The English Chaucerians are worthy men, who spend their time in bewailing the errors of their youth and offering good advice to whoso will accept it. Of Chaucer's humour and realism they have no conception, nor do they realise the force of his digressions. The allegorical form of his earlier poems appeals to them, and, disregarding the movement and life of the _Canterbury Tales_, they ramble along the paths marked out in the _Hous of Fame_ without attending to their master's excellent advice to flee prolixity. Lydgate, it is true, does show some narrative power. His _Troy Book_ is obviously inspired by _Troilus and Creseyde_, and his _Story of Thebes_ by the _Knightes Tale_, but he has neither the conciseness of Gower nor the dramatic insight of Chaucer. Among the 114 works attributed to him, it is only natural that some variety should be shown, and occasionally, as in the _London Lickpenny_, a skit on contemporary life in the City, he shows some trace of humour. _The Temple of Glas_ is a close imitation of the _Hous of Fame_, but it lacks the shrewd sense, the original comments on life, the subtle humour of its model. Lydgate is most poetical when his religious feeling is touched, as in his _Life of Our Lady_; and most human when he becomes frankly autobiographical. The stiffness of the _Temple of Glas_ is redeemed by such pa.s.sages as that in which the author (who entered a monastery at fifteen) describes the lamentations of those

That were constrayned in hir tender youthe And in childhode, as it is ofte couthe[208]

Yentered were into religion[209]

Or they hade yeares of discresioun; That al her life cannot but complein In wide copes perfeccion to feine.

Occleve, who has even less poetic genius than Lydgate, is remembered chiefly because the ma.n.u.script of his _Gouvernail of Princes_ (a poem of good advice, addressed to Prince Hal) contains the only authentic portrait of Chaucer--a sketch drawn in the margin by the author himself. The lines which accompany the portrait, sufficiently ill.u.s.trate the estimation in which Chaucer was held. Their modesty and simple affection disarm criticism.

Symple is my goste, and scars my letterure[210]

Unto youre excellence for to write My inward love, and yit in aventure Wol I me put, thogh I can but lyte; My dere maister--G.o.d his soule quyte,--[211]

And fader, Chaucer, fayne wold have me taught, But I was dulle, and lerned lyte or naught.

Allas! my worthy maister honorable, This londes verray tresour and richesse, Dethe by thy dethe hath harm irreperable Unto us done: hir vengeable duresse[212]

Dispoiled hath this londe of the swetnesse Of rethoryk, for unto Tullius Was never man so lyk amenges us.

She myght have taryed hir vengeaunce a whyle, Tyl sum man hadde egal to thee be; Nay, let be that; she wel knew that this yle[213]

May never man forth bringe like to thee, And her office needes do must she; G.o.d bad her soo, I truste as for the beste, O maystir, maystir, G.o.d thy soule reste!

His consciousness of the superiority of his master did not, however, prevent him from venturing to make use of the same material, and in the _Chaste Spouse of the Emperor Gerelaus_ he re-tells the story of Constance.

A number of minor poets make up the list. Benedict Burgh--the shadow of Chaucer's shadow--completed _The Secrets of the Philosophers_, a peculiarly dull poem which Lydgate left unfinished at his death. Side by side with him worked George Ashby, clerk of the signet to Queen Margaret, and a little later comes Henry Bradshaw, a monk of St. Werburgh's Abbey at Chester. They are all worthy, honest men, who utter moral plat.i.tudes with an air of conviction; painstaking but unskilful apprentices in the workshop of poetry, who conscientiously blunt their tools and cut their fingers in a vain effort to do the work of master craftsmen. One curious little development is, however, worth noticing. In the latter half of the fifteenth century two poets, Sir George Ripley and Thomas Norton, wrote treatises on alchemy, in verse. Ripley's _The Compound of Alchemy, or the Twelve Gates_, and Norton's _Ordinall of Alchemy_, owe their interest in the first place to the proof they afford that verse at the time was a natural means of instruction rather than an end in itself; and in the second to their advent.i.tious connection with the _Chanouns Yemannes Tale_. Norton endeavours to copy the Chaucerian couplet, and Professor Saintsbury suggests that he is probably the Th. Norton whom Ascham, in his _Scholemaster_, cla.s.ses with Chaucer, Surrey, Wyatt and Phaer, as having vainly attempted to replace accent by rhyme.

Stephen Hawes falls into a cla.s.s somewhat apart. Writing at the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, he stands at the parting of the ways, and while his poetry shows signs of the new influences that were at work, his heart is evidently with the old conventions which are beginning to pa.s.s away. His chief poem, _The Pastime of Pleasure, or the Historye of Graunde Amoure and la Bell Pucell: containing the Knowledge of the Seven Sciences and the Course of Man's Life in this World_, is sufficiently described by its t.i.tle. It stands, as it were, half-way between Chaucer and Spenser, at one moment clearly recalling the love scenes of _Troilus and Criseyde_, at another reminding us equally forcibly of the elaborate and ingenious allegory of the _Faerie Queene_. The combination of chivalry and allegory was something new, and though Hawes himself proved incapable of making the most of its possibilities, English literature owes him a real debt. He never rises to any great height. Mr. Murison, in his chapter on Hawes in Vol. II of the _Cambridge History of Literature_, draws attention to certain verbal resemblances between the _Pa.s.setyme of Pleasure_ and the _Faerie Queene_, but the pa.s.sages quoted serve only to show how far removed the music of Spenser is from the speech of ordinary men. At his worst Hawes sinks beneath the lowest level of what can possibly be allowed to pa.s.s as verse.

The dialogue between Graunde Amour and Dame Grammar defies parody:--

"Madame," quod I, "for as much as there be Eight partes of speche, I would knowe right faine, What a noune substantive is in his degree; And wherefore it is so called certaine?

To whom she answered right gentely againe Saing alway that a noune substantive Might stand without helpe of an adjective.

That the stanza of _Troilus and Criseyde_ should be used for such stuff as this is unbearable.

The Scottish Chaucerians are of far more intrinsic importance. The love-allegory of the _Kingis Quair_ shows the influence of Chaucer not only in its use of the Chaucerian stanza--henceforth to be known as the rhyme royal--but in the evidence it affords of its author's acquaintance with the English version of the _Romance of the Rose_. Moreover, in it may be noticed that sympathy with the freshness and joy of nature which forms so strong a bond between Chaucer and his Scottish disciples, and is so conspicuous by its absence in the work of the English Chaucerians. Emily herself might well walk in the garden where

... on the smale grene twistis[214] sat The little sweete nyghtingale, and song So loud and clear, the hymnes consecrate Of loves use, now softe now loud among, That all the gard(e)nes and the walles rong Ryght of their song, and on the copill[215] next Of their sweet harmony, and lo the text:

"Worschippe, ye that loveres be(ne) this May, For of your bliss the kalendes are begonne, And sing with us, away winter, away, Come sumer, come, the sweet season and sonne, Awake, for schame! that have your heavenes wonne, And amourously lift up your heades all, Thank Love that list you to his merci call;"

and the picture of Joan Beaufort,

The fairest or the freschest yong(e) floure That ever I sawe, me thoght, before that houre;

has something of Chaucer's daintiness and grace.

The Scottish poets have, also, far more sense of form than the English.

Henryson's _Testament of Cressid_, written to satisfy its author's thirst for poetic justice and to show Cressida paying the penalty of her misdeeds, with all its conventional morality, for sincerity of feeling and felicity of style will bear comparison with its great original. His fables show a quick sense of humour, a combination of tenderness and realism which recall Chaucer again and again. The feast spread by the Burgis Mouse for the Uplandis Mouse is delightful:--

After when they disposed were to dine, Withouten grace they wash'd and went to meat, With all the courses that cooks could define, Mutton and beef laid out in slices greet; And lordis fare thus could they counterfeit, Except one thing, they drank the water clear Instead of wine, but yet they made good cheer.

Gawain Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, was perhaps most nearly akin to the English Chaucerians. A scholar and a man of distinguished position, he has none of the lightness of Henryson. He takes poetry seriously, and inclines to trace a moral purpose even in the aeneid. His _Palice of Honour_ well ill.u.s.trates the manner in which Chaucer's successors made free with the framework of his poems, while at the same time it shows the growing delight in picturesque effect which was one day to break into the Elizabethan glow of colour. The poet finds himself wandering in a dreary wilderness and breaks out in complaint against Fortune, who has led him there. As he laments, he sees approaching him a rout "of ladyis fair and gudlie men":--

Amiddes(t) whom borne in a golden chair O'er-fret with pearl and stones most preclair[216]

That draw(e)n was by hackneys all milk-white Was set a Queen, as lily sweet of swair[217]

In purple robe, hemmed with gems each gair[218]

Which gemmed claspes closed all perfite[219]

A diadem, most pleasantly polite, Set on the tresses of her golden hair.

The original form, which ill.u.s.trates the comparatively modernness of the language used by Chaucer, is as follows:

Amiddes quhome, borne in ane goldin chair Ourfret with perle and stanis maist preclair That drawin was by haiknayis all milk quhite, Was set a Quene, as lyllie sweit of swair In purpor rob hemmit with gold ilk gair, Quhilk gemmit claspis closit all perfite.

A diademe maist plesandlie polite.

Set on the tressis of her giltin hair.