Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/462

450 CHAUCER which from the Fabian tactics pursued by the French king there was little opportunity for distinction He was back in London towards the end of 1370, and henceforward devoted himself to more peaceful pursuits. His talents for diplomacy and his acquaintance with commerce were recognized by the crown. In 1372 he was despatched to Genoa as a commissioner to arrange a commercial treaty with the Genoese. About this embassy much has been written, on the supposition that he may have made the acquaintance of Petrarch in the course of his visit to Italy. Whether in recognition of his services or on other grounds, he received on his return, in 1374, the grant of a pitcher of wine daily ; and soon after, in further evidence of the royal favour, he was appointed comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wools, skins, and tanned hides in the port of London. In 1376 he was associated with Sir John Burley on some secret service, the nature and place of which are not known, and in 1377 he was sent on the secret mission to Flanders. And it was not merely in commercial matters that the poet was considered serviceable; in 1378, after the accession of Richard II., he was attached to a mission sent into France to negotiate a marriage for the young king His fortunes continued steadily to improve ; with his pension of twenty marks from the king, 10 from the duke of Lancaster, his allowance for robes as one of the king s esquires, his salary as comptroller, his payments for occasional services, his pitcher of wine (commuted in 1378 into an annuity of twenty marks), and his wife s pension, he had no reason to complain that his genius was neglected. The wonder was that his genius was not smothered. His employment as comptroller was not a sinecure ; he was bound to write the rolls of his office with his own hand, and he had to be continually present at his office, not iaving the option of appointing a deputy. Apparently as he rose in the world he was allowed to make an easier arrangement ; in 1 382 he was appointed comptroller of the petty customs of the port of London, with the privilege of appointing a deputy ; and in 1385 he was allowed to appoint a deputy for the other comptrollership. In 1386 he touched the summit of his fortune, being returned to Parliament as a knight of the shire of Kent. But that was an unfortunate year for him ; his patron, John of Gaunt, lost his ascendency at court, and a commission which sat to inquire into the abuses of the preceding administration superseded Chaucer in his two comptroller- ships. In the course of two years he was obliged to transfer his annuities to another man, probably selling them for a sum of ready money. The return of Lancaster to power in 1389 again brightened his prospects; he was appointed clerk of the king s works, and four years after wards obtained a grant of an annnity of .20. How much he wanted this assistance appears from the fact that he was several times obliged to apply for small portions of it in advance. When Bolingbroke came to the throne in 1399 he gave the old poet an additional annuity of forty marks, which came in time to comfort the last year of his life. The minutes of his pension cease in 1400, and, according to the inscription on his tomb, he died on the 25th of October of that year These are the main facts of Chaucer s life as brought to light by successive investigators, and they form a tolerably complete outline biography, more complete than Spenser s or Shakespeare s. They are significant facts, throwing light on the singularly varied circumstances, aptitudes, and occupations of the man, supplementing in a really sub stantial way what may be gathered from his works. They show that Chaucer was not merely a poet and a scholar, deeply read in what then passed for science and philosophy, as well as in the rich literature of his poetical predecessors, but a soldier, a courtier, a man of business, familiar from the circumstances of his birth and subsequent rise in posi tion with all sides of the life of his time, ready to under take any kind of employment that his powerful patrons chose to obtain for him, comptrollership of customs, secre taryship of an embassy, diplomatic commissionership, guardianship of a minor. Mr Furnivall has also discovered that, rather late in life, he was charged with being concerned ia the " raptus " (abduction, probably) of a girl, which would show that he was willing to undertake more questionable services, unless the " raptus " was for his own benefit. Great caution must be observed in trying to fill up from hints in his poems the gaps in the documentary facts of his biography, great caution, that is, if we wish to get at the truth and not merely to speculate for the sake of speculating. Antiquarian speculators are usually more distinguished for fancy than imagination. They catch at hints and push them to conclusions without having imagination enough to take account of qualifying considera tions. Thus it has often been taken for granted that ia the description of the poet of the Canterbury Tales, we have an authentic portrait of Chaucer himself. The poet is a very quiet unobtrusive man, and the Host, master of the ceremonies, suddenly casts his eye on him, and addresses him in his bullying way : What man art thou ? quod he. Thou lookest as thou wouldst find an hare, For ever upon the ground I see thee stare. Approache near, arid looke merrily. Now ware you, sirs, and let this man have space. He in the waist is shapen as well as I ; This were a puppet in an arm to embrace For any woman, small, and fair of face. He seemeth elvish by his countenance, For unto no wight dotli he dalliance. There is no reason to suppose that this quaint, shy little figure was any more like Chaucer than the Spectator was like Addison or Steele. The allusion to his waist, coming from the burly host, is evidently jocular, and the whole picture is in all likelihood a humorous description of the opposite of Chaucer s own appearance. We must be particularly careful in accepting literally the statements of a writer one of whose favourite veins of humour, appear ing in every one of his works, is self-depreciation. We should remember that Chaucer wrote for a limited audience, all of whom knew him personally, and for whose amusement he was in the habit of making comical allusions to himself. His jokes were more of the nature of family jokes than we are now accustomed to in writings intended for wide and promiscuous circulation. When he made the eagle in the House of Fame complain of his being heavy to carry, or promise to make him the butler of the gods, or append to the statement that he lived like a hermit, the qualification " although thine abstinence is little," or remind him that he had had no personal experience of love, he knew that these little jests at his own expense would be fully appreci ated by his few readers. The extreme of frivolous conjecture is reached when it is supposed that his wife was a termagant because he " chaffs " women frequently. His graceful and chivalrous compliments to women are quite as frequent as his chaff. There is, indeed, one passage in the House of Fame which is pretty clearly intended for his wife, that where the eagle cries " awake " to him Plight in the same voice and steven (sound) That useth one I coulde neven (name). But if it had been anything more serious than common place conjugal banter, he would hardly have dared to circulate it. A conjecture of an equally frivolous kind ia that he was unmarried in 1369, because in that year he> spoke of having suffered for eight years pangs which none but one could heal. The pangs may have been matrimonial

pangs, or pangs of poverty, or purely imaginary pangs,