Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies Part 3

He was not further molested,--at least for the next two years. This interval was busily employed. A host of opponents sprung up against him after the adjudication at Oxford, and he was not of a temper to let them pa.s.s unanswered. His intense energy was little impaired by age or anxiety, and his opponents still found him a ready antagonist. Bowed down by persecution, his life by illness made a living death, he wavered not, nor ceased from his labours. During his last years Wiclif suffered much from paralysis--the effect, no doubt, of his anxious and stormy life. His first attack was in 1379. Perhaps the knowledge of his weak state prevented his enemies from pressing for the infliction of physical punishment. But a few months before his death he was cited by Urban II.

to appear before him at Rome, to answer for his heresies. Wiclif was unable from illness to go, but he addressed a letter to his holiness in which he "tells his belief." The main points of it are his declaration of his entire dependence on Christ as the Son of G.o.d, and of his a.s.surance of the supreme authority of Scripture. He acknowledges the pope to be Christ's chief vicar on earth--but adds, that he ought to follow the example of his master, who was the poorest of men when in this world. "This I take as wholesome counsel that the pope leave his worldly lordship to worldly lords, as Christ gave (charged) him, and move speedily all his clerks (clergy) to do so: for thus did Christ, and taught thus his disciples, till the fiend had blinded this world." He declares that if he were able he would go to the pope; but as he cannot, he supposes the pope will not show himself open anti-Christ by commanding him again to do that which G.o.d had rendered him unable to do.

If his opinions can be prayed to be wrong, he is ready to recant; if it be necessary to die for them, he is willing, "for that I hope were good for me."

As he was a.s.sisting at the celebration of ma.s.s by his curate in his parish church of Lutterworth, on the 29th of December, 1384, another and more fatal stroke of paralysis deprived him of the use of speech and of motion. He lingered two days, when his spirit ascended to that world where misapprehension and strife are alike unknown. His corpse was buried in the church; and there it rested, till forty years afterwards the Council of Constance, at the same time that it crowned itself with eternal infamy by its treacherous murder of John Huss and of Jerome, condemned Wiclif's doctrines, and directed that his corpse should be exhumed and burnt, "if it could be discerned from those of the faithful." The order was obeyed. Richard Fleming, bishop of Lincoln, in whose diocese Lutterworth was situated, directed the process. The reformer's remains were taken up, burnt, and the ashes cast into the Swift, a little stream that runs at the foot of the hill on which the town is built. "Thus this brook," says Fuller, "hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wiclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over."

We have endeavoured, as far as our limits would allow us, to exhibit Wiclif according to his own principles. It remains for us to add a few words on his sentiments, and express our own impression of his character. His opinions have been the subject of much disputation, and it is often said that they are so enwrapped in explanations and mystifications, that it is difficult to make out what they really were.

But to one desirous to understand them, the difficulty soon disappears.

The contemporary notices of him do not imply that there was any obscurity: the charges brought against him; his own defences; the references his followers make to him, do not suggest it. That his opinions will appear contradictory to one who extracts from his different writings, without regard to the circ.u.mstances and the time in which each was written, there can be no doubt; but if it be borne in mind that his creed, like that of every reformer, and especially of every religious reformer, was progressive--that his opinions were slowly formed, often forced upon his conviction after a long struggle against them--so that he would more than any other lament the necessity imposed upon him to admit, and especially to diffuse them,--if this gradual formation of his creed be remembered, the difficulty of reconciling the articles of it with the statements and reasonings to be found in others of his writings, will not surprise any candid inquirer, whether he admit the truth of the opinions or not. To us it appears he might truly be called the first Protestant--the first who boldly and firmly protested against the papal domination, both in relation to society and to individual man. His doctrinal views were in the main those afterwards adopted by Luther and the reformed churches--in others, he went far beyond them, verging closely upon Puritanism; while to the last he held many things now only retained by the Romish church.

His moral character was unimpeached. His sincerity has been questioned, but to us it seems to stand firm and unshaken. His faults, however, are manifest. Living up to the lofty character he set before him, he stooped not to one who was unable to attain to the same elevation. A fierce polemic, he is unmeasured in the expression of his wrath against all whom he opposed. But we must not let our dislike of such violence lead us too far. A wise man has told us "not to condemn bitter and earnest writing." In truth, a man cannot beat down idols with a feather broom: and Wiclif's task was not merely to sweep the dust off those about the holy place. After all, Wiclif was abundantly repaid in his own coin. For every handful of mud he flung, a cart-load was thrown back upon him. Let him not be condemned for a fault common to every one who has undertaken so apparently hopeless a task as the destruction of a mighty system of evil. It is a fault that seems to spring out of the vehemence of temper natural and almost necessary to the character of a reformer. The vehemence of his language in some instances, and its cautiousness at other times, appear to have arisen from the fact that, _seeing_ palpably the evil practices of the religious orders about him, and the consequences that resulted from them, he attacked them with an overflowing asperity--while in matters of _doctrine_ he formed his opinions deliberately, was conscious of all the difficulties of the question, and spoke cautiously, moderately, and with an honest desire not to obtrude extreme opinions. This, at least, appears to us the true explanation.

We regard Wiclif as one of the n.o.blest of our Worthies; and as long as true manly earnestness and Christian worth are honoured by his countrymen, his name will live in their remembrance, and be cherished with devout grat.i.tude, A true, honest, n.o.ble-hearted man, he recognised the divinity within him, and followed its bidding--through evil and through good report. With him worldly honours were nought; the fear of man he knew not; he had a work to accomplish, and he turned not aside from it. As long as he had a hand or a tongue to labour with, he ceased not to labour. Wiclif was the pioneer in the great struggle to release man from spiritual thraldom. He stood forth and proclaimed the forgotten truth, that the soul of man is responsible alone to its Creator; that no man can stand between his fellowman and his Divine Master. The welcome with which his doctrine was met showed that the hollowness of the ground upon which men stood was felt. He died, but his work survived him. In this country a goodly band remained, and carried on what he had begun; and when they were silenced, his opinions were cherished in private, till on the introduction of the reformed doctrines they were lost in the broader stream. It is probable, indeed, that these secret dissentients within the English church largely contributed to the easy introduction of the reformed opinions here. On the Continent, too, his views found a home and a welcome. Carried into Bohemia immediately after his death, they there spread widely; nor did the martyrdom of John Huss stop their progress. The result was their accomplishment in the great Reformation.

The number of writings attributed to Wiclif, from tracts of a page up to large and elaborate works, which remain in MS. scattered through public libraries, is very great. Few of them have been printed, and it is not creditable to our literature that while the various societies established for the republication of the works of our earlier writers are loading their shelves with much worthless rubbish, only one work attributed to Wiclif (and that not known to be his) should have been printed. The Religious Tract Society, a few years back, published a volume of selections from his writings; but the language is modernized with very little judgment, and the work is of course of no value.

The authorities we have consulted for this sketch are Wiclif's own writings, so far as accessible to us; Walsingham, Knighton, and Wilkins; the Lives by Lewis and Vaughan; the Introduction to the 'Hexapla;' the various ecclesiastical histories; and the papers and prefaces by Dr.

Todd.

CHAUCER

Two undertakings of more than ordinary importance mark the second half of the fourteenth century, and suggest on various grounds an interesting and useful parallel. Pursuing one of these undertakings, the chief actor in it collected vast sums of treasure by the taxation of the people of England, drew from the peaceful and profitable avocations of industry the materials for army after army of English citizens, and poured them upon the soil of a neighbouring country, which he was determined at all costs to conquer. To found for England a new empire on the Continent, was the undertaking on which the brave, able, accomplished, but grasping and unscrupulous Edward III. concentrated the energies of a life. About the very same time that Edward began in earnest to prosecute this undertaking, there was a youth, buried in the seclusion of study, not less actively engaged in the promotion of another undertaking; that--too gigantic in its character probably to be determined upon, or even rightly estimated then--was doubtless dawning little by little upon his mind. For this undertaking, he too drew supplies from all quarters, but his levies were of books, his treasure the acc.u.mulated stores of thought that time had bequeathed to the world. And when he had mastered all that could thus be obtained, he went forth into the world to study men, as well as man, before he attempted the conquest of the empire _he_ meditated, over the hearts and minds of his fellows. And how fared these respective undertakings? Failures of course affected the ambitious student as well as the ambitious warrior, but we have not in the one case, as in the other, a record of them; let us therefore look simply at the successes of both, and the results. The battle of Creci, the first great encounter between the two nations, was won in 1346, and in the same year the first important poem of the first great English poet is understood to have been produced. Ten years later, Creci had been followed by Poitiers; the 'Court of Love,' by the n.o.ble 'Troilus and Cressida;' and by an announcement contained in the concluding lines of that work, which showed the poet had essayed and was satisfied as to his powers, and was preparing to give to England a work that should rival the divine comedy of the ill.u.s.trious Italian (Dante) lately deceased.

"Go, little book," wrote the poet--

"go, little tragedy, Where G.o.d my maker, yet ere that I die.

So send me might to make some comedy."

Sixteen or seventeen years more elapse, and the iron-willed sovereign bends beneath a fiat even more potent than his own, and in deep humiliation feels that he is utterly defeated; about the same time the poet is receiving from the lips of an ill.u.s.trious contemporary an addition to the materials for the work that is to form the culminating point of his life and fame, the last of a long series of productions destined to be as permanent as the language itself which they have done so much to create, the 'Comedy,' in short, of which he has so long dreamed;--he is hearing from Petrarch the exquisitely pathetic story of Griselda. Edward dies in 1377, a broken-hearted man; deserted, even on his palace-hearth, at the last hour, by those he had fed and clothed and honoured; he who would have conquered France cannot even now command the presence of a single lackey: when Chaucer dies, it is amidst the profound regrets of all who knew him personally or through his works; and as he goes "home" and takes his "wages," it is with the conviction that he has indeed done his "worldly task," in the foundation of what, all things considered, it is no national vanity to call the mightiest of Literatures. The parallel we have thus ventured to draw does not even end here. Whilst we still drink refreshing draughts from Chaucer's "well of English undefiled," and wonder to see how little of essentially differing qualities his greatest successors have infused into the national literature, the only effect, if there be any one now perceptible, of Edward's unjust attempt, or of his brilliant victories, is in the unhappy jealousy which these and similar events have left in the minds of the people who most suffered from them. Truly if the sword in its day is honoured at the expense of the pen, the pen in the long run repays itself with sweeping interest. We have said nothing in these remarks of the connexion between the two personages whose respective undertakings we have placed in juxtaposition with each other, but that connexion is not the least interesting or least important portion of the biography of either: we do not know whether Edward intentionally forwarded Chaucer's poetical undertakings, but it is clear that by his patronage they _were_ forwarded--and greatly; whilst Chaucer, on the other hand, was one of the most trusted and valued of the king's servants; promoting Edward's views by his personal services in the field as a soldier, and still more influentially by his experience and wisdom in the cabinet as a diplomatist.

It is a curious though a very common characteristic of certain biographers, in dealing with cases where information is as desirable as it is meagre, to make the little less, by throwing all sorts of doubts upon the facts that we thought had been settled and realized. They have, in short, a horror of all speculations but those which may tend to disturb existing beliefs. Unable to build themselves, they would deny to others the use of the necessary foundations. Why, for instance, must there be a doubt excited as to the date of Chaucer's birth? Most of the old writers say it took place in the second year of the reign of Edward III., 1328, and their statement is supported by a host of indirect evidences, which show that it must have been about the time they mention. But it is urged, that when Chaucer, in 1386, gave his deposition in the controversy between Lord Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor relative to the right of using a certain coat-of-arms (an important part of Chaucer's biography, to which we shall subsequently refer), he described himself "of the age of forty and upwards," and as having borne arms for twenty-seven years. Do the doubters therefore abide by their own necessary inference that he was born in 1345, and became a soldier at the ripe age of thirteen? Not a whit; they acknowledge that such a date cannot be correct; it has even been pointed out that other persons who were examined at the same time are known to have been from ten to twenty years older than the depositions make them.

Whatever, therefore, the explanation of the phrase "forty and upwards,"

it is clear that it is not to be received in contradiction of the date that makes the poet to have been in his fifty-fifth year. Yet the doubt is raised just the same! So again as to the place of Chaucer's birth. In his prose work, the 'Testament of Love,' where the poet is as evidently and avowedly referring to himself as poet well can, he speaks of the City of London that is "to me so dear and sweet, in which I was forth grown; and more kindly love have I to that place, than to any other in earth; as every kindly creature hath full appet.i.te to that place of his kindly engendure, and to wiln [wish] rest and peace in that stead [place] to abide." But then as some biographers have mistaken various other pa.s.sages in that work, this pa.s.sage also is to be doubted, nay, the whole production laid aside as one that cannot be relied on. It is true, that for a comprehensive and trustworthy Life of Chaucer greater care must be shown in the use of the somewhat perplexing materials that wait the biographer's disposal than ever yet has been shown, but it is not by a system of wholesale negation that the work will be accomplished. Nothing can come of nothing, and, trite as the observation may be, there are some few for whom it still seems requisite to be a.s.serted. Not simply useless, but mischievous, is that kind of biography which delights to reduce what at all events looks like flesh and blood to a pure skeleton, and has no objection to take away even a bone or two from that.

Chaucer then was born in 1328, in London; and there doubtless he spent his earliest years, until, as he says, he was "forth-grown." Of his parents we know nothing direct. A long list of persons has been collected, who during the period in question bore the name of Chaucer, which was derived from the old Norman word Chaucier or Chaussier, signifying a shoemaker; and used in that sense during the poet's life by Richard of Hampole, a hermit, who translated the Gospel of St. Mark, and died in 1394. The pa.s.sage, "There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose,"

is thus rendered by Richard: "A stalworthier man than I shall come after me, of whom I am not worthy, downfalling or kneeling, to loose the thong of his chawcers." But that the poet's parents were certainly persons of wealth, probably also of consideration, may be a.s.sumed from the excellence of the education given to their son, and from the ready access which he found, on entering into public life, to the very person and favour of the sovereign. Chaucer, in a word, was born a gentleman; and the fact is of importance, not only for the incalculable benefit that it involved through the instrumentality of that education, but as showing us still more plainly than otherwise could have been shown the true n.o.bility of the poet's mind. It is Chaucer who tells us, in the 'Wife of Bath's' tale, that he who ever intendeth to perform all kinds of gentle deeds is the greatest gentleman, and that he who will perform none of them--

"He is not gentle, be he duke or earl;"

and that the poet here speaks his own sentiments, while relating the sentiments of the knight's apparently aged and hideous bride, is clear from his ballad on the same subject, where it is inculcated that unless a man love virtue and fly vice,

"He is not gentle, though he riche seem, All wear he mitre, crown, or diademe."

Where Chaucer was educated is uncertain; but the a.s.sertions of the older biographers that he was both at Cambridge and Oxford, and that he subsequently went to Paris, then the most famous and flourishing of all the European universities, is supported by the known facts in the lives of other eminent men, who became, like him, distinguished by their scholastic attainments. Grostete, Roger Bacon, and Michael Scott, all pursued the exact route ascribed to Chaucer. The poet is supposed to refer to himself under the designation of "Philogenet of Cambridge, clerk," in the 'Court of Love,' and the indications of a correct knowledge of the locality exhibited in the Reve's Tale are referred to as an additional corroboration of his residence in the neighbourhood.

Even the very college is named--Clare Hall--at which he studied, and where he may have written his earlier poems, including the 'Court of Love.' Clare Hall, Speght says, is the same with that mentioned in the Reve's Tale, under the denomination of the Soleres or Scholars'. It is to be hoped the licentious freaks of the scholars, as described in that tale, are not to be received as characteristic of the order at the period that Chaucer was a member.

Two of Chaucer's most intimate friends appear to have been the "moral Gower" and the "philosophical Strode," whose names he has thus embalmed in his verse; and both were members of the University of Oxford at the time that all three must have been engaged in the business of mental culture. To them he dedicated his 'Troilus and Cressida;' and the poem itself, which is said to have been written at Oxford, may have been composed while in the daily enjoyment of their society. But whether it was Oxford, or some other place, that the poet left at the termination of his English academical studies, we may rest a.s.sured that Leland was essentially correct in his general statement when he wrote, "At the period of his leaving Oxford, he was already an acute dialectician, a persuasive orator, an eloquent poet, a grave philosopher, an able mathematician, and an accomplished divine. These no doubt are lofty appellations; but whoever shall examine his works with a curious eye, will admit that I have sufficient ground for my panegyric." But the touches of the "finishing school," it appears, from the same authority, were still requisite, and were obtained. Chaucer went to Paris, where "he imbibed all the beauties, elegance, charms, wit, and grace of the French tongue, to a degree that is scarcely credible." And thus accomplished, and possessing a handsome person, which must have been trained and developed into strength and activity by martial exercises, the young poet returned to England, and prepared to enter into the ordinary business of life, from which alone, it is probable, he thenceforward derived his chief or entire support. At first he entered into the study of the law, and became a member of the Inner Temple; but the only result was, an affair in which he became subject to the law, instead of an expounder of it. Some friar having offended the poet in Fleet Street, he is said to have given him a beating, and to have been fined five shillings for the offence. But it was not in the time of the Third Edward that a young ambitious man, in the possession of all that nature could possibly confer upon her greatest favourites--whether of personal or mental advantages, and whose acquisitions were as remarkable as his endowments,--it was not then such a man could shut himself up in the dusty solitudes of the Temple chambers, and pore over legal treatises from morn to noon--from noon to dewy eve. It was not the moths of fashion that the dazzling radiance of the court of King Edward attracted, but England's bravest and ablest men, her n.o.blest and most virtuous women, whose beauty, however conspicuous, formed the least of their qualifications. It was with such as these that the palace halls of Windsor were thronged. To mention but two names, each sufficient to immortalize any court--there were then among the brilliant groups that surrounded Edward, his queen Philippa, the saviour of the ill.u.s.trious citizens of Calais, and the Countess of Salisbury, the heroine of Froissart's charming narration, who not only resisted the king's unlawful love, but so purified the heart of the lover, that when the well-known accident happened at a ball, he founded the order of the Garter in her eternal honour: an act, all things considered, unequalled for its combination of chivalrous, poetical, and lover-like feeling.

It was among such personages the young poet desired to be, and his wishes were speedily gratified. And it is evident that he was at least as much admired as he could admire, notwithstanding his modest and retiring, if not even reserved habits. A pleasant tradition tells us that the Countess of Pembroke, the king's daughter, one of his patronesses, told him his silence created more mirth than his conversation; for he was very bashful and reserved in company, notwithstanding that life and spirit which appeared in his writings. But Chaucer had no desire to play the courtier--and he was understood. More than one of his poems are believed to have originated in conversations between the poet and the n.o.ble women who honoured themselves and him by taking an interest in his career. Thus, to appease them generally, when they professed to be offended by the strictures contained in some of his writings, he produced, at the command of Queen Philippa, 'The Legend of Good Women,' which, it has been pointedly observed, should rather be called 'The Legend of Bad Men.' Lydgate says--

"The poet wrote, at the request of the queen, A Legende of perfect holiness; Of good women to finde out nineteen That did excel in bounty and faireness;"

and the sly monk adds, for all his labour he found it impossible

"In all this world to find so great a number."

How the poet obtained admittance to the court we know not. In the absence of any facts tending to show that he was by birth ent.i.tled to expect as a matter of course the remarkable favour that was accorded to him, we do not see why we may not fall back upon the agreeable hypothesis that it was not social rank (though he had as much of it as was indispensable), but intellectual merit that really introduced him there. At all events such a supposition is supported in a remarkable manner by the known nature of his connexion with the man who, next to Edward and his son the Black Prince, occupied in his time the largest share of the attention of the people of England: we refer to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the fourth son of Edward, and of course, therefore, the brother of the prince just named.

Among the poems of Chaucer there are three which have been looked upon, and no doubt correctly, as ill.u.s.trating the personal history of the duke as a lover and a husband. In the first of these, 'The Complaint of the Black Knight,' the poet, in a charming pa.s.sage, describes himself as walking forth on a May morning, and meeting in an arbour the Black Knight, who is bewailing the cruelty of his mistress. It is worthy of observation, that the poem shows how much better the poet felt what did concern him, the beauty of the time and season, than what did not touch very deeply his sympathies, the love-distresses of his friend and patron John of Gaunt. The second work of the series, 'Chaucer's Dream,' shows that the lady's obduracy was, as usual, more apparent than real. The royal lover has married the lady of his heart, Blanche, daughter of the Duke of Lancaster. The third poem, the 'Book of the d.u.c.h.ess,' records the premature death of Blanche in 1369, and the profound grief of her husband. The historical facts relating to John of Gaunt, "time-honoured Lancaster," harmonize so completely with the poetical ones contained in this trio of poems, that there can be no reasonable doubt as to the scope and origin of the latter. And this conviction is of greater value than may be at first apparent. The 'Complaint of the Black Knight,'

referring to the duke's courtship, and 'Chaucer's Dream,' referring to the duke's marriage, must have been written--the one a little before and the other a little after that marriage, which took place at Reading, in May, 1359, and was solemnized with great splendour. Knowing then the period and the circ.u.mstances of the production of these poems, we shall find, on looking at the one named 'Chaucer's Dream,' that we also know the essential history of the poet's own courtship and marriage. In the other two poems he is thinking chiefly of his friend and patron; in this one he makes all turn toward the expression of his own heartfelt wishes.

In the 'Dream' he imagines himself in a lodge, beside a well in the forest, reposing after the fatigues of a hunt. The difficulties attending the courtship of the duke and d.u.c.h.ess are then shadowed forth by an account of their death, and revival, ending in their union. Then follows a long and highly important pa.s.sage, evidently, up to a certain point, narrating facts. After the marriage was determined upon, the royal lovers sent out messengers in all directions

"To kinges, queenes, and d.u.c.h.esses, To divers princes, and princesses,"

inviting them to be present at the solemnity. Then, says the poet, they ordered that certain knights and squires and officers--

"In manner of an emba.s.sade, With certain letters clos'd and made, Should take the barge and depart, And seek _my lady_ every part Till they her found."

The duke and d.u.c.h.ess[26] (Blanche) tell them to charge her to be there at the day; again and again Blanche desires to be commended to her, and she is to be told that, unless she come, all will be wasted,

"And the feast but a business, Withouten joy or l.u.s.tiness."

The emba.s.sy departs, and, after fourteen days, returns with the object of their search in the barge. The d.u.c.h.ess, in her delight, cannot wait for her arrival at the court, but, says the poet, she met my lady on the sand, and clasped her in her arms. And for twelve hours after they parted not, but wandered alone, talking of their joys and troubles, with the pleasure natural to their young and tender years. And when night came, they still remained together. On the morrow the prince of lords

"Came, and unto my lady said Of her coming glad, and well apaid[27]

He was, and full right cunningly Her thanked, and full heartily, And laugh'd and smil'd, and said, 'Ywis That[28] was in doubt, in safety is.'"

The marriage takes place, and then, continues the poet,

"The prince, the queen,[29] and all the rest Unto my lady made request And her besought often, and pray'd To me-wards to be well apaid And consider mine olde truth, And on my paines haven ruth, And me accept to her service In suche form and in such wise That we both mighten be as one; Thus pray'd the queen and every one, And, for there should ne be no Nay, They stinten jousting all a day To pray my lady, and requere To be content and out of fear, And with good heart make friendly cheer, And said it was a happy year; At which she smiled, and said 'Ywis I trow well he my servant is, And would _my_ welfare, as I trist,[30]

So would I _his_; and would he wist How; and I knewe that his truth Continue would, withouten sloth, And be such as ye here report.

Restraining both courage and sport, I could consent at your request To be ynamed of your feast, And doen after your usance In obeying of your pleasance.

At your request this I consent, To pleasen you in your intent: _And eke the sovereign above, Commanded hath me for to love, And before others him prefer_; Against which prince may be no wer;[31]

For his power o'er all reigneth, That other would for nought him paineth; And sith his will and yours is one, Contrary in me shall be none.'"

Here we have pa.s.sed the boundaries of fact. That the lady had not yet said what the poet so delicately tells her she should say, much less that the marriage had taken place amidst all the ceremonies and gladness and splendour that he next so picturesquely describes, the poet presently proceeds to tell us. The sounds

"Round about, and in all the tents, With thousandes of instruments,"

trouble him in his sleep; he wakes, and finds no lady, alas! And now the mask, a.s.sumed for the moment, is dropped; he avows his prayer that his lady will accept of his service in such a manner that the substance of his dream may prove true, or that he may return into the same pleasant isle of fancy. And then, in direct appeal to her for grace (under the t.i.tle of L'Envoy), he concludes the poem.

If we need any other evidence of the correctness of the idea that this poem records the poet's own feelings and position, and the position of the lady loved by him, we have only to inquire who it was that is known to have inspired such sentiments in his breast. She was the daughter of Sir Payne Roet, Guienne, king-of-arms, who is supposed to have come over from Hainault with Queen Philippa, after whom she may have been named, and in whose service she remained up to the day of the queen's death.

This lady therefore was a member, and, as we know, a highly favoured one, of the household of the wife of John of Gaunt's brother. But the connexion may be traced still closer. Philippa Roet's sister Katherine, widow of Sir Hugh Swynford, was in the household of the d.u.c.h.ess Blanche herself, the queen of Chaucer's dream, and it was that Katherine whom the great duke, later in life, married.

And what did the lady say, on the receipt of this poem, so exquisitely contrived and carried out? We know not, but may guess from subsequent circ.u.mstances that it was not very unfavourable. Suddenly, however, the sound of war rouses the lovers from all such dreamy delights. Edward, like a losing gamester, growing only the more desperate, is fitting out a new army for the conquest of France. The poet must accompany him. It is Chaucer's first military expedition. We must for a while forget the poet in the soldier.

Our knowledge of this important incident in the poet's career is derived from the deposition before mentioned, and forms the chief value of that doc.u.ment. Though delivered, therefore, many years subsequent to the period in question, we may here fitly transcribe it. Chaucer, among a host of other witnesses, was called by Richard, Lord Scrope, to bear testimony to his right to certain arms, in opposition to a similar claim on the part of Sir Robert Grosvenor.