Chaucer And His Times Part 15

Men mighte asken why she was nat slayn?

Eek at the feste who mighte hir body save?

And I answere to that demaunde agayn, Who saved Daniel in the horrible cave, Ther every wight save he, maister and knave Was with the leoun fret er he asterte?[175]

No wight but G.o.d, that he bar in his herte.

Now, sith she was not at the feste y-slawe,[176]

Who kepte hir fro drenching[177] in the see?

Who kepte Jonas in the fisshes mawe Til he was spouted up at Ninivee?...

It is obvious that Catholicism appeals to his emotions, and that the shortcomings of unworthy priests no more affect his pleasure in the tender beauty of its point of view, than the moral errors of a Benvenuto Cellini affect our pleasure in his craftsmanship. The poet's soul responded to the poetry of worship, a poetry which underlies all forms and ceremonies, which no unworthiness on the part of the officiant can wholly obliterate, no superst.i.tion render wholly absurd. He recognises and rebukes the hypocrisy of many who minister in the name of Holy Church, but he is quick to separate wanton friar and idle priest from the religion whose dignity they profane. The fact that religion lies in the spirit rather than the observance is very clearly stated in the _Romaunt of the Rose_, ll.

6225-94.

As has been said, it is on the emotional side that Catholicism appeals to him. Intellectually he finds many difficulties, and more than once his poetry shows a tinge of scepticism which might well have brought him into serious difficulties had his patron been a man less powerful and less inclined to tolerate heretical sympathies than John of Gaunt. Again and again Chaucer comes to the edge of an abyss, and, after one glance into the depths, turns away with a shrug of the shoulders and a half-whimsical, half-satirical smile on his lips. Does G.o.d ordain man's life for him, from beginning to end, and has he no choice or freedom of action left him? Chaucer plays with the question, turns it over, makes it a trifle ridiculous by applying it to the death of a c.o.c.k, and then, as we have seen, tosses it aside with

I wol not han to do of swich matere;

The long disquisition on the subject--chiefly taken from his favourite philosopher, Boethius--which he puts into the mouth of Troilus (_Troilus and Criseyde_, Book IV, stanzas 137-154) proves nothing, except Chaucer's interest in the subject, which leads him to translate and insert so long a pa.s.sage, and the natural inclination to fatalism of Troilus himself.

The Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_ begins with a characteristic shelving of an important question:--

A thousand tymes have I herd men telle, That ther is joye in heven and peyne in h.e.l.le; And I accorde wel that hit is so; But natheles, yit wot I wel also, That ther nis noon dwelling in this contree, That either hath in heven or h.e.l.le y-be, Ne may of hit non other weyes witen But as he hath herd seyd, or founde it writen

True, the poet goes on to protest the absurdity of refusing credence to everything that we cannot see with our own eyes, but involuntarily we find ourselves recalling his refusal to commit himself as to the probable fate of Arcite's soul, and the fact that Arcite, although a hero, was a heathen, does not seem entirely to account for it.

This tendency to dwell upon insoluble problems manifests itself also in the strange attraction that dreams have for Chaucer. He is not content simply to use the conventional dream setting for his poems. He is continually harking back to the question: Do dreams contain some mysterious warning by which men may escape a threatened fate? In the _Nonnes Prestes Tale_ the subject is treated satirically. Pertelote's arguments against belief in dreams are excellent, and most convincing. All sensible people must share her opinion that Chauntecleer is probably suffering from indigestion. Yet--the dream comes true. Only the fact that the whole story takes place in the hen-yard makes it impossible to take it seriously. But in _Troilus and Criseyde_, Chaucer deliberately interpolates three, quite unnecessary, stanzas in Book V, in which he discusses whence dreams spring:--

For prestes of the temple tellen this, That dremes been the revelaciouns Of G.o.ddes, and as wel they telle, y-wis, That they ben infernals illusiouns; And leches[178] seyn, that of complexiouns[179]

Proceden they, or fast, or glotonye,[180]

Who woot in sooth thus what they signifye?...

Again in the opening lines of the _Hous of Fame_ he asks the same question:--

G.o.d turn us every dreem to G.o.de!

For hit is wonder, by the rode, To my wit, what causeth swevenes[181]

Either on morwes, or on evenes; And why th' effect folweth of somme, And of somme hit shal never come....

and again, characteristically, refuses to give any opinion on the matter--

For I of noon opinioun Nil as now make mencioun.

But if Chaucer is chary of committing himself on speculative matters such as these, with regard to practical morality he has no such hesitation. It was the fashion of the day to draw a moral from the most unlikely stories, and Chaucer, while he never forces an application after the manner of Gower or the compiler of the _Gesta Romanorum_, is sufficiently in sympathy with the spirit of his age to conform to the practice when opportunity occurs. The Somnour, who, by the way, has just had a violent quarrel with the Friar, preaches an admirable homily against Ire, ill.u.s.trating it, after the most approved method, with an apt anecdote. The Pardoner, as we have seen, inveighs against drunkenness, as does Chaucer himself in the _Man of Lawes Tale_. The simple statement of Averagus--

Southe is the hyeste thing that man may kepe--

is a sermon in itself, and the Maunciple ends his distinctly unmoral tale with some excellent advice of his dame's:--

My sone, keep wel thy tonge, and keep thy freend, A wikked tonge is worse than a fend[182]

My sone, G.o.d of his endelees goodnesse Walled a tonge with teeth and lippes eek, For man sholde him avyse what he speke....

It would be possible to multiply instances almost indefinitely. Perhaps the most striking of all is the sudden, unexpected moral application which ends _Troilus and Criseyde_. We have followed the pa.s.sion and sins of the lovers, we have wept with Troilus and forgiven Cressida in spite of ourselves, and all at once, while our minds are still tuned to the rapture and sweetness of a love-story, Chaucer turns to bid us note the end of life and love:--

O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she, In which that love up groweth with your age, Repeyreth hoom from worldly vanitee, And of your herte up-casteth the visage To thilke G.o.d that after his image Yow made, and thinketh al nis but a fayre This world, that pa.s.seth sone as floures fayre.

And loveth him, the which that right for love Upon a cros, our soules for to beye First starf, and roos,[183] and sit in heven a-bove; For he nil falsen no wight, dar I seye, That wol his herte al hoolly[184] on him leye.

And sin he best to love is, and most meke, What nedeth feyned loves for to seke?

In politics, as in religion, Chaucer shows himself keenly alive to the evils and abuses of the day, and yet no partisan. The author of _Piers Plowman_ has left us a picture of the bitter poverty of the peasant cla.s.s.

The complaint of Peace against Wrong (Pa.s.sus 4), shows how he has carried off his wife and stolen both geese and grys (pigs):--

He maynteneth his men to murthere myne hewen,[185]

Forstalleth my feires,[186] and fighteth in my chepyng,[187]

And breketh up my bernes dore[188] and bereth awey my whete

I am noght hardy for hym unethe to loke;[189]

and how completely the poor were at the mercy of the rich. When a peasant died, his lord had a right to his best possession, and if he owned not less than three cows, the parson of the parish took the next best, a condition of things against which we find Sir David Lyndsay protesting, as late as 1560, in his _Satyre of the Three Estaats_. John Ball, "the mad priest of Kent," for twenty years combined the preaching of Lollardy with that of a kind of rough socialism, and the rude rhyme which contained the kernel of his teaching--

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?--

went the round of the Midlands and helped to fan the flame of discontent which finally broke into the wide-spread conflagration of the Peasants'

Revolt. It was a time when new ideals were slowly struggling to find expression, and the old order of feudalism was pa.s.sing away for ever. But while the n.o.bles were divided by factions among themselves, and the poor beat bleeding hands against the prison walls that hemmed them in, the middle cla.s.s was steadily increasing in wealth and prosperity, and it is with this cla.s.s that Chaucer chiefly concerns himself. The majority of the Canterbury pilgrims are prosperous, well-to-do tradesmen and artisans:--

Hir knyves were y-chaped[190] noght with bras But al with silver, wroght ful clene and well, Hir girdles and hir pouches every-deel.

Wel semed ech of hem a fair burgeys To sitten in a yeldhall[191] on a deys.[192]

Everich, for the wisdom that he can, Was shaply[193] for to been an alderman.

For catel hadde they y-nogh and rente, And eek hir wyves wolde it wel a.s.sente; And elles certain were they to blame.

It is ful fair to been y-clept "_ma dame_,"

And goon to vigilyes[194] al bifore, And have a mantel royalliche y-bore.

This is something very different from Langland's[195] picture of Dawe the d.y.k.ere dying of hunger, or the poor farmer dining on bean-bread and bran.

Even the Plowman seems fairly well off:--

His tythes payed he ful faire and wel, Bothe of his propre swink[196] and his catel,

and the general impression is one of comfort, which even rises to a certain mild luxury. The pilgrims are well fed and well clothed, they have horses to ride, and can afford to call at the ale-house as they pa.s.s. They fill the air with the sound of laughter and song as they ride, and we can well understand the Lollard Thorpe's complaint (made more than ten years after Chaucer wrote his _Canterbury Tales_) that, "What with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their Canterburie bells, and with the barking out of dogges after them ... they (_i. e._ pilgrims) make more noise than if the king came there away with all his clarions and many other minstrels" (_Wycliff's Works_, ed. Arnold, I. 83). Even in the tales themselves little hint is given of the darker side of the picture. We get a glimpse of the relation between lord and va.s.sal, in the _Clerkes Tale_, but no comment is made on it.

Griselda is carrying her water-pot back from the well, when she hears the marquis calling her:--

And she set doun her water-pot anoon Bisyde the threshfold, in an oxes stalle, And doun up-on hir knees she gan to falle, And with sad contenance kneleth stille Til she had herd what was the lordes wille.

Apparently there is nothing in this incident to attract the attention of a fourteenth-century poet. It is quite natural to kneel on the floor of the cow-shed when your lord honours you by seeking you there and giving his commands in person.

That Chaucer has no very high opinion of the intelligence or reliability of a mob is shown, not only by his sketches of crowds, but by such pa.s.sages as that in the _Clerkes Tale_ where he breaks off the story to apostrophise the people:--

O stormy peple! unsad[197] and ever untrewe As undiscreet and chaunging as a vane, Delyting ever in rumbel that is newe, For lyk the mone ay wexe ye and wane; A ful of clapping,[198] dere y-nogh a jane[199]