English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Part 7

His studie was but litel on the Bible.

It was a suggestive satire which led him to hint that he was

... but esy of dispense; He kepte that he wan in pestilence; For gold in physike is a cordial; Therefore he loved gold in special.

Chaucer deals tenderly with the lawyers; yet, granting his sergeant of the law discretion and wisdom, a knowledge of cases even "from the time of King Will," and fees and perquisites quite proportional, he adds,

Nowher so besy a man as he ther n' as, And yet he seemed besier than he was.

HIS PRESENTATIONS OF WOMAN.--Woman seems to find hard judgment in this work. Madame Eglantine, the prioress, with her nasal chanting, her English-French, "of Stratford-atte-Bow," her legion of smalle houndes, and her affected manner, is not a flattering type of woman's character, and yet no doubt she is a faithful portrait of many a prioress of that day.

And the wife of Bath is still more repulsive. She tells us, in the prologue to her story, that she has buried five husbands, and, buxom still, is looking for the sixth. She is a jolly _compagnon de voyage_, had been thrice to Jerusalem, and is now seeking a.s.soil for some little sins at Canterbury. And the host's wife, as he describes her, is not by any means a pleasant helpmeet for an honest man. The host is out of her hearing, or he would not be so ready to tell her character:

I have a wif, tho' that she poore be; But of her tongue a blabbing shrew is she, And yet she hath a heap of vices mo.

She is always getting into trouble with the neighbors; and when he will not fight in her quarrel, she cries,

... False coward, wreak thy wif; By corpus domini, I will have thy knife, And thou shalt have my distaff and go spin.

The best names she has for him are milksop, coward, and ape; and so we say, with him,

Come, let us pa.s.s away from this mattere.

THE PLAN PROPOSED.--With these suggestions of the nature of the company a.s.sembled "for to don their pilgrimage," we come to the framework of the story. While sitting at the table, the host proposes

That each of you, to shorten with your way, In this viage shall tellen tales twey.

Each pilgrim should tell two stories; one on the way to Canterbury, and one returning. As, including Chaucer and the host, there are thirty-one in the company, this would make sixty-two stories. The one who told the best story should have, on the return of the company to the Tabard inn, a supper at the expense of the rest.

The host's idea was unanimously accepted; and in the morning, as they ride forth, they begin to put it into execution. Although lots are drawn for the order in which the stories shall be told, it is easily arranged by the courteous host, who recognizes the difference in station among the pilgrims, that the knight shall inaugurate the scheme, which he does by telling that beautiful story of _Palamon and Arcite_, the plot of which is taken from _Le Teseide_ of Boccacio. It is received with cheers by the company, and with great delight by the host, who cries out,

So mote I gon--this goth aright, Unbockled is the mail.

The next in order is called for, but the miller, who has replenished his midnight potations in the morning, and is now rolling upon his horse, swears that "he can a n.o.ble tale," and, not heeding the rebuke of the host,

Thou art a fool, thy wit is overcome,

he shouts out a vulgar story, in all respects in direct contrast to that of the knight. As a literary device, this rude introduction of the miller breaks the stiffness and monotony of a succession in the order of rank; and, as a feature of the history, it seems to tell us something of democratic progress. The miller's story ridicules a carpenter, and the reeve, who is a carpenter, immediately repays him by telling a tale in which he puts a miller in a ludicrous position.

With such a start, the pilgrims proceed to tell their tales; but not all.

There is neither record of their reaching Canterbury, nor returning. Nor is the completion of the number at all essential: for all practical purposes, we have all that can be asked; and had the work been completed, it would have added little to the historical stores which it now indirectly, and perhaps unconsciously, offers. The number of the tales (including two in prose) is twenty-four, and great additional value is given to them by the short prologue introducing each of them.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAUCER, (CONTINUED.)--REFORMS IN RELIGION AND SOCIETY.

Historical Facts. Reform in Religion. The Clergy, Regular and Secular.

The Friar and the Sompnour. The Pardonere. The Poure Persone. John Wiclif. The Translation of the Bible. The Ashes of Wiclif.

HISTORICAL FACTS.

Leaving the pilgrims' cavalcade for a more philosophical consideration of the historical teachings of the subject, it may be clearly shown that the work of Chaucer informs us of a wholesome reform in religion, or, in the words of George Ellis,[16] "he was not only respected as the father of English poetry, but revered as a champion of the Reformation."

Let us recur briefly to the history. With William the Conqueror a great change had been introduced into England: under him and his immediate successors--his son William Rufus, his nephew Henry I., the usurper Stephen, and Henry II.,--the efforts of the "English kings of Norman race"

were directed to the establishment of their power on a strong foundation; but they began, little by little, to see that the only foundation was that of the unconquerable English people; so that popular rights soon began to be considered, and the accession of Henry II., the first of the Plantagenets, was specially grateful to the English, because he was the first since the Conquest to represent the Saxon line, being the grandson of Henry I., and son of _Matilda_, niece of Edgar Atheling. In the mean time, as has been seen, the English language had been formed, the chief element of which was Saxon. This was a strong instrument of political rights, for community of language tended to an amalgamation of the Norman and Saxon peoples. With regard to the Church in England, the insulation from Rome had impaired the influence of the Papacy. The misdeeds and arrogance of the clergy had arrayed both people and monarch against their claims, as several of the satirical poems already mentioned have shown. As a privileged cla.s.s, who used their immunities to do evil and corrupt the realm, the clergy became odious to the _n.o.bles_, whose power they shared and sometimes impaired, and to the _people_, who could now read their faults and despise their comminations, and who were unwilling to pay hard-earned wages to support them in idleness and vice. It was not the doctrine, but the practice which they condemned. With the accession of the house of Plantagenet, the people were made to feel that the Norman monarchy was a curse, without alloy. Richard I. was a knight-errant and a crusader, who cared little for the realm; John was an adulterer, traitor, and coward, who roused the people's anger by first quarrelling with the Pope, and then basely giving him the kingdom to receive it again as a papal fief. The nation, headed by the warlike barons, had forced the great charter of popular rights from John, and had caused it to be confirmed and supplemented during the long reign of his son, the weak Henry III.

Edward I. was engaged in cruel wars, both in Wales and Scotland, which wasted the people's money without any corresponding advantage.

Edward II. was deposed and murdered by his queen and her paramour Mortimer; and, however great their crime, he was certainly unworthy and unable to control a fierce and turbulent people, already clamorous for their rights. These well-known facts are here stated to show the unsettled condition of things during the period when the English were being formed into a nation, the language established, and the earliest literary efforts made. Materials for a better organization were at hand in great abundance; only proper master-builders were needed. We have seen that everything now betokened the coming of a new era, in State, Church, and literature.

The monarch who came to the throne in 1327, one year before the birth of Chaucer, was worthy to be the usher of this new era to England: a man of might, of judgment, and of forecast; the first truly _English_ monarch in sympathy and purpose who had occupied the throne since the Conquest: liberal beyond all former precedent in religion, he sheltered Wiclif in his bold invectives, and paved the way for the later encroachments upon the papal supremacy. With the aid of his accomplished son, Edward the Black Prince, he rendered England ill.u.s.trious by his foreign wars, and removed what remained of the animosity between Saxon and Norman.

REFORM IN RELIGION.--We are so accustomed to refer the Reformation to the time of Luther in Germany, as the grand religious turning-point in modern history, that we are apt to underrate, if not to forget, the religious movement in this most important era of English history. Chaucer and Wiclif wrote nearly half a century before John Huss was burned by Sigismond: it was a century after that that Luther burned the Pope's decretals at Wittenberg, and still later that Henry VIII. threw off the papal dominion in England. But great crises in a nation's history never arrive without premonition;--there are no moral earthquakes without premonitory throes, and sometimes these are more decisive and destructive than that which gives electric publicity. Such distinct signs appeared in the age of Chaucer, and the later history of the Church in England cannot be distinctly understood without a careful study of this period.

It is well known that Chaucer was an adherent of John of Gaunt; that he and his great protector--perhaps with no very pious intents--favored the doctrines of Wiclif; that in the politico-religious disturbances in 1382, incident to the minority of Richard II., he was obliged to flee the country. But if we wish to find the most striking religious history of the age, we must seek it in the portraitures of religious characters and events in his Canterbury Tales. In order to a proper intelligence of these, let us look for a moment at the ecclesiastical condition of England at that time. Connected with much in doctrine and ritual worthy to be retained, and, indeed, still retained in the articles and liturgy of the Anglican Church, there was much, the growth of ignorance and neglect, to be reformed. The Church of England had never had a real affinity with Rome. The gorgeous and sensual ceremonies which, in the indolent airs of the Mediterranean, were imposing and attractive, palled upon the taste of the more phlegmatic Englishmen. Inst.i.tutions organized at Rome did not flourish in that higher lat.i.tude, and abuses were currently discussed even before any plan was considered for reforming them.

THE CLERGY.--The great monastic orders of St. Benedict, scattered throughout Europe, were, in the early and turbulent days, a most important aid and protection to Christianity. But by degrees, and as they were no longer needed, they had become corrupt, because they had become idle. The Cluniacs and Cistercians, branches of the Benedictines, are represented in Chaucer's poem by the monk and prioress, as types of bodies which needed reform.

The Grandmontines, a smaller branch, were widely known for their foppery: the young monks painted their cheeks, and washed and covered their beards at night. The cloisters became luxurious, and sheltered, and, what is worse, sanctioned lewdness and debauchery.

There was a great difference indeed between the _regular_ clergy, or those belonging to orders and monasteries, and the _secular_ clergy or parish priests, who were far better; and there was a jealous feud between them. There was a lamentable ignorance of the Scripture among the clergy, and gross darkness over the people. The paraphrases of Caedmon, the translations of Bede and Alfred, the rare ma.n.u.scripts of the Latin Bible, were all that cast a faint ray upon this gloom. The people could not read Latin, even if they had books; and the Saxon versions were almost in a foreign language. Thus, distrusting their religious teachers, thoughtful men began to long for an English version of that Holy Book which contains all the words of eternal life. And thus, while the people were becoming more clamorous for instruction, and while Wiclif was meditating the great boon of a translated Bible, which, like a noonday sun, should irradiate the dark places and disclose the loathsome groups and filthy manifestations of cell and cloister, Chaucer was administering the wholesome medicine of satire and contempt. He displays the typical monk given up to every luxury, the costly black dress with fine fur edgings, the love-knot which fastens his hood, and his preference for p.r.i.c.king and hunting the hare, over poring into a stupid book in a cloister.

THE FRIAR AND THE SOMPNOUR.--His satire extends also to the friar, who has not even that semblance of virtue which is the tribute of the hypocrite to our holy faith. He is not even the demure rascal conceived by Thomson in his Castle of Indolence:

... the first amid the fry,

A little round, fat, oily man of G.o.d, Who had a roguish twinkle in his eye, When a tight maiden chanced to trippen by,

Which when observed, he shrunk into his mew, And straight would recollect his piety anew.

But Chaucer's friar is a wanton and merry scoundrel, taking every license, kissing the wives and talking love-talk to the girls in his wanderings, as he begs for his Church and his order. His hood is stuffed with trinkets to give them; he is worthily known as the best beggar of his house; his eyes alight with wine, he strikes his little harp, trolls out funny songs and love-ditties. Anon, his frolic over, he preaches to the collected crowd violent denunciations of the parish priest, within the very limits of his parish. The very principles upon which these mendicant orders were established seem to be elements of evil. That they might be better than the monks, they had no cloisters and magnificent gardens, with little to do but enjoy them. Like our Lord, they were generally without a place to lay their heads; they had neither purse nor scrip. But instead of sanctifying, the itinerary was their great temptation and final ruin.

Nothing can be conceived better calculated to harden the heart and to destroy the fierce sensibilities of our nature than to be a beggar and a wanderer. So that in our retrospective glance, we may pity while we condemn "the friar of orders gray." With a delicate irony in Chaucer's picture, is combined somewhat of a liking for this "worthy limitour."[17]