TO A.D. 1359.] COMPLAINT OF THE BI.ACK KNIGHT. [21 the eagle"-and so forth. In Chaucer's "Assembly of Foules," or, as it is sometimes called, "The Parliament of Birds," Nature held as chief of the birds to be mated a female eagle, of which the poet celebrates the grace and beauty. The worthiest was to begin the suit. There spoke then "a tercel eagle, as ye know full well, the fowl royal, above you all in degree," through whom Chaucer expressed in allegory the suit of John of Gaunt. And when this eagle had declared his love, “another tercel eagle spake anon, of lower kind," and yet again a third. Hereupon Chaucer exercised his sense of humour by representing the opinions of other classes of birds upon this suit in particular and love in general. Nature, bidding the quarrel cease, called on the lady eagle to speak for herself, but counselled her to take the royal tercel. She answered, timidly, that she must wait another year. Nature, therefore, counselled the three suitors to wait patiently—“ A yere is not so longë to endure"-and proceeded to the pairing of the other birds. Since we have direct evidence that a year before John of Gaunt's marriage Chaucer was in the service of one of the young princes-for he was in attendance upon Lionel's wife—it is almost a matter of course that he should have exercised his known skill as a poet for the pleasure of his friends at court in gracing the suit of Prince John for the hand of Lady Blanche. A piece, the Complaint of the Black Knight, which is also written in Chaucer's stanza, professes to record what the poet heard of the complaint of a knight whom false tongues had hindered of his lady's grace. The poem ends with a direct appeal to her for whom it was written on her knight's behalf— "Princess, pleaseth it your benignity," &c. This poem was written by John Lydgate and was twice assigned to him by John Shirley in his contemporary writings, Brit. Mus. Additional MS. 16165. It is a court poem of French pattern, thoroughly conventional, expressing unreal agonies by the accepted formulas. It is conventional even in the use of the usual "Envoy," with no more change of form than transformation of the customary "Prince" into "Princess." In every French province there used to be a sort of courtly academy of verse-writers, called the "Puy d'Amours," of which the President was called the Prince. Poets recited to him their verse, and addressed him in these last lines, which were called "l'Envoy," or "le Prince." In the "Complaint of the Black Knight," the natural genius of a poet appears only in some touches at the close. 17. But throughout the poem known as Chaucer's Dream there is a delicate play of fairy fancy. It is in the light octosyllabic rhyme, which came in almost with the first English poems written after the Conquest (ch. iii. § 30), telling how the poet found himself in dream the only man in a marvellous island of fair ladies, whose queen was gone over the sea to a far rock to pluck three magic apples, upon which their bliss and well-being depended. But she returned, and with her came the Poet's Lady, by whom the Queen of that Isle of Pleasaunce had found herself forestalled. The Poet's Lady had been found already on the far rock with the magic apples in her hand. A Knight also had there claimed the unlucky Queen as his; but the Poet's Lady had comforted her: had graciously put into her hand one of the apples, and had brought in her own ship both Queen and Knight home to the pleasant island. There its fair ladies all knelt to the Poet's Lady. The Knight would have died of the Queen's rigour if she had not revived him by some acts of kindness, after which she was resolved to bid him go. But then there were seen sailing to that island ten thousand ships; and the God of Love himself made all resistance vain. Many Knights landed, and the Queen of the Isle, being overcome, presented to the Lord of Love a bill declaring her submission. The God of Love also paid homage to the Poet's Lady, and himself pleading to her the Poet's cause, laughed as he told her his name. The first of the two dreams which form the poem ended with a festive gathering before the Lord of Love, visible in the air, and the departure of the Poet's Lady, to whom the Queen of the Island offered to resign her power if she would but stay. The despairing poet followed her ship through the water; was rescued, was comforted, and came happily home. But with that the first dream ended. In the next he was again upon the island, where, between the knights and ladies, marriage was arranged. The Queen's Knight, who was a prince, was to go home and make ready for the wedding. The poet travelled with him in a barge "Which barge was as a mannës thought, But there were delays, and when the knights returned, behind their time, they found the Queen and many of the ladies dead of despair, while those who were not dead were dying. The Prince hereupon stabbed himself, and also died. The Prince, and the A.D. 1359.] CHAUCER's dream. 123 Queen, and the dead ladies were all carried over the sea for burial within a royal abbey. There, as the dead lay in state, a bright bird perched on the hearse of the Queen and sang three sweet songs. An old knight, by a sudden movement of his hand, startled the bird, which, in its haste to fly out, beat itselt dead against a painted window. Other birds gathered outside with noise of lament. One presently brought a green flowerless herb. The herb grew suddenly, flowered, and yielded seed. One of the seeds was put by a bird into the beak of the dead songster, who at once stood up and pruned himself. The abbess, with the other seeds, restored the dead Prince, Queen, and ladies to life. There was, three months after this, a marriage festival; and all, except the Poet, had been thus happily married, when, during a whole day, they besought of the Poet's Lady grace for him also. She yielded, and their marriage was to be that night. Then the happy poet was led by the host of the happy in joyous procession into a great tent that served for church, and there was solemn service, with rejoicing afterwards. of which the loud sound woke him from his dream. He was alone then, in the old forest lodge, where he had slept, and was left in grief to pray that his Lady would give substance to his dreaming, or that he might go back into his dream and always serve her in the Isle of Pleasaunce. He ended his verse with a balade, bidding his innocent heart go forth to her who may "give thee the bliss that thou desirest oft." This is one of the poems of which Chaucer's authorship has been denied. Of it, as of the "Court of Love," no early MS. has been found, and through the intervention of copyists it has not come to us just as it left Chaucer's hand. But, even as it stands, there is no strong case against its authenticity. Who else could have written it? Destructive criticism is not always right, and where it mainly rests upon opinon its utmost power should be to raise a doubt. If the poem was by Chaucer, and if it had any personal reference at all, it must have been written for the pleasure of Philippa, daughter of Sir Paon de Rouet, of Hainault, who was king-at-arms for the province of Guienne. This young lady was in the service of Philippa Queen of England, who also was of Hainault. Queen Philippa was the daughter of a Count of Hainault, and after her, following a common fashion of loyalty, the lady who became the wife of Chaucer seems to have been named. 18. Five months after John of Gaunt's marriage Chaucer bore arms. Laurence Minot did not live to include among his war-poems a celebration of the Battle of Poitiers, fought in Sep, tember, 1356. In May of the next year the Black Prince entered London in triumph, with John King of France his honoured guest and prisoner. France was distracted by the Jacquerie, bred of the utter misery and ruin of her peasantry, and by the contending factions of her nobles. But the regency of France refused to endorse her captive king's assent to the hard conditions of peace offered by his conqueror, and at the end of October, 1359, Edward III. sailed again to France, with the largest and best army raised in England for more than a century. In the ranks of that army every able-bodied courtier must have been compelled to march. Geoffrey Chaucer was enrolled in it, and then he first bore arms. Evidence of this fact is associated with a statement upon which those critics rely who do not accept the year 1328 as the date of Chaucer's birth, but hold that he was born many years later. There was in Chaucer's time a long suit, still famous in heraldic records, between Richard Lord Scrope, of Bolton, and Sir Robert Grosvenor, of Cheshire, as to the right of bearing certain arms; azure, a bend or. The Constable and Marshal of England pronounced, in 1390, a decision, with a saving clause which permitted the loser of the suit, in consideration of the goodness of his case, to bear the disputed arms within a bordure argent. This was disallowed by the king. Record remains that at one of the many sittings of the heralds to hear evidence upon this much ado about nothing, Geoffrey Chaucer was a witness. He gave his evidence on the 12th of October, 1386, when his age, if he died in 1400 at the age of seventy-two, was fiftyeight. But in the record of his evidence he is described as 66 Geffray Chaucere, Esquier, del age de xl ans et plus, armeez par xxvij ans" (aged forty and more, and having borne arms for twenty-seven years). Here it will be observed that upon the point essential to the cause the record is exact. Chaucer was asked how long he had borne arms, and his answer is precisely entered, twenty-seven years. According to that reckoning his bearing of arms dated from 1359, and the evidence he proceeded to give on Scrope's behalf did, in fact, go back to what he saw in the year 1359, when he was with Edward's army in Brittany, and before he was taken prisoner. But the Scrope and Grosvenor Roll is no safe authority for the age of "forty and more" assigned to Chaucer in October, 1386. Sir George Bryan was THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS. 125 TC A.D. 1369.] entered as sixty" et pluis" when his age was over eighty. Sir Richard Bingham, aged sixty-six, was said to be fifty" et pluis." Sir Robert Marny is said to have been fifty-two (without any “pluis”), and first armed at the first relief of Stirling—that is to say, when he was two years old. Sir Bernard Brocas, when his age was really fifty-six, was put at forty, while the record adds that he was first armed at La Hogue, so that the Roll itself represents him as having gone to the wars when he was not yet one year old. John Schakel also, said to be forty-five in 1386, and to have been first armed in the year of the battle of Morlaix, must (if this record be decisive) have gone to the wars aged one. 19. The great army with which Geoffrey Chaucer marched, when he first bore arms in 1359, laid unsuccessful siege to Rheims, advanced on Paris, of which it burnt the suburbs, and there suffered famine so severe that it was forced to a retreat, hasty as flight, towards Brittany, leaving a track of dead upon its way. Over the suffering host then broke, near Chartres, a great storm, in which King Edward vowed to God and the Virgin that he would make peace. It was in Brittany that Chaucer became prisoner to the French. King Edward fulfilled his vow. The Peace of Bretigni was signed in May, 1360, and solemnly ratified at Calais in the following October. The peace would cause release of prisoners; but nothing is known of Chaucer's life for the next seven years. At the end of that time, in 1367, when he was thirty-nine years old, he was still attached to the king's household, and he received in that year a salary of twenty marks for life, or until he should be otherwise provided for, in consideration of his former and future services. The buying power of money changes with the course of time; and Chaucer's twenty marks under Edward III. would be worth about £140 under Victoria. 20. In 1369 John of Gaunt lost his mother, his brother Lionel. and his wife. In service of her mistress, Queen Philippa, the Philippa to whom Chaucer was married had obtained, three years before the queen's death, a pension of ten marks. The death of John of Gaunt's wife, Duchess Blanche, in September, 1369, after ten years of marriage, was lamented by Chaucer in his Book of the Duchess, a court poem, in eight-syllabled rhyming verse, with the customary dream, May morning, and so forth, the romance figure of Emperor Octavian, from the tale of Charlemagne, and a chess play with Fortune imitated, almost translated, from a favourite passage of the "Roman de la Rose." Thus far a follower of |