merchant, Leland that he was of noble stock, and Pitts that his father was a knight. Whether descended from peer or peasant, we may be sure he was well born in the best sense-endowed with nature's richest gifts; and it is certain also that his parents, whatever their rank, must have had competent means at their command, for he was liberally educated, and studied at both universities, -first at Cambridge, and after at Oxford. He travelled through many European countries, becoming also a student of the Temple. He was appointed to an office at court, at a time when gentle birth was much valued; and he ultimately, by his marriage, became allied to royalty. Few men in any age could have so great an opportunity of beholding human nature under various aspects. scholar, a traveller, a courtier, nature, education, and circumstances seem happily, in his case, to have combined to aid him.

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Four of the most illustrious women of the age pre-eminently delighted in the genius of Chaucer: Philippa the Queen; the Lady Margaret, Countess of Pembroke, daughter of the king; and the Lady Blanche, heiress of Lancaster, who was the first wife of John of Gaunt; and, at a later time, Anne of Bohemia, the first wife of the ill-fated Richard the Second. These were the patrons of his intellect. One who influenced his heart and stimulated his genius yet more

was

Philippa Picard de Rouet of Hainault, who, after eight or nine years' tender and respectful courtship, became his wife. It was Catherine, the sister of this Philippa, who ultimately became the third wife of John of Gaunt, and thus linked her illustrious poet brother-in-law with the royal family of England.

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In such a sphere of courtly splendour, mingling with the great and gay, all of them foreigners, or of immediate foreign extraction, and when it was the fashion to look upon the language and people of England as boorish, and incapable of refinement,-it was brave and patriotic of Chaucer to make the rugged national language the vehicle of his graphic and minute descriptions, his playful fancies, his tender and kindly thoughts. Chaucer went on a political mission to Genoa; and while he was in Italy he visited Padua in 1373, and saw Petrarch, and brought from Italy many noble thoughts and pleasant fancies to weave into our literature, in particular that narrative of the patience of woman, the story of Griselda, which his genius ultimately made so popular, despite the improbability and extravagance of the incidents, and the doubtful morality of the lesson it inculcates. Chaucer takes pains to tell his reader whence he had the pathetic and beautiful narrative of unmerited wrongs and patient endurance. He said it was

"Learned at Padua of a worthy clerk -
As proved by his words, and by his work,
Francis Petrark, the laureate poete."

This truly great poet had travelled without losing his own nationality: he was a scholar without pedantry, a courtier without servility. He used the powers of his mind and the advantages of education and travel to enrich his native language, and to lay the basis of a national literature. Admirably has it been said, "Not a quip, not a jest, not a simile, not a new jingle of sounds and syllables, let the intrinsic value of the sentiment of which they are the foliage and efflorescence be ever so small, but in the act of originating that quip, jest, simile, or jingle, Chaucer is struggling successfully with the tough element of an unformed language, and assisting to render it plastic for future speakers and writers."

It is memorable, as marking the intellectual influence of women over the mind of the father of our poetry, how many of his works were written at their suggestion. The book of "The Duchess," "La Prière de Notre Dame," "Chaucer's Dreame," "The Legende of Gode Women," were thus composed.

Many had been the public calamities and commotions that Chaucer had seen. In his youth the fearful pestilence of "the black death; afterwards, the splendid continental victories of

Edward; the knightly shows and courtly splendours; the stirring of a thought like hidden fire among the people, roused by the voice of Wickliffe, who, moved by the spirit of truth, wrote severely against the wolves in sheep's clothing, who in the name of religion practised on the superstitions of the oppressed people, saying of the friars, "they visiten rich men, and by hypocrisy getten falsely their alms, and withdrawen from poor men; but they visiten rich widows for their muck, and maken them to be buried in the Friars, but poor men come not there." Of such he asserts that they "be worse enemies and slayers of men's soul than is the cruel fiend of hell himself; for they, under the habit of holiness, lead men and nourish them in sins, and be special helpers of the fiend to strangle men's souls."

Such words made the principles of the "Lollards," the early protestants, spread rapidly among the people. The sense of wrong, however, is a different thing from a clear perception of right, and hence tumult and insurrection checked the progress of the Lollards. The revolt of Wat Tyler and John Ball shows pretty clearly the discontents, but not the knowledge, prudence, and power, of the people. Then followed the dethronement of Richard and the accession of Henry IV. (the son of Chaucer's patron and brother-inlaw, John of Gaunt), a circumstance that laid

the basis of the future wars of the succession between the houses of York and Lancaster.

Our poet father did not escape the discipline of adversity; he became involved in the affairs of John of Gaunt, and in the struggles of the Wickliffites and Lollards, and it was necessary for him to escape to the continent. He took refuge at Hainault, the birthplace of his wife, and remained there till the animosity of his adversaries or their power was modified. Subsequently, on his venturing to return, he met with ingratitude from his own party, and was for a time a prisoner in the Tower. After his release he suffered, according to some of his biographers, "sheer unmistakable poverty." Thus he may be said to have completed the circle of human experience in his own person. High and low, rich and poor, rude and learned, a prison and a palace, his native land and foreign countries, were equally well known to him. Hence the universality of his knowledge, the aptness of his illustrations, the graphic delineation and distinctness of his cha

racters.

His writings are of three kinds : his prose, containing "A Treatise on the Astrolabe," written for his son Lewis, a child of ten years, but so advanced in his studies as to require his father's knowledge on the principles of astronomy as then understood, "The Testament of Love," and a