and þan is it gode sone for to scarifie pe place ysmyten, and drawe be blode pennez, and after put on enplastrez repressyng akyng and bolnyng, ffor ofttymez þe mormale comep of sich þings.' IV. PROLOGUE 493-8, 527-8 We are told of Chaucer's Parson that he would visite The ferreste in his parisshe, muche and lyte, Upon his feet, and in his hand a staf. This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf, That first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte. He taughte, and first he folwed it himselve. In the Oxford Chaucer, published in 1894, Skeat has two notes on the sources of these lines: '498. The allusion is to Matt. v. 19, as shewn by a parallel passage in P. Plowman, C. xvi. 127. 528. Cf. Acts, i. I; Gower, Conf. Amantis, ii. 188.' More than a dozen years earlier, Mayor and Lumby, in their edition of Books 3 and 4 of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, had brought the above lines into relation with Bede's account of Aidan, in their notes on Eccl. Hist. 3. 5. Thus they quote: 'Non aliter quam vivebat cum suis ipse docebat. Discurrere per cuncta et urbana et rustica loca non equorum dorso sed pedum incessu vectus solebat'; and to this they add a number of parallels. Still other parallels may be found in Plummer's edition (1896) of Bede, Opera Historica 1. xxxvi. To these we may add a line from the epitaph on Gregory the Great (Eccl. Hist. 2. 1): Implebatque actu quicquid sermone docebat. 'In his hand a staf' scarcely demands a literary source; if it did, the Bible would readily suggest the form: Gen. 33. 18; Exod. 12. 11; 1 Sam. 17. 40; 2 Kings 4. 29; Zech. 3. 4. V. KNIGHT'S TALE 1290 On the wall of the Camera degli Sposi of the Castello di Corte at Mantua, Andrea Mantegna, between 1468 and 1474, represented a meeting between Lodovico II Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, and his son Francesco, then Cardinal. In one of the smaller compartments of the fresco is depicted the horse from which the Marquis has just alighted, and near the horse two large dogs, perhaps three feet in height to the top of the head, white or grey in color, one at least being held by a leash. This dog, the one facing the spectator, is of powerful build, the head large, the eyes small, and the ears cropped. The picture is reproduced by Thode (Mantegna, p. 61), Knapp (Andrea Mantegna, p. 41), and Kristeller (Andrea Mantegna, p. 251). Thode describes the dogs merely as Lodovico's favorites; Cruttwell (Andrea Mantegna, p. 69), as 'fierce looking boarhounds'; and Kristeller (p. 249), as 'huge dogs (not hounds for the chase, as has been supposed).' It is evident that the biographers are in considerable uncertainty as to the species of the dogs in question, even though Kristeller elsewhere maintains (p. 262) that these 'animals [are] studied from nature with amazing care and fidelity.' It occurs to me to suggest that these dogs may perhaps be alaunts, of which Baillie-Grohman remarks (Cook, The Last Months of Chaucer's Earliest Patron: Trans. Conn. Acad. of Arts and Sciences 21. 135) 'Both Gaston [de Foix] and the Spanish king [Alfonso XI] say that the body of the Alaunt was like that of a heavy greyhound, their eyes were small, they were square in the jaw, and that their ears were trimmed and pointed to make them look alert. The tail was rather large than small. They were of three colors, white, grey, and blackish.' De Noirmont (op. cit., p. 136) 'compares it to the Great Dane or German boarhound, to which he assigns a height of 30 to 32, or, exceptionally, 34 inches'that is, to the shoulder. It will be seen that these accounts apply sufficiently well to the dogs delineated by Mantegna. Chaucer's alaunts, as we know, were white. Other representations of dogs which might be consulted in this connection are in Titian's picture of Charles V (Prado), Venus and Adonis (Prado), and Van Dyck's Duke of Juliers and Berg (Munich). For the alaunt in a fifteenth-century shield, see Encyc. Brit., 11th ed., 13. 326. VI. BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 368 The present Master of Peterhouse, writing in 1880,1 thus comments on this line: 'The Emperor Octovian (a favorite character in Chaucer's poem probably a of Carolingian legend,2 Skeat, flattering allegory for the King) is holding his hunt.' though he says 'the name originally referred to the emperor Augustus,' and notwithstanding its occurrence in that sense in L. G. W. 624, apparently accepts Ward's view, and supposes the allusion to be to the personage of the medieval romance. As bearing on this matter, it may be noted that Deschamps, who employs the name five times, never alludes to the legendary personage. Once, in discoursing on the Nativity, and the conditions then prevailing in the Roman world, he says*: Octovien sanz doubtance Regnoit vertueusement. 'Le temps Octovien' is conceived as a golden age. Thus (2. 5): Quant verray je le temps Octovien, Que toute paix fut au monde affermée? And at the beginning of another ballade (7. 251): Que toute paix fut reformée, Je voy Saincte Eglise essaucée, Bonnes euvres, devocion, Faire et tenir sanz fiction. -Dit il voir?-Par may foy, il ment. Elsewhere he compares the Emperor Charles IV (1316-1378), son of John of Bohemia, to Augustus (1. 296): Et l'empereur ot gracieux renom, L'empire tint com fist Octoviens, 1Chaucer (English Men of Letters), pp. 68-9. Cf. Gaston Paris, Litt. Fr. au Moyen Age, 3d ed., p. 50; Wells, Manual, p. 118. 3 Oxford Chaucer I. 472-3. Oeuvres, ed. Saint-Hilaire, 7. 153. Finally, after the death of Charles V of France (1380), he complains to Charles VI, possibly with allusion to his father (8. 159)5: Li tempts n'est pas qu'Octoviens Regnoit. In the light of these instances, then, it would seem probable that Chaucer is comparing Edward III to Augustus Cæsar. In representing Edward as enjoying the pleasures of the chase, Chaucer is upheld by the monk of St. Albans to whom we owe the Chronicon Angliæ. On his deathbed, it appears, being encouraged by Alice Perrers to believe that he would recover, he would talk of nothing but hunting and hawking, 'and trifles of that sort.' 26 VII. CHAUCER'S 'SWERD OF WINTER' In the Legend of Good Women (125-7) we read: Of winter, that him naked made and mat, And in the Squire's Tale (52-7): Ful lusty was the weder and benigne, For which the foules, agayn the sonne shene, With these may be compared Roman de la Rose 6678-82 (ed. Et quant bise resouffle, il fauche Les floretes et la verdure A l'espée de sa froidure, Si que la flor i pert son estre Sitost cum el commence a nestre. The general notion is that of the 'penetrale frigus' of Lucretius I. 494, and the 'penetrabile frigus' of Virgil, Georg. 1. 93; Martial 4. 19. 9; so in English we speak of piercing, biting (and bitter), cutting, sharp, keen cold. "Ed. Thompson (Rolls series), p. 142: 'Itaque factum est ut, per totum illud tempus, de aucupatione, venatione, talibus quoque nugis sermocinaretur.' VIII. THE COMPLAINT OF CHAUCER TO HIS Root1 justly calls this a 'delightful poem, which with delicate humor applies the conventional language of amorous poetry to an empty purse.' Assigning the envoy to 1399, he adds: 'It is, of course, possible that the preceding stanzas had been written at an earlier time.' The latter statement is in accord with Skeat's view: 'I think it highly probable that the poem itself is older than the Envoy.' This is suggested by the fact that MS. Harl. 7333 heads the poem: 'A Supplicacion to Kyng Richard by Chaucier.' Wells says3: 'There is a general impression that the envoy is Chaucer's latest composition, and was added to the stanzas, which are of earlier date.' Skeat's remarks on the model for the poem are as follows*: 'A somewhat similar complaint was addressed to the French king John II by G. de Machault in 1351-6; but it is in short rimed lines; see his works, ed. Tarbé, p. 78. But the real model which Chaucer had in view was, in my opinion, the Ballade by Eustache Deschamps, written in 1381, and printed in Tarbé's edition, at p. 55 [Oeuvres, ed. Saint Hilaire, 2. 81]. This Ballade is of a similar character, having three stanzas of eight lines each, with a somewhat similar refrain, viz. "Mais de paier n'y sçay voie ne tour," i. e. but how to pay I know therein no way nor method. It was written on a similar occasion, viz. after the death of Charles V of France, and the accession of Charles VI, who had promised Deschamps a pension, but had not paid it. Hence the opening lines: The Poetry of Chaucer, p. 78. 2 Oxford Chaucer 1. 88; cf. p. 562; and see Ten Brink, in Litteraturblatt for 1883, pp. 426-7. 'Manual, p. 637; cf. p. 616. On p. 637 he also says: 'It is a pleasing bit of humorous application of conventional love-phrasing, not to a lady, but to an empty purse. It occurs in three forms: three rime-royal stanzas with like rime-sounds and final refrain line, followed by an envoy aabba; the three stanzas without the envoy; and the three stanzas without the envoy and with a set of rime-royal stanzas on imprisonment.' 'Oxford Chaucer 1. 562-3. |