a doubt that the Parliament of Birds' relates to the marriage of John of Gaunt with the Lady Blanche of Lancaster, who, in the poem, puts off the marriage for a year. Now the marriage took place in 1359, and this would make Chaucer the author of the poem in question when he was eighteen. But in the poem called The Dream,' which still more certainly relates to the same marriage, we have Chaucer representing, in the true Romance vein, John of Gaunt and Lady Blanche, with the other lords and ladies, interceding with his own mistress on his behalf, and she finally relents, also in the true Romance fashion, and agrees to marry him. Tyrwhitt and Urry say that he was married in 1360; and Sir Harris Nicolas, who says in one place that it was about June, 1367, when Chaucer married Philippa, one of the ladies in attendance upon the Queen,' quotes in another place a pension to Philippa Chaucer una Domicellarum Cameræ Philippæ Reginæ Angliæ,' of ten marks per annum for life, on the 12th of September, 1366. The exact date of his marriage is not, however, so curious or so disputed a question as the exact lady whom he married. Sir Harris Nicolas disposes absolutely of the notion that one Philippa Picard was Chaucer's wife, by quoting a record of a pension to Philippa Pycard, expressly by that name, in January, 1370, when the poet must have been married at the least four years. The fact is, the frequency with which the name Philippa was given to girls in honour of Queen Philippa of Hainault, is rather

confusing. But the idea of some previous biographers, that the alliance with Philippa Picard originated Chaucer's close relations with John of Gaunt is disposed of by Mr. Bond's discovery. John of Gaunt was at Hatfield during the three years over which the account extends, and the poet's connexion with him was probably of some standing at the time of his marriage. The lady to whom all the evidence points as Chaucer's wife is Philippa Roet, sister of Catherine Swynford, whom John of Gaunt made his wife in due form, after he had sustained conjugal relations with her for several years without the form.

6

Some points upon which tradition was tolerably strong, though the evidence expected by the scientific historian was wanting, while they were plausible and natural in themselves, have been made yet more plausible by the discovery of Mr. Bond. Godwin was in his usual fashion eloquently positive, merely upon the strength of internal probabilities, that Chaucer met Petrarch at Padua, and there probably received from him the story of Patient Griselda.' One of the points Godwin made was, that it was otherwise an unaccountable circumstance that Chaucer should insert in the Clerk's Tale the name of Petrarch, as the person from whom he had it, when it was from Boccaccio's Italian that Petrarch had translated the tale into Latin. Godwin says, It is plain Chaucer did this, because he was eager to commemorate his interview with this venerable patriarch of Italian letters, and to record

the pleasure he had reaped from his society. Chaucer could not do this more effectually than by mentioning his having learned from the lips of Petrarch a tale which had been previously drawn up and delivered to the public by another. We may defy all the ingenuity of criticism to invent a different solution for the simple and decisive circumstance of Chaucer having gone out of his way, in a manner which he has employed on no other occasion, to make the Clerk of Oxenford confess that he learned the story from Petrarch; and even assigned the exact place of Petrarch's residence in the concluding part of his life.' There is perhaps only one other obvious solution, and that is a base one. It might be suggested that Chaucer was willing to hide out of sight, so far as ignoring them would do it, numerous supposed obligations to Boccaccio. But it is scarcely incontestable that he incurred any such obligations; and if he did, the middle ages had no literary code or etiquette which made the acknowledgment of such debts at all necessary. Upon this question Sir Harris Nicolas seems to me I say it with much respect—to hit rather wide of the mark. In the first place, the fact which he mentions, namely, that two English envoys in 1404 could not speak French when in France for the purposes of their embassy, by no means goes to prove that Chaucer could not, with his versatility and power, speak and read Italian quite easily. There is no need to be one of those indiscriminate worshippers of genius who endow their idols with all human attain

ments; but, though Sir Harris Nicolas does not appear to appreciate the fact, the difference in the attaining or acquiring faculties possessed by a man like Chaucer, and those of any other man then in England, would be as the difference in height between Chimborazo and Primrose Hill. Is it too much to say that Chaucer's brain was more superior to that of, for instance, a man like Edward II., than such a man's brain was superior to an anthropoid ape's? A first-class mind is like a many-sided mirror, which catches reflections more than it wishes or needs; or like Ezekiel's living creatures, with eyes before and behind. But besides this, Sir Harris Nicolas surely mistakes the point, when he remarks, 'Unless, then, it be assumed against probability that Italian, of which there is no proof that Chaucer knew anything, was as familiar to him as Latin, which language there is evidence that he knew well, a sufficient reason is formed for his having taken the tale from Petrarch's translation, rather than from the Decameron.' But the point is not where Chaucer took the tale from, but what he says about taking it. Godwin's question remains pertinent, 'Why did Chaucer go out of his way to say that the tale was learned of a particular person, at a particular place?' Far more forcible is the remark of Sir Harris Nicolas, that the theory of the poet's having learned the tale from Petrarch at Padua, is very different from the apparent suggestion of a passage near the end of the Clerk's Tale :

'Every wight in his degree Shulde be constant in adversitee,

As was Griselde, therefore Petrark writeth

This storie, which with high stile he enditeth.'

This however, though differing, is not inconsistent; and Speght and Godwin, who maintain that Chaucer met Petrarch in Italy, are decidedly confirmed by Mr. Bond's discovery, which makes it probable that Chaucer, being part of the suite of Prince Lionel, was present at the Prince's marriage with Violanta, daughter of Galeazzo, Lord of Milan, which was celebrated at Milan in the year 1369, and there met Petrarch. On the whole, my own reading of the case would be that the imaginative, sensitive Godwin caught in Chaucer's words a tone or accent which others have missed in the intentness of their criticism. The probability is that Chaucer did meet Petrarch, and was anxious to record the meeting. And that, whether Petrarch told him of the story in person, or not (which is indifferent to either theory), he read it in Petrarch's version, and then, as a compliment to a great man with whom he had exchanged courtesies, added that Petrarch had himself with high style indited the story:'q. d. 'I saw Petrarch, who spoke to me of this story, which he has himself written out.'

Chaucer was on the Continent in the king's service in 1370, and the usual letters of protection granted him by the king are quoted by Sir Harris Nicolas. In 1372 he went to Genoa, being joined in a commission