XXIX.

CHAP. with his addresses may be presumed not to have been entirely indifferent to his person, 1369. his character, or accomplishments. But she could not resolve to quit the service of her royal mistress. This seems to be highly honourable to the queen. Chaucer however no doubt still promised himself, that he should be able to induce her to surmount this scruple of delicacy; especially as his addresses are said (and he has insinuated as much in the poem of the Dream) to have been countenanced by the duke and duchess of Lancaster, and perhaps by the queen herself. The lady however, though mild (it may be, a little encouraging) in her refusals, still contrived to elude the conclusion of his suit. At length, the main topic of her objections having been removed by the lamented death of the queen, we may naturally infer that their nuptials were celebrated as soon as the general laws of decorum and the ideas of female delicacy would allow and we shall see

1370. His mar

riage.

XXIX.

reason hereafter to believe, that Chaucer's CHAP. marriage could not have taken place later than the year 1370.

The circumstance of so long a courtship may be received as an undoubted evidence of a steady, enthusiastic and undebauched temper of mind. Spenser has left us one hundred sonnets addressed to the lady whom he afterward married, descriptive of all the fluctuations of a protracted courtship. There is also another singular coincidence in this point: Spenser and Chaucer seem both to have married about the same period of life; the age of forty-two. They were however very different in the stamp of their minds. Though Spenser equal in powers of description any poet that ever existed, though his genius be resplendent and his language and his thoughts exquisitely beautiful, yet there is a sickliness and effeminacy in the character of his poetry, which makes us rather tender him as a sort of aerial creature, than honour him as a man. Chaucer's poetry is cast in a very different mould. In Spenser's particular excellences Chaucer is by no means his

1370.

Coincidcircumthe lives

ence of

stances in

of Chaucer and

Spenser.

XXIX.

1370.

CHAP equal. But the verses of our elder poet have no want of vigour and manliness; and in almost every one of his productions we recognise the elasticity of his spirit, and the healthful temper of his soul. If therefore he was a ten years suitor, we may be well assured that this circumstance was in him no indication of a whining and feeble temper, defective in discrimination, or nerveless and impotent to resolve.

Consideration in which Chaucer

The marriage of Chaucer may be regarded as one of the first demonstrative evidences occurring in his history, of the important lustrated. light in which he was viewed by his con

was now

held, il

temporaries. We might reasonably indeed

presume this, from the known deference and honour with which poets of merit and genius were regarded in this early period of modern Europe. His pension however, granted in the year 1367, was not considerable; and may be conceived as of nearly the same value as the pensions granted to poets in more recent examples, by princes who certainly had no desire to make them their associates and their equals, and in times which could

XXIX.

1370.

engender the sentiment that it would be an CHAP. enormous breach of decorum to inter a man distinguished only by his merit as a player [Garrick], among princes and statesmen, but that the honour has nothing in it to astonish us when we find that his tomb is only placed by the side of those of Shakespear and Milton'.

The marriage of Chaucer fully ascertains the rank in which he was placed. His wife was the daughter of a knight, and a man filling what was in those days regarded as a very distinguished office. Her own situation about the queen was one which we now find reserved for ladies of honourable birth. Her sister was placed in a similar office about the person of the duchess Blanche; and we may conclude, from the sequel of her history, as well as from the superintendence which was committed to her over the female offspring of this distinguished personage, that she was

This sentiment is to be found in a volume entitled Lettres sur l'Angleterre, par M. Fiévée, 8vo, 1802.

CHAP. foremost in the possession of the confidence

XXIX.

1370.

of the duchess. We have seen, in examining the poem entitled Chaucer's Dream, in what terms he speaks of the attention and deference yielded to his wife by the duke and duchess of Lancaster. It was by this marriage, as will hereafter appear, that our poet became the progenitor of the earl of Lincoln, declared by Richard III. presumptive heir to the crown of England; while the sister of Chaucer's wife was the ancestress of those who have now for more than three centuries been in actual possession of it.