XVIII. is rendered, " myne unpitous life draweth CHAP. along ungreable dwellynges." Here, if we should affirm that Chaucer himself unquestionably understood the last word of the line, we must at least admit that his version would never convey the true sense to a mere English reader, and that the word " dwellynges" must be interpreted by such a person, not as a denomination of time, which is its meaning in Boethius, but as a denomination of place, and referring to the prison in which the illustrious senator was newly immured. It would be idle further to multiply instances. Through the whole performance Chaucer seems to have aimed too much at a literal rendering of his author, and not suf ficiently to have enquired what ideas the English phrases he used would convey to an ordinary reader. Judging from internal evidence, we should Its beauties. undoubtedly be inclined to consider this production simply as the exercise of a young man for his improvement in the art of composition. In this point of view Chaucer was well employed upon it. An author who had XVIII. CHAP. conceived the sublime and audacious purpose of creating a language, or (to state his enterprise in the lowest terms) of bringing a language from the hovels of the brutish and the enslaved, to which it had been banished, and of teaching it to erect its lofty front in the dwellings of princes and the halls of the learned, did wisely when he set himself diligently to consider how a Roman senator, the ornament of a mighty empire, would have expressed his thoughts in the words and phrases of this dishonoured tongue. Accordingly many passages of Chaucer's translation are beautifully idiomatic and harmonious in their construction. Take for example the commencement of his version of that celebrated metre *, O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas, &c. "O thou father, soveraine and creatour of heven and of erthes, that governest this world by perdurable reson, that commandest a Lib. III, Metrum ix. XVIII. the tymes to gone sythe that age had begin- CHAP. ning thou that dwellest thy selfe aye stedfaste and stable, and yevest all other thinges to be meved: ne foraine causes ne causeden the never to compoune werk of flitering matere, but onely the forme of soverain gode yset within the without envy, that meved the frely; thou that art © alderfairest, beringe the fayre world in thy thought formedest this worlde to thy [the] likenesse semblable of that fayre world in thy thought." с values himself upon it. There are reasons however which may Chaucer induce us to believe that Chaucer regarded his translation of Boethius in a different light than as an exercise to be performed for his private improvement. He, as well as Lydgate, mentions it with apparent complacence in the general enumeration of his works". Beside which, we are to consider that, in the first attempts to form and refine a language, translation was not, as now, regarded b moving, agitated, unquiet. c most fairest, double superlative. Legend of Good Women, ver. 425. XVIII. CHAP. as the province of inferior talents; but that on the contrary, the highest geniuses and great masters of intellect regarded themselves as well and nobly employed in the task, and believed that the proper foundation for a superstructure of letters in any language, was to naturalise and make free of that language, the venerable fathers of letters in remote ages and distant countries. CHAP. XIX. CHAUCER ENTERS INTO THE SERVICE OF EDWARD RESIDES NEAR THE PALACE AT WOODSTOCK.-CHARAC- XIX. 1358. HITHERTO Chaucer has appeared only CHAP. as a private individual, and the anecdotes of his life are scanty. We are left to reasoning and inference, as to the places of his education, and the functions to which he was destined. We are now to see him in a different light. From the thirtieth year of his age, if not sooner, to his death, he was a courtier, the counsellor of princes, employed in various negociations and embassies, and involved in the factions, contentions and intrigues of his time. |
