It is also alleged that during his imprisonment in the Tower, he consoled himself by composing one of his most celebrated prose works, "The Testament of Love." This fact, with most others relating to that period, is based upon passages in the Testament of Love, and must be received with many grains of allowance. Upon a still more uncertain authority, some of his biographers build a story of the details of his imprisonment; and forming their estimate of the doubtful or unknown parts of his history, from examples of modern political baseness, they hint rather than assert that he was released from confinement upon his making a confession to the court impeaching his associates; the truth of which confession, it is also said, he offered to maintain, according to the custom of that time, by personal combat. He was moved to this treachery, says the same veritable rumor, by the promise of pardon coupled with a poignant recollection of the ingratitude of his friends. And upon this gossip Hazlitt clutched, choosing to lend his name to sanction a lie, rather than to employ his acuteness in its dispersion; and unwilling to lose so tempting an opportunity for the display of one of his rounded and apothegmatic sentences: says he, "Chaucer was imprisoned, and made his peace with government, as it is said, by a discovery of his associates. Fortitude does not appear at any time to have been the distinguishing virtue of poets." This reflection is itself a falsity, unless Hazlitt mentally reserved a long list of exceptions, in which must have appeared the illustrious names of Dante and Homer, of Gower and Douglas, of Sidney and Shakspeare, of Surrey, Herrick and Milton; men whose fortitude was as unwavering as their courage was undaunted. Over this period of Chaucer's life, there undoubtedly hangs a gloom which cannot be lifted; nevertheless we indignantly reject as an outrage upon our credibility, a story unadorned by the attributes of ingenuity or truthfulness, and unsupported by the most shadowy evidence. The character of the man for integrity; his writings which breathe throughout a chivalrous and lofty nature; his chosen companionship by Wickliffe and Gower, who were both undaunted and even stubborn champions of what they conceived to be the truth; and the fact that he retained the uninterrupted friendship of John of Gaunt, as well as the favor of the King, emphatically disprove the fiction. His circumstances, which had been severely straitened by the difficulties above alluded to, and by the approaching infirmities of age, were made more comfortable, at the accession of the son of his patron and brother-in-law to the throne, with the title of Henry the Fourth. But, in the meantime, we cannot disguise the fact, Chaucer tasted the commingled and bitter waters of penury and age; and he was obliged to seek the protection of the King, who tenderly guarded the venerable poet and philosopher, and extended over his property and tenants his especial protection. At the last, however, these murky clouds fled away, and fortune once more smiled upon our poet. His pensions were doubled, and comfort, if not luxurious abundance, blessed the last days of the noble old man. He shortly after visited London to secure or receive his pensions; but the fatigue incident upon an attendance at court at his advanced age, overcame him, and he fell sick at a tenement in the garden of the "Chapel of the Blessed Mary, of Westminster," which he had temporarily rented. While lying upon his death bed he composed the following manly ballad, which has all the measured and stately cadence of a dirge: "Fly from the prease' and dwell with soth fastnesse3 For hoarding hath hate, and climbing tikelnesse, Sir H. Nicolas, vol. i., pp. 52, 53. 2 Crowd or press. 3 Truth. 4 Make sufficient, or be content with. Savour no more than thee behove shall Pain thou not each crooked to redress That thee is sent, receive in buxomnesse,' He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and nearly a century and a half after his decease, a splendid tomb was reared over his remains by a gifted admirer of his writings. It still forms a conspicuous object in Poet's Corner. In addition to what we have above collected, it is said, that in his youth, while studying at the Inner Temple, "Geoffry Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleetstreet;" that at the age of thirty, being of a fair and beautiful complexion, his lips red and full, "his size of a just medium, and his air polished and graceful," he was married to Philippa Roet, 3 Judge. There is no dread or doubt. 4 Obedience or contentment. Floyd's Biographia. 2 An earthen pot or cup. the daughter of a "Hainault Knight; and that later in life he became corpulent, and contracted a habit of gazing on the ground. That his marriage was a happy one, we are assured by the following enthusiastic exclamation of his, which occurs in his latest production: "Oh! who could tell, but he had wedded be, The joye, the ese, and the prosperitee That is betwix an hosband and his wife?"1 Or this one, which is still more satisfactory. "A wif! ah Saint Mary, benedicite, Or elles pray to God him for to send It is also recorded of the poet, that he was more " facetious in 1 Frankelein's Tale. 3 Not a bit. 2 Work. 4 Merchant's Tale. his tales than in his conversation, so much so that the Countess of Pembroke used to rally him, by saying that his silence was more agreeable to her than his conversation."1 That he was the possessor of great and varied learning, we know from the graceful profusion with which it is strewn ever his numerous productions; and also that his erudition was elegant as well as profound, for he possessed an intimate knowledge of the Greek, Latin, and Italian classics, in an age when few aspired to their passing acquaintance. His treatise upon the Astrolabe, moreover, was a chosen recreation from the storms and persecutions of life; and his translation of Boethius was the more serious effort of less mature years. He was passionately fond of reading, as we may gather from his Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women;" in which he shows that his love of reading was subservient only to his love of Nature, especially as exhibited by rural sights and sounds. He says: "And as for me, though I can but lite2 Save certainly when that the month of May 1 D'Israeli who also mentions the curious fact, that in the British Museum is preserved a black stone, on which nature has sketched a resemblance of the portrait of Chaucer.-Cur. Literature. 2 Know but little. |