words, such as shoures, bathed, flour, swete, breeth, inspired,
corage; 'small' and 'tale' will be found rhyming (smale, tale),
'you' and 'now' (you, nou) 'down' and 'lion' (doun, le-oun'),
'cheer' and 'manner' (chere, manere). But if we are willing to
practise the pronunciation till no sense of quaintness remains,
the really rich harmonies of Chaucer's verse will fully emerge.*
Beyond the mere music of the verse, however, which not
all who read Chaucer to-day will have the patience to study out,
are other poetic virtues of easier reach and more potent appeal.
The stories themselves, which are perhaps in no case
Wide Range
original, but gathered from a variety of sources, bear
of Interest.
always the hall-mark of the poet's genius. They are
selected to accord with the characters of the narrators, are freely
remodelled for narrative effect, and are embellished with a
hundred touches of native grace and humor. Humor, fresh
and never failing, broad or delicate, is one of Chaucer's dis-
tinguishing qualities. It comes out chiefly in his perception of
the caprices and frailties of human nature, and there is scarcely
one of the band of pilgrims who does not receive some sly
or open thrust at his idiosyncrasies. For instance, after the
Man of Law has told his story, the Parson is called upon, but the
Shipman interrupts with a mild oath and offers to tell a tale that
"shall waken all this company." The jovial host himself only
'spak of mirthe amonges othere thinges Whan that we hadde
maad our rekeninges (paid our bills)." In the Nonne Preestes
Tale the gallant Chauntecleer says to his wife, "Mulier est hom-
inis confusio" ["Woman is man's torment"], and then the priest,
mindful that the women in the party do not know Latin, grac-
iously makes Chauntecleer translate the sentence: "Womman is
*The pronunciation of the first lines of the Prologue may be represented
approximately thus:

Whan that A-pril-le with hise shuu-res soh-te
The droghte of March hath pair-sed to the roh-te,
And bah-thed eve-ry vaine in swich li-kuur,

Of which vair-tü en-gen-dred is the fluur.

For a simple treatment of Chaucer's pronunciation see Sweet's Second Middle English Reader, or G. Hempl's Chaucer's Pronunciation.

mannes joye and al his blis." There are tales, like that just cited (the old fable of Chanticleer and the Fox), the whole purpose of which is humorous or satirical. On the other hand there are not a few whose pathos and tenderness is moving to the last degree. "High seriousness," it is true, Matthew Arnold would deny to Chaucer; and he did not have it in the sense in which Dante and Shakespeare have it. It is on this side that his limitations are most apparent. But court poet though he was, removed from close contact with the poverty and oppression and sorrows and virtues of the people, his eyes and heart were not shut to them. Read the Clerk's Tale of the village maiden, Griselda, for a picture of virtue fostered among the lowly.

"But hye god som tyme senden can
His grace in-to a litel oxes stalle."

True, God's grace in the end takes the inadequate form of a nobleman's graciousness-a marquis makes Griselda his wife; and it is also true that the fickle people cheer the marquis in the very height of his cruel trial of her wifely patience and love. But the final lesson of the wickedness of a headstrong will, and the beauty of virtue and humility, comes surely home.

It would be impossible to give even a summary of the remaining merits of Chaucer's poetry, from the verbal felicity of many a single phrase to the final revelation of what a medieval poet saw in life this side of the grave. One thing more, however, that is of particular interest to us who live after Burns and Wordsworth, will bear emphasis. This is the outdoor freshness that breathes through all his verse and keeps it perennially sweet. The little English daisy, white and red, is in one unforgettable passage* immortalized as the flower of all flowers, ever fair and fresh of hue; the moon shines down on the forsaken Ariadne as she climbs a rock in the early dawn to gaze after Theseus's vanishing barget; Cressida, with unquiet heart, goes to sleep at last Legend of Good Women, Prologue, 40 ff.

+ Same, VI., 309.

to the song of "a nightingale upon a cedar green. to myself a thousand times," says Lowell,

'Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,'

"I repeat

"and still at the thousandth time a breath of uncontaminate spring-tide seems to lift the hair upon my forehead." This is not the most essential thing in Chaucer, but it is a very vital thing, and whatsoever of his poetry the changing generations may like or mislike, this wholesomeness springing from the source of all human health will surely not fail of its appeal.

*Troilus and Criseyde, II., 918.

After Chaucer, mediæval England has little to offer to the student of literature that does not seem hopelessly tame. In intellectual and artistic sterility the fifteenth century might almost challenge comparison with the twelfth. Yet the record is not without a varied interest. Chaucer was never wholly forgotten; the undercurrent of popular verse, at no time stagnant, was then particularly strong; and the introduction of printing at the end of the century gave a powerful impulse to prose and was attended by a bright, if somewhat transient, gleam of poetry.

Among the immediate successors of Chaucer were two whose names are always recorded, though to the ordinary reader of

Thomas Hocelere, d. about 1450.

to-day they remain only names. One was Thomas Hoceleve, or Occleve, who has been already mentioned as having probably drawn the portrait of Chaucer to be seen in Hoccleve's manuscript of De Regimine Principum, and who was among the sincerest mourners of Chaucer's death. "O master dear, my master!" he exclaims. He was a facile writer of rather indiferent poems and versified tales, mostly of a personal, gossipy

John Lydgate, d. about 1450.

nature, but with a trend toward the didactic, especially in his later days of mingled regret for lost youth and repentance for the follies of it. The other was John Lydgate, a somewhat worldly Benedictine monk of Bury St. Edmunds, who was likewise a disciple and imitator of the unapproachable master. He composed a long Troye Book, inspired by the interest in that subject aroused by Chaucer's Troilus, and he frankly endeavored to continue the Canterbury Tales with a Storie of Thebes. His most popular book was the Falles of Princes. He was extremely versatile, writing at great length on all sorts of subjects, with the result that, in spite of his once considerable fame, many of his poems remain to this day unpublished.

Ballads.

After these men, the influence of Chaucer is hardly worth tracing until it won renewed strength with the introduction of printing. Meanwhile we may take note of several species of popular poetry that flourished in this otherwise obscure period. One is the ballad. Just how old our old ballads are, can seldom be determined. It is of course possible, as was noted in a previous chapter, that ballads of Robin Hood, for instance, appeared in the twelfth century, when that mythical outlaw was supposed to have lived. But we know that scarcely any ballads as we now have them can be dated earlier than the fifteenth century. Of course very few manuscripts or prints go back even that far. The earliest draft of Chevy Chace, which celebrates the battle of Otterburn (1388), may be very old. Robin Hood and the Monk is from a manuscript "of about 1450." A fragment of A Gest of Robyn Hode was printed possibly by 1489. The evidence merely points to the fifteenth century as a time of marked growth in the production of ballads, with the north of England and the Scottish border as their especial domain.

The virtue of these rude chants, whether local folk ballads, or the more ambitious productions sung by professional minstrels at merrymakings, or by town-pipers from door to door, lies in