Chaucer Part 6

--some merry thing of adventures; Your termes, your colours, and your figures, Keep them in store, till so be ye indite High style, as when that men to kinges write; Speak ye so plain at this time, we you pray, That we may understande that ye say.

And the "Clerk" follows the spirit of the injunction both by omitting, as impertinent, a proeme in which his original, Petrarch, gives a great deal of valuable, but not in its connexion interesting, geographical information, and by adding a facetious moral to what he calls the "unrestful matter" of his story. Even the "Squire," though, after the manner of young men, far more than his elders addicted to the grand style, and accordingly specially praised for his eloquence by the simple "Franklin," prefers to reduce to its plain meaning the courtly speech of the Knight of the Brazen Steed. In connexion with what was said above, it is observable that each of the "Tales" in subject suits its narrator. Not by chance is the all-but-Quixotic romance of "Palamon and Arcite," taken by Chaucer from Boccaccio's "Teseide,"

related by the "Knight"; not by chance does the "Clerk," following Petrarch's Latin version of a story related by the same author, tell the even more improbable, but, in the plainness of its moral, infinitely more fructuous tale of patient Griseldis. How well the "Second Nun" is fitted with a legend which carries us back a few centuries into the atmosphere of Hrosvitha's comedies, and suggests with the utmost verisimilitude the nature of a Nun's lucubrations on the subject of marriage. It is impossible to go through the whole list of the "Tales"; but all may be truly said to be in keeping with the characters and manners (often equally indifferent) of their tellers--down to that of the "Nun's Priest," which, brimful of humour as it is, has just the mild naughtiness about it which comes so drolly from a spiritual director in his worldlier hour.

Not a single one of these "Tales" can with any show of reason be ascribed to Chaucer's own invention. French literature--chiefly though not solely that of fabliaux--doubtless supplied the larger share of his materials; but that here also his debts to Italian literature, and to Boccaccio in particular, are considerable, seems hardly to admit of denial. But while Chaucer freely borrowed from foreign models, he had long pa.s.sed beyond the stage of translating without a.s.similating. It would be rash to a.s.sume that where he altered he invariably improved.

His was not the unerring eye which, like Shakspere's in his dramatic transfusions of Plutarch, missed no particle of the gold mingled with the baser metal, but rejected the dross with sovereign certainty. In dealing with Italian originals more especially, he sometimes altered for the worse, and sometimes for the better; but he was never a mere slavish translator. So in the "Knight's Tale" he may be held in some points to have deviated disadvantageously from his original; but, on the other hand, in the "Clerk's Tale," he inserts a pa.s.sage on the fidelity of women, and another on the instability of the mult.i.tude, besides adding a touch of nature irresistibly pathetic in the exclamation of the faithful wife, tried beyond her power of concealing the emotion within her:

O gracious G.o.d! how gentle and how kind Ye seemed by your speech and your visage The day that maked was our marriage.

So also in the "Man of Law's Tale," which is taken from the French, he increases the vivacity of the narrative by a considerable number of apostrophes in his own favourite manner, besides pleasing the general reader by divers general reflexions of his own inditing. Almost necessarily, the literary form and the self-consistency of his originals lose under such treatment. But his dramatic sense, on which perhaps his commentators have not always sufficiently dwelt, is rarely, if ever, at fault. Two ill.u.s.trations of this gift in Chaucer must suffice, which shall be chosen in two quarters where he has worked with materials of the most widely different kind. Many readers must have compared with Dante's original (in canto 33 of the "Inferno") Chaucer's version in the "Monk's Tale" of the story of Ugolino. Chaucer, while he necessarily omits the ghastly introduction, expands the pathetic picture of the sufferings of the father and his sons in their dungeon, and closes, far more briefly and effectively than Dante, with a touch of the most refined pathos:--

DE HUGILINO COMITE PISAE.

Of Hugolin of Pisa the langour There may no tongue telle for pity.

But little out of Pisa stands a tower, In whiche tower in prison put was he; And with him be his little children three.

The eldest scarcely five years was of age; Alas! fortune! it was great cruelty Such birds as these to put in such a cage.

Condemned he was to die in that prison, For Royer, which that bishop was of Pise, Had on him made a false suggestion, Through which the people gan on him arise, And put him in prison in such a wise, As ye have heard, and meat and drink he had So little that it hardly might suffice, And therewithal it was full poor and bad.

And on a day befell that in that hour When that his meat was wont to be y-brought, The gaoler shut the doors of that tower.

He heard it well, although he saw it not; And in his heart anon there fell a thought That they his death by hunger did devise.

"Alas!" quoth he, "alas! that I was wrought!"

Therewith the teares fell from his eyes

His youngest son, that three years was of age, Unto him said: "Father, why do ye weep?

When will the gaoler bring us our pottage?

Is there no morsel bread that ye do keep?

I am so hungry that I cannot sleep.

Now woulde G.o.d that I might sleep for ever!

Then should not hunger in my belly creep.

There is no thing save bread that I would liever."

Thus day by day this child began to cry, Till in his father's lap adown he lay, And saide: "Farewell, father, I must die!"

And kissed his father, and died the same day.

The woeful father saw that dead he lay, And his two arms for woe began to bite, And said: "Fortune, alas and well-away!

For all my woe I blame thy treacherous spite."

His children weened that it for hunger was, That he his arms gnawed, and not for woe.

And saide: "Father, do not so, alas!

But rather eat the flesh upon us two.

Our flesh thou gavest us, our flesh thou take us fro, And eat enough." Right thus they to him cried; And after that, within a day or two, They laid them in his lap adown and died.

The father in despair likewise died of hunger; and such was the end of the mighty Earl of Pisa, whose tragedy whosoever desires to hear at greater length may read it as told by the great poet of Italy hight Dante.

The other instance is that of the "Pardoner's Tale," which would appear to have been based on a fabliau now lost, though the substance of it is preserved in an Italian novel, and in one or two other versions. For the purpose of noticing how Chaucer arranges as well as tells a story, the following attempt at a condensed prose rendering of his narrative may be acceptable:--

Once upon a time in Flanders there was a company of young men, who gave themselves up to every kind of dissipation and debauchery--haunting the taverns where dancing and dicing continues day and night, eating and drinking, and serving the devil in his own temple by their outrageous life of luxury. It was horrible to hear their oaths, how they tore to pieces our blessed Lord's body, as if they thought the Jews had not rent Him enough; and each laughed at the sin of the others, and all were alike immersed in gluttony and wantonness.

And so one morning it befel that three of these rioters were sitting over their drink in a tavern, long before the bell had rung for nine o'clock prayers. And as they sat, they heard a bell clinking before a corpse that was being carried to the grave. So one of them bade his servant-lad go and ask what was the name of the dead man; but the boy said that he knew it already, and that it was the name of an old companion of his master's. As he had been sitting drunk on a bench, there had come a privy thief, whom men called Death, and who slew all the people in this country; and he had smitten the drunken man's heart in two with his spear, and had then gone on his way without any more words. This Death had slain a thousand during the present pestilence; and the boy thought it worth warning his master to beware of such an adversary, and to be ready to meet him at any time. "So my mother taught me; I say no more." "Marry," said the keeper of the tavern; "the child tells the truth: this Death has slain all the inhabitants of a great village not far from here; I think that there must be the place where he dwells." Then the rioter swore with some of his big oaths that he at least was not afraid of this Death, and that he would seek him out wherever he dwelt. And at his instance his two boon-companions joined with him in a vow that before nightfall they would slay the false traitor Death, who was the slayer of so many; and the vow they swore was one of closest fellows.h.i.+p between them--to live and die for one another as if they had been brethren born. And so they went forth in their drunken fury towards the village of which the taverner had spoken, with terrible execrations on their lips that "Death should be dead, if they might catch him."

They had not gone quite half a mile when at a stile between two fields they came upon a poor old man, who meekly greeted them with a "G.o.d save you, sirs." But the proudest of the three rioters answered him roughly, asking him why he kept himself all wrapped up except his face, and how so old a fellow as he had managed to keep alive so long? And the old man looked him straight in the face and replied, "Because in no town or village, though I journey as far as the Indies, can I find a man willing to exchange his youth for my age; and therefore I must keep it so long as G.o.d wills it so. Death, alas! will not have my life, and so I wander about like a restless fugitive, and early and late I knock on the ground, which is my mother's gate, with my staff, and say, 'Dear mother, let me in! behold how I waste away! Alas! when shall my bones be at rest? Mother, gladly will I give you my chest containing all my worldly gear in return for a shroud to wrap me in.' But she refuses me that grace, and that is why my face is pale and withered. But you, sirs, are uncourteous to speak rudely to an inoffensive old man, when Holy Writ bids you reverence grey hairs. Therefore, never again give offence to an old man, if you wish men to be courteous to you in your age, should you live so long. And so G.o.d be with you: I must go whither I have to go." But the second rioter prevented him, and swore he should not depart so lightly. "Thou spakest just now of that traitor Death, who slays all our friends in this country. As thou art his spy, hear me swear that, unless thou tellest where he is, thou shalt die; for thou art in his plot to slay us young men, thou false thief!" Then the old man told them that if they were so desirous of finding Death, they had but to turn up a winding path to which he pointed, and there they would find him they sought in a grove under an oak-tree, where the old man had just left him; "he will not try to hide himself for all your boasting. And so may G.o.d the Redeemer save you and amend you!"

And when he had spoken, all the three rioters ran till they came to the tree. But what they found there was a treasure of golden florins--nearly seven bushels of them as they thought. Then they no longer sought after Death, but sat down all three by the s.h.i.+ning gold.

And the youngest of them spoke first, and declared that Fortune had given this treasure to them, so that they might spend the rest of their lives in mirth and jollity. The question was how to take this money--which clearly belonged to some one else--safely to the house of one of the three companions. It must be done by night; so let them draw lots, and let him on whom the lot fell run to the town to fetch bread and wine, while the other two guarded the treasure carefully till the night came, when they might agree whither to transport it.

The lot fell on the youngest, who forthwith went his way to the town.

Then one of those who remained with the treasure said to the other: "Thou knowest well that thou art my sworn brother, and I will tell thee something to thy advantage. Our companion is gone, and here is a great quant.i.ty of gold to be divided among us three. But say, if I could manage so that the gold is divided between us two, should I not do thee a friend's turn?" And when the other failed to understand him, he made him promise secrecy and disclosed his plan. "Two are stronger than one. When he sits down, arise as if thou wouldest sport with him; and while thou art struggling with him as in play, I will rive him through both his sides; and look thou do the same with thy dagger. After which, my dear friend, we will divide all the gold between you and me, and then we may satisfy all our desires and play at dice to our hearts'

content."

Meanwhile the youngest rioter, as he went up to the town, revolved in his heart the beauty of the bright new florins, and said unto himself: "If only I could have all this gold to myself alone, there is no man on earth who would live so merrily as I." And at last the Devil put it into his relentless heart to buy poison, in order with it to kill his two companions. And straightway he went on into the town to an apothecary, and besought him to sell him some poison for destroying some rats which infested his house and a polecat which, he said, had made away with his capons. And the apothecary said: "Thou shalt have something of which (so may G.o.d save my soul!) no creature in all the world could swallow a single grain without losing his life thereby--and that in less time than thou wouldest take to walk a mile in." So the miscreant shut up this poison in a box, and then he went into the next street and borrowed three large bottles, into two of which he poured his poison, while the third he kept clean to hold drink for himself; for he meant to work hard all the night to carry away the gold. So he filled his three bottles with wine, and then went back to his companions under the tree.

What need to make a long discourse of what followed? As they had plotted their comrade's death, so they slew him, and that at once. And when they had done this, the one who had counselled the deed said, "Now let us sit and drink and make merry, and then we will bury his body."

And it happened to him by chance to take one of the bottles which contained the poison; and he drank, and gave drink of it to his fellow; and thus they both speedily died.

The plot of this story is, as observed, not Chaucer's. But how carefully, how artistically the narrative is elaborated, incident by incident, and point by point! How well every effort is prepared, and how well every turn of the story is explained! Nothing is superfluous, but everything is arranged with care, down to the circ.u.mstances of the bottles being bought, for safety's sake, in the next street to the apothecary's, and of two out of three bottles being filled with poison, which is at once a proceeding natural in itself, and increases the chances against the two rioters when they are left to choose for themselves. This it is to be a good story-teller. But of a different order is the change introduced by Chaucer into his original, where the old hermit--who, of course, is Death himself--is fleeing from Death.

Chaucer's Old Man is SEEKING Death, but seeking him in vain--like the Wandering Jew of the legend. This it is to be a poet.

Of course it is always necessary to be cautious before a.s.serting any apparent addition of Chaucer's to be his own invention. Thus, in the "Merchant's Tale," the very naughty plot of which is anything but original, it is impossible to say whether such is the case with the humorous compet.i.tion of advice between Justinus and Placebo, ("Placebo"

seems to have been a current term to express the character or the ways of "the too deferential man." "Flatterers be the Devil's chaplains, that sing aye Placebo."--"Parson's Tale."), or with the fantastic machinery in which Pluto and Proserpine antic.i.p.ate the part played by Oberon and t.i.tania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." On the other hand, Chaucer is capable of using goods manifestly borrowed or stolen for a purpose never intended in their original employment. Puck himself must have guided the audacious hand which could turn over the leaves of so respected a Father of the Church as St. Jerome, in order to derive from his treatise "On Perpetual Virginity" materials for the discourse on matrimony delivered, with ill.u.s.trations essentially her own, by the "Wife of Bath."

Two only among these "Tales" are in prose--a vehicle of expression, on the whole, strange to the polite literature of the pre-Renascence ages--but not both for the same reason. The first of these "Tales" is told by the poet himself, after a stop has been unceremoniously put upon his recital of the "Ballad of Sir Thopas" by the Host. The ballad itself is a fragment of straightforward burlesque, which shows that in both the manner and the metre (Dunbar's burlesque ballad of "Sir Thomas Norray" is in the same stanza) of ancient romances, literary criticism could even in Chaucer's days find its opportunities for satire, though it is going rather far to see in "Sir Thopas" a predecessor of "Don Quixote." The "Tale of Meliboeus" is probably an English version of a French translation of Albert of Brescia's famous "Book of Consolation and Counsel," which comprehends in a slight narrative framework a long discussion between the unfortunate Meliboeus, whom the wrongs and sufferings inflicted upon him and his have brought to the verge of despair, and his wise helpmate, Dame Prudence. By means of a long argumentation propped up by quotations (not invariably a.s.signed with conscientious accuracy to their actual source) from "The Book," Seneca, "Tullius," and other authors, she at last persuades him not only to reconcile himself to his enemies, but to forgive them, even as he hopes to be forgiven. And thus the Tale well bears out the truth impressed upon Meliboeus by the following ingeniously combined quotation:--

And there said once a clerk in two verses: What is better than gold?

Jasper. And what is better than jasper? Wisdom. And what is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than woman? No thing.

Certainly, Chaucer gave proof of consummate tact and taste, as well as of an unaffected personal modesty, in a.s.signing to himself as one of the company of pilgrims, instead of a tale bringing him into compet.i.tion with the creatures of his own invention, after his mocking ballad has served its turn, nothing more ambitious than a version of a popular discourse--half narrative, half homily--in prose. But a question of far greater difficulty and moment arises with regard to the other prose piece included among the "Canterbury Tales." Of these the so-called "Parson's Tale" is the last in order of succession. Is it to be looked upon as an integral part of the collection; and, if so, what general and what personal significance should be attached to it?

As it stands, the long tractate or sermon (partly adapted from a popular French religious manual), which bears the name of the "Parson's Tale," is, if not unfinished, at least internally incomplete. It lacks symmetry, and fails entirely to make good the argument or scheme of divisions with which the sermon begins, as conscientiously as one of Barrow's. Accordingly, an attempt has been made to show that what we have is something different from the "meditation" which Chaucer originally put into his "Parson's" mouth. But, while we may stand in respectful awe of the German daring which, whether the matter in hand be a few pages of Chaucer, a Book of Homer, or a chapter of the Old Testament, is fully prepared to show which parts of each are mutilated, which interpolated, and which transposed, we may safely content ourselves, in the present instance, with considering the preliminary question. A priori, is there sufficient reason for supposing any transpositions, interpolations, and mutilations to have been introduced into the "Parson's Tale"? The question is full of interest; for while, on the one hand, the character of the "Parson" in the "Prologue" has been frequently interpreted as evidence of sympathy on Chaucer's part with Wycliffism, on the other hand, the "Parson's Tale," in its extant form, goes far to disprove the supposition that its author was a Wycliffite.

This, then, seems the appropriate place for briefly reviewing the vexed question--WAS CHAUCER A WYCLIFFITE? Apart from the character of the "Parson" and from the "Parson's Tale," what is the nature of our evidence on the subject? In the first place, nothing could be clearer than that Chaucer was a very free-spoken critic of the life of the clergy--more especially of the Regular clergy,--of his times. In this character he comes before us from his translation of the "Roman de la Rose" to the "Parson's Tale" itself, where he inveighs with significant earnestness against self indulgence on the part of those who are Religious, or have "entered into Orders, as sub-deacon, or deacon, or priest, or hospitallers." In the "Canterbury Tales," above all, his attacks upon the Friars run nearly the whole gamut of satire, stopping short perhaps before the note of high moral indignation. Moreover, as has been seen, his long connexion with John of Gaunt is a well-established fact; and it has thence been concluded that Chaucer fully shared the opinions and tendencies represented by his patron. In the supposition that Chaucer approved of the countenance for a long time shown by John of Gaunt to Wyclif there is nothing improbable; neither, however, is there anything improbable in this other supposition, that, when the Duke of Lancaster openly washed his hands of the heretical tenets to the utterance of which Wyclif had advanced, Chaucer, together with the large majority of Englishmen, held with the politic duke rather than with the still unflinching Reformer. So long as Wyclif's movement consisted only of an opposition to ecclesiastical pretensions on the one hand, and of an attempt to revive religious sentiment on the other, half the country or more was Wycliffite, and Chaucer no doubt with the rest. But it would require positive evidence to justify the belief that from this feeling Chaucer ever pa.s.sed to sympathy with LOLLARDRY, in the vague but sufficiently intelligible sense attaching to that term in the latter part of Richard the Second's reign. Richard II himself, whose patronage of Chaucer is certain, in the end attempted rigorously to suppress Lollardry; and Henry IV, the politic John of Gaunt's yet more politic son, to whom Chaucer owed the prosperity enjoyed by him in the last year of his life, became a persecutor almost as soon as he became a king.

Though, then, from the whole tone of his mind, Chaucer could not but sympathise with the opponents of ecclesiastical domination--though, as a man of free and critical spirit, and of an inborn ability for penetrating beneath the surface, he could not but find subjects for endless blame and satire in the members of those Mendicant Orders in whom his chief patron's academical ally had recognised the most formidable obstacles to the spread of pure religion--yet all this would not justify us in regarding him as personally a Wycliffite. Indeed, we might as well at once borrow the phraseology of a recent respectable critic, and set down Dan Chaucer as a Puritan! The policy of his patron tallied with the view which a fresh practical mind such as Chaucer's would naturally be disposed to take of the influence of monks and friars, or at least of those monks and friars whose vices and foibles were specially prominent in his eyes. There are various reasons why men oppose established inst.i.tutions in the season of their decay; but a fourteenth century satirist of the monks, or even of the clergy at large, was not necessarily a Lollard, any more than a nineteenth century objector to doctors' drugs is necessarily a h.o.m.oeopathist.

But, it is argued by some, Chaucer has not only a.s.sailed the false; he has likewise extolled the true. He has painted both sides of the contrast. On the one side are the Monk, the Friar, and the rest of their fellows; on the other is the "Poor Parson of a town"--a portrait, if not of Wyclif himself, at all events of a Wycliffite priest; and in the "Tale" or sermon put in the Parson's mouth are recognisable beneath the acc.u.mulations of interested editors some of the characteristic marks of Wycliffism. Who is not acquainted with the exquisite portrait in question?--

A good man was there of religion, And was a poore Parson of a town.

But rich he was of holy thought and work.

He was also a learned man, a clerk That Christes Gospel truly woulde preach; And his paris.h.i.+oners devoutly teach.

Benign he was, and wondrous diligent, And in adversity full patient.

And such he was y-proved ofte sithes.

Full loth he was to curse men for his t.i.thes; But rather would he give, without doubt, Unto his poor paris.h.i.+oners about Of his off'ring and eke of his substance.

He could in little wealth have suffisance.

Wide was his parish, houses far asunder, Yet failed he not for either rain or thunder In sickness nor mischance to visit all The furthest in his parish, great and small, Upon his feet, and in his hand a staff.

This n.o.ble ensample to his sheep he gave, That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught Out of the Gospel he those wordes caught, And this figure he added eke thereto, That "if gold ruste, what shall iron do?"

For if a priest be foul, on whom we trust, No wonder is it if a layman rust; And shame it is, if that a priest take keep, A foul shepherd to see and a clean sheep; Well ought a priest ensample for to give By his cleanness, how that his sheep should live.

He put not out his benefice on hire, And left his sheep enc.u.mbered in the mire, And ran to London unto Sainte Paul's, To seek himself a chantery for souls, Or maintenance with a brotherhood to hold; But dwelt at home, and kepte well his fold, So that the wolf ne'er made it to miscarry; He was a shepherd and no mercenary.

And though he holy were, and virtuous, He was to sinful man not despitous, And of his speech nor difficult nor digne, But in his teaching discreet and benign.

For to draw folk to heaven by fairness, By good ensample, this was his business: But were there any person obstinate, What so he were, of high or low estate, Him would he sharply snub at once. Than this A better priest, I trow, there nowhere is.

He waited for no pomp and reverence, Nor made himself a spiced conscience; But Christes lore and His Apostles' twelve He taught, but first he followed it himself.