CHAUCER, GEOFFREY, the Morning Star of En glish poetry, was born in London in 1328. His descent appears, from the name, to have been Norman ; and his father, though variously described, was most probably a merchant. At what university he studied, is a disputed point which even Mr Tyrwhitt has left unsettled. Leland and Warton place him at Oxford, without adducing any proof. His signature of Philoginet of Cambridge, affixed to his first poem, The Court of Love, is brought by other biographers as direct testimony that he studied at the other university ; but the signature, it should be remembered, is fictitious in point of name, and might be equally so in point of date.
Leland, who is so often inaccurate, tells us that he studied in France. Mr Godwin undertakes to prove this doubtful part of his history, from the circumstance of a Parisian education being so commonly given to young Englishmen in those days, and from Chaucer's fluently speaking French. The reader will admit these proofs at his own discretion. The presumption of Chaucer's having studied at the Temple, and the story of his having been fined whilst a student there, for thrashing a friar in Fleet-street, rest also on the weakest authority.
The precise time at which he attracted the notice of Edward the Third, and of his munificent patron John of Gaunt, is not ascertained, but he certainly enjoyLd that patronage bi fore his thirty-first year, as appears from the date of his poem, entitled, The Dream, an allegory alluding to the nuptials of John of Gaunt with Blanche would do honour to the matured imagination of the greatest genius. The chorus in Godsuynne, beginning, "When Freedom drcst in bloodstained vest— To many a knight her war-song sung," tic.
heiress of Lancaster. The same poem contains an allusion to the poet's own tender attachment to the lady whom he afterwards married. This was a daughter of Payne de Rouct, king at arms for the province of Guienne. She was maid of honour to Philippa, Queen of Edward III. and youngest sister to Catharine do Rouet, who was first the mistress, and afterwards the wife of John of Gaunt, and by her marriage with that prince, an ancestor of the royal family of England. The supposition of his having been early patronized at the court of Edward, is countenanced by many passages in his poems, describing a residence, which coincides with that which tradition has ascribed to him at the royal abode of Woodstock, in the lodge near the park gate. There is some reason to presume that lie accompanied his warlike monarch in the invasion of France in 1359, in a military character. From the record of his evidence in a military court, discovered by one of his latest biographers, (Godwin,) we find that he gave evidence to a fact which he had witnessed in France in the capacity of a soldier. The expedition of 1359, however, which terminated in the peace of Bretigni, gave him little op portunity of seeing service, and he certainly never resum ed the profession of arms.
In his thirty-ninth year he received from Edward the Third a pension of twenty marks per annum, a sum pro bably equal in effective value to two or three hundred pounds of modern money. In the patent for this annui ty, he is styled by the king Valettus .Koster. Valettus, Mr Tyrwhitt thinks, is a contraction of vassalettus, the diminutive of vassallus The name was given, though not as a badge of service, to young men of the highest distinction before they were knighted. Chaucer, howe ver, at the date of that pension, was not young, being thirty•nine years of age. How leng he had served the king in that or in any other station, and what particular merits were rewarded by this royal bounty, arc points equally unknown. Chaucer, at the time of receiving his first pension, must have been thirty-nine. He did not acquire the rank of scutifer or esquire till five years af ter, when he was appointed the king's envoy to Genoa. So respectable an appointment seems to imply, that he had established a personal and political character of some importance ; but the particular objects of his mission, it has puzzled all his biographers to discover. :Mr God win, whose life of the poet is a series of suppositions, supposes that it related to commercial objects, and is decidedly of opinion that he visited the northern parts of Italy, and had a conference with Penwell. But the rea lity of this interview, pleasing as it is to the imagination, is more than doubtful. it is said to be implied in a pas sage of one of the Canterbury Tales, in which the speak er says, that he learned his story from Petrarch, a learn ed clerk of Padua. It should be noticed, in the first place, that Chaucer, making one of his pilgrims deduce his talc from Petrarrh, does not amount to a declaration from himself as author, that he derived it from that source. 'Vie story of iginally belongs to Boccaccio, and was only translated into Latin by Petrarch, and, like the plan of the Canterbury Tales, is in all probability bor rowed from the same author. On the other hand, the accurate Tyrwhitt, though he doubts whether Chaucer ever went upon Lis mission, yet admits, that, supposing lion to have been at Genoa, it is to be presumed that he would have seen the first literary character of the age ; and it is remarkable that the time of this embassy in i 1373, is the precise time at which he could have learned this story of Petrarch at Padua. Neither Petrarch nor
his biographers, however, have mentioned the fact, nor did the author of Memoires flour la Vie de Petrarque ever fulfil his promise of proving the interview. His genius as a poet, and, we may suppose from the style of his writings, his amenity as a courtier, also kept him in prosperity during the whole of Edward the Third's reign, and indeed during the whole period of John of Gaunt's influence. In 1374, the year after his appointment as envoy, he was presented by the crown with an allowance of a pitcher of wine daily, a grant which was commuted during the succeeding reign to an annuity of twenty marks. He was appointed in the same year to the comp. trollership of the customs of wool and skins in the port of London. In the next year he received 1041. for the wardship of Sir Edward Staplcgatc's heir ; and in the following year, some forfeited wool to the value of 1. 71 : 4 : 6. In the last year of Edward's reign, he was sent with Sir Guichard Dangle. His situation in the middle part of his life must thus have been opulent and honourable. It was so opulent, he says himself in his Testament of Love, as to enable him to maintain a plentiful hospitali ty. But the picture of his fortune was reversed during a considerable part of the reign of Edward's successor. He was not, it is true, immediately deprived of his comp trollership on the accession of Richard the Second ; his pension was renewed to him, and a grant of money made to him in lieu of his daily pitcher of wine. But these fa vours were obtained by the influence of John of Gaunt, an influence which lasted but during a few years under the new king. We find him, however, in 1382, receiv ing a grant of comptrollership of small customs in the port of London ; with the additional favour, that the new office might be performed by deputy. Neither is it true that he was obliged to receive a royal protection from his creditors within two years of Richard's acces sion. This error in former biographers, is one of the few things which Mr Godwin proves in his voluminous bio graphy. He was certainly attached, as his patron was, (for a time,) to the opinions of the reformers, which be came unpopular at court, under Richard. The immedi ate cause of our poet's misfortunes seems to have been his interfering in a dispute between the court and the ci ty of London, in which Chaucer embraced the civic.side. This came to a violent crisis in 1384. John of North ampton, a popular candidate for the mayoralty of Lon don, was supposed to be attached to the tenets of Wick liffe. Richard and his court, who detested the London ers, were resolved that they should have a mayor of a different description. They succeeded in forcing upon the city another candidate, Sir Nicholas Brembar, and the contest subsided, after some resistance on the part of the popular leaders, which was dignified with the name of a rebellion, in the death of some of them, and the im prisonment of John of Northampton. There is a mys tery over this court as it is connected with Chaucer's life ; for though his writings testify that his subsequent exile and misfortunes arose from it, yet we find him, in 1385, permitted to execute his office by deputy, at a time when there is reason to believe that he was in exile on account of his politics. It is certain, however, that be was arrested and committed to the Tower on his return to England. When obliged to fly, he escaped first to ainault, then to France, and finally to Zealand. While in Zealand, he maintained some of his countrymen who had fled thither on the same account, a liberality which soon exhausted his money. In the mean time, the putt zans of his cause whom he left at home, contrived to snake their peace, not only without endeavouring to pro cure him a pardon, but without aiding him in his pover ty abroad. On his return home, he suffered a tempora ry confinement, and in 1386 he was deprived of his two comptrollerships. The coincidence of this date with that of the Duke of Glocester's usurpation of power, Mild lead us to suppose that Glocester was personally more hostile to the poet than the king. himself was, whose asperity was probably softened b) the good offices of his queen, Anne of Bohemia, the friend of Chaucer, and the subject of his warmest panegyric. In 1388, he was obliged to dispose of his two pensions, which were all the resources left to him by his persecutors. From 1386 to 1389, Richard the Second had been stript of his au thority. The latter year was propitious to Chaucer. Before its conclusion, John of Gaunt, now Duke of Lan easter, who afterwards married his sister-in-law, return ed from Spain, and from that date he had a more steady protector. Before Lancaster's arrival, he had procured his liberation from prison, on terms which have been al leged to be disgraceful to his memory. He made a con fession of his coadjutors in what was called Northamp ton's conspiracy. But in naming them, he implicated no innocent person ; and it is evident that they had be haved towards him in the most unprincipled manner.