In the same year, 1389, he was appointed to be clerk of the works at Westminster, and in the year following to the same office at Westminster. His salary amount ed to 361. 10.s. per annum, a sum (considering the price of provisions in those days,) probably equal in effect to seven hundred pounds of our present palter currency. His resignation of this office brings us to the sixty-third year of the poet's life. lie then retired most probably to Woodstock, and devoted the repose and evening of his life to writing his immortal Canterbury Tales, among those beautiful scenes which had inspired his youthful genius. In 1394, he obtained a pension for life of 201. One of the most curious particulars in the concluding part of his life is, the patent of protection granted to him by Richard the Second, in the year 1398, which has been generally supposed to be a protection against his creditors. But this protection proves, upon examina tion, to contain no mention or the poet's debts or credi tors ; and though it is difficult to suppose what other sort of protection a man of peaceable pursuits could re quire, yet it is one of the many problems in his history which remain yet to be solved. The record shows, how ever, that Chaucer, though now years of age, had once more embarked in public business, although the nature of his employment is not specified. In the autumn of the same year, he received a grant of a year ly ton of wine, we may suppose in lieu of the daily pitch er which had been stopped during his misfortunes. The place appointed for this delivery scents to imply. that his residence was then in London.
The succeeding year, 1:399, was marked by the depo sition of Richard the Second, and the ascension of Bo lingbroke, the son of his patron John of Gaunt, to the English throne. It is creditable to the memory of Hen ry IV., although he abandoned so many of his father's friends, that he did not suffer the poetical ornament of the age to be depressed by the revolution. Chaucer's grants of the annuity and pipe ()I wine w t i e i t new ed is the first year of the new it ign, and all addtional pt n. sion of forty marks a year was conferred on hint. Bill he did not live long to enjoy them. 11«lied, at.( ordin to the inscription on his tomb-stohe, in the beginning r, the second ) ear of Item.). I V., at Londom on the 25th of October, 1400, and was interred iu r A'tbe). south-cross aisle. The monunn•nt to Lis nit 'luny tv erected above a century and a half after his decease, by Nicholas Brigham, a gentleman of Oxford, at.d a warm admirer of his poetry. It stands at the not th end of a magnificent recess, formed by four obtuse foliaged and is a plain altar, with three quatrefoils and the saute number of shields. The inscription and fiwi•e: on the hack are almost obliterated.
Chaucer, it will be baldly necessary to inform any of our leaders, Found the poetry of England (if the metri cal romances and rhyming chronicles of the Norman school deserve that name) in the rudest state. Of the measures of verse which had been established by his predecessors, he deigned only to adopt one, the eight syl lable measure, and another still shorter and more impel feet ; but the latter he introduces in his Canterbury Tales only as a specimen of the common minstrel in derision. l Ie introduced the majestic ten syllable iam bic into our language, which, although it may be some times found among the hobbling and indetermined mea sure of older versifiers, evidently occurs only by acci dent. lie found, however, the numbers of the language more defective than its stores of fancy and fiction. Fa ble and imaginary characters had been already engrafted on English minstrelsy, through the joint influence of the troubadours, and of the expansion of intercourse among nations, among whom England had taken a distinguish ed lead since the period of the first Richard. This in creasing intercourse and diffusion of taste and fancy, as well as knowledge, throughout Europe, is to be remark ed in the influence w hich the Italian poets possessed up on Chaucer's character as a poet, both as it tuned his versification and enriched him with subjects.
Chaucer's earliest production, The Court of Love, was written at eighteen years of age. There yet existed, as we have already noticed, no form of versification in Eng lish that could direct his car in the stately and regular measure of the prolonged iambic.' It was reserved for the youthful hand of our poet first to array them in Eng lish, and to ornament them with that inverted form of rhyme which was borrowed from the French and Ita lians. The Court of Love scents to have derived its name from a custom peculiar to the days of early chi valry, .t ix. courts or pa•liamems of love. These institu tions, whimsical as they appear to a serious age, decided questions of gallantry and attachment that were propos ed to them, in the same manner as modern academies pretend to determine questions of literature. The obe dience that was paid to them was voluntary, the result of public respect fur the arbiters ; but the questions argued before them were commonly fanciful. Chaucer's poem reminds us of the institution. It is an allegorical dream,
in which the poet supposes himself summoned by Met curs to visit the court of love at Nount Citheron, where he meets with a number of votaries, is introduced to a mistress, and sworn to observe the twenty statutes of the god. These include fidelity to his mistress, implicit be lief in her virtues, promptitude to fight, to swear either truth or falsehood for her honour, to say that the crow is white if she says so, and to do the duties of love seven times in a night. The poet objects to this statute alone, and pleads his inability. Among the attendants at the court arc placed, with a bold impropriety, but evidently for the sake of contrast, a crowd of monks and friars, and those who lament their obligation to celibacy from other causes. The poet does not leave the court till he forms an assignation with his mistress, and with the ce lebration of that meeting the poem concludes, " The season is May," and the birds sing a service in concert to the god of love, which, strange to say, is from the Ro man Catholic ritual. The nightingale sings, Domine labia ; the possinjay, Cali enarrant ; and the turtle dove, Tu autem. Tue materials of the piece arc meagre, ex travagant, and ill united. We see, however, in the lo ver's refusal to the hardest statute of love, and in the de plorable picture of the monks, some promise of the arch and salacious humour which sports so indulgently in the Canterbury Tales. We have been thus particular in noticing the earliest production of our earliest poet.* His next production, in order of time, is the story of Troilus and Cresseide, in which Chaucer has claims on our curiosity were it only for being the precursor of Shakspearc and Dryden, in telling, though differently, an interesting talc. It is, however, the best of Chau cer's productions next to the Canterbury Tales, and was for ages the favourite of the English nation.t Troilus, one of the sons of Priam, is supposed, during the siege of Troy, to fall in love with a beautiful widow,t Cres seide, whose father, the poet, in defiance of antique sto ry, makes a Trojan, and supposes to have deserted from his native city to the camp of the Greeks. The Trojan prince secs her in the temple of Minerva, and is irreco verably smitten with her appearance, naturally lovely, but made more interesting by the grief for her father's desertion. The uncle of Cresseide is the bosom-friend of Troilus ; he visits him, finds him in despair, and, sa crificing duty to friendship, obtains, by a long train of artifices, the happiness of Troilus from the yielding vir tue of Cresseide. Calchas, however, sends for his daugh ter from Troy ; she is exchanged for a Greek prisoner ; after bidding a secret and tender adieu of the prince, and taking an oath of constancy, which, like many other mis tresses, she forgets, and repairing to the camp of the Greeks, transfers her affections to Diomed. Troilus learns her infidelity, and dies in despair. The story con cludes disagreeably, and is tediously told ; but it is in terspersed with a number of interesting and deeply pa thetic passages. Though the scene and subject arc connected with classical and heroic story, the poet de scribes no pomp nor circumstances of war, but such as are immediately necessary to usher in his hero to the no tice of his mistress with better effect, returning victo rious from the field ; and he seems to describe the tem • ple of Minerva, only for the sake of introducing the beauty in a greater attitude of solemnity. Like the true poet of love, he magnifies the importance of domes tic scenes, and neglects war and public circumstances, ex cept where they serve as auxiliaries to that passion which "Drives ambition with its pomp away; Unless conducive to his ampler sway?' The scenery and names in Troilus and Cresscidc are Trojan, but the sentiments and nIZI I niers are purely mo dern and chivalrous. In one place we hear of jousts and tournaments, in another of the parliament of Troy. Cres wide is found by a noble anachronism reading the The bais of Statius during the Trojan war. In the speeches, there are frequent allusions to bishops, scholastic divi nity, the devil, and other ideas still more modern than Statius. Next to the length of the poem, the greatest obstacle to our interest in it is an inconsistency between the strength and tenderness, and the lawlessness and se crecy of Troilus's passion. The poet represents no sufficient cause to prevent the Trojan from marrying Cresseide. lie dies of love for her, and yet declares no honourable passion. This is a departure from nature and probability, the more remarkable in a poet whose characteristic merit is generally adherence to both. Yet this tale of Troy divine, which Sir Philip Sydney adored, and which was once regarded as an ornament of our lan guage, (lid not fascinate our forefathers without a reason. As au ancient novel in verse, it reminds us very fre quently of the minute touches and pathos of Richardson. The confession which Cresscide makes of her attach ment in the scene of felicity, has been noticed, deserved ly, by Warton as exceedingly beautiful.