Part 3 (1/2)

Grant translateur, noble Gelfroi Chaucier

But whether or not such was the case, his version of the ”Roman de la Rose” seems, on the whole, to be a translation properly so called--although, considering the great nuinal, it would probably be no easy task to verify the assertion that in one or the other of these are to be found the few passages thought to have been interpolated by Chaucer On the other hand, his omissions are extensive; indeed, the whole of his translation ainal It is all the more noteworthy that Chaucer reproduces only about one-half of the part contributed by Jean de Meung, and again condenses this half to one-third of its length In general, he has preserved the French names of localities, and even occasionally helps hi a French word Occasionally he shows a certain ti of ”the tree which in Franceout, so that there may be no mistake, that mermaidens are called it ”sereyns” (sirenes) in France On the other hand, his natural vivacity now and then suggests to him a turn of phrase or an illustration of his own As a loyal English courtier he cannot compare a fair bachelor to any one so aptly as to ”the lord's son of Windsor;”

and as writing not far from the time when the Statute of Kilkenny was passed, he cannot lose the opportunity of inventing an Irish parentage for Wicked-Tongue:

So full of cursed rage It well agreed with his lineage; For him an Irishwoman bare

The debt which Chaucer in his later works owed to the ”Roman of the Rose” was considerable, and by noexordiuin of which latter (the dream of Scipio related by Cicero and expounded in the widely-read Co lines of the ”Roernation of Nature as ”the Vicar of the ales like that in which he afterwards, with further aid froentleman But the main service which the work of this translation rendered to hi and perfecting a ready and happy choice of words,--a service in which, perhaps, lies the chief use of all translation, considered as an exercise of style How far he had already advanced in this respect, and how lightly our language was alreadyitself in his hands, es in the poem; for instance, from that about the middle, where the old and new theme of self-contradictoriness of love is treated in endless variations In short, Chaucer executed his task with facility, and frequently with grace, though for one reason or another he grew tired of it before he had carried it out with co the causes why he see a certain air of schoolwork; and though Chaucer's next poens the date of the year 1369, is still very far froreat from the ”Romaunt of the Rose” to the ”Book of the duchess”

Aes of the French ”Roman de la Rose” o critical reflexions on the character of kings and constituted authorities--a species of observations which kings and constituted authorities have never been notorious for loving This circuether with the reference to Windsor quoted above, suggests the probability that Chaucer's connexion with the Court had not been interrupted, or had been renewed, or was on the eve of renewing itself, at the ti a courtier, he was certainly placed within the reach of social opportunities such as in his day he could nowhere else have enjoyed In England as well as in Italy during the fourteenth and the two following centuries; as the frequent recurrence of the notion attests, the ”good” courtier seeentleerated conceptions of the courtly breeding of Chaucer's and Froissart's ageto contrast with Chaucer's generally liberal notions of manners, severe views of etiquette like that introduced by himatizes as a solecism the statement of the author fro Aella sent his little boy to invite the emperor to dinner ”It is best to deem he went himself”

The position which in June, 1367, we find Chaucer holding at Court is that of ”Valettus” to the King, or, as a later docuis”--Valet or Yeo's Chamber Posts of this kind, which involved the ordinary functions of personal attendance--theof tables, the going on ood family In due course of tiher post of royal squire--either ”of the household” generally, or of a more special kind Chaucer appears in 1368 as an ”esquire of less degree,” his na seventeenth in a list of seven-and-thirty After the year 1373 he is never mentioned by the lower, but several tiher, title

Frequent entries occur of the pension or salary of twenty ranted to hian to be eular member of the royal establishment, within the sphere of which we must suppose the associations of the next years of his life to have been confined They belonged to a period of peculiar significance both for the English people and for the Plantagenet dynasty, whose glittering exploits reflected so lory on the national arms At home, these years were the brief interval between two of the chief visitations of the Black Death (1361 and 1369), and a few years earlier the poet of the ”Vision” had given voice to the sufferings of the poor

It was not, however, thefor their children whoy written in the year 1369; the woe to which he gave a poetic expression was that of a princely er temporarily inconsolable for the loss of his first wife In 1367 the Black Prince was conquering Castile (to be lost again before the year was out) for that interesting protege of the Plantagenets and representative of legitihter the inconsolable as to espouse in 1372, and whose ”tragic” downfall Chaucer afterwards duly lamented in his ”Monk's Tale”:--

O noble, O worthy Pedro, glory of Spain, Whoh in majesty!

As yet the star of the valiant Prince of Wales had not been quenched in the sickness which was the harbinger of death; and his younger brother, John of Gaunt, though already known for his bravery in the field (he commanded the reinforceun to play the prominent part in politics which he was afterwards to fill

But his day was at hand, and the anti-clerical tenour of the legislation and of the ades of these years was in entire harmony with the policy of which he was to constitute himself the representative 1365 is the year of the Statute of Provisors, and 1371 that of the dismissal of William of Wykeham

John of Gaunt was born in 1340, and was, therefore, probably of e as Chaucer, and like hily be more natural than that a more or less intimate relation should have formed itself between them This relation, there is reason to believe, afterwards ripened on Chaucer's part into one of distinct political partisanshi+p, of which there could as yet (for the reason given above) hardly be a question There was, however, so far as we know, nothing in Chaucer's tastes and tendencies to render it antecedently unlikely that he should have been ready to follow the fortunes of a prince who entered the political arena as an adversary of clerical predominance Had Chaucer been a friend of it in principle, he would hardly have devoted his first efforts as a writer to the translation of the ”Roman de la Rose” In so far, therefore, and in truth it is not very far, as John of Gaunt may be afterwards said to have been a Wycliffite, the saht probably be applied to Chaucer With such sentiments a personal orthodoxy was fully reconcileable in both patron and follower; and the so-called ”Chaucer's A B C,” a version of a prayer to the Virgin in a French poetical ”Pilgriether by him either early or late in the course of his life There was, however, a tradition, repeated by Speght, that this piece was composed ”at the request of Blanche, duchess of Lancaster, as a prayer for her private use, being a woion very devout” If so, it must have been written before the duchess's death, which occurred in 1369; and we ine it, if we please, with its twenty-three initial letters blazoned in red and blue and gold on a flyleaf inserted in the Book of the pious duchess,--herself, in the fervent language of the poehted in this world with the Virgin's holy name

In the autumn of 1369, then, the duchess Blanche died an early death; and it is pleasing to know that John of Gaunt, to whoht wealth and a dukedom, ordered services, in pious rey which--very possibly at the ed Duke's request--was composed by Chaucer, leaves no doubt as to the identity of the lady whose loss it deplores:--

--Goode faire ”White” she hight; Thus was ht

But, in accordance with the taste of his age, which shunned such sheer straightforwardness in poetry, the ”Book of the duchess” contains no further transparent reference to the actual circumstances of the wedded life which had come to so premature an end--for John of Gaunt had married Blanche of Lancaster in 1359;--and an elaborate framework is constructed round the essential theme of the poeenius had taught him the value of personal directness; and, artificially as the course of the poeins in the iven by the poet of his own sleeplessness and its cause already referred to--an opening so felicitous that it was afterwards imitated by Froissart And so, Chaucer continues, as he could not sleep, to drive the night away he sat upright in his bed reading a ”roht better entertainhts The book which he read was the ”Metamorphoses” of Ovid; and in it he chanced on the tale of Ceyx and Alcyone--the lovers whoed into the seabirds that bring good luck to mariners Of this story (whether Chaucer derived it direct from Ovid, or from Machault's French version is disputed), the earlier part serves as the introduction to the poem

The story breaks off--with the dramatic abruptness in which Chaucer is a uishes his versions frorief at the tidings brought by Morpheus of her husband's death Thus subtly the God of sleep and the death of a loving wife es in the poet's ht upon his book”

What more natural, after this, than the dream which ca-ti been awakened out of his slu forth their notes--”so their htly through his s stained with end, and upon the walls painted in fine colours ”both text and gloss, and all the Romaunt of the Rose”--is not this a picture of Chaucer by his own hand, on which, one un with a touch of nature, and at the beginning of its h the whole of its course it maintains the same tone The sleeper awakened--still of course in his dream--hears the sound of the horn, and the noise of hunts for the chase He rises, saddles his horse, and follows to the forest, where the Eend, and pleasantly revived under this aspect by theTieck--in Chaucer's poe his hunt The deer having been started, the poet is watching the course of the hunt, when he is approached by a dog, which leads hihty trees; and here of a sudden he coe oak How si as a guide into the ht who to hi,” in these words:--

I have of sorrow so great wone, That joye get I never none, Now that I see ht, Is froone

Alas! Death, what aileth thee That thou should'st not have taken me, When that thou took'st oode, thatthe knight overco, the poet accosts him, and courteously demands his pardon for the intrusion Thereupon the disconsolate mourner, touched by this token of sympathy, breaks out into the tale of his sorrohich forms the real subject of the poeain (the historical basis of this is unknown, but great heiresses are usually hard to gain for cadets even of royal houses), and whoained her Nothing could be sihtful than the Black Knight's description of his lost lady as she was at the ti her Many of the touches in this description--and a them some of the very happiest--are, it is true, borrowed from the courtly Machault; but nowhere has Chaucer been happier, both in his appropriations and in the way in which he has really converted them into beauties of his own, than in this, perhaps the e of our literature Or is not the following the portrait of an English girl, all life and all innocence--a type not belonging, like its opposite, to any ”period” in particular--?

I saw her dance so coh, and play so wooodly speak and so friendly, That, certes, I trow that nevermore Was seen so blissful a treasure

For every hair upon her head, Sooth to say, it was not red, Nor yellow neither, nor brown it was, Methought old it was

And ah! what eyes ood size, not too wide

Thereto her look was not aside

Nor overthwart;

but so well set that, whoever beheld her was drawn and taken up by it, every part of him Her eyes seemed every now and then as if she were inclined to be merciful, such was the delusion of fools: a delusion in very truth, for

It was no counterfeited thing; It was her owne pure looking; So the Goddess, dame Nature, Had lad, Not foolishly her looks were spread, Nor wildely, though that she play'd; But ever, iven”

And at the same time she liked to live so happily that dulness was afraid of her; she was neither too ”sober” nor too glad; in short, no creature had over ht had won for hi to hi auditor

”Sir!” quoth I, ”where is she now?”