Part 5 (1/2)

Authors ARE often hard on persons who have to read their handiwork professionally; but in the interest of posterity poets es their words as well as against whosoever moves their bones:--

Adam Scrivener, if ever it thee befall ”Boece” or ”Troilus” to write anew, Under thy long lockscopy not more true!

So oft a day I must thy work renew, It to correct and eke to rub and scrape; And all is through thy negligence and rape

How far the ressed is uncertain; the ”Prologue” to the ”Legend of Good Women” mentions the ”Love of Palaht's Tale,” if not identical with it--and a ”Life of Saint Cecilia” which is preserved, apparently without alteration, in the ”Second Nun's Tale”

Possibly other stories had been already added to these, and the ”Prologue” written--but this is more than can be asserted with safety

Who shall say whether, if the stream of prosperity had continued to flow, on which the bark of Chaucer's fortunes had for soht not have found leisure and i hisit near to completion? That his powers declined with his years is a conjecture which it would be difficult to support by satisfactory evidence; though it seeh to assume that he wrote the best of his ”Canterbury Tales” in his best days Troubled times we know to have been in store for him The reverse in his fortunes may perhaps fail to call forth in us the syainst a Philistine reaction, or for Spenser overwhelmed with calamities at the end of a life full of bitter disappointment

But at least we may look upon it with the respectful pity which we entertain for Ben Jonson groaning in the midst of his literary honours under that dura rerum necessitas, which is rarely more a matter of indifference to poets than it is to other men

In 1386, as already noted, Chaucer, while continuing to hold both his offices at the Custohts of the shi+re of Kent He had attained to this honour during the absence in Spain of his patron the Duke of Lancaster, though probably he had been elected in the interest of that prince But John of Gaunt's influence was inevitably reduced to nothing during his absence, and no doubt King Richard now hoped to be a free agent But he very speedily found that the hand of his younger uncle, Thomas Duke of Gloucester, was heavier upon him than that of the elder The Parliament of which Chaucer was a member was the assembly which boldly confronted the autocratical tendencies of Richard II, and after overthrowing the Chancellor, Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, forced upon the king a Council controlling the ad the acts of this Council, of which Gloucester was the leadingis known, except that in financial matters it attempted, after the manner of new brooms, to sweep clean Soon the attention of Gloucester and his folloas occupied by subjectsthan a branch of reform fated to be treated fitfully In this instance the new ad their number was Chaucer For it can hardly be aof December in this year, 1386, Chaucer had lost one, and by the middle of the same month the other, of his comptrollershi+ps At the same time, it would be presumptuously unfair to conclude that misconduct of any kind on his part had been the reason of his reiven is that he fell as an adherent of John of Gaunt; perhaps a safer way of putting the land to protect hi Governments are occasionally as anxious about men as they are about measures, Chaucer's posts may have been wanted for nominees of the Duke of Gloucester and his Council--such as it is probably no injustice to Masters Adam Yerdely and Henry Gisors (who respectively succeeded Chaucer in his two offices) to suppose them to have been Moreover, it is just possible that Chaucer was the reverse of a persona grata to Gloucester's faction on account of the Comptroller's previous official connexion with Sir Nicholas Bre hated in the city, had been accused of seeking to compass the deaths of the Duke and of some of his adherents In any case, it is noticeable that four land of the Duke of Lancaster, ie in July, 1389, Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the King's Works at Weste nu (froe's Chapel, Windsor In this office he was not ill-paid, receiving two shi+llings a day in money, and very possibly perquisites in addition, besides being allowed to appoint a deputy

Inas Richard had assuovern to a close, weto have been personally desirous to provide for a faithful and attached servant of his house, for who It would be specially pleasing, e able to connect with Chaucer's restoration to official e betrothal he had probably celebrated in one poee he had clai's Works to which Chaucer was appointed, seems to have been but a temporary office; or at all events he only held it for rather less than two years, during part of which he performed its duties by deputy Already, however, before his appointment to this post, he had certainly become involved in difficulties For in May, 1388, we find his pensions, at his own request, assigned to another person (John Scalby)--a state that he had raisedover the pensions themselves

Very possibly, too, he had, before his dismissal from his comptrollershi+ps, been subjected to an enquiry which, if it did not touch his honour, at all events gave rise to very natural apprehensions on the part of hily much probability in the conjecture which ascribes to this season of peril and pressure the co justly famous stanzas entitled ”Good Counsel of Chaucer”:-

Flee froood, though it be s tickleness: Press hath envy, and wealth is blinded all

Savour no more than thee behove shall; Do well thyself that other folk canst rede; And truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread

Pain thee not each crooked to redress In trust of her (Fortune) that turneth as a ball

Greate rest stands in little business

Beware also to spurn against a nail

Strive not as doth a pitcher with a wall

Deeme thyself that deemest others' deed; And truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread

That thee is sent receive in buxo of this world asketh a fall

Here is no horah, and thank God of all

Waive thy lust, and let thy ghost thee lead, And truth shall thee deliver, it is no dread

Misfortunes, it is said, never come alone; and whatever view may be taken as to the nature of the relations between Chaucer and his wife, her death cannot have left him untouched From the absence of any record as to the payment of her pension after June, 1387, this event is presumed to have taken place in the latter half of that year More than this cannot safely be conjectured; but it reue” forain after he had lost her, though without thinking of her as of his ”late departed saint” Philippa Chaucer had left behind her a son of the na to find the er in the year 1391 (the year in which he lost his Clerkshi+p of the Works) attending to the boy's education, and supplying him with the intellectual ”bread and e in the shape of a popular treatise on a subject which has at all ti The treatise ”On the Astrolabe,” after describing the instru hoork it, proceeded, or was intended to proceed, to fulfil the purposes of a general astronomical manual; but, like other and more important works of its author, it has come down to us in an uncompleted, or at all events incomplete, condition What there is of it was, as a inal--popular scientific books rarely are The little treatise, however, possesses a double interest for the student of Chaucer In the first place it shows explicitly, what several passages imply, that while he was to a certain extent fond of astronomical study (as to his capacity for which he clearly does injustice to hiood sense and his piety alike revolted against extravagant astrological speculations He certainly does not wish to go as far as the honest carpenter in the ”Miller's Tale,” who glories in his incredulity of aught besides his credo, and who yet is afterwards befooled by the very iical pursuits he had reprehended the i of that which is private to God Yea, blessed be alway a si but only his belief” In his little work ”On the Astrolobe,” Chaucer speaks with calm reasonableness of superstitions in which his spirit has no faith, and pleads guilty to ignorance of the useless knowledge hich they are surrounded But the other, and perhaps the chief value, to us of this treatise lies in the fact that of Chaucer in an intimate personal relation it contains the only picture in which it is i For here we have hi to his ”little Leith fatherly satisfaction in the ability displayed by the boy ”to learn sciences touching nu a present to the child of ”a sufficient astrolabe as for our own horizon, composed after the latitude of Oxford,” he has further resolved to explain to him a certain number of conclusions connected with the purposes of the instrument This he has made up his mind to do in a forcible as well as simple way; for he has shrewdly divined a secret, now and then overlooked by those who condense sciences for babes, that children need to be taught a few things not only clearly but fully--repetition being in more senses than one ”the mother of studies”:--

”Noill I pray meekly every discreet person that readeth or heareth this little treatise, to holdexcused, and my superfluity of words, for two causes The first cause is: that curious inditing and hard sentences are full heavy at once for such a child to learn And the second cause is this: that truly it seeood sentence, than to forget it once”

Unluckily we know nothing further of Lewis--not even whether, as has been surmised, he died before he had been able to turn to lucrative account his calculating powers, after the fashi+on of his apocryphal brother Thoh by the latter part of the year 1391 Chaucer had lost his Clerkshi+p of the Works, certain payments (possibly of arrears) seem afterwards to have been reeable incident of his tenure of it had been a double robbery from his person of official money, to the very serious extent of twenty pounds The perpetrators of the crihwaymen, by whom Chaucer was, in September, 1390, apparently on the same day, beset both at Westminster, and near to ”the foul Oak” at Hatchaed by writ fro the three years following are unknown; but in 1394 (when things were fairly quiet in England) he was granted an annual pension of twenty pounds by the King This pension, of which several subsequent notices occur, seems at times to have been paid tardily or in small instalments, and also to have been frequently anticipated by Chaucer in the shape of loans of small sums Further evidence of his straits is to be found in his having, in the year 1398, obtained letters of protection against arrest, rant of a tun of wine in October of the same year is the last favour known to have been extended to Chaucer by King Richard II Probably no English sovereign has been more diversely estimated, both by his contemporaries and by posterity, than this ill-fated prince, in the records of whose career ely contrast with the impotence of its close It will at least be remembered in his favour that he was a patron of the arts; and that after Froissart had been present at his christening, he received, when on the threshold of e of Gower, and on the eve of his downfall showed reater than either of these It seen to any particular point of ti Richard” by Chaucer; but itsof the poet's syainst the opponents of the royal policy, which was a thoroughly autocratical one

Considering the nature of the relations between the pair, nothing could be more unlikely than that Chaucer should have taken upon hin and patron to steadfastness of political conduct

And in truth, though the loyal tone of this address is (as already observed) un for the mixture of co, to persist in a spirited domestic policy He is to

”Dread God, do law, love truth and worthiness,”