the selfishness of her husband. The one gives herself up first to her father and then to her husband, making her bed "ful harde and no thing softe"; the other gives himself over wholly to present selfindulgence, even hesitating to take a wife because he rejoices in his liberty that

"Seelde tyme is found in marriage."

When two such natures are brought together, the more unselfishness yields-the more selfishness takes. The ideal of womanhood revealed in Griselda is eminently medieval, and Chaucer admits that he does not expect women of his time to follow her humility, adding that he tells us the story to show that

"Every wight in his degree

Sholde be constant in adversitie,

As was Griselde."

Fortitude may likewise be taken as the patron virtue of the lawyer's tale, as indeed the name of the heroine, Constance, seems to imply. But the story also shows the divine care of innocence in adversity. Over and over again is Constance placed in peril, only to be rescued by the Divine hand. She stands on the seashore, betrayed and about to be set adrift with her newborn child. Even in the face of this deadly peril her faith remains unshaken:

"He that me kepte fro the false blame
While I was on the lond amonges yow,

He kan me kepe from harm, and eek fro shame,

In salte see, al thogh I see noght how

As strong as evere he was he is yet now.

"Her litel child lay wepyng in her arm,

And knelynge, pitously to hym she seyde,
'Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee non harm!'
With that hir kerchef of hir heed she breyde,
And over hise litel eyen she it leyde,

And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste,

And in-to hevene hire eyen up she caste.'

Words cannot be more simple or more tender, nor pathos more profound. We see all as in a picture: The sobbing country people crowding about the fair woman kneeling in their midst; the sacred beauty of motherhood, of suffering, of heroic faith; the boat ready at the water's edge, and, in melancholy perspective, the receding background of the waiting sea. In such passages we feel the truth of Mrs. Browning's words:

Chaucer, with his infantine

Familiar grasp of things divine.” †

The "Man of Lawe's Tale " may be set beside Milton's Comus as the story of that virtue which can be " assailed, but never hurt." "Great are the perils of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of all;" this may be said to be the text of the story of Constance. Yet, even the true joys of the righteous are not temporal, but eternal, and Chaucer continually pauses to remind us of the shortness of earthly happiness.

"Upon thy glade day have in thy mynde

The unwar wo or harm that cometh behynde."

*"Man of Lawe's Tale."

+ Mrs. Browning's Vision of Poets.

"Man of Lawe's Tale.”

Constance is at last reunited to her husband, but he only lives a year after the union.

"Joye of this world for tyme wol nat abyde,

Fro day to night it changeth as the tyde." *

In Chaucer's work we see the expression of a rounded life, an equable and well-developed character that knew and loved men, books, and nature. Like Shakespeare, Chaucer seems to have been able to keep in just balance the ideal and the practical, able to combine the student and the dreamer with the successful ability of a man of affairs. There shines through Chaucer's poems that element of the highest achievement-personal greatness of character. He is truthful, putting down honestly and naturally what he sees; he can enjoy life almost with the frank delight of a child, capable of laughter without malice; and boisterous or coarse as he may sometimes seem, he is at heart surpassingly gentle and compassionate. If such figures as the Wife of Bath flaunt themselves through his pages with noisy laughter and flaring garments, in them are also to be found the very flower of a pure and noble womanhood. Few poets are so loving to little children, few so far from bitter or morbid complainings, ready to face what life sends with a cheerful and manly courage.

"That thee is sent receyve in buxomnesse,

The wrastling of this world asketh a fal;
Here is no hoom, here is but wildernesse.

"Man of Lawe's Tale."

Forth, pilgrim, forth! forth best, out of thy stal!
Look upon hye, and thonke God of al;

Weyve thy lust, and let thy gost thee lede,

And trouthe shal thee delyver, hit is no drede.” *

Finally, in his grasp of human life and in his handling of a story, Chaucer shows a dramatic power which, had he lived in a play-writing age, would have placed him among the greatest dramatists of all time.

Poet of the court.

But with all this breadth, there are certain elements in Chaucer's England that find no utterance in his works. Men and women of many conditions are indeed found there, from the knight to the miller and the plowman, and all are pictured with the same vividness and truth; but breadth of observation is not of necessity breadth of sympathy. Nowhere does he show us the England of Langland, with its plague, pestilence, and famine, its fierce indignation flaming up into wild outbursts of socialism. We may suppose Chaucer's ideal plowman to have been after the pattern of the one he describes in the Canterbury Tales:

'A trewe swinker and a good was he

Lyvynge in pees and perfight charitee."

Chaucer was the poet of the court, the poet of those who dwelt in fine houses clad in rich stuffs, not of those who hungered in rain and cold in the fields.

* Good Counseil.

+ See “The Pilgrim and the Ploughman" in Palgrave's Visions of England.

Prologue to Canterbury Tales.

He was the outcome and voice of the spirit of chivalry, in its class distinctions and exclusiveness as well as its splendor.

His easy-going nature has no touch in it of the reformer, the martyr, or the fanatic. He is above all lovable and companionable, not withdrawn in the stern isolation of the highest souls, alone and awful on the mountain summit wrapped in clouds. He rather dwells at his ease at the base, in the broad, sunshiny world of green fields and merry jests, and if the heights and the depths in Dante and Shakespeare were beyond him, we should be thankful for all we gain in his genial and manly company.

STUDY LIST

CHAUCER AND HIS TIME

1. CHAUCER'S WORKS. The following poems are sug gested for beginners in Chaucer, as fairly representative, and as suitable for introductory study:

a. Prologue to Canterbury Tales. This is, perhaps, the most familiar of Chaucer's works. It is unique as a contemporary study of English life in the fourteenth century, and has great historic as well as poetic value. It shows Chaucer, as student and observer of humanity, at his best. Saunders' Canterbury Tales gives interesting comments on the various pilgrims, together with pictures of each taken from the Ellesmere MS. It is superfluous to speak here of the poetic charm and dramatic force of the "Prologue," but to appreciate it as a work of art should, of course, be the first consideration with the student of literature. It may also be profitably studied in connection with the contemporary social, political, and religious life. Note especially, under this, condition of the Church; position and work of Wyclif; cf. opening of Langland's vision of Piers Plowman; the attitude of Langland,