CHAUCER
644
CHAUCER
counts see Spielmann, "The Portraits of Geoffrey
Chaucer", London, 1900, first issued in the "Chaucer
Memorial Lectures". 111-41.) Like Dryden, he was
silent, and had a "down look"; this physical charac-
teristic was partly due to a most genuine modesty,
partly to the habit of constant reading. Chaucer in-
deed read and annexed everything, and transmuted
everything into that wonderful vocabulary of his, all
plasticity and all power. He is a cosmopolite, chiefly
influenced by Ovid, and by his own contemporary
Italy, a debtor, if ever man was, to the whole spirit
of his age; he has its fire, its impudence, its broad
licentiousness; he has rather more than his share of
its true-hearted pathos, its exquisite freshness and
brightness, its sense of eternity. The so-called
"Counsel of Chaucer" sums up, at a holy and serene
moment, his philosophic outlook. He had unequalled
powers of observation, and gave a highly ironic but
most humane report. He is an artist through and
through, and that artist had been a soldier and a
diplomat; hence his genius, even in its extremes
of mirth, has balance and health, remoteness and
neutrality; it is never bitter, and never in the
least "viewy". Matthew Arnold (Introduction to
Ward's "English Poets", 1S85, I, pp. xxxiv-v) ac-
cuses him of a lack of what Aristotle calls " high and
excellent seriousness ". But " high seriousness " is not
quite the note of the fourteenth century. Chaucer's
is the master-note (submerged all over Europe since
the Reformation) of joy. This brings us to the ques-
tion of his personal religion.
Foxe (Acts and Monuments of the Church, 1583, II, 839) started the absurd theory that Chaucer was a follower of Wyclif. The poet's own abstract habit; his association with the prince who (probably actu- ated by no very high motives) withdrew his favour from the contemporary reformer when solicitude for a purer practice ran into heresy and threatened re- volt; his close friendship with Strode, a Dominican of Oxford and a strong anti-Lollard — these things tend of themselves to denote Chaucer's views in the matter. The opposite inference is "due to a mis- conception of his language, based on a misconcep- tion of his character" (Lounsbury, Studies, II, 469). Like Wyclif, Chaucer loved the priestly ideal; and he draws it incomparably in his " Poor Parson of a Town". Yet, as has been said, that very "Parson's Tale", in its extant form, goes far to prove that its author, even by sympathy, was no Wyclifite (A. W.Ward, "Chaucer", London, 1879, p. 134, in "Eng- lish Men of Letters Series"). Passionless justice was the bed-rock of Chaucer's mind. He paints that parti-coloured Plantagenet world as it was, not in- terfering to make it better, nor to wish it better. Where the churchman type was gross, he represents it grossly. It is well, however, to recall that the famous episode of his "beating a Friar in Fleet Street" is the invention of Speght, further embroid- ered by Chatterton; and that the prose tractate, "Jack Upland", full of invective against the religious orders, is proved not to be Chaucer's. His attitude towards women is just as two-sided. He shows in many a theme a reverence toward them which must have been fed by t hat " hv devocioun" to Our Lady which is beautifully apparent in his pages, and which Hoccleve mentions in recalling his memory; but dramatic exigencies, Boccaccio's example, pre- sumable hard domestic experience, a laughingly merciless psychology, and a paralyzing outspoken- ness, contrive too often, as readers regret, to fight it down. He has been held up as a rationalist, on the strength of a few passages, and against the enormous mass of testimony which lie furnishes on the sound- ness of his Catholic ethos. Of that , after all. as of its absence, Catholics are the best judges. The "Nuns' Priest's Tale" (Skeat's ed., lines 4421 40) raises the question of predestination, only to drop it.
The context shows that the poet thinks his sud-
den side-issue not trivial or tedious, but quite the
contrary; he quits it only because he cannot "boult
it to the bren", i. e., sift it down, analyze it satisfac-
torily. Again, the "Knight's Tale" (Skeat's ed.,
lines 2809-14) implies that the author has no mind
to dogmatize upon the final destiny of poor Arcite,
newly slain. Both these instances have been ci + ed
in the masterly chapter on "Chaucer as a Literary
Artist" (Lounsbury, Studies, II, 512-15, 520), to
prove, in the one case, an easy dismissal of a mere
scholastic dilemma; in the other, Chaucer's disbelief,
or half-belief, in immortality. They prove, rather,
a restraint in dogmatizing about the destiny of the
individual, a restraint practised by the church it-
self. " The Legend of Good Women " opens with some
fifteen lines, the purport of which need never have
been questioned. They mean nothing if they do not
mean that knowledge by evidence is one thing, assur-
ance by faith another thing; and that lack of sensible
proof can never discredit revelation. A somewhat
playful confession of belief has here been turned into
a serious profession of agnosticism, through sheer lack
of spiritual understanding. His "hostility to the
Church", as Professor Lounsbury calls it, is certainly
not borne out by Chaucer's going out of his way, as
he does, to defend her from age-long calumnies; for
instance, in the " Franklin's Tale", and in the section
" De Ira" of the " Parson's Tale", he witnesses to her
horror of superstitions and false sciences. Chaucer,
in short, though none too supernatural a person, had
a most orthodox grip on his catechism.
The "Preces", or prose "retracciouns", which are usually printed at either end of the "Canterbury Tales", date from the evening of Chaucer's life. To Tyrwhitt, Hales, Ward, and Lounsbury, who suspect undue priestly influence, the "Preces" are, in their own words, "morbid", "reaction and weakness", "a betrayal of his poetic genius", "unbearable to have to accept as genuine". In the course of them, Chaucer disclaims of his books "thilke that sounen in-to sinne", i. e., those which are consonant with, or sympathetic with sin. Skeat is the only editor who understands Chaucer in his contrition (Notes to the "Canterbury Tales", in the Oxford Press complete edition, 475). Gascoigne (Theological Dictionary, Pt. II, 377, the MS. of which is in the library of Lin- coln College, Oxford) unwittingly parodies the situ- ation, and represents the old sinner "Chawserus" as dying while lamenting over pages, quce male scripsi de malo et turpissimo amore. To the secular point of view it has all seemed, and may well seem, mistaken and deplorable. But nothing is manlier, or more touching and endearing, than this humble self-sub- ordination to conscience and the moral law. " Ex- cept ye become as little children" is the hardest say- ing ever given to the intellectual world. There are great geniuses, Geoffrey Chaucer not least among them, to whom it was not given in vain.
The standard recent editions of Chaucer are: (1) "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Annotated and Ac- cented, with Illustrations of English Life in Chaucer's Time. New and revised edition, with illustrations from the Hllesmere MS." (Saunder's ed., London, 1894); (2) "The Student's Chaucer; being a Complete Edition of his Works" (Skeat ed., Oxford. 1895): (3) "The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, edited from numerous Manuscripts" (Skeat ed., 7 vols., Ox- ford, 1894-7); (4) "The Canterbury Tales done into Modern English, by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat " (The King's Classics Series, Gollancz ed., 1904 I.
The critical study of Chaucer began with Tyuwiiitt (1730- 1786); it was splendidly revived and extended by scholars in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth oentury, notably by Kurnivau.. Child, KOlbinq, ECaluza, Graf, I,\m;k, Koch, etc., and lias come to its perfection, under II \i.K.B, l.oiiNBBi'RY, and ski \i The chief puhlii at ions deal- no- wilh Chaucer published since 1S90 are: HiECKM., D<M SpricAwort bci Chaucer (ErlanRen, 1S90); Ballkuktept, L'ebtr
