LIFE OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
CJhauoer was selected to accompany Sir John Berkeley on a mission to the Coxirt or Bernardo Visconti, Duke of Milan, with the view, it is supposed, of concerting military plans against the outbreak of war with France. The new King, meantime, had shown that he was not insensible to Chaucer's merit — or to the influence of his tutor and the poet's patron, the Duke of Lancaster ; for Richard II. confirmed to Chaucer his pension of twenty marks, along with an equal annual sum, for which the daily pitcher of wine granted in 1374 had been commuted. Before Ms departure for Lombardy, Chaucer — still holding his post in the Customs — selected two repre- sentatives or trustees, to protect his estate against legal proceedings in his absence, or to sue in his name defaulters and offenders against the imposts which he was charged to enforce. One of these trustees was called Eichard Forrester ; the other was John Gower, the poet, the most famous English contemporary of Chaucer, with whom he had for many years been on terms of admiring friendship — although, from the strictures passed on certain productions of Gower's in the Prologue to The Man of Law's Tale,^ it has been supposed that in the later years of Chaucer's life the friendship suffered some diminution. To the "moral Gower" and "the philo- sophical Strode," Chaucer "directed" or dedicated his " TroUus and Cressida ; " ^ while, in the " Confessio Amantis," Gower introduces a handsome compliment to his greater contemporary, as the " disciple and the poet " of Venus, with whose glad songs and ditties, made in her praise during the flowers of his youth, the land was filled everywhere. Gower, however — a monk and a Conservative — ^held to the party of the Duke of Gloucester, the rival of the WyclifS.te and innovating Duke of Lancaster, who was Chaucer's patron, and whose cause was not a little aided by Chaucer's strictures on the clergy ; and thus it is not impossible that political differences may have weakened the old bonds of personal friendship and poetic esteem. Eeturning from Lombardy early in 1379, Chaucer seems to have been again sent abroad; for the records exhibit no trace of him between May and December of that year. Whether by proxy or in person, however, he received his pensions regularly until 1382, when his income was increased by his appointment to the post of Controller of Petty Customs in the port of London. In November 1384, he obtained a month's leave of absence on account of his private affairs, and a deputy was appointed to fill his place ; and in February of the next year he was permitted to appoint a permanent deputy — ^thus at length gaining relief from that close attention to business which probably curtailed the poetic fruits of the poet's most powerful years.s
1 See page 61, and note 9.
2 " Written," says Mr Wriglit, " in the sixteentli year of the reign of Richard II. (1392- 1393) ; " a powerful confirmation of the opinion that this poem was really produced in Chaucer's mature age. See the introductory notes to it (page 248) and to the Legend of Grood 'Wonien (page 281).
s The old biographers of Chaucer, founding on what they took to be autobiographic allusions in " The Testament of Lore," assign to him between 1384 and 1389 a very different history from that here given on tlie strength of authentic records explited and quoted by Sir H. Nicolas. Chaucer is made to espouse the cause of John of Northampton, the WyoUffite Lord Mayor of London, whose re-election in 1384 was so vehemently opposed by the clergy, and who was imprisoned in the sequel of the grave disorders that arose. The poet, it is said fled to the Continent, taking with him a large sum of money, which he spent in supporting compan- ions in exile ; then, returning by stealth to England in quest of funds, he was detected and sent to the Tower, where he languished for three years, being released only on the humiliating condition of informing against his associates in the plot. The public records show however that, aU the time of his alleged exUe and captivity, he was quietly living in London regularly drawing his pensions in person, sitting in Parliament, and discharging his duties in the Cus- toms until his dismissal in 1386. It need not be said, further, that although Chaucer freely handled the errors, the ignorance, and vices of the clergy, he did so rather as a man of sense and of conscience, than as a Wycliffite — and there is no evidence that he espoused the opinions
