From: ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS
CHAUCER
BY
ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD
NOTE.
The peculiar conditions of this essay must be left to explainthemselves. It could not have been written at all without the aid ofthe Publications of the Chaucer Society, and more especially of thelabours of the Society's Director, Mr. Furnivall. To other recentwriters on Chaucer—including Mr Fleay, from whom I never differ butwith hesitation—I have referred, in so far as it was in my power to doso. Perhaps I may take this opportunity of expressing a wish thatPauli's "History of England," a work beyond the compliment of anacknowledgement, were accessible to every English reader.
A.W.W.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER 1. CHAUCER'S TIMES.
CHAPTER 2. CHAUCER'S LIFE AND WORKS.
CHAPTER 3. CHARACTERISTICS OF CHAUCER AND OF HIS POETRY.
CHAPTER 4. EPILOGUE.
GLOSSARY.
INDEX.
CHAUCER.
CHAPTER 1. CHAUCER'S TIMES.
The biography of Geoffrey Chaucer is no longer a mixture of unsiftedfacts, and of more or less hazardous conjectures. Many and wide as arethe gaps in our knowledge concerning the course of his outer life, anddoubtful as many important passages of it remain—in vexatious contrastwith the certainty of other relatively insignificant data—we have atleast become aware of the foundations on which alone a trustworthyaccount of it can be built. These foundations consist partly of ameagre though gradually increasing array of external evidence, chieflyto be found in public documents,—in the Royal Wardrobe Book, the IssueRolls of the Exchequer, the Customs Rolls, and suchlike records—partlyof the conclusions which may be drawn with confidence from the internalevidence of the poet's own indisputably genuine works, together with afew references to him in the writings of his contemporaries orimmediate successors. Which of his works are to be accepted asgenuine, necessarily forms the subject of an antecedent enquiry, suchas cannot with any degree of safety be conducted except on principlesfar from infallible with regard to all the instances to which they havebeen applied, but now accepted by the large majority of competentscholars. Thus, by a process which is in truth dulness and drynessitself except to patient endeavour stimulated by the enthusiasm ofspecial literary research, a limited number of results has been safelyestablished, and others have at all events been placed beyondreasonable doubt. Around a third series of conclusions or conjecturesthe tempest of controversy still rages; and even now it needs a warystep to pass without fruitless deviations through a maze of assumptionsconsecrated by their longevity, or commended to sympathy by the fervourof personal conviction.
A single instance must suffice to indicate both the difficulty and thesignificance of many