which the language of the poem is found to correspond.

In fact, he was misled, and we can tell how; so that the matter is scarce worth further discussion. There is not, and never was, more reason for inserting it among Chaucer's poems, than there is reason for inserting Ireland's Vortigern among Shakespeare's plays; yet it is somewhat strange that this poem has been clung to by some readers and writers with great tenacity, chiefly because it contains the not very valuable allusion wherein the author declares that, at eighteen years of age he was a young man, and in another passage says his name was "Philogenet," and that he was "of Cambridge clerk;" from which it seems to have been assumed that he must be identified with Chaucer, because the latter speaks of Trumpington, not far from the same famous town. It seems to have escaped observation that there have been, at various times, a good many "clerks" at Cambridge." The internal evidence against the poem, which hardly contains one clear example of the use of the final e which so abounds in Chaucer, is simply overwhelming.

"

The piece called the 'Virelai' contains no final e. It belongs to the fifteenth century. It was inserted merely because Chaucer said that he once wrote 'virelaies;' (see Legend of Good Women,' vol. iii. p. 333; also Franklin's tale, p. 495, below).

The few other poems, such as 'A Goodly Ballad,' A Praise of Women,' 'Prosperity, Leaulte vaut Richesse,' 'Three Roundels,' and Chaucer's 'Prophecy,' are of small importance.

In the present edition, an attempt has been made to bring all the spurious or doubtful poems together into one volume. They proved, however, to be more than sufficient to fill the fourth volume, so that one of them, viz., 'Chaucer's Dream,' has found its way to the end of the third volume. There is not much

fear of its being mistaken for Chaucer's, so that the line has thus been drawn with sufficient sharpness. The advantage of separating the true from the spurious poems is so obvious, that I hope the reader will be pleased with the result.

All

In a few places where newer information has suggested emendations in the notes to the former edition (which were written by Mr. Jephson), such slight corrections as were feasible have been made. for which I am responsible are marked with my initials. In the main, with the exception of the rearrangement, and some necessary corrections in 'The Life of Chaucer' in vol. i., the edition remains the same as when completed by Mr. Jephson, under the supervision of Mr. Robert Bell.

Mr. Furnivall speaks of "Chaucer's Dreme,' which one could swear, after reading it, was not Chaucer's: the thing is impossible;" Trial Forewords,' p. &

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

1328-1400.

REMEMBERING how little is known of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, we cannot be surprised at the scantiness of the information we possess concerning Chaucer, who flourished two hundred years before the Elizabethan period. When we consider, indeed, the remoteness of his age, and the long interval of darkness that followed, it becomes rather matter for surprise that we should possess so much. This information is derived from two sources: authentic documents, and certain passages in Chaucer's writings, supposed to contain allusions to his own life.' The materials collected from the latter source are, of course, purely conjectural. Some of Chaucer's biographers accept them without hesitation-others exclude them altogether. In the following outline, the infe

1 These allusions occur in The Court of Love, and The Testament of Love [which are however no longer regarded as Chaucer's.-W. W. S.].

2 The principal biographers of Chaucer are-1. Leland. a. Speght, 1598. 3. Urry, 1721. This biography was not written by Urry, having been prefixed to the folio after his death; but his name is used in referring to it, to identify the edition. 4. Tyrwhitt, 1775-8. 5. Godwin, 1803. 6. Sir N. H. Nicolas, 1845. Of these, the first three are, upon the whole, the least reliable for facts. Leland, who lived nearest to Chaucer's time, and whose commission of investigation in the archives of the religious houses opened up much general information, abounds in mistakes. Speght deals largely in statements unsustained by proofs. Urry, who exhibits pains in the structure of his narrative, blends the speculative and the true in such a way as to render his labours comparatively valueless. Tyrwhitt was the first who reduced the biography to the few historical items that were Godwin capable of documentary verification. rejecting all the rest. added several new particulars; but his voluminous work is so overlaid with conjectural matter that it cannot be consulted with safety, except for its criticisms, which exhibit taste and discrimination.

r

rences that have been drawn from the works of Chaucer are carefully distinguished from the facts that are supported by historical evidence; and the grounds are stated which either entitle them to notice, or justify their rejection.

The birth, birth-place, parentage, and education of Geoffrey Chaucer are involved in obscurity. According to a tradition, which cannot now be traced to its origin, he was born in 1328. Leland, his first biographer, speaks of him throughout as if he were born much later; which would seem to be confirmed by a deposition made by Chaucer himself in 1386, when he was cited as a witness in a cause of chivalry between Lord Scrope and Sir Richard Grosvenor. In this document, Chaucer avers that he was then of the age of 40 and upwards,' which would fix his birth about 1343 or 1344; but as the depositions of the other witnesses on the same occasion are extremely lax and inaccurate respecting their ages, the averment can be considered only as a matter of form, not intended to convey any more definite term than that the witness was, more or less, upwards of forty. Sir Harris Nicolas shows that the deposition is not to be relied apon, in consequence of the remarkable mistakes made in the ages of other deponents, some of whom are stated to have been ten, and others even twenty years younger than they really were.' We know by the inscription on Chaucer's tomb, erected in 1556 by Nicholas Brigham, a poet and man of erudition, that he died in 1400; and, as we learn incidentally from his own writings, and those of Gower and Occleve,'

The biography by Sir N. Harris Nicolas is the most complete and authentic. Sir Harris strictly confines his narrative to facts extracted from the public records, many of which had escaped his predecessors, and points out clearly the erroneous inferences and suppositions that had been drawn from Chaucer's writings.

1 That Chaucer had attained a considerable age at the time of his death is placed beyond doubt by decisive testimonies. Gower, in 1392-3, speaks of him as being now in his dayes old; Occleve, lamenting his death, apostrophises him-'O maister deere and fadir reverent terms, says Sir Harris Nicolas, long used to indicate respect for age, and for superiority in any pursuit or science;' Chaucer alludes to himself as being 'olde and unlusty: and Leland says that

that he lived to an advanced age, there is some probability, if no exact authority in favour of the earlier date.'

A passage in The Testament of Love is supposed to deter mine the city of London as his birth-place, and would be conclusive of the fact if other particulars, drawn from the same source and proved to be erroneous, had not thrown suspicion upon the authority. Of his family almost nothing

he 'lived to the period of grey hairs, and at length found old age his greatest disease.' The well-known portrait, painted by Occleve from memory (Harl. MS. 4866), agrees with these descriptions, and represents Chaucer with grey hair and beard, and features bearing evident traces of old age. In another portrait, found in an early, if not contemporary, copy of Occleve's poems in the Royal MS. 17, D. vi., he also appears very old, holding, as in Occleve's portrait, a string of beads in his left hand.

1 The birth of Chaucer in 1328,' observes Tyrwhitt, 'has been settled, I suppose, from some inscription on his tombstone, signifying that he died in 1400, at the age of 72.' This 'supposition' has been adopted as a matter of fact by Mr. Singer and others; but there is no evidence whatever in support of it. No record of such an inscription has been discovered. The date of 1328 was first stated in print by Speght, but upon what grounds does not appear. In the deposition made by Chaucer in 1386, he says that he had then borne arms for twenty-seven years. This places the commencement of his military career in the year 1359, when, assuming him to have been born in 1328, he was thirty-one years of age. As most men who bore arms entered the profession at a much earlier age, the fact tends to discredit the date of his birth assigned by Speght, although the inference cannot be considered conclusive. On the other hand, the age indicated by the deposition is itself discredited by several circumstances. It, as is generally assumed, Chaucer produced his Parliament of Birds in 1358, we must believe, according to the deposition, that he wrote them when he was not more than fourteen or fifteen. [Or rather seventeen or Eighteen: Chaucer's statement that he was of the age of forty and upwards in 1386 is good evidence that he was born about 1340. The tradition that he was born in 1328 has no authenticity, and does not agree with the known facts.-W. W.S.]

2 The Testament of Love is an allegory written in prose, the heroine of which is a lady named Marguerite, who, notwithstanding that the author typifies her as a pearl, and gives us to understand also that the name is intended to represent grace, virtue, wisdom, and holy church, is nevertheless addressed throughout as a woman, to whom the writer offers up his homage with a vivacity that cannot be mistaken for the expression of a merely spiritual sentiment. The ingenuity that extracted from this mystical composition a clue to a series of incidents which the most careful examination will fail to detect in what the author himself calls the wimples and folds' of the allegory, is, perhaps, without a parallel. The real signification veiled under all this elaborate devotion-if it have any other signification than that which the title of the piece very plainly conveysmay be difficult, if not impossible, at this distance of time, to determine;