AFTER all the most careful and untiring researches of late years into contemporary records of every kind, the facts which have been gleaned having a direct or an indirect connection with the personal history of Chaucer are very few and far between. All the scattered fragments of his outer life which have been laboriously gathered up contribute nothing to our knowledge of the real personality of the poet. But for such knowledge his works afford abundant material. Every devoted and sympathetic student of them can know much of what manner of man Geoffrey Chaucer was in his essential being; and such knowledge is of vastly more importance than that of any quantity of mere biographical circumstance.

The year of his birth was long held to be 1328. The antiquary, John Leland (1500-1552), who wrote the first life of Chaucer, contained in his Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis, not published till 1709, makes no mention of the year of his birth. In the brief biographical sketch prefixed to Thomas Speght's edition of his works, published in 1598, it is stated that Geoffrey Chaucer departed out of this world the twenty-fifth day of October, in the year of our Lord 1400, after he had lived about seventy-two years.'

In this statement there is only an implication of the birth year. In the life prefixed to Urry's edition of Chaucer, published in 1721, the year 1328 is for the first time actually stated as the date of his birth; and this date was accepted until the investigations promoted by the London Chaucer Society, founded in 1868, showed it to be untenable, and pointed to the year 1340 as the most probable. It may have been a little earlier, but certainly not later.

His father, John Chaucer, who died in 1366, was 'citizen and vintner of London,' and his mother, whose Christian name was Agnes, was his father's second wife. It is probable, but not wholly certain, that the poet was a Londoner by birth. That he must have enjoyed good early advantages of education, in the conventional sense of the word, is evident enough; but it is not necessary to suppose that his varied learning, as exhibited in his writings, implies a residence at a university. There is no reliable authority that he was either at Oxford or Cambridge, John Leland's account of his residence at Oxford notwithstanding.

In 1357, previous to which year nothing whatever is known of his life, Chaucer was a page in the household of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III. His first military service appears to have been in 1359, when Edward III. made his last invasion into France; but in what capacity he served is not known. He was taken prisoner at Retters, 'a place,' says Lounsbury, ‘no longer known, at least to biographers of the poet. By most it is thought to be the village of Retiers, not very far from Rennes in Brittany. This view may be true, but it is certainly not plausible. When Chaucer was taken prisoner, Edward's forces had not been in that province, and there seems no ground to suppose that he was absent from the main army.' On the following first of March, 1360, the

King paid £16 towards his ransom; from which fact it may be inferred that he was no longer in the service of Prince Lionel, but in the immediate service of the King.

From the last mentioned date up to the 20th of June, 1367, a period of seven years and more, no record of him' or of his doings has been discovered. At the latter date he was pensioned by the King, 'de gratia nostra speciali et pro bono servitio quod dilectus valettus noster Galfridus Chaucer nobis impendit et impendet in futurum' (of our special grace and for the good service which our beloved valet, Geoffrey Chaucer, has rendered and will render in the future). From this expression of the royal favour, it is quite evident that during the blank in the poet's life, between 1360 and 1367, he was a favourite valet at the Court. In 1368, he is spoken of as 'unus valettorum Cameræ Regis' (one of the valets of the King's Chamber), or Household, a position which he appears to have held till 1372, after which he is styled Armiger,' or 'Scutifer' (esquire). In 1369, he was again in military service of some kind, in France, or elsewhere on the continent; and on the 20th of June, in the following year, Letters of Protection, to continue in force until Michaelmas, were given him on the occasion of another visit to the continent, but in what capacity it is not known. That he was back in England on the 8th of October is evident from the fact that on that date he drew his pension in person.

Chaucer's marriage, when it took place, and whether it was well or ill assorted, shares the fate of obscurity which is shared by nearly all the other events of his life. But he must have been married before 1374, for, by a warrant dated the 13th of June of that year, the Duke of Lancaster (John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III.) granted him an annuity of £10 for life, to be paid to him at the manor

of the Savoy, in consideration of the good service which he and his wife Philippa had rendered to the said Duke, to his Consort, and to his mother the Queen.' This grant is supposed to have been a commutation of a pension granted in 1372 to his wife, Philippa. In September, 1366, a Philippa Chaucer is mentioned as one of the ladies of the Chamber to the Queen; and there can be little or no doubt that she was the same Philippa Chaucer mentioned in the Duke of Lancaster's grant to Chaucer of an annuity of £10.

Some of Chaucer's biographers and critics have seen evidences of his matrimonial unhappiness, in various passages in poems which are known to have been written after his marriage. But such passages are, perhaps, no more trustworthy as bearing testimony to the poet's own married life, than are passages in Shakespeare's Plays which critics have taken as evidence that Shakespeare's marriage was ill-assorted and unhappy.

Whatever any of the Canterbury characters may be made to say derogatory to wives and the marriage state, Chaucer himself certainly had the highest estimate of womanhood, and he was not the man to give expression to bitter feelings of his own, if he had them, and he must have been exceptionally free from such feelings in all his relations in life.

In December, 1372, Chaucer again left England, this time for Italy, and on international commercial business, he being joined in a commission with two citizens of Genoa, 'to treat with the Duke, citizens, and merchants of Genoa, for the purpose of choosing some port in England where the Genoese might form a commercial establishment.' Before his departure, the sum of £66 13s. 4d. was advanced to him for his expenses. That he was back in England by the 22d of November, the following year, appears from his receiving, at that date, his pension in person. There are no records of

his doings and experiences during this visit to Italy, nor of the places he visited, except Genoa and Florence. On the 4th of February, 1374, he received the additional sum of £25 6s. 8d. at the Exchequer, 'for his expenses while in the King's service at Genoa and Florence in the preceding year' (profisciendo in negociis Regis versus partes Jannue et Florence in anno xlvii).

No reliable evidence exists that he visited Petrarch, at Padua, during this visit, and learned from him the story of patient Griselda. It would be a pleasant fact, if it could be established as a fact, that these two poets met; but conclusive testimony thereto is wanting.

What the Clerk of Oxford, in The Canterbury Tales, is made to say in the Prologue to the Tale of Griselda,

'I wol yow telle a tale which that I
Lerned at Padwe of a worthy clerk,
As preved by his wordės and his werk;
Fraunceys Petrak, the lauriat poete,

Hightė this clerk whos rethorike sweete
Enlumyned al Ytaille of poetry,' -

is all that can be produced in evidence, and this cannot be interpreted as an experience of the poet's own, except on the principle expressed by Cæsar (B. G. iii. 18), that 'fere libenter homines id, quod volunt, credunt' (men, for the most part, readily believe what they wish to be true). This was especially the case with William Godwin, who, in his big Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2 vols. 4to, tells us all about the visit of the English, to the Italian poet ! Some of the details of the visit, related by Godwin, with cool audacity, as simple matters of fact, are decidedly amusing. (See Vol. II. pp. 150-158.)

He concludes his special and specious pleading with the remark that a man must have Mr. Tyrwhitt's appetite for