INTRODUCTION.

FOR about two centuries after the Norman conquest, Anglo-Norman was almost exclusively the language of literature in this country. The few exceptions belong to the last expiring remains of an older and totally different Anglo-Saxon style, or to the first attempts of a new English one, formed upon a Norman model. Of the two grand monuments of the poetry of this period, Layamon belongs to the former of these classes, and the singular poem entitled the Ormulum to the latter. After the middle of the thirteenth century, the attempts at poetical composition in English became more frequent and more successful, and previous to the age of Chaucer we have several poems of a very remarkable character, and some good imitations of the harmony and spirit of the French versification of the time.

During this latter period, there had been a great movement in intelligence and art throughout

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Europe, which was shewing itself sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, and which was giving great promises of a splendid future. By the end of the thirteenth century it broke out in Italy in Dante, and a little later in Petrarch. In France it shewed itself in a multitude of poetical compositions, remarkable for their spirit and harmony of versification. In England it became magnificently embodied in Chaucer, almost to rise and die with him; for two centuries passed away before another poet was produced who could lay any claim to rivalry with his great predecessor.

According to the best information that can be collected, Geoffrey Chaucer was born somewhere near the year 1328,* his family being apparently citizens of London. The accounts of his earlier

*The following brief notice of the personal history of the poet is little more than an abridgment of the Life of Chaucer by Sir Harris Nicolas, who has gathered together a mass of curious facts from the public records, many of them not known before. To that biographical sketch, which is prefixed to Mr. Pickering's last edition of Tyrwhitt's text, Į refer those who are desirous of learning everything that is really known of Chaucer's life, which had been disfigured by previous biographers with a mass of details founded only on mistakes, or drawn from the imaginations of the writers. I have no wish to rewrite what Sir Harris Nicolas has already done with so much judgment, but it will probably be expected that I should give here the outlines of the life of the author I am editing.

years and of his education are vague and unsatisfactory, but he was certainly a man of extensive learning, and he had the education of a gentleman : he is generally believed to have been bred to the law. We learn from Chaucer's own testimony, given at a later period, in the case of the Grosvenor peerage, that in the autumn of 1359 he was in the army with which Edward III invaded France, which was his first military service, and that he was made prisoner by the French during the expedition which terminated with the peace of Chartres, in May 1360.

We know nothing further of Chaucer's history until 1367, when a pension of twenty marks yearly for life was granted by the king to the poet, as one of the valets of the king's chamber, in consideration of his services. About the same time, he married Philippa, one of the ladies in attendance on the queen, who is said to have been the eldest daughter of Sir Payne Roet, king-of-arms of Guienne, and sister of Katherine, widow of Sir Hugh Swynford, and subsequently wife of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. In 1370, as we find from the records, Chaucer was employed in the king's service abroad. Two years after this, on the 12th November 1372, the poet was sent on a mission to Genoa, to treat on the choice of a port in England where the Genoese might form a com

mercial establishment; he appears to have remained in Italy nearly a year, as we do not trace him in England until the latter part of November 1373, and we then find by the allowance of his expenses that he had been on the king's service to Florence as well as to Genoa. We are, unfortunately, in perfect ignorance of Chaucer's movements in Italy; and the statement of the old biographers that he visited Petrarch at Padua, is founded on mere suppositions totally unsupported by any known evidence. It can hardly be believed, however, that Chaucer did not profit by the opportunity thus afforded him of improving his acquaintance with the poetry, if not with the poets, of the country he thus visited, whose influence was now being felt on the literature of most countries of Western Europe. He was evidently well acquainted with the writings of Dante, and probably with those of Petrarch, if not with those of Boccaccio. He distinctly quotes the former poet more thus :

than once,

"Wel can the wyse poet of Florence,

That hatte Daunt, speke of this sentence."

C. T. 6707.

The "sentence," as Chaucer gives it, is almost a literal translation from the Purgatorio. It may be observed, also, that the inference from this and other circumstances is strongly in favour of the