Chivalry in English literature
Chaucer, Malory, Spenser and Shakespeare

William Henry Schofield. 1912

CHAUCER

CHAUCER, while he lived, won the hearts of his fellow men. Faithful disciples called him "master," with evident joy. "My master Chaucer," wrote Lydgate, "was the ground of well-saying. No one old or young in his day was worthy to hold his inkhorn. Yet never in all his life did he hinder an other's 'making.' Though he found full many a spot, he would never grumble, or pinch his praise, but always said the best, suffering goodly of his gentleness full many a thing embraced with rudeness." "O master dear and father reverend!" exclaimed Occleve, with like sincere emotion; "from thee I was wont to have counsel and rede. Thou wouldst fain have taught me, but I was young and learned right naught." "With heart as trembling as the aspen leaf," he openly bewailed the poet's death. "Queen of Heaven!" he prayed, "be thou his advocate." "As thouwell knowest, O blessed Virgin! with loving heart and high devotion, in thine honour, he wrote full many a line. Make known now unto thy Son how he thy servant was, Maiden Mary, and let his love flower and fructify." Chaucer's personal qualities drew men unto him. His gentleness, based upon his loving heart and high devotion, made him honoured and beloved. Like his own Clerk, gladly would he teach. He loyally served the "Queen of Comfort," and himself gave comfort to mankind.

Here we shall not consider the poet's careful art or wide scope, his subtlety in psychological analysis or power of vivid description, his unsurpassed skill as a painter of human beings, or even his captivating humour. We shall enquire only how he came to be enamoured of "gentilesse," how his poems reveal the practices and precepts of the knightly class in his age, and how his character, as early developed by his environment and reading, and later by broad experience of the world, finally affected his views of nobility. Chaucer, we shall see, was not only "the first finder of our fair language;" he was the first finder of our chivalry.

I

IN 1338, at most two years before the poet's birth, his father, John Chaucer, a well-to-do citizen of London, was in attendance on King Edward III and Queen Philippa during their memorable expedi tion to Flanders and Cologne; and ten years later he was still, or again, in the royal service, deputy to the king's butler at the port of Southampton. John Chaucer, it seems, was born in the same year as Edward III (1312), and must early have felt the appeal of that eager chivalric life which the king pursued. He could hardly have failed to fix his son's attention on the doings of the Black Prince, Sir John Chandos, Sir Walter Manny, and various other knights, who, as Froissart states, were "reputed sovereigns in all chivalry," and urge him

to comune with [every] gentil wight
Ther he mighte lerne gentilesse aright.

It was probably he who brought it about that Geoffrey started his career at court.

Unfortunately, Chaucer has left us no account of his boyhood, as Froissart did, and we have no positive information concerning him before 1357. Important records, however, show that he was then a page in the household of the handsome Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and his charming wife, Elizabeth of Ulster, ward of the queen, who had been married as children, and were now hardly older than the poet himself. "It would appear," said Dr. Bond, who first called attention to these records, that Chaucer "was at that period at Hatfield in Yorkshire; that he was present at the celebration of the feast of St. George, at Edward Ill's court, in attendance on the Countess, in April of that year; that he followed the court to Woodstock; and that he was again at Hatfield, probably from September, 1357, to the end of March, 1358, and would have witnessed there the reception of John of Gaunt, then Earl of Richmond. We may infer that he was present at that most splendid entertainment given by Edward III to the royal personages then in England, including the King of France, the Queen of Scotland, the King of Cyprus, and that saddest of figures in such a scene, the sister of the captive King of France and Edward's own mother, the almost forgotten Queen Isabella, at what was ever after called the Great Feast of St. George, in the same year; and that he was at Reading with the court and at London in the following winter."

The time was one of intense excitement. The battle of Poictiers, which had just been fought, had sent a thrill of exultation and pride throughout the nation. Everyone was speaking of the Black Prince, who, although he had fought all the morning against his enemy "like a fell and cruel lion," yet treated him when the battle was over with almost fabulous cour tesy, waiting upon him at table, and declaring that the King of France had borne himself more bravely than anyone on the field. All were now awaiting the return of the Prince, with his royal prisoner, in an ecstasy of excitement. Finally, after an eleven days' voyage from Bordeaux, he landed at Sandwich, and rode straight to Canterbury, where he offered thanks at the shrine of St. Thomas, and then went on to London by the same route as Chaucer's pilgrims. This triumphal procession, marked by most pictur esque incidents, must have made an ineffaceable impression on the young man. And soon he was himself to participate in actual war.

The Dauphin having rejected the agreement made by his father, King John was imprisoned, and all Englishmen between the ages of sixteen and sixty were commanded to make ready to join Edward in war against France. Immense stores of provisions were quickly collected, and in October, 1359, a brilliant army set forth, crossed the Channel, and proceeded to Rheims and Paris.

Like his Squire, Chaucer now journeyed in arms through Artois and Picardy. Unluckily, he was taken prisoner in a skirmish near Rethel, but was ransomed soon after by the king, who paid a considerable sum to this end. He was probably with the army on the eighth of May, at the signature of the Treaty of Bretigny, by which Edward renounced his claim to the throne of France. He was in Calais when King John, now set free, came there to meet Edward, and he participated in the fortnight of fetes that followed. From his deposition in a law-suit later, we are certain that at this time he was observant of heraldry.

Towered cities please [him] then,
And the busy hum of men.
When throngs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her grace, whom all commend.

Thus:

Pomp and feast and revelry,
With mask and antique pageantry,

which appeared to Milton

Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream,

were actualities of the young Chaucer's life.

We next hear of him in 1367, when he is granted a good pension, as a "beloved yeoman" in the king's household. Before this he had been married to one of the ladies-in-waiting of Queen Philippa, named Philippa after her, who at the same time is also granted a pension for life. Through his wife Chaucer undoubtedly increased his influence at court, for she was a sister of Katherine Swynford, who eventually became John of Gaunt's wife. On various later occasions Philippa Chaucer received royal grants, because of her "good and agreeable service" to Edward's queen. On August 15, 1369, that virtuous lady died, whereupon, to both Chaucer ("a squire of less estate") and his wife, special allowance was made for weeds of mourn ing. On September 12 the queen's favourite daughter-in-law, Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, also died, at the age of twenty-nine, and in memory of her the poet soon after composed his first notable work, the Book of the Duchess. The death of Queen Philippa and the Duchess Blanche closed a very significant period in the life of Chaucer. He was then nearly, if not quite, thirty years old. By this time the chief features of his personality were undoubtedly fixed.

We are happy to have Froissart's help in deter mining the atmosphere of Philippa's court. The young Flemish writer had journeyed there in 1361, bearing with him a rhymed chronicle of the wars of the period, of which he says: "I presented the volume to my lady Philippa of Hainault, noble Queen of England, who right amiably received it, to my great profit and advancement." "God has given me so much grace,"he elsewhere states,"that I have been of the household of King Edward and the noble queen his wife, my lady Philippa of Hainault, whose clerk I was in my youth and whom I served with fair ditties and amorous treatises." "For the love of the noble and valiant lady whom I served, all great lords, kings, dukes, counts, barons and knights, to whatever nation they belonged, loved me and saw me willingly."

"Tall and upright was she," writes Froissart, "wise, gay, humble, pious, liberal and courteous, decked and adorned in her time with all noble virtues, beloved of God and of mankind." In the Fair Boscage of Youth where he singles out several of his former friends for praise, he begins with her; for, as he states, she "created and made " him. Next to Philippa in the same poem, Froissart places Blanche of Lancaster, whom he describes as:

Gaie, lie friche, esbatans,
Douce, simple, d'umble semblance.

"Tant suis plein de melancholic," says the poet,"j'ai trop perdu en ces deux dames."

Chaucer never once mentions Queen Philippa by name, any more than he does Edward III, the Black Prince, or almost any great personage of the realm; but it is most probable that he felt towards her, as towards Blanche, much as Froissart did. In any case, the Book of the Duchess gives us a definite impression of what he then thought noble in woman.

Chaucer's portrait of Blanche is the first life-like picture in English literature of an actual English lady. In her he portrayed gladness, friendliness, sweetness, debonairete, but no quality at odds with straightforward honesty and loyal wifely devotion. The fact is emphasized that though Blanche had radiant physical charm, and dullness dreaded her, yet she was not coquettish, let alone frivolous. She would never put herself in an equivocal position, nor en courage men's attentions, nor hold out false hopes. She used no such small tricks. She was never in the least scornful to anyone. She was the resting-place of truth. Good folk over all others she loved. She used gladly to do well.

I saw hir daunce so comlily,
Carole and singe so swetely,
Laughe and pleye so womanly.
And loke so debonairly,
So goodly speke and sofrendly,
That certes, I trow, that evermore
Nas seyn so blisful a tresore.

Blanche was trained by Philippa, and it is be lieved that the two were exceptionally sympathetic. They died within a month of each other, and were inevitably associated in the poet's memory. When, then, he was called upon by John of Gaunt, a living patron, to commemorate the loss of Blanche, and undertook, in the Book of the Duchess, to describe iyi ideal gentlewoman, he could hardly have failed to thinlTnofonly of her, but also of her beloved guide. The epitaph on Philippa's tomb, after a description of her virtues, closes with the words:." Learn to live." It appears as if it were particularly from Philippa, whom all in her time proclaimed "the Good," that the pure in heart at the English court learned to live. Probably from her Chaucer first gained that profound respect for good women which is manifest in all his works.

For several years subsequent to Philippa's death, Chaucer and his wife remained closely attached to the court, both probably in the employ of John of Gaunt and his new duchess. In 1374, on St. George's Day at Windsor, when as usual the Knights of the Garter were holding high festival, the king made Chaucer ("dilecto armigero nostro") a new grant of a pitcher of wine daily. One is glad to know that the poet retained Edward's regard to the end. But there can be little doubt what he thought of Alice Ferrers, who had taken Philippa's place. In the same year, 1374, at a great seven days' tournament held at Smithfield, the king's vain mistress appeared at his side, dressed in gorgeous raiment as the Lady of the Sun! Immediately after the Windsor festival, Chaucer took a life-lease of a house above Aldgate in London. On June 8 he was given a lucrative position in the custom house, and then apparently settled down to routine occupation in the city. But he was not confined altogether by business duties. Between 1370 and 1380 he was employed on no less than seven diplomatic missions to various lands France, Flanders, and Italy by which without question his knowledge grew, his acquaintance with literature broad ened, and his mind matured. In 1377 Edward III died a melancholy death, just a year after his illustrious son, the Black Prince; and Richard II, a youth of eleven years, reigned in his stead. Then for some time John of Gaunt and his two brothers were guardians of the throne. Men began to lament: "Woe to thee, O land, where thy king is a child."

II

IF we review Chaucer's productions up to this point in his life, we shall find that they exhibit him as a man of pure, idealistic character.

"His earliest extant complete poem," the so-called A.B.C. which is said to have been written for the Duchess Blanche, reveals whole-hearted devotion to the "almighty and most merciful queen," gentle yet glorious, mother of Our Lord, fit is significant that this prayer is all that the poet extracted from the Monk Deguilleville's ponderous allegory The Pilgrimage of Human Life, and that he heightened the effect of his original by new thoughts finely phrased? It is also significant that one of the chief passages hi Dante which appealed to him was the Invocation to Mary at the close of the Paradiso. Chaucer was drawn to it not only because of its great beauty of expression, but also because of his sympathy for the feeling there enshrined. Both he and Dante adored the Virgin because in her mercy, goodness, and pity were "assembled with magnificence." She had borne the Son of Man within the "blissful cloister" of her sides. Chaucer understood well the mystical devotion of St. Bernard, to whose hymns in Mary's honour he refers with applause. He makes his heroine Constance tenderly appeal to her for help in lonely grief:

Now, lady bright, to whom alle woful cryen,
Thou glorie of wommanhede, thoufaire may,
Thou haven ofrefut, brighte sterre of day,
Rewe on my child, that of thy gentilesse
Rewest on every rewful in distresse!

The Virgin's "gentilesse" was gloried in by all gentle folk on earth. They envisaged her as the Venus of Heaven; they exalted her as the divine patroness of chivalry. Chaucer seems to have viewed the Virgin as a living ideal of womanhood. In her was abound ing pity; she had a tender heart; she was the great treasurer of bounty to mankind "glorious maid and mother, which wert never bitter, but full of sweetness and of mercy ever."

Chaucer's life of St. Cecilia is a close translation, and one cannot infer much from it as to the poet's own sentiments. He reveals, however, no cynicism or impatience in his version of this ecclesiastical fable, and was apparently glad to show how by baptism men might become " Christ's own knights," cast away all the works of darkness, and take on the "armour of brightness." The converts of the tale fought a good fight; they kept the faith; there was laid up for them a crown in Heaven.

Likewise, in the story of Constance, another early work, revised to suit the Man of Law, religion is treated with full respect. Here Christ is glorified as the champion of the weak, the cure of every harm.

The "victorious tree" on which He, "the white Lamb," hung, is the "protection of the true;" through it Constance was saved from manifold distress. The portrait which Chaucer draws of this princess of Rome, wife of King Alia of Northumberland, is that of an ideal character in his own eyes:

In hir is heigh beautee, withoute pryde,
Yowthe, withoute grenehede orfotye;
To alle hir werkes vertu is hir gyde,
Humblesse hath slayn in hir al tirannye.
She is mirour of alle curteisye;
Hir herte is verray chambre of holinesse,
Hir hand, ministre of fredom for almesse.

Constance patterned herself on the blissful Mary, holy and benign. The "common voice" declared that it would have been well if she, "to reckon as well her goodness as beauty," had been queen of all Europe. In the Clerk's Tale, Chaucer again described a young wife of singular nobleness. Griselda was a girl of lowly station, with whom a marquis of Lombardy fell in love. His followers wished him to make a distinguished match ; but in his heart he so commended Griselda's womanhood and virtuous beauty, her dig nified mien and filial devotion, the absence in her of "likerous lust"

for she wolde vertu plese,
She knew wel labour, but non ydel ese

that he determined to marry her on whom his heart was set. And Griselda, without seeming effort, by simply being benign and " digne of reverence," soon captured everyone's heart a convincing proof of her true gentleness! "Everyone loved her that looked on her face." But, according to the story, Lord Wal ter decided to test her fidelity and obedience. So he separated from her first one child, then another, and finally announced that he had arranged to take a new wife, whom he bade her make ready to receive. She accepted all her lord did without complaint, nor showed him any less love than before. She went back in poverty to her cottage home this "flower of wifely patience" without revealing any anger, giving any indication of offence. Whereupon, the poet says

No wonder is, for in hir grete estaat
Hir gost was ever in pleyn humylitee;
No tendre mouth, non herte delicat,
No pompe, no semblant of royaltee,
But fid of patient benignitee,
Discreet and pry deles, ay honourable,
And to hir housbonde ever meke and stable.

Chaucer says that he told the Clerk's Tale to show, not that wives should be humble like Griselda, but that all men and women should be constant in ad versity. We should, he declares, accept the will of God, since His chastenings are for our good. Then (as an afterthought, it would seem; for several man uscripts have another ending) the poet relieved the high-wrought nature of the narrative by some ironical comments:

But o word, lordinges, herkeneth er I go:
It were fid hard tojinde now a dayes
In al a toun Grisildes three or two;
For, if that they were put to swich assayes,
The gold of them hath now so badde alayes
With bras, that thogh the coyne be fair at ye,
It wolde rather breste a-two than plye.

The poet's constant references to conditions at the time of his writing his several works (not to his own time in general, the fourteenth century, as we are too prone to say without reflection) are very significant. His youthful training, as well as his temperament, was idealistic. In his early years he was surrounded by ladies whom he could praise unstintedly for their goodness and patience. But history does not reveal many such in prominent places in the last quarter of the century, when, on the contrary, women abound of the type of Alice Ferrers and Kate Mortimer, women more like Lady May and the Wife of Bath. There is in Chaucer a steady comparison of the present with le bon vieux temps which was to him the happy era of Edward Ill's vigour and Philippa's beauty, when the king won brilliant victories and was faithfully devoted to his queen.

By too exclusive consideration of the gaiety of Chaucer's work, many readers have failed to regard sufficiently the underlying seriousness of his character. Yet this is manifest, not only in his prose works, but also in poems composed at all stages of his career. Naturally it grew with advancing years, particularly as a result of the steady deterioration of morals among both aristocrats and commoners. Distressing changes in public life forced Chaucer, as well as every other thoughtful man, towards the close of the four teenth century, to turn away from fair to foul aspects of social and political life? When Froissart returned to England in 1395, after an absence of twenty-eight years, he was disheartened to find the whole atmos phere different from what it had been in the glad days of his youth, and he thus voices the prevailing pessimism: "What have become, they said in England, of such great undertakings and valiant men, splendid battles and conquests? Who are the knights in England who do any such thing? In former days Englishmen were feared and dreaded, and we were spoken of throughout all the world. Now we give cause for silence. It certainly appears that we are in this country weakened in sense and grace. Times have changed from right to wrong since the death of good King Edward. Justice was maintained and guarded with care in his day. At present, King Richard of Bordeaux wishes only repose and rest, frivolities and amusements with ladies. Thus it is apparent that soon there will be no man of valour in England, and all sorts of felony and hate will increase."

"The wise," adds Froissart, "noted the great evils that might be born and come; to them the fools paid no heed." Chaucer was surely among the wise, as all will admit who read his ballade Lack of Stedfastness, in which he too laments that "the world [had] made a permutation from right to wrong, from truth to fickleness." Sadly he affirms that a man's word is no longer felt to be an obligation; truth is put down; pity is exiled; no man is merciful; and finally he implores King Richard to cultivate chivalrous attributes:

O prince, desyre to be honourable . . .
Dred God, do law, love trouthe and worthinesse,
And wed thy folk again to stedfastnesse.

One of Chaucer's most impressive poems is a "Ballade de Bon Conseil," entitled Truth. "Flee from the press, and dwell with soothfastness ;" "tem pest thee not all crooked to redress ;" "work well thy self, that thou canst others rede;" these are words of counsel that he spoke with conviction, revealing his own creed.

That thee is sent, receyve in buxomnesse,
The wrastlingfor this worlde axeth a fed.
Her nis non hoom, her nis but wildernesse.
Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stall
Know thy contree, look up, thank God ofal;
Hold the hye wey, and let thy gost thee lede:
And trouthe shal deliver e, hit is no drede.

In an exalted envoy, the poet pleads with men to leave their wretchedness, and cry mercy of God, who in His high goodness made them of naught.

Draw unto Him, and pray in general
For thee, and eejtfor other, hevenlich mede;
And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.

Truth evidently meant to Chaucer, not merely veracity, but, above that, loyalty, verity, and highest of all, symbolically the truth that makes one free. Truth, indeed, is the very keynote of Chaucer's poetry truth in description, which we call realism; truth in sentiment, namely poise; truth in imagination, that is art; truth to human nature; truth to truth. "Truth," Chaucer affirmed, "is the highest thing that man may keep."

III

THOUGH Chaucer's idealism is marked, it is not extravagant. Devotion to the Virgin, exaltation of good women, praise of purity, meekness, stedfastness, and truth were incumbent upon all who strove to fulfil the high principles of the order of chivalry. Chaucer was high-minded, but he was also glad-hearted. In later life, as we have seen, he viewed with anxiety the growing corruption of the times, but he never rebelled against the existing institutions of society. He sincerely deplored the wrong doing of the great, but he never removed from their sphere. Throughout his career, the poet was thrown into intimate contact with the highest of rank in the realm, and was plainly happy in that environ ment. His temperament made him a glad witness of pageants, a genial companion of men of the world, a gracious friend of ladies, and a sympathetic listener to all who related adventures or feats of war. Chaucer was lucky to be born amid the splendours of the reign of Edward III. in the halcyon days of English knighthood. Unquestionably there was much artificiality and affectation in the outer manifestations of chivalry in England, as elsewhere, at that time. Edward III may justly be accused of vainglory in his confident emulation of King Arthur. "The elegant Order of the Garter was a far cry from the practical crusading orders of an earlier age. Personal ostentation and pride characterized notable warriors of the period. There was mainly vanity in the new pursuit of heraldry. Yet, notwithstanding this, the era of Chaucer's youth makes a strong ap peal to the manly. It was certainly not one of mere make-believe, but of vigorous and effective undertakings. Chivalry then, as men of the day them selves felt, had reached its height, and shone with unsurpassed brilliance. Froissart believed that during the fifty years of which he wrote in his chronicle more "feats of arms and marvels" had taken place in the world than in three hundred years before.

"Since the time of the good King Charlemagne," he declared, "never happened so great aventures deguerre." The spirit of chivalry, without question, animated heroic oftener than fantastic deeds. In the general disorder of Christendom, in the era of the great schism, when prelates and other clergy were often entitled to scorn, its ideals were the chief guide of many men in daily conduct. Langland represents an honest Plowman as the one best fitted to lead his contemporaries to the shrine of Truth. Chaucer, in his picture of the same English world, places first and foremost a noble Knight.

From our present point of view, the portrait of the Knight in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is the most significant single passage in Chaucer. It has been repeated by historians and critics countless times. The vital part of the description of the Knight is not, however, the statement of far-away places where he fought. These might have occurred to anyone as the most suitable for an errant warrior to visit, and were perhaps suggested by a poem of Machaut. Few remember them now. It is the Character of the noble pilgrim that has permanently held men's thought; Everyone who knows anything about Chaucer is familiar with these lines:

A Knight ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first began
To ryden out, he lovedj chivalrye.,

Trouihe and honour, fredom and curteisye.
Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,
And therto hadde he riden (no manferre)
As well in Cristendom as hethenesse,
And ever honoured for his worthinesses

And evermore he hadde a sovereyn prys.
And though that he were worthy, he was wys,
And of his port as meke as is a mayde.
He never yet no vileinye ne sayde,
In al his lyf, unto no maner wight.
He was a verray parfit gentil knight.

While considering the features of this portrait, it is well to know that they are not unique. Without in the least assailing the poet's originality, but rather with the idea of emphasizing his genius for improving the already excellent, it may be pointed out that Chaucer's words resemble closely those used by Watriquet de Couvin to describe his patron, Gauchier de Chatillon, Constable of France, who died in 1329. The standards of chivalry being universal, one or several of the phrases used by Chaucer can be paralleled in many other works; but nowhere else, so far as known, is there a continuous description which can so reasonably be offered as the source of his conception. Watriquet was one of the most not able poets of Hainault, Queen Philippa's home when she became King Edward's wife. He certainly occupied a position of dignity in Gauchier's circle, for he addresses the lords and ladies about him with extraordinary frankness, dwelling upon their duties as gentle folk, while he exalts the honour of their estate. He adored "gentilesse." He was the apostle of "loyalty." There is other evidence that Chaucer knew his work.

In his Dit du Connestable de France, Watriquet regularly calls the knight Gauchier a preudomme (worthy man) and highly applauds his prouesce (worthiness). He terms him roi de chevalerie. We are informed that this worthy man, who loved chivalry, rode out young to foreign lands (Aragon, Sicily, etc.), and sought without repose in many wars pour aguerre d'honneur le pris.

Sa renomee s'estendi
En mainte mar die par le monde.

Onques personne tant prisie
De lid a son vivant nefu.

Though he was un preud'omme que chascuns prisc, he was also sage.

Near the beginning of the eulogy we read :

Li preudons estoit parfais
En honneur par diz et parfais. . . .
Prouesce faisoit esveillier,
Courtoisie, honneur et largesce
Et loiaute, qui de noblesce
Toutes les autres vertus passe . . .
Tant fust plains de courouz ne d'ire
Onques n'issi hors de sa bouche
Vilains mos; maniere avoit douche
Plus que dame ne damoisele.

"Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye" is the exact equivalent of courtoisie, honneur, et largesce et loiaute. Strangely enough, Chaucer never uses the word "loyalty," though it is common in other fourteenth-century English writers; for it he always writes "trouthe." "Fredom," of course, signifies largesse, generosity. The passage "never was [he] so full of anger that there issued from his mouth a word of vileinye; his port was meek, more than [that of] a lady or a maid" is identical in substance with Chaucer's memorable words regarding the Knight's attitude toward others. Elsewhere Watriquet states that Gauchier was doux comme un pucelle. This gentilz connestable, tres gentilz prince, was, he explains, en parfaite honneur nourris, tres parf ait in largess; in his heart sprang the fountain of parfaite courtoisie. Gauchier also was a "verray parfit gentil knight." Whether or no Watriquet's portrait influenced Chaucer's, the claim of the latter to reality is strengthened by the fact that it is parallel to one of an actual personage in the author's age.

An additional feature in Chaucer's descrrption which is significant as exhibiting the Knight's character, lies in the statement regarding his equipment:,. "His horses were good, but he was not gay." 'No critic has failed to notice how Chaucer makes his effects in description by contrasts. What the Knight was not is as striking as what he was. "He was not gay, just as "he never yet no vileinye ne sayde," is emphatic. Chaucer's ideal knight, whose profession might seem to demand splendid array and richly caparisoned horses, eschewed vain apparel and rode only in serviceable armour, which showed signs of hard wear. His "gipoun" was made of mere fustian and his "habergeoun" was "all besmotered." On the other hand, the Monk, who should have had nothing to do with "dainty" horses and fine raiment and rich living, sought particularly these things. He had swift grey hounds, and spared no cost in his preparation for the hunt. " His boots [were] supple, his horses in great estate. . . . His palfrey was as brown as is a berry." This passage should be brought into connection with words of the Parson in the last of the Canterbury Tales. The Parson there dwells upon the outer signs of the deadly sin of pride; not only does pride appear "in speech and countenance," but also "in outrageous array of clothing." "Alas!" he says, "may men not see in our days, the sinful costly array of clothing?" "Also the sin of ornament or of apparel is in things that appertain to riding, as in too many delicate horses that be holden for delight, that be so fair, fat, and costly; and also too many a vicious knave that is sustained because of them; in too curious harness, as in saddles, in cruppers, peytrels, and bridles covered with precious clothing and rich, bars and plates of gold and of silver. For which God saith by Zacharah the prophet, 'I will confound the riders of such horses.' These folk take little regard of the riding of God's Son of Heaven, and of His harness when He rode upon an ass, and had no other harness but the poor clothes of His disciples; nor do we read that ever He rode on other beast. I speak this for the sin of superfluity, and not for reasonable honesty, when reason it requireth."

It deserves, in truth, special notice how much Chaucer's portrait of the ideal Knight resembles in fundamental nature his portrait of the ideal Parson. "Rich in holy thought and work," though lowly of estate, the Parson was as faithful a knight of peace as his higher-born companion a knight of war. Many times in adversity he had proved himself worthy of his Master in Heaven. He fulfilled in his own domain every demand of chivalrous precept "trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye." He too "waited after no pomp or reverence." By his own demeanour he commended his profession. Both the Parson and his brother the Plowman, because they followed so closely in the footsteps of Christ, Chaucer pictures as "gentles of honour;" they had "gentilesse of grace." We fail wholly to realize the significance of Chaucer's exaltation of the Knight, if we do not observe that he was not simply a man of great physical courage and brilliant achievement in war, but the embodiment of very high spiritual excellence. "Blessed are the meek," says the Gospel, and the Knight is nobly meek. He is Christ-like in his behaviour to his fellows. His chivalry is religious through and through. Not in vain had he vowed his first vow when dubbed faithfully to serve God and Holy Church.

In his description of the Knight Chaucer presents us with an ideal which we may be sure was seldom if ever realized. Very different it would have been if the author of the Vision of Piers Plowman had painted the picture. He would probably have exposed the seamy side of the tapestry of knighthood, all the supposed defects upon which certain one-sided English historians of recent times have been pleased to dwell. Instead of portraying the Knight, as he did the Monk, genially but with clear exhibition of his imperfections. Chaucer chose to portray him as without a flaw and by his own sympathy he has made him so appealing that we feel that all knights are, or should be, like him. Chaucer has fixed forever our conception of knighthood, beautiful, almost holy. Historians without number may tell us: "Knights were not all like that;" and we reply (with some unreason): "No doubt, but here was at least one." It is singular good fortune that the situation is not the reverse, as in the case of the Monk. Without doubt all monks were not like Chaucer's specimen. But there he stood, and afterwards monks in England had to prove the contrary.

The Knight bore arms honourably "in his lord's wars" but these are not dwelt upon; he was less a patriot than a fighter "for our faith." St. Louis would have called him a preudomme, according to his own Christian interpretation of that word. "Master Robert," once said the great Crusader to the founder of the Sorbonne, "I should wish to have the name of preudomme [worthy man], provided I were one . . . for preudommie [worthiness] is such a great thing and such a good thing that merely to name it fills one's mouth." A preudomme, who believed in God and the Virgin, the King carefully distinguished from ordinary preus hommes, who merely showed valour in fight. Of the latter, he pointed out, there were many in Saracen as well as in Christian lands, but to the former God vouchsafed the great benefit and grace that He guarded him from mortal sin in holy service. The preudomme's prowess came to him as a gift of God. When such an one had gained "sovereyn pris" in war, it was fitting that he should promptly "do his pilgrimage;" on his return home he should at once yield praise and thanksgiving for the mercies of the Lord.

To Chaucer chivalry was a religion, and, in matter of chivalrous sentiment, he is a pronounced moralist.,His morality is not obtrusive, as is the case with Watriquet and Gower; but it is there consciously, efficaciously, and (his countrymen in the main think) rightly there. Chaucer never scolds or sneers, never draws a long face or sets his jaw; he is the happiest and cheeriest of comrades; but he never shows that he approves the wrong, and he persistently shows that he approves the right. Though frankly a man of the world, a very human man, who never dreamed of posing as a saint, he leaves us in no doubt as to his whole-hearted approbation of "good men of religion" within or without the church.

IV

HAVING thus studied the qualities with which Chaucer invests the leading "gentle" among his pilgrims, we should now examine the tale given to him to tell, the poet's chief production "of storial thing that toucheth gentilesse."

The position, of the Knight's Tale at the beginning of the Canterbury Tales attests its importance in the author's eyes; and the extreme felicity of style which makes it one of the most charming of all Chaucer's narratives, shows that he wrote it with as much care as sympathy.

The tale purports to be one of ancient days, con cerning Theseus, King of Athens, and his wife Hippolyta, and deals with the fates of two young princes, Palamon and Arcite, taken in war against Thebes, and held without ransom. As it happens, both knights behold almost simultaneously from their prison window the king's sister Emelye in her garden below, and both instantly fall in love with her. Thereupon they languish in hopeless rivalry. After a while, Arcite is released, yet goes home envying Palamon his continued opportunity to see his lady. He manages, however, to return in disguise, and takes humble service with the king; but he is rapidly advanced in rank. One morning, while in the woods bemoaning his plight, he meets Palamon, who has just escaped from prison, and they agree to settle their dispute by a duel on the following day. Theseus, out hunting with his court, discovers them fighting, and, after his first anger is appeased, undertakes to arrange a great tournament a twelvemonth later, to which each suitor may bring one hundred knights to support his cause, promising to the victor the hand of Emelye. The tournament is a magnificent event, and is amply described in preparation and fulfilment. Arcite wins; but, before leaving the lists, is mortally injured by a fall from his horse. The sorrow at this is intense, and the hero is entombed with great sadness and solemnity. Nevertheless, an alliance between Greece and Thebes being desirable, the king later persuades Emelye to marry Palamon, for, as he says, "gentle mercy ought to pass right," a maxim of noble chivalry.

Modern critics have dwelt long upon the romance and minimized the reality of this tale. Properly understood, however, it is one of the best pictures we have of English courtly life in the fourteenth century. Of course, there is something remote to us in the pageantry described; but to most of us all royal display and entertainment is remote. The technical terms inevitably used to make vivid the account of a tournament are strange to the majority; that, however, does not make them less actual at the time when they were on everyone's lips. Mediaeval armour is no longer seen except in museums; mediaeval costumes are familiar to us only through the books of antiquaries; mediaeval manners may seem nowadays stilted or quaint; yet mediaeval armour, costumes, and manners of entertainment were the only ones that Chaucer knew. Further more, Chaucer used the language of his day, a day of chivalrous largess, and showed no plebeian desire to "grouch" and say "but," no self-conscious solici tude to avoid exaggeration in speech. There is little if any extravagance in the statements of the Knight's Tale that does not find a parallel in contemporary accounts of the happenings of Edward Ill's reign. If acquainted with these, one need but glance at the chief personages of the tale to see that under their names men in Chaucer's circle would have recognized portraits no more conventional than poets were then drawing of persons conspicuous to public gaze. The "gentle duke" Theseus, the "lord and governor" of Athens, is described in terms that must have reminded all of Edward III; and few could read of the tender-hearted Hippolyta without think ing of Philippa. The queen interferes but once, and that is to crave pardon for the young warriors whom her husband evidently prone, like Edward, to sudden wrath had impulsively condemned to death. The scene is one of great charm, and worthy to be set alongside of that memorable one at Calais, when Philippa, as described in a familiar chapter of Froissart, obtained pardon for the rich burgesses of the city, who knelt before the irate Edward, clad only in their shirts, with halters about their necks, to save their fellow citizens from destruction. As Chaucer never tires of saying: "Pity runneth soon in gentle heart."

Of the two lovers of Emelye, the poet evidently portrays Arcite with more favour than Palamon.

Half so wel biloved a man as he
Ne was ther never in court, of his degree;
He was so gentil of condicioun,
That thurghout al the court was his renoun.

Arcite is almost quixotically generous. The most striking example of his sense of honour is where he refuses to take any advantage of his ferocious rival who had just denounced him as a false, wicked traitor, his mortal foe, and threatened him with death.

Arcite, being armed, could have slain Palamon in stantly. Instead, he shows great self-control, acknowledges his opponent a worthy knight, and offers him a chance to "darreyne" Emelye in open battle. His generosity goes further. He undertakes to bring food and drink and bedding secretly to Palamon, to strengthen him for the encounter. He will also provide armour for both, begging his opponent to choose the best and leave the worst for him. On this he gives his word as a knight; yet he realizes that his courtesy may cost him as in the end it does both his lady and his life. This is one of the first, the earliest, instances in English literature of what we call "fair play." The ideal of fair play arose as a guide to knights in martial encounter, "in battle or in tournament." Plainly, the chief part of Chaucer's tale is the account of the tournament. Everything leads up to this; everything depends on its result. In this part of the story the poet varies in all but general features from his source. The Knight's Tale might almost be called the Tale of the Tournament. In like manner, Edward III might almost be called the King of the Tournament. The number of jousts that he held was legion, and their magnificence was unparalleled in English history. Even a cursory examination shows that Chaucer's tournament is astonishingly like those of Edward III, while quite impossible for Theseus in Athens.

For trusteth wel, that dukes, erles, hinges,
Were gadered in this noble companye.
For love and for encrees ofchivalrye.

After having enumerated the armour that the combatants wore (most of it of quite recent contrivance), the poet, seeing the humour of the anachronisms, remarked slyly: "There is no new guise that is not old." Well aware of what he was doing, and with deliberate intent of arousing greater interest by making his characters as much as possible like those whom his readers knew, he so altered the miseen scene as to give us a valuable picture of the outer chivalry of his own time, substantiated as true by all sorts of evidence.

The moral discourse, moreover, at the end of the tale, on the text, "The king must die as well as the page," is in curious accord with the sentiments of the poem composed in French by the Black Prince to be placed on his tomb. And the memorable speech which follows, in which Theseus declares that it is very much better for a knight to die in his excellence and flower "than when his name has grown pale by age" and "all forgotten is his vassalage," might have been uttered by the ghost of Edward III delivering a warning. In any case, it offered the only consolation the people had for the death of the Black Prince; and of the Black Prince, preudomme et en fait s et en dits, la fleur de chevalerie, le prince qui ot coer gentil, one cannot fail to think in connection with Arcite. Chaucer is realistic in his presentation of the life of chivalry in the Knight's Tale.

Was he realistic also, we wonder, in the tale of Sir Thopas? That "rhyme "has sometimes been grotesquely misunderstood. It was not intended, of course, to ridicule romance in general, but only the degenerate versions of courtly poems prepared for ignorant audiences in England, written in a metre never employed on the Continent for the same pur pose, and wholly unsuited to extended narrative "drasty rhyming," without appeal. It was, of course, still less intended to ridicule chivalry in general. But Chaucer told this "tale of mirth" himself, and we suspect that he was up to something more pointed in it than a mere parody of "Horn Child and of Ypotys, of Bevis and Sir Guy." Flanders in the fourteenth century was the actual home of many a fantastic chevalier, noted more for his "fair bear ing" than his might, more concerned with "para mours and jollity" than genuine war, decked out gorgeously, but white-faced, and easily-wearied "for pricking on the soft grass."

The tale of Sir Thopas is certainly a "dainty thing." Chaucer seems in it to be poking fun at contempo rary affectations, in a mood not unlike that of Shake speare in Loves Labour 's Lost. He often laughs at "colours of rhetoric," "art poetical," all pretentious "high style." We may feel confident that he admired no more than Hotspur a popinjay knight. While recent investigations have shown that chivalric cus toms in Flanders in Chaucer's day were particularly susceptible to mockery, there were also many so- called knights in England who counterfeited valiant heroes of the time and type of the Black Prince, as an ape, or "as craft counterfeiteth kind." For such Chaucer had no respect.

One should note particularly that the only person who is mentioned in the Prologue as an attendant of the Knight and Squire was a Yeoman. The poet was evidently proud of this Yeoman, whom he describes sympathetically in his green suit, with peacock ar rows at his girdle, with a mighty bow in his hand, And he might well have been! The English archer yeomen were the real victors at Crecy and Pointiers. The French nobilityin their self-confidence disdained the support of unhorsed warriors; the English wel comed them to their cause, and fought willingly at their head. It was very English of Chaucer to in troduce the Yeoman in this way. If it was might of the commons, as Langland said, that made the king reign, it was might of the yeomen that made the knights win. Chivalry in England, the commons believed, should justify itself to gain their support. Chivalry in England was democratized, and it there fore lived.

So far we have looked chiefly at mature warriors and tales of "arms." It is time now to consider another representative pilgrim who figures forth in prospect, not so much the body as the soul of chivalry, its first animating impulse, love.

No one questions the charm of Chaucer's Squire, a most engaging youth. He was wonderfully quick and of great strength, a good horseman, a good jouster, a good dancer. Though but twenty years of age, he had already borne himself well in military expeditions. "He could make songs and well endite."

A He promised to be peerless in eloquence.

Curteys he was, lowly, and servisable,
And carf biforn his fader at the table.

His gentle, feeling speech, and his discretion won the heart of the Franklin, who could not help con trasting him with his own son, a waster and wanton, who paid no heed to virtue. The Host also approved A of the Squire, to judge from the respectful way in which he invited him to tell his tale. And, indeed, the friendliness, the modesty, the "good-will" which the young man showed in doing his part for the general entertainment, must have made him beloved by all. The Squire had evidently taken to heart the idealistic precepts of the order of chivalry, which he was later to adorn. "Sire," said Prince Huon of Tabary, in explaining to Saladin, his conqueror, the significance of a knight's baptism, resembling that of a child:

Sire, tout ensement devez
Issir sans nide vilonnie,
Et estre plains de courtoisie;
Baignier devez en honeste,
En courtoisie et en bonte,
Etfere amer a toutes genz.

To this end that of being worthy of all men's love an aspiring, chivalric youth was encouraged to seek straightway the love of a particular lady. The Squire had shown his prowess in war, "in hope to stand well in his lady's grace." He was "a lover and a lusty bachelor." Many similar figures meet us in the pages of Froissart as actual combatants of the period, but perhaps none is more conspicuous than Sir Walter Manny, Knight of the Garter, who died in 1372. As a youth he had accompanied Queen Philippa when she left Valenciennes for London to be crowned. "At that time," we read, "were great jousts, tourneys, dancing, carolling, and great feasts every day, the which endured the space of three weeks." After they were ended, most of the bride's company returned, but Walter Manny "abode still with the queen, and was her carver, and after did many great prowesses in divers places." "Let me never be beloved with my lady, unless I have a course with one of these followers," he once exclaimed before a combat in Brittany, and sallied forth to do "noble deeds." Whereupon the countess on whose behalf he had fought, " descended down from the castle with a glad cheer and came and kissed Sir Walter Manny and his companions one after another two or three times, like a valiant lady."

Des femes venent les proesces
Et les honours et les hautesces,
Qui de femes s'est fait haier
Ja ne verres bien acheveir.

So we read in a most interesting poem, entitled Les Enseignements d'Edouard III, in which a prince is instructed how to be a preud'omme. "A knight may never be of prowess but if he be a lover" Sir Tris tram's words in the Morte d Arthur express gen eral chivalric belief.

In the Legend of Good Women, Chaucer informs us (through the lips of Alceste) that "while he was young," he "kept Love's estate," served him with his cunning, and furthered his law in verse. Like the hero of his Book of the Duchess, the poet chose love for his "first craft." He might just as well have learned "other art or letter," but he was impressionable like a white wall, and poems of love came to him, it seemed, by nature. Therefore, he kept on in this way, writing "books, songs, ditties," in praise of love. The poet had made his head ache, he tells us, many a night, writing in his study about "Love's folk," furthering, not despising them; though he was not among those whom Love cared to advance.

Chaucer refers more than once to his own experiences of love, but that we cannot take his statements literally is, of course, clear. It is noteworthy that in describing his own lovesickness he uses the same extravagant phrases that the characters of his stories do: he cannot sleep; he has no feeling in anything; he is in dread to die; he is distraught with fantasies; and this sickness has lasted for eight years. All French poets of the period seem to have had similar experiences, and led a "cruel life unsoft."

'.There is no question that Chaucer knew well the ways of courtly lovers. He gives us interesting side lights on them in the House of Fame, even alluding to the peculiar vows that it was then the chivalrous custom to make. But Chaucer, always extremely sensitive to insincerity, and always alive to the ridiculous, always (good practical Englishman that he was) a believer in common sense, sedulously avoided the rhetorical excesses of the love poets of his age. "Why," he asks, "should I speak more quaintly, or pain myself to paint my words to speak of love? It will not be. I can naught of that faculty." Very seldom indeed did Chaucer write fantastic verse. "I do," he says, "no diligence to show craft, but only sentence [sense]." In like manner, there is nothing "crafty" or artificial, let alone deceitful or transient, in the chivalrous love that Chaucer commends.

More and more, as time went on, the poet seems to have refrained from association with "lovers." The eagle in the House of Fame complains that he took no more interest in "tidings of love and such glad things." Good Alceste thought he might be a renegade, and the god of love even accused him of making wise folk withdraw from him, holding "that he is only a very proper fool who loves paramours too hard and hot." Yet Chaucer maintained that he always desired to speak well of love. Though he did not wish to be a lover, though he did not take sides with the leaf or the flower (alluding to certain love societies of the time), he wrote "in honour of love," and even declares that "no true lover shall come in hell."

The Squire was a pattern lover, and his tale promised to be a pattern tale; but alas! the poet left it "half-told." We have in the prelude a portrait of the noble King Cambinskan of Tartary, who is seen to have all the characteristics of mediaeval distinction, and we have a description of a splendid birthday feast, of just such a sort as the poet may often have enjoyed; but the essential part of the tale as it stands is the experience of a false lover which the beautiful princess Canacee hears from the lips of a bird in distress. The gentle falcon had been chivalrously wooed by a tercelet who "seemed to be the well of all gen- tilesse," but he turned out to be a hypocrite, "full of treason and falseness," and had basely neglected her for a common bird whom he had met in another land where he was obliged to go "for his honour."

This poem, animated by the same moral thought as his Queen Anelida and False Arcite, deals veiledly, it may be, with an actual happening to one whom Chaucer knew; but that is too long a subject to broach here. The main thing is the author's exposition of what must have been one of the greatest difficulties of chivalrous love-service! "Men love by their very nature newfangleness," says the poet, "and often no gentleness of blood may them bind." Herein lay his personal grief; sometimes the word of a born gentleman was no better than that of men in gen eral; sometimes his love was as low as a churl's. Chaucer's address to Tarquinius, the seducer of Lucrece, shows clearly his manner of thought:

Tarquinius, that art a fringes eyr,
And sholdest, as by linage and by right,
Doon as a lord and as a verray knight,
Why hastow doon dispyt to chivalrye?
Why hastow doon this lady vilanyel
Alias! ofthee this was a vileins dede!

These lines exhibit his peculiar method of modernizing the sentiments of ancient story, but still more his insistence on chivalry as a superior code of morals. In this respect, as in so many others, he shared the sentiments of his Parson: "Ever from the higher degree that man falleth, the more is he thrall, and more to God and to the world vile and abominable."

Loyalty, the poet felt, was absolutely essential to a lover. At the very mention or thought of a man who proved false, he lost all his customary benignity and flared forth in indignation. No place pleasanter than the nethermost hell was suitable for such an, one's eternal abode. The consoling sentiment that is expressed nowadays by the proverb: "There are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught," which corresponds to the one quoted in the Parliament of Fowls: "There are more stars, God knows, than a pair," Chaucer describes as "dung- hill" in character, fit for barnyard fowl, but not for noble birds of the air. The turtle-dove said: "Love till death."' In Chaucer's eyes gentleness implied purity. To him chivalrous love meant idealism in life.

Ideal love, with its concomitant of fidelity to troth, is the theme of one of the most charming of the Canterbury Tales, the Breton Lay of the Franklin. Perhaps the close relations between England and Brittany in the poet's time (many an English knight had fought there, and the young Duke and Duchess of Brittany resided in England) gave added interest to the story of a Breton knight who came to England "to seek in arms worship and honour." But Chaucer's choice of the tale and its juxtaposition in the general group are significant as showing the teaching he desired to impress. Though he often dwells wittily, in a clerkly, after-dinner mood, on the temptations of sex, the poet always seems glad to pay tribute, as in the Squire's Tale, to the "truth that is in women seen." Here we have another lady whose colour was true blue. And happily she is wedded to one equal to her in fidelity. The knight Aryiragus is "the flower of chivalry" not merely a "worthy man of arms," but a perfect lover, a devoted servant of his lady, without jealousy, with out suspicion and his wife is a mirror of wifely chastity, sad in his absence, joyful on his return. But in her circle was a young squire, of whom no harm is said, save that he had the misfortune to fall in love with this noble wife, and the indiscretion to try to win her love in return. This squire Aurelius is painted sympathetically, like the Squire in the Prologue. But he was young, poetic, sensitive, and, as became a person of his sort, a "servant of Venus." According to Continental ideas of the "gay science," there was only merit in his devoting himself assiduously to a married lady. Aurelius, however, recognized that it would be "churlish" to keep Dorigen to a promise she had no desire to fulfil. He was so deeply impressed by the sincerity of her love for her husband that he preferred to suffer himself rather than disturb it, and he proclaims her the truest and the best wife he has ever known.

The "great gentilesse" of Arviragus led to the squire's "gentle deed, "which in its turn led to a "gentle deed" from the bachelor of law, to whom the squire had plighted his troth.. The moral is: gentleness begets gentleness. The whole secret of the inspiration to gentle deeds on the part of every man in the tale knight, squire, and clerk was the fidelity of a lady to her plighted word. After read ing such a tale as that of the Franklin, our English word "betrothed" renews its mediaeval significance; it implies a chivalric obligation.

The Franklin's gentle story of "perfect wifehood" ends the so-called marriage group in the Canterbury Tales, and probably indicates Chaucer's mature conclusion that love in marriage, without mastery on either side, is the sort of love most highly to be approved.

VI

FOR Chaucer's chief treatment of love, however, we must turn to that marvellously subtle poem Troilus and Cressida, the depth and seriousness of which have escaped many readers, who have been over- engrossed by the intrigue of the story, or by the author's masterly portrayal of a humorous character.

Troilus and Cressida is far from being, as some think, a light-hearted narrative of erotic impulse, a comic tale of how a pandar helped a friend to satisfy sensual desires, a cynical exposure of the instability of an amorous woman.; It is at bottom an earnest presentation of the circumstances and effects of idealistic passion, a revelation of the way chivalric fidelity may ennoble a gentleman and unchivalric disloyalty bring a lady to scorn, a solemn plea for perfect devotion and inviolable truth in relations of love.

The hero Troilus first appears on the scene with a company of gay young knights and squires, but, unlike them, shows indifference to ladies. "There was not a man of greater hardiness than he, nor more desired worthiness;" he had "excellent prowess; "but he did not hold lovers in reverence; he thought they worshipped Saint Idiot. He was scornful, haughty, and vain. Then suddenly he was overwhelmed by the sight of Cressida, and his whole being changed through "the fire of love."

Dede were his japes and his crueltee,
His heighe port and his manere estraunge.
And ech of tho ganfor a vertu chaunge.

In the field against the Greeks, he was like a lion; but in the town his manner was so goodly that "every one loved him that looked on his face." When, after a combat, he returned to the city with his armour smashed and hewn, "and aye the people cried, 'here cometh our joy" Troilus cast down his eyes with modesty. All his "thews" were good. He was no boaster "too wise [was] he to do so great a vice;" he had a humble, true and pitying heart he was a noble, gentle knight, "as gentle man as any wight in Troy.

It was, however, of the love of Troilus, not of his arms or knighthood, as seen in many a cruel battle, that Chaucer undertook to write. And he pictures Troilus as a perfect lover humble, true, secret, patient in pain, ever fresh in desire, diligent to serve, and devoted with a good heart. Cressida had no fault to find with him in any way. Her own reason for yielding to him is particularly worthy of note:

For trusteth wel,'ihat your estat royal,
Ne veyn delyt, nor only worthinesse
Of you in werre, or torney martial,
Ne pompe, array, nobley, or eek richesse,
Ne made me to rewe on your distresse;
But moral virtue, grounded upon trouthe,
That was the cause I first hadde on you routhe!

Instead of "moral virtue, grounded upon truth,"Boccaccio had written, "thy lofty and lordly demeanour, thy high spirit and chivalrous talk" a great and significant difference! Chaucer here secured moral elevation at the expense of consistency in delineating character.

Cressida also the poet portrays with sympathy.

She was angelic in native beauty, with voice melodious, simple, womanly, and wise. " Her goodly look ing gladdened all the press;" "never lacked her pity;" she was "gracious to do well," both "of young and old full well beloved.") Chaucer did not regard it as a crime in her that she yielded to Troilus. He makes it clear that she knew what she was doing in going to the first meeting with her lover at Pandarus' house. Love had his dwelling "within the subtle streams of her eyes." Troilus had been over come by it, and she loved in return. But Cressida proved untrue therein lay her grievous sin. To be unfaithful to one who had done no wrong, who was, as she declared, a "sword of knighthood, source of gentilesse,"was an unpardonable offence. As Chaucer portrays her, Cressida had no excuse for her infidelity, and she offers none. Her sorrowful lament at the end is all because she herself lacked truth. Troilus had refused to believe in her weakness as long as he could, and when at last he knew all, he simply said: "Alas! your name of truth is now fordone, and that is all my ruth." It was past his understanding. "O God!' quoth he, 'that oughtest take heed to further truth.' " The poet was similarly moved, and him self prayed: "Every lover in his truth advance;" "keep them that be true."

In Troilus Chaucer is plainly under the influence of the Italians, pondering, as deeply as his mind allowed, on love as a mystical passion. Inspired by Boccaccio, he wrote with fine phrase :

Plesaunce of love, O goodly debonaire,
In gentil hertes ay redy to repair e!
O verray cause ofhele and ofgladnesse,
Yheried be thy might and thy goodnessel

Here we are in the atmosphere of Guido Guinizelli:

Within the gentle heart Love shelters him,
As birds within the green shade of the grove.
Before the gentle heart, in Nature's scheme,
Love was not, nor the gentle heart ere Love.

Love, says the poet, "makes hearts digne." It "makes worthy folk worthier of name, and causeth most to dread vice and shame." All under its influence be come courteous and benign. Could it be otherwise, when God is love?

God loveth, and to love wol nought werne;
And in this world no lyves creature,
Withouten love, is worth, or may endure.

Troilus emphasizes the result of Cressida's "benignity "upon him. He feels unworthy, but recognizes that he must amend in some wise, through the virtue of her high service. God, he believed, had created him to love his lady, and he takes her as his "star," his teacher. In the first rapture of accomplished desire, he breaks out in an apostrophe to Venus, in which is mingled part of Dante's final Invocation to Mary:

Benigne love, ihou holy bond of thinges,
Whoso wol grace, and list thee nought honouren,
Lo, his desire wol flee withouten winges.

The idea of Iove as the "holy bond of things" Chaucer took from Boethius. "Love," said the latter, "holdeth together people joined with an holy bond, and knitteth sacrament of marriages of chaste love; and love enditeth laws to true fellows. O wealful were mankind, if that same love that governeth heaven governed your courages!" Boethius always helped to dignify Chaucer's thought."

Troilus is incomparably more uplifted than the Filostrato, on which it is based. A difference in tone is manifest throughout the works, but most notably .at the end, where Chaucer replaces Boccaccio's worldly advice: "Control evil appetite; believe not all women," and the like, by lofty spiritual pleading. He implores all the young and fresh to turn their thoughts from worldly vanity to God, and love Him, who for love died for them.

For He nilfalsen no wight, dar I seye,
That wol his herte al hootty on Him leye.
And sin He best to love is, and most meke,
What nedethfeyned loves for to seke?

Finally, with deep and genuine emotion, he appeals to the "soothfast Christ" for mercy, begging Jesus, for the love of His benign mother, to defend him against visible and invisible foes, and make him worthy of grace. In this conclusion the poet again followed Dante, but he wrote the plea " with all [his] heart."

There was nothing incongruous in Chaucer's end ing Troilus with a quotation from the great Italian. He had been stirred by Dante's spirit, and had exalted love in Dante's sense. As an eminent critic has remarked: " The phrase of Dante, 'Love that with draws my thought from all vile things,' would have been unintelligible to Catullus. This new aspect of love the modern world owed to chivalry, to Chris tianity, to the Germanic reverence for women, in which religious awe seems to have been blended with the service of the weaker by the stronger." "Dante is the most luminous example in literature of the chivalrous ecstasy of love."

VII

THERE were some parts of Troilus and Cressida which the author knew would not please all "lovers," whose good opinion he desired, particularly that which told "how Troilus came to his lady's grace." He already heard precious folk say: "I would not procure love thus." He calls attention, therefore, to the fact that there were sundry ways of winning love in sundry lands in sundry ages. In love "each coun try has its laws," he remarks, making clear that the laws of love in Boccaccio's land differed from those of his own. Though Chaucer had no narrow desire to judge all foreigners by English standards, there can be no doubt that he accepted these as his. (He was not intolerant; he was not prudish; but he honoured virtue in women, and approved fidelity in marriage bonds.)

Near the end of Troilus, he begs "every gentle woman" to be not wroth with him because Cressida was untrue. He was not responsible for her guilt. He would, he asserts, more gladly write of the truth of Penelope and good Alceste. Here he was looking forward to the composition of the Legend of Good Women. In the remarkable prologue to that poem, he hints that he composed Troilus because he was "bidden of some person" whom he durst not "withsay," and thus protests his good intent:

Whatso myn auctour [Boccaccio] mente,
Algate, Godwot,hyt was myn intente,
Toforthren trouthe in love and hit cheryse;
And to be war fro falsenesse and fro vyce,
By swich ensample; this was myn meninge.

Afterwards he puts on Love's lips these reproaches for himself:

Than seyde Love, "a fid gret negligence
Was hit to thee, to write unstedfastnesse
Of woman, sith thou knowest hir goodnesse
By preef, and eetc by stories heer-biforn; . . .
For of Alceste shidde thy writyng be,
Sin that thou wost that kalendar is she
Of goodnesse, for she taughte of fyn lovinge,
And namely of wyfhood the livinge,
And alle the boundes that she ogte kepe"

In whose likeness Chaucer would have pictured the ideal Alceste, had he reached her legend, we can never be quite sure. But we know that he would have presented her as a very calendar of goodness, a teacher of fine loving, especially in wifehood. Very different was the teaching of the brilliant Countess Marie de Champagne, who inspired Chretien's Lancelot, ou le Chevalier de la Charette. Chaucer had the advantage of knowing the goodness of women "by prf." He knew not only "the good Queen Anne" of Bohemia (wedded to Richard II in 1382), to whom he planned to dedicate the Legend when complete, but also much earlier, longer, and more intimately the circle of "the good Queen Philippa," whose renown had doubled after her death.

It has been said that one can estimate a writer's character by his heroines. In chivalric poems, where ladies play so large a part, it is peculiarly important to see how they appear to Chaucer, in a way distinctly different from that of Continental romance, represented goodness as necessary to ideal gentlewomen. Noble ladies, he insisted, should be like virtuous Al ceste, "womanly, benign and meek". In this respect Chaucer established an English tradition, and saved chivalry in his land from a grave reproach it might otherwise have seemed to merit, that of being an encourament of frivolity or a cloak for vice.

Chaucer reveals himself constantly as very sensitive to the opinion of gerntle folk. He labours the point, when he permits himself to tell a coarse tale, that he is doing it, not because he approves or even likes the story, but because he feels bound to do so in deference to truth. With emphasis he remarks:

The Miller is a cherl, ye Jcnowe wel this;
So was the Reve and other many mo.

And we are left to draw our own conclusions as to ourselves. Do we approve of the matter in the tales of the Miller, the Reeve, and their crowd, then we are of their type: we too are churls at heart.

Chaucer does not picture any of his pilgrims as squeamish, but there was, he makes clear, a limit to their endurance. The gentles refused to hear the Pardoner tell of ribaldry, but were all ready for "some moral thing," from which they might profit. Accepting their rebuke, that "full vicious man" brazenly prepares to tell a moral tale. The situation was the opposite with the poet. He shows us by himself that, while one may recognize tales to be churlish and best suited to the low-born, one may relate them and still be a full gentle man. Yet we cannot conceive of Chaucer's Knight or Parson doing this under any circumstances. They were ideal figures. The poet would have been the first to acknowledge that he was not so good as they. Properly, from an aristocratic standpoint, Chaucer should have arranged his personages according to rank. In society the laws of precedence were, and the poet felt should be, strictly observed. But his pilgrims, for the most part, were not in society, and at any rate artistic effect, he saw, forbade grouping them together. When one stops to think what the Canterbury Tales would have been like if Chaucer had followed the plan of "setting folk in their degree," one discovers that the gentles are aUjdignified, and tell tales becoming to their station tales of "gentle ness, morality, and holiness." Not one of them is in the least coarse in his or her utterance. Half of the clergy are low or wanton; but something, evidently, separates the gentles from such defilement. With out snobbishness, in frank and open fellowship, they associate with the vulgar crowd and preserve their distinction. This effect is very subtly achieved by the poet. He makes his readers feel that "reverence" is due the gentles, because their conduct is without reproach.

Every wight was full blithe and glad when the Knight drew the lot to begin the tales; and when he finished there was no one, young or old (though "especially the gentles every one"), who did not declare his was a "noble story and worthy for to draw in memory." From the beginning to the end of the pilgrimage, while the churls treat each other roughly, while they show contempt for various ecclesiastics among them, they do not utter a disrespectful word to or be ungentle in their midst. They show them spontaneous, willing deference, even the burly Host, though he did not care a straw for the gentilesse of the Franklin, "Epicurus' own son," who was not thoroughbred. Harry Bailey offers a constant, unconscious foil to the gentles' real quality. When the Knight interrupts the Monk's dreary tragedies, he does it with grace and courtesy, as well as good reason. But the atmosphere changes abruptly when the Host, backing him up, undertakes to state his own opinion. His first phrase is characteristically an oath. Already the Parson had rebuked the Host for this manifestation of his coarseness; and later, when he tells his own tale, he dwells upon this sin: "What say we eek of them that delight in swearing, and hold it gentry or manly deed to swear great oaths? And what of them that, of verray usage, cease not to swear great oaths, all be the cause not worth a straw? Certes, this is horrible sin." The Knight and other gentles avoided swearing noticeably. The Prioress's greatest oath was but by St. Loy.

[She] peyned hir to countre fete chere
Of court, and been estatlich ofmanere,
And to been holden digne of reverence.
In curtelsye was set fid much hir lest.

VIII

CHAUCER reached maturity at a time of profound social unrest, when crowds of his countrymen were swayed to revolt by the ominous cry:

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?

In contemporary France the followers of Jack Good man likewise sought with violence to overwhelm the nobility. The poet observed that "the rude people" had "no great insight in virtue," and, in the Clerk's Tale, addressed them with contempt

"O stormy peple! unsad and ever untrewe!
Ay undiscret and changing 1 as a vane,
Delating ever in rumbel that is newe,
For lyk the mone ay wexe ye and wane;
Your doom isfals, your Constance yvel preveth,
A ful greet fool is he that on you leveth!"

Yet he also averred in the same narrative that "under low degree was often virtue hid," and, whatever his views of the crowd, he had too much human sympa thy not to encourage the aspirations of every individual.

For God it woot, that children qfte been
Unlyk her worthy eldres hem before;
Bountee comth al of God, not of the streen
Of which they been engendred and y-bore.

Even had England enjoyed social tranquillity in his day, Chaucer's thought would inevitably have been directed to the eternal, universal question of true gentleness since sundry of those authors whom he most admired had occupied themselves with the problem, and it was congenial for him to consider. In his early years he read, if no others, the discussions in the Roman de la Rose, and later those of Boethius and Dante.

Guillaume de Lorris, like various French writers before him, at least as far back as Wace in the twelfth century, declared that Vilonic fait li vilains, but, aristocrat that he was in his attitude, he carefully avoided even implying the reverse: Gentilesse fait li gentilhomme. He felt that common people had nothing to do with honour or courtesy.

Vilains estfel et sans pitie,
Sans servise et sans amitie.

Jean de Meung, on the contrary, emphatically asserts: Nus nest gentis s'il nest asvertus ententis; and in the long and straightforward examination of the subject by Nature, which follows, lie proclaims the same democratic doctrine that Chaucer was later to show forth, though with less defiance and asperity. Unlike the great satirist by whom he was so much influenced, Chaucer was courtier himself; he loved to associate with gentle folk; and he presented his views without cynicism or vexation, in a mood of compromise, void of offence.

In his moral ballade entitled Gentilesse, the poet asserts that "anyone who claims to be gentle must follow virtue and flee vice, for dignity belongeth to virtue, and not the reverse, even in him who wears mitre, crown or diadem." Though he never ceases to applaud gentleness, Chaucer steadily insists that it should not depend on mere outward adherence to conventions, but spring from the heart and stimulate good deeds. Gentleness, he maintains, cannot be passed on, like title or riches, from father to son. It is wholly dependent on an individual's "virtuous noblesse," "that is appropriated to no degree, but to the first Father in majesty."

The poet's most ample discussion of the subject he puts into the mouth of Dame Ragnell, heroine of the Arthurian tale of the Wife of Bath, Are we gentle, she asks, merely because our elders were? Certainly not is the definite answer; that is unjustified arrogance. Our parents cannot bequeath their "virtuous living," that made them to be called gen tlemen. "Gentry is not annexed to possessions," for, God knows, we often find a lord's son doing shame and villainy. Let a man be born of a gentle house, granted that his elders were noble and virtuous, if he will not himself do gentle deeds, he is not gentle, be he duke or earl. "Villain's sinful deeds make a churl."

Loke who that is most vertuous alway,
Privee and apert, and most entendeth ay
To do the gentil dedes that he can.

And tak him for the grettest gentil man.

Once again we find Chaucer establishing his convictions by the example of Boethius and Dante, to whom, along with Seneca, he here makes open reference. The Purgatorio of "the wise poet of Florence" furnished him the lines:

Fid selde up ryseth by his branches smale
Prowesse of man ;for God, of his goodnesse,
Wol that of Him we clayme our gentiksse.

But we seem also to hear echoes of the Fourth Treatise of the Convivio when he presents the problem as that of "such gentilesse as is descended out of old riches." Dante, with Frederick II's views in mind, repudiates the "false thought" that folk are gentle " because of race which has long abode in great wealth." "I affirm," he says, "that nobility in its constituent essence ever implies the goodness of its seat as baseness ever implies ill. ... Gentleness is wherever there is virtue." "He is not only base (that is ungentle) but the very basest, who is descended from good forbears but is himself bad."

The same thought is expressed with peculiar beauty in the canzone of Guido Guinizelli, already referred to, which Dante himself so much admired:

The sim strikes full upon the mud all day;
It remains vile, nor the sun's worth is less.
"By race I am gentle" the proud man doth say:
He is the mud, the sun is gentleness.
Let no man predicate
That aught the name of gentleness should have.
Even in a king's estate.
Except the heart there be a gentle man's.
The star-beam lights the wave,
Heaven holds the star and the star's radiance.

Happily, Chaucer brooded earnestly upon this theme and perpetuated to us the wisest opinion current in his time.

It would be interesting to review the extensive comment on the subject of nobleness back to anti quity; but there is no need. We find everywhere in the mediaeval conception of "gentilesse," or "gentilezza,' an element which is obviously lacking in classical thought, the element of Christian feeling, mystical and sweet. It is more important to note that Chaucer was not alone in England in espousing the cause of virtue as essential to honour. Wycliffe and Gower did the same thing, and Langland wrote these words of advice to a knight:

Beguile not thy bondman, the better thou ''It speed;
Though under thee here, it may happen in Heaven
His seat may be higher, in saintlier bliss,
Than thine, save thou labour to live as thou shouldst,
In the charnel at church, churls are hard to discover,
Or a knight from a knave there; this know in thy heart.

The tale of the Parson, brother of the Plowman, was planned to "knit up well a great matter," and the Parson's words we may also use in the same way.

It is not without significance that he speaks of the "gentilesse" of "the courteous Lord Jesu Christ," and contrasts it with the "vileinye" of the Devil. He dwells earnestly on the danger of pride in gentry, pointing out that "oftentimes the gentry of the body steals away the gentry of the soul." "Forsooth," he declares, "one manner of gentry is to be praised, that which apareleth man's courage with virtues and moralities and maketh him Christ's child. For trust well, that over what man sin hath mastery, he is a very churl to sin. "I The poet plainly believed that is informed by grace. It comes, he says, "from God alone."

This study of Chaucer has aimed to bring to view an important feature of his work which has been singularly overlooked by most of his critics. If, as Saint Augustine said, "we estimate a man not by what he knows, nor by what he believes, but by what he loves," it must be clear that one of the chief bases of our judgement of Chaucer henceforth should be his attitude towards chivalry, since there is nothing, perhaps that he loved more. Had Chaucer not written so many poems and tales of gentleness, as well as of morality and holiness, he would certainly not have won the reverence of the numerous "sage and serious" men who have applauded him from his day to our own.

Chaucer's attitude toward chivalry was pragmatic. He regarded the circumstances of knighthood in his day with common sense. He recognized that there were then, and must be, gentle classes, and he did not expect too much in the way of refinement from the lowly in rank. He saw clearly that men of good lineage were by that very fact more predisposed to gentleness. Nevertheless, he was ready to welcome and applaud this virtue wherever it might appear. He encoraged every man to try to exhibit it in his acts. He believed, as do most of us, that "he is gentle who doth gentle deeds."

The chivalry that the poet exalted was that of his own time; it was also that of his own life; but even as it was the best of his time, so it was the best of his life. And because it was then so beautiful, it is alluring still; because it was then so honest, it is of perpetual good report. It has lived, not as a dream, but as a transfiguration of reality.

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