The legacy which Chaucer left to our literature was to fructify in the
hands of a long succession of heirs; and it may be said, with little fear
of contradiction, that at no time has his fame been fresher and his
influence upon our poets--and upon our painters as well as our poets--more
perceptible than at the present day. When Gower first put forth his
"Confessio Amantis," we may assume that Chaucer's poetical labours, of the
fame of which his brother-poet declared the land to be full, had not yet
been crowned by his last and greatest work. As a poet, therefore, Gower
in one sense owes less to Chaucer than did many of their successors;
though, on the other hand it may be said with truth that to Chaucer is due
the fact, that Gower (whose earlier productions were in French and in
Latin) ever became a poet at all. The "Confessio Amantis" is no book for
all times like the "Canterbury Tales"; but the conjoined names of Chaucer
and Gower added strength to one another in the eyes of the generations
ensuing, little anxious as these generations were to distinguish which of
the pair was really the first to it "garnish our English rude" with the
flowers of a new poetic diction and art of verse.
The Lancaster period of our history had its days of national glory as well
as of national humiliation, and indisputably, as a whole, advanced the
growth of the nation towards political manhood. But it brought with it no
golden summer to fulfil the promises of the spring-tide of our modern
poetical literature. The two poets whose names stand forth from the
barren after-season of the earlier half of the fifteenth century, were,
both of them, according to their own profession, disciples of Chaucer. In
truth, however, Occleve, the only name-worthy poetical writer of the reign
of Henry IV, seems to have been less akin as an author to Chaucer than to
Gower, while his principal poem manifestly was, in an even greater degree
than the "Confessio Amantis," a severely learned or, as its author terms
it, unbuxom book. Lydgate, on the other hand, the famous monk of Bury,
has in him something of the spirit as well as of the manner of Chaucer,
under whose advice he is said to have composed one of his principal poems.
Though a monk, he was no stay-at-home or do-nothing; like him of the
"Canterbury Tales," we may suppose Lydgate to have scorned the maxim that
a monk out of his cloister is like a fish out of water; and doubtless many
days which he could spare from the instruction of youth at St. Edmund's
Bury were spent about the London streets, of the sights and sounds of
which he has left us so vivacious a record--a kind of farcical supplement
to the "Prologue" of the "Canterbury Tales." His literary career, part of
which certainly belongs to the reign of Henry V, has some resemblance to
Chaucer's, though it is less regular and less consistent with itself; and
several of his poems bear more or less distinct traces of Chaucer's
influence. The "Troy-book" is not founded on "Troilus and Cressid,"
though it is derived from the sources which had fed the original of
Chaucer's poem; but the "Temple of Glass" seems to have been an imitation
of the "House of Fame"; and the "Story of Thebes" is actually introduced
by its author as an additional "Canterbury Tale," and challenges
comparison with the rest of the series into which it asks admittance.
Both Occleve and Lydgate enjoyed the patronage of a prince of genius
descended from the House, with whose founder Chaucer was so closely
connected--Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Meanwhile, the sovereign of a
neighbouring kingdom was in all probability himself the agent who
established the influence of Chaucer as predominant in the literature of
his native land. The long though honourable captivity in England of King
James I of Scotland--the best poet among kings and the best king among
poets, as he has been antithetically called--was consoled by the study of
the "hymns" of his "dear masters, Chaucer and Gower," for the happiness of
whose souls he prays at the close of his poem, "The King's Quair." That
most charming of love-allegories, in which the Scottish king sings the
story of his captivity and of his deliverance by the sweet messenger of
love, not only closely imitates Chaucer in detail, more especially at its
opening, but is pervaded by his spirit. Many subsequent Scottish poets
imitated Chaucer, and some of them loyally acknowledged their debts to
him. Gawin Douglas in his "Palace of Honour," and Henryson in his
"Testament of Cressid" and elsewhere, are followers of the southern
master. The wise and brave Sir David Lyndsay was familiar with his
writings; and he was not only occasionally imitated, but praised with
enthusiastic eloquence by William Dunbar, that "darling of the Scottish
Muses," whose poetical merits Sir Walter Scott, from some points of view,
can hardly be said to have exaggerated, when declaring him to have been
"justly raised to a level with Chaucer by every judge of poetry, to whom
his obsolete language has not rendered him unintelligble." Dunbar knew
that this Scottish language was but a form of that which, as he declared,
Chaucer had made to "surmount every terrestrial tongue, as far as midnight
is surmounted by a May morning."
Meanwhile, in England, the influence of Chaucer continued to live even
during the dreary interval which separates from one another two important
epochs of our literary history. Now, as in the days of the Norman kings,
ballads orally transmitted were the people's poetry; and one of these
popular ballads carried the story of "Patient Grissel" into regions where
Chaucer's name was probably unknown. When, after the close of the
troubled season of the Roses, our Poetic literature showed the first signs
of a revival, they consisted in a return to the old masters of the
fourteenth century. The poetry of Hawes, the learned author of the
crabbed "Pastime of Pleasure," exhibits an undeniable continuity with that
of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, to which triad he devotes a chapter of
panegyric. Hawes, however, presses into the service of his allegory not
only all the Virtues and all the Vices, whom from habit we can tolerate in
such productions, but also Astronomy, Geometry, Arithmetic, and the rest
of the seven Daughters of Doctrine, whom we CANNOT; and is altogether
inferior to the least of his models. It is at the same time to his credit
that he seems painfully aware of his inability to cope with either Chaucer
or Lydgate as to vigour of invention. There is in truth, more of the
dramatic spirit of Chaucer in Barklay's "Ship of Fools," which, though
essentially a translation, achieved in England the popularity of an
original work. For this poem, like the "Canterbury Tales," introduces
into its admirable framework a variety of lifelike sketches of character
and manners; it has in it that dramatic element which is so Chaucerian a
characteristic. But the aim of its author was didactic, which Chaucer's
had never been.
When with the poems of Surrey and Wyatt, and with the first attempts in
the direction of the regular drama, the opening of the second great age in
our literature approached, and when, about half a century afterwards, that
age actually opened with an unequalled burst of varied productivity, it
would seem as if Chaucer's influence might naturally enough have passed
away, or at least become obscured. Such was not, however, the case, and
Chaucer survived into the age of the English Renascence as an established
English classic, in which capacity Caxton had honoured him by twice
issuing an edition of his works from the Westminster printing-press.
Henry VIII's favourite, the reckless but pithy satirist, Skelton, was
alive to the merits of his great predecessor, and Skelton's patron,
William Thynne, a royal official, busied himself with editing Chaucer's
works. The loyal servant of Queen Mary, the wise and witty John Heywood,
from whose "Interludes" the step is so short to the first regular English
comedy, in one of these pieces freely plagiarised a passage in the
"Canterbury Tales." Tottel, the printer of the favourite poetic
"Miscellany" published shortly before Queen Elizabeth's accession,
included in his collection the beautiful lines, cited above, called "Good
Counsel of Chaucer." And when, at last, the Elizabethan era properly so-
called began, the proof was speedily given that geniuses worthy of holding
fellowship with Chaucer had assimilated into their own literary growth
what was congruous to it in his, just as he had assimilated to himself--
not always improving, but hardly ever merely borrowing or taking over--
much that he had found in the French trouveres, and in Italian poetry and
prose. The first work which can be included in the great period of
Elizabethan literature is the "Shepherd's Calendar," where Spenser is
still in a partly imitative stage; and it is Chaucer whom he imitates and
extols in his poem, and whom his alter ego, the mysterious "E.K.," extols
in preface and notes. The longest of the passages in which reference is
made by Spenser to Chaucer, under the pseudonym of Tityrus, is more
especially noteworthy, both as showing the veneration of the younger for
the older poet, and as testifying to the growing popularity of Chaucer at
the time when Spenser wrote.
The same great poet's debt to his revered predecessor in the "Daphnaida"
has been already mentioned. The "Fairy Queen" is the masterpiece of an
original mind, and its supreme poetic quality is a lofty magnificence upon
the whole foreign to Chaucer's genius; but Spenser owed something more
than his archaic forms to "Tityrus," with whose style he had erst
disclaimed all ambition to match his pastoral pipe. In a well-known
passage of his great epos he declares that it is through sweet infusion of
the older poet's own spirit that he, the younger, follows the footing of
his feet, in order so the rather to meet with his meaning. It was this,
the romantic spirit proper, which Spenser sought to catch from Chaucer,
but which, like all those who consciously seek after it, he transmuted
into a new quality and a new power. With Spenser the change was into
something mightier and loftier. He would, we cannot doubt, readily have
echoed the judgment of his friend and brother-poet concerning Chaucer. "I
know not," writes Sir Philip Sidney, "whether to marvel more, either that
he in that misty time could see so clearly, or that we, in this clear age,
walk so stumblingly after him. Yet had he," adds Sidney with the
generosity of a true critic, who is not lost in wonder at his own
cleverness in discovering defects, "great wants, fit to be forgiven in so
reverent an antiquity." And yet a third Elizabethan, Michael Drayton,
pure of tone and high of purpose, joins his voice to those of Spenser and
Sidney, hailing in the "noble Chaucer"
--the first of those that ever brake
Into the Muses' treasure and first spake
In weighty numbers,
and placing Gower, with a degree of judgment not reached by his and
Chaucer's immediate successors, in his proper relation of poetic rank to
his younger but greater contemporary.
To these names should be added that of George Puttenham--if he was indeed
the author of the grave and elaborate treatise, dedicated to Lord
Burghley, on "The Art of English Poesy." In this work mention is
repeatedly made of Chaucer, "father of our English poets;" and his
learning, and "the natural of his pleasant wit," are alike judiciously
commanded. One of Puttenham's best qualities as a critic is that he never
speaks without his book; and he comes very near to discovering Chaucer's
greatest gift when noticing his excellence in "prosopographia," a term
which to Chaucer would perhaps have seemed to require translation. At the
obsoleteness of Chaucer's own diction this critic, who writes entirely
"for the better brought-up sort," is obliged to shake his learned head.
Enough has been said in the preceding pages to support the opinion that
among the wants which fell to the lot of Chaucer as a poet, perhaps the
greatest (though Sidney would never have allowed this), was the want of
poetic form most in harmony with his most characteristic gifts. The
influence of Chaucer upon the dramatists of the Elizabethan age was
probably rather indirect and general than direct and personal; but
indications or illustrations of it may be traced in a considerable number
of these writers, including perhaps among the earliest Richard Edwards as
the author of a non-extant tragedy, "Palamon and Arcite," and among the
latest the author--or authors--of "The Two Noble Kinsmen." Besides
Fletcher and Shakspere, Greene, Nash and Middleton, and more especially
Jonson (as both poet and grammarian), were acquainted with Chaucer's
writings; so that it is perhaps rather a proof of the widespread
popularity of the "Canterbury Tales" than the reverse, that they were not
largely resorted to for materials by the Elizabethan and Jacobean
dramatists. Under Charles I "Troilus and Cressid" found a translator in
Sir Francis Kynaston, whom Cartwright congratulated on having made it
possible "that we read Chaucer now without a dictionary." A personage
however, in Cartwright's best known play, the Antiquary Moth, prefers to
talk on his own account "genuine" Chaucerian English.
To pursue the further traces of the influence of Chaucer through such a
literary aftergrowth as the younger Fletchers, into the early poems of
Milton, would be beyond the purpose of the present essay. In the
treasure-house of that great poet's mind were gathered memories and
associations innumerable, though the sublimest flights of his genius
soared aloft into regions whither the imagination of none of our earlier
poets had preceded them. On the other hand, the days have passed for
attention to be spared for the treatment experienced by Chaucer in the
Augustan Age, to which he was a barbarian only to be tolerated if put into
the court-dress of the final period of civilisation. Still, even thus, he
was not left altogether unread; nor was he in all cases adapted without a
certain measure of success. The irrepressible vigour, and the frequent
felicity, of Dryden's "Fables" contrast advantageously with the tame
evenness of the "Temple of Fame," an early effort by Pope, who had wit
enough to imitate in a juvenile parody some of the grossest peculiarities
of Chaucer's manner, but who would have been quite ashamed to reproduce
him in a serious literary performance, without the inevitable polish and
cadence of his own style of verse. Later modernisations--even of those
which a band of poets in some instances singularly qualified for the task
put forth in a collection published in the year 1841, and which, on the
part of some of them at least, was the result of conscientious endeavour--
it is needless to characterise here. Slight incidental use has been made
of some of these in this essay, the author of which would gladly have
abstained from printing a single modernised phrase or word--most of all
any which he has himself been guilty of re-casting. The time cannot be
far distant when even the least unsuccessful of such attempts will no
longer be accepted, because no such attempts whatever will be any longer
required. No Englishman or Englishwoman need go through a very long or
very laborious apprenticeship in order to become able to read, understand,
and enjoy what Chaucer himself wrote. But if this apprenticeship be too
hard, then some sort of makeshift must be accepted, or antiquity must
remain the "canker-worm" even of a great national poet, as Spenser said it
had already in his day proved to be of Chaucer.
Meanwhile, since our poetic literature has long thrown off the shackles
which forced it to adhere to one particular group of models, he is not a
true English poet who should remain uninfluenced by any of the really
great among his predecessors. If Chaucer has again, in a special sense,
become the "master dear and father reverent" of some of our living poets,
in a wider sense he must hold this relation to them all and to all their
successors, so long as he continues to be known and understood. As it is,
there are few worthies of our literature whose names seem to awaken
throughout the English-speaking world a readier sentiment of familiar
regard; and in New England, where the earliest great poet of Old England
is cherished not less warmly than among ourselves, a kindly cunning had
thus limned his likeness:--
An old man in a lodge within a park;
The chamber walls depicted all around
With portraiture of huntsman, hawk and hound,
And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark
Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note
Of lark and linnet, and from every page
Rise odours of ploughed field or flowery mead.
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