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allowance for its author's peculiar theories, and for critical shortcomings. Howitt's "Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets," Hutton's "Literary Landmarks of London," Hare's "Walks About London.' For selections, Ward's "English Poets," Cook's "Selections from English Prose," Chambers's "Cyclopedia of English Literature." For reference, Ryland's "Chronological Outlines of English Literature," Phillips's "Popular Manual of English Literature," Adams's "Dictionary of English Literature," Brewer's Readers' Handbook," Brewer's "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," Ploetz's "Epitome of Universal History."

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NOTES AND REFERENCES.-CHAPTER I.

History.--Green's "Making of England," Green's "Conquest of England." On extent of admixture of English and Celt, a question much discussed, consult Matthew Arnold's "Celtic Literature," Huxley's article on "Some Fixed Points in British Ethnology," in "Critiques and Addresses," p. 177; Isaac Taylor's "Words and Places"; Henry Morley's article on "The Celtic Element in English Literature" in "Clement Marot and Other Essays."

Literature. For good collection of Anglo-Saxon poems to use in class, see translations in Longfellow's " Poets and Poetry of Europe"; see also Morley's "English Writers," vols. i., ii., and Conybeare's "Illustrations of A.-S. Literature." For Beowulf: "The Deeds of Beowulf," John Earle, Clarendon Press (prose translation), and "Beowulf” metrical line for line translation, by J. M. Garnett (Ginn & Co.). For Caedmon, Thorpe's "Metrical Paraphrase " gives translation with text. Extracts from Celtic poetry in Arnold, supra, and Morley's "English Writers"; see also Guest's translation of "Mabinogion," and Lanier's "Boy's Mabinogion." Stories from the latter may be read with class.

Histories of Literature, and Criticism.-Earle's "A.-S. Literature," Azarias's "Development of Literature, Old English Period," Ten Brink's "English Literature." "The Englishman and the Scandinavian," by Frederic Metcalf, compares the Early English and Norse Literatures.

Chapter 11.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

1340 (?) to 1400.

CHAUCER'S CENTURY.

To enter into the poetry of Chaucer and to understand how vast an influence he had on the development of our language and literature, we must try to imagine ourselves back in his time. Chaucer lived in a century full of interest and change, when England, along with the rest of Europe, was growing impatient of the cramped life and restricted thought of the Middle Ages, and was throbbing with that new life which was to find expression in the Renaissance. The old mediæval world yet remained, but everywhere in the midst of its most characteristic institutions we can see the beginning of the new order destined to take its place.

Chivalry.

Thus chivalry, by which in the Middle Ages the mere barbarian fighter of earlier times became the knight, was at the height of its splendor. Our first great poet lived and breathed in the very air - of knightly romance; he knew in his youth the dazzling and luxurious court of the third Edward, a king who delighted in the display of tournaments and who founded the Order of the Garter. As we read of Sir John Chandos and of Bertrand du Guesclin in Froissart's Chronicles of the Hundred Years' War,* this brilliant and lavish reign seems crowded with knightly feats. Yet mediaval as this world of Chaucer seems to us, as we imagine the gray turrets of its moated castles, the streaming plumes, the shining armor, and all the picturesque pageantry of its real or mimic war, agencies were at work undermining the whole fabric of its chivalry. Gun

* "The IIundred Years' War" (1338-1452), a war between France and England.

powder, first used in Europe at the battle of Crécy in 1346, was destined to revolutionize the mode of warfare, and to help make castle and armor things of the past.

Socialism.

In England new forces were active in the mass of the people, which threatened to change the whole order of society. In 1349, England was desolated by a loathsome and deadly plague, the Black Death, through which about half the entire population miserably perished. The farms were untilled, the crops scanty, and famine followed pestilence. The country was filled with vagrants driven by idleness and starvation to beggary or theft. The organization of labor was unsettled, and iron laws were passed which made matters worse. Then came bitter denunciations and riotous uprisings against all those class distinctions which had been accepted almost as part of the divinely arranged order. John Ball, the" mad priest of Kent," thundered against those who " are clothed in rich stuffs, ornamented with ermine, who dwell in fine houses while we must brave the wind and rain in our labors in the fields." Our dream of fourteenth century chivalry is thus broken by the stormy complaint of the poor, the prelude of modern democracy.

The Church.

In religion, too, the century is full of signs of a coming change. The Church no longer inspired that devotion which characterized the days of the earlier crusader. In 1309 the Pope removed from Rome to Avignon, and the reverence and divinity which had hedged him about as the declared "Vicar of Christ on Earth" was greatly lessened when men saw him the creature of the growing power of France. The multiplying corruptions in the Church itself, the sordidness and lack of spirituality in its clergy, moved earnest men to scorn and satire. In all this we see signs of the coming Reformation.

The old scholastic learning of the Middle Ages yet lingered in Chaucer's England, The Oxford Clerk, in The Canterbury Tales, delights in Aristotle, an The New author of first importance in the old educa

Learning.

tion of the monastic schools. Yet a New Learning has already arisen in Italy, and in the work of Chaucer himself has entered English literature. Twenty years before the birth of Chaucer, Dante-the first supremely great poet since the classic writers-had died in exile in Ravenna, leaving for all time the expression of the soul of medieval Christendom in the "Divine Comedy." When Chaucer was a year old, Petrarch, the sonneteer of Laura, a poet and scholar who was a great leader in the new way of feeling and thinking, was crowned with laurel at Rome. Boccaccio was pouring out, in the prose tales of his Decamerone, the world's new delight in the beauty and good things of this life.

This threefold change, which marked the breaking up of the medieval and the beginning of the modern world, expressed itself in England in the works of three great writers. The Social movement found its mouthpiece in WILLIAM LANGLAND, 1332–1400; the new Religious spirit in WYCLIF, while the New Learning of Italy enters into the verse of GEOFFREY CHAUCER (cir. 1340-1400).

Langland's

man.

The well-nigh hopeless cry of the people against the social evils and a corrupt church goes up in the Vision of Piers the Plowman, of Langland. The poet falls asleep and sees in his vision the world -his distracted English world-as a "fair Piers the Plowfield full of folk." There are plowmen, the fruit of whose toil the gluttons waste, men in rich apparel, chafferers, lawyers who will not open their mouths except for gold, pardoners from Rome, who traffic with the people for pardons, and divide with the parish priest the silver of the poor. The world makes a pilgrimage to seek

Truth, and finds a guide in Piers, a plowman, at work in the fields. He bids them wait until he has finished his half-acre, then he will lead them. "The equality of all men before God, the gospel of labor-these are the two great doctrines found in this poem.'

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In religion John Wyclif, by his fearless attack on the illgotten wealth and corruptions of the church, by certain of his religious doctrines, and by his translation of the. Bible (1380), stands as the greatest mouth

John Wyclif.

piece of the new spirit and the herald of the Reformation. Wyclif, too, by giving up the Latin of the mediaval schoolmen, and speaking directly to the people in homely English, shows us that learning was ceasing to be the exclusive possession of priest and clerk. Finally, the new learning of Italy colors the verse of Chaucer, and mingles with its mediæval hues. In his

Chaucer.

work, more than in that of any other writer, this crowded fourteenth century survives for us; there, indeed, its men and women breathe and act before us-alive veritably to-day beyond the power of five centuries of time and change.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.-1340 (?)-1400.

Our knowledge of Chaucer's life is meagre and fragmentary; many points are uncertain, and much left to conjecture. Yet Chaucer is real to us through his books, and the little we do know of his life is remarkably significant of its general character.

Geoffrey Chaucer, the son of John Chaucer, a wine merchant on Thames Street, was born in London about 1340. As a boy he learned something of the court, for he was page in the household of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second son of Edward III. As a youth, he knew something of war and camps, for he took part in a campaign * Green's "History of English People," vol. i. p. 442.

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