Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/167

 fact that Thomas Chaucer succeeded Geoffrey Chaucer in the post of forester of North Petherton Park, Somersetshire, an office which the poet held in his latter days (, Somersetshire, iii. 62 ; Mr.  letter in Athenæum, 20 Nov. 1886). And there is no countervailing evidence of any importance; what there is is merely negative. Possibly the patronage John of Gaunt extended to Chaucer and his wife may be accounted for by the consideration that that wife was the sister of a lady (Catharine Swynford’s maiden name was Root) to whom he seems to have been greatly attached, who was for some years his mistress, and at last (in 1396) his wife. The year of Thomas Chaucer's birth is unknown; Nicolas suggests 1367, we 1361 or thereabouts.

A great many of Chaucer’s writings have been assigned to the first period which a more exact criticism refuses to assign to Chaucer at all. Any anonymous poem of the later fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries was at one time said to be Chaucer’s. Much rubbish has thus been heaped up at. Chaucer's door, and one of the chief results of recent Chaucerian criticism has been to sweep this away. Much meritorious work has also been given to him which is certainly not from his hand. Thanks to Mr. Bradshaw, Professor Skeat, Professor ten Brink, and others, a scrutiny has been instituted that may fairly be described as scientific, with the result that many pieces that used to pass current as Chaucers are now confidently pronounced spurious. ‘The Cuckow and the Nightingale,' accepted by Wordsworth (see, Selections from Chaucer modernised); ‘The Flower and the Leaf,’ attributed to him by the donor of the Chaucer window in Westminster Abbey (a poem years and years later in point of date, as its language and grammar show, quite un-Chaucerian in point of metre, and which internal evidence informs us was written by a lady) ; ‘The Court of Love.’ ‘Chaucer’s Dream,' ‘The Complaint of the Black Knight,' and ‘The Romaunt of the Rose,’ have no claim to a place among Chaucer’s works. With the merely seeming exception of the 'Romaunt,’ not one of them is mentioned in any of the four most important lists of Chaucer’s works-the list in the ‘Prologue to the Legende of Good Women,’ that in the ‘Prologue to the Man of Lawes Tale,’ that in the ‘Preces de Chauceres’ at the end of the ‘Persones Tale,’ and that in Lydgate’s ‘Fall of Princes,’ Prol. Nor for any of them is there any other external evidence of any value. In the case of ‘The Complaint of the Black Knight’ there is decisive extemal evidence in favour of Lydgate. And the internal evidence of metre, and grammar, and style cries aloud against their pretensions.

‘The Romaunt of the Rose’ demands a few words. We have already said that the influence that especially acts upon this first period is that of France. The French critic andras has undoubtedly exaggerated this influence (see his Etude sur Chaucer considéré comme un imitateur des Trouvères) ; but no competent judge can deny that it is both marked and considerable. We have Chaucer's own word for it, that he translated the ‘Roman de la Rose, the most. famous poem of niedizeval France. In the ‘Prologue to the Legende of Good Women' the God of Love angrily indicts Chaucer thus: Thou hast translat the Romaunt of the Rose, That is an heresie ayenst my lawe, And makest wise folk fro me withdrawe.

The impeachment is not denied. The contemporary French poet, Deschamps, probably has this work in his mind when he ends every verse of his well-known ‘balade’ with the words:

Grant translateur, noble Geffroy Chaucer

(see Œuvres Complètes de Eustavhe Deschamps, ii. 138-9, published by the Société des Anciens Textes Francais). On the strength of this information, a copy of a translation of the ‘Roman de la Rose’ having been found, it was at once confidently taken to be Chaucer’s, and is always published among his works. But this assumption cannot be justified. It would be a strange thing if Chaucer were the only Englishman who produced a version of so popular a poem as the ‘Rose.’ We can point to at least four versions of the ‘Troy-book,' several of the ‘Story of Alexander,' ‘and so on.' (See ‘Why the “Romaunt of the Rose” is not Chaucer's,’ in his Prioress’ Tale, 3rd ed. 1880.) And the internal evidence throughout is conclusive against this particular version being Chaucer’s. It rhymes y with ye; it uses assonant rhymes—e.g. shape, make; it neglects the finale, which is such a noticeable feature in Chaucer’s English. Moreover, the dialect is not Chaucer’s; nor can this difliculty be got over by supposing that we have here a copy of Chaucer’s version put into the transcriber’s dialect, for the signs of a dialect in which Chaucer did not write—a ‘midland dialect exhibiting Northumbrian tendencies’—can be shown to be imeradicable. Lastly, the test of vocabulary points to an un-Chaucerian authorship. So far as is at present known, Chaucer's translation of the ‘Roman de la Rose’ is not; extant any more than his translations of the ‘Book of the Lion,’ of ‘Origenes upon the