Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/174

 arrested or sued by anybody except on a plea connected with land (see a copy of this document in, iv. 299, 300). He must have been sorely pinched in this year, 1398, when twice, on 24 July and 31 July, he obtained a loan of 6s. 8d.

In October another grant of wine was made him, this time not a ‘pitcher,’ but a time, to be received in the port of London by the king's chief butler or his deputy. The king's butler at that time was Thomas Chaucer.

He was not more satisfactorily placed till the accession of Henry IV the son of his old patron the Duke of Lancaster (3 Oct. 1399). Four days after Henry came to the throne he granted Chaucer forty marks (23l. 13s. 4d). yearly, in addition to the annuity Richard II had given him, so nearly doubling his previous income. This grant may have been made in answer to the poet's appeal appended to the 'Compleynte to his Purse'—lines which show that his humour did not desert him amidst all his troubles. Perhaps it is worth noting as possibly significant of Chaucer's character that in a few days he managed to lose his copy of this grant, and also his copy of the grant of l394. He was furnished with new copies on 18 Oct. He was now, we may presume, in comfortable circumstances, or some two months later, on Christmas eve, 1399, he took a lease for fifty-three years, at the annual rent of 2l. 13s. 4d., of a house situated in the garden of the Lady Chapel Westminster. This Lady Chapel occupie the ground now covered by Henry VII’s Chapel. Chaucer’s house probably remained till a clearance was made for this latter structure. On 21 Feb. 1400 Chaucer received one of his pensions. The following months he was probably ailing, as he did not claim another payment then due to him; and not till June was any part of this payment claimed, and then it was paid not to himself, but to one Henry Somers. This is our last notice of the the poet. The inscription on his tomb says he died on 25 Oct. 1400. The date of that inscription is long after the event, but it may have been copied from some older stone, and its accuracy is extremely probable. Being not only a tenant of the abbey, but a distinguished courtier and a distinguished poet, he was buried in what came afterwards to be known as the Poets’ Corner in the east aisle of the south transept, Westminster. In Caxton’s time there were some Latin lines in his memory, 'wreten on a table hongyng on a pylere by his sepulture’ composed by one Surigonius, a poet laureat of Milan, beginning: Galfriduo Chaucer rates et fame poetis Maternu, bac sacra sum tumulatua homo,

where ‘fame poeis maternæ,' we suppose means the ‘glory of my mother-country's poetry.' In 1555 Nicholis Brigham [q. v.], a special admirer of Chaucer’s works, himself a poet, erected close by his grave the tomb which is now extant. His wife had probably died, as we have seen, in 1387. Of his 'litel son Lewis,' for whom he compiled the ‘Astrolabe' in 1391, we know nothing more. Thomas Chaucer, assumed to be the poet's elder son, is separately noticed.

The great literary work of this third period is the supreme work of Chaucer‘s life—the ‘Canterbury Tales.' He probably finally fixed on his subject about 1387. Had the scheme been carried out, we should have had about 120 tales. There are a hundred in the ‘Decamerone' but they are comparatively slight and brief; many of Chaucer's are long and elaborate. Several of his earlier writings were adapted (not always thoroughly) to form a part of it, viz. ‘Palamon and Arcite,' the ‘Tale of Griselda,’ the ‘Tale of Constance,' the ‘Tale of Saint Cecilia.' Perhaps the earliest allusion to the ‘Canterbury Tales’ is made by Gower in the prologue to the second (the 1393) edition of the ‘Confessio Amantis’— But for my wittes ben so smale To tellen every man his tale, &c.

We may well believe that by 1393 a great part of the work as we have it was completed. But no doubt Chaucer was intending to go on with it, at least till near the close of his life, till the time when he could onl take pleasure in ‘the translation of Boes of consolation and other bokes of legendes of Seintes, and of Omelies and moralito and devotion' One would rejoice if this morbid passage, occurring at the close of the ‘Persones Tale,’ could be shown to be the interpolation of some monk; but as it is we must suppose that to Chaucer there came an hour of reaction and weakness. In the ‘Compleynt of Venus,' which is quite a distinct piece from the ‘Compleynt of Mars,' although so commonly printed as a part of it, Chaucer begs that his work may be received with indulgence— For olde, that in my spirit dulleth me, Hath of enditing al the sotelle Welnigh bereft out of my remembrance.

So that he felt his powers decaying. On the other hand, the lines ‘Flee from the prees,' known as the ‘Good Counsil of Chaucer,' are vigorously written, and they are said to have been written on his deathbed; but this cannot be proved. The lines to his Purse sent to Henry IV, as we have seen, in l399, are lively; but it does not follow that they were