Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/55

 GEOFFREY CHAUCER 29 into a mess with the Venetian Republic, and sent for Petrarch to get him out of it This the poet's skill and eloquence very soon did, and then he went back to Arqua. Florence the Fair had a peculiar way of her own of doing tardy justice to her children. She wept over Dante's grave, and after many years she begged Pe- trarch to come and live in the home of his fathers, within her walls. But the poet did not go. He had grown to think all Italy his country, rather than one city Besides, a brighter home was beginning to open on the old man's view. Eletta and Laura and many other dear ones waited for him there, and when he had been seventy years upon earth God called him to join them. GEOFFREY CHAUCER By Alice King I (1328-1400) t is very difficult to get even a correct outline of the figure of Geoffrey Chaucer. We think we have a perfect view of him ; we congratulate our- selves upon knowing the man just as he moved and spoke among his contemporaries ; when suddenly we discover that we are looking at a puppet cun- ningly dressed up by some imaginative biographer. We believe that we have got him into a good his- torical light, when all at once a doubt whether he was or was not an actor in such and such events throws him again into shadow. We try to conjure him up, but he comes in so many forms that we grow utterly bewildered. Yet, notwithstanding all this, we reverence him so deeply and love him so dearly, that we cannot help striving to gain some idea of what he was like. The dates given of Chaucer's birth are very varied, and range from 1328 to 1348. Probably some year midway between these two may be the right one. The accounts of his parentage are just as uncertain. Some give him a vintner for a father, some a merchant, and some a knight. In our opinion the former of these is the most likely origin for Geoffrey Chaucer. His rich but broad humor seems as if it must have sprung from the merry, vigorous heart of the common people, and the variety of characters depicted in the " Canterbury Tales " proves that he must have mixed with all sorts of men and women, both high and low. In after-life he was familiar with courts, and knights, and ladies ; but we fancy that in his youth he must have known intimately the cook, the wife of Bath, and the yeoman.