Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/155

. i. FEB. is, i9M.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

Hainault, must surely have spoken and written in continental French, not, as Skeat says, in A.-F. She "formed the centre of a society cultivating the French language and poetry " (Ten Brink), prominent among whom was Jean Froissart, the privileged exponent of polite literature and love poetry (" beaux dicties et traites amoureux ") at her Court. Now Chaucer, in view of his prolonged con- nexion with the Court and his repeated visits to France in peace and war, had every opportunity of hearing "French of Paris," and this, together with his constant readings and translations of the best French authors, can hardly have failed to impress upon him the superiority of their idiom as compared with the obsolescent Anglo-French of his day. To return from this digression to " Strat- ford atte Bo we": if the foregoing discussion may be held to furnish proof that Anglo- French was in Chaucer's day regarded as inferior, and if a sufficiently solid foundation has thus been established on which to base a joke, if joke there be, may we not now venture to detect a flavour of irony, or good- natured ridicule, in the very wording of the passage itself 1 For even though the ex- pression " after the scole," <fec., refers to an actual school viz., the Benedictine nunnery at Stratford-le-Bow, where we may suppose the Prioress to have been educated, and of which she was now, perhaps, the Lady Superior still the phrase has a ring about it which suggests something more than a state- ment of plain matter of fact. We think of the parisn clerk Absalom, in the 'Miller's Tale,' who dances " after the scole of Oxen- forde" (A 3329). In fine, if Gower had written our passage we might have suspected a jest ; with Chaucer we may be pretty sure that one is intended.

4. Are there any autobiographical touches to be found in the description of Chaucer's Pilgrims ? It has been thought that the " Clerk of Oxenford " is partly intended as a portrait of the poet himself, and we notice traits of resemblance in the Clerk's studious habits, his modesty and taciturn reserve. Yet the points of difference are more striking : the speech "sowninge in moral vertu/' the severely academical library of " twenty bokes of Aristotle and his philosophye " (com- pare Chaucer's own "sixty bokes, olde and

newe alle ful of storyes grete," Prologue

to 'Legend of Good Women,' 1. 273), lastly the Clerk's leanness. But the sketch of the young Squire offers many points that exactly fit in with what is known or surmised of Chaucer's youth. The Squire is " twenty years of age," and this, according to the most

probable computation of Chaucer's birth-date,, was about his age when he joined the expedi- tion to France in 1359, in the course of which
 * ie must have passed through the very pro-

vinces of Flanders, Artois, and Picardy where the Squire had been "in chivachye."" The latter hoped by his youthful exploits to "stand in his lady's grace," and Chaucer's- irst unfortunate love-affair began, according to his own account, immediately after his return from this expedition ('a siknesse
 * hat I have suffred this eight yere," ' Book of

she Duchesse,' 1369). The Squire's stature is- "of evene lengthe," and he is "wonderly delivere, and greet of strengthe." In a description taken from a portrait of Chaucer in early life, he is said to have been "of a Pair and beautiful complexion, his lips full and red, his size of a just medium, and his port and air graceful and majestic." With the first part of this description we have a further parallel if the lines

Embrouded was he, as it were a mede Al ful of fresshe floures, whyte and rede,

are taken to refer not, according to the usual interpretation, to the embroidery on his coat, but to his "pink and white "complexion. In favour of this view it may be said (a) that the description of his clothes begins several lines lower down, "Shorte was his goune," &c. ; (6) that the line " He was as fresh as is the month of May," which intervenes, rather favours the allusion to complexion ; (c) that " erubrouded " is used elsewhere of a meadow " that was with floures swote embrouded al," Prologue to 'L.,' 11. 118-9, from which the transition is easy tothecomparison suggested ; (d) that such comparison is further borne out by the following Chaucerian passages :

For right as she [Nature] can peynte a lilie whyt

And reed a rose, right with swich peynture

She peynted hath this noble creature. C 31,

Emelye, that fairer was to sene

Than is the lilie upon his stalke greene,

And fressher than the May with floures newe,

For with the rose colour strof hir hewe, &c.

A 1037.

The Squire's accomplishments seem to- point in the same direction. Singing and. " fluting," jousting and dancing this much might be expected of any young squire ; but when we are told of this squire that he could "songes make and well endyte," we seem to trace a reference to Chaucer's own " com- plaints "and his early love-poetry, much of which is probably now lost, the

Many an ympne for your halydayes That highten balades, roundels, virelayes,

which he tells us in the ' Legende ' he had once composed, and the " dytees and songes-