There is considerable discrepance between the generally received and the probable date of Geoffrey Chaucer’s birth. In the life prefixed to the edition of his works by Speght, it is stated, that he “departed out of this world in the year of our Lord 1400, after he had lived about seventy years.” The biographer’s authority for this is “Bale, out of Leland.” Leland’s accuracy on this, as on many other points, may be doubted, since he believed Oxfordshire or Berkshire to have been the poet’s native county. But Chaucer himself, in his Testament of Love, mentions London as the “place of his kindly engendure.” The received date of his birth is 1328: if that be correct, he was fifty-eight in 1386. But a record in the Appendix to Mr. Godwin’s Life shows that in that year he was a witness on oath, in a question between Sir Richard le Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor. The point at issue occasioned an inquiry to be made as to Chaucer’s age, which he stated to be “forty years and upwards.” Eighteen years upon forty is a large upwards on a sworn examination. Mr. Sharon Turner, therefore, in his History of the Middle Ages, suggests, with every appearance of reason, that 1340, or thereabouts, is a date fairly corresponding with the witness’s “forty years and upwards,” and even necessary to vindicate his accuracy in a predicament requiring the most scrupulous adherence to truth. Chaucer might not be certain as to the precise year of his birth; and, in that case, it was natural to fix on the nearest round number. The chronology of his Works must be deeply affected by this difference of twelve years: it will be to be seen whether the few authenticated facts of his life are to be reconciled with this presumptive later date.

Chaucer is represented by Leland to have studied both at Cambridge and at Oxford. At the latter University, he is said to have diligently frequented the public schools and disputations, and to have affected the opinions of Wiclif in religion. “Hereupon,” says Leland, “he became a witty logician, a sweet rhetorician, a pleasant poet, a grave philosopher, and a holy divine.” But Mr. Tyrwhitt thinks that nothing is known as to his education, and doubts his having studied at either University. The evidence that he was of the Inner Temple seems to rest on a record of that house, seen some years afterwards by one Master Buckley, showing that Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street. Mr. Tyrwhitt complains of the want of date to this record. The sally is plainly a youthful one, and inclines him to believe that Chaucer was of the Inner Temple before he went into the service of Edward III. That he could have been engaged in the practice of the law in after-life, as stated by Leland, is shown by Mr. Tyrwhitt to be utterly inconsistent with his employments under the crown. In the paucity of biographical anecdotes, Chaucer’s personal career will be most satisfactorily ascertained by following the succession of his appointments, as verified by the public documents in Mr. Godwin’s valuable appendices. In 1367, Edward III. granted him, for his good services, an annuity of twenty marcs, payable out of the Exchequer. In 1370, he was sent to the Continent on the king’s business. Two years afterwards, he, with two others, was employed on an embassy to the Doge of Genoa. This negotiation probably regarded the hiring of ships for the king’s navy. In those times, although the necessity for naval armaments was frequent, very few ships were built by the English. This deficiency was supplied by the free states either in Germany or Italy. The age of thirty and thirty-two squares well enough with such appointments. In 1374, the king granted to him a pitcher of wine daily, to be delivered by the Butler of England. At the same time, he made him Comptroller of the Customs of London, for wool, wool-fells, and hides, on condition of his executing the office in person, and keeping the accounts with his own hand. In the following year he obtained from the king the wardship of the lands and body of Sir Edmund Staplegate, a young Kentish heir. In 1377, the last year of King Edward, “Geoffrey Caucher” is mentioned by Froissart as one of those envoys employed abroad, as his protection expresses it, “on the king’s secret service.” The object of the mission is divulged by the French historian; it was a treaty between the Kings of England and France, in which the marriage of Richard with the French Princess Mary was debated; but neither the peace nor the marriage were brought about. Here end both the commissions and benefactions received by Chaucer from Edward III.

Some time after 1370, and before 1381, according to Mr. Turner’s calculation, but in 1360 according to others, Chaucer married a lady who, according to documents taken from Rymer, had been one of the “domicellÆ,” damsels, or, in modern court phrase, maids of honour to Queen Philippa. Mr. Turner places the marriage within those limits, on the following grounds:—Chaucer, in his “Treatise on the Astrolabe,” dates an observation as made in 1391, and mentions his son Lewis as being then ten years old. A grant to the queen’s damsel, on quitting her service, is dated 1370, and made to her by her maiden name. The “Astrolabe” and the grant together furnish conclusive evidence in favour of Mr. Turner’s limits; but the current story of the Duke and Duchess of Lancaster having concocted the match, can only be reconciled with the earlier date, as the duchess died in 1369. It is unnecessary to enumerate those various grants made to Chaucer by Richard II., which bear on no other events of his life. An important document of the year 1398, states that the king had ordered Chaucer to expedite several urgent affairs for him, as well in his absence as in his presence, in various parts of England. As a security against alarms expressed by Chaucer respecting suits and other molestations, Richard granted him a protection from arrest, injury, violence, or impediment, for two years. Richard was deposed in August of the following year. In October, Henry IV. confirmed Richard’s donations, with an additional annuity of forty marcs. The last document as to Chaucer is an indenture of lease to him, dated 24th December, 1399, of a tenement in the Priory Garden of Westminster, for a term of fifty-three years. Chaucer, therefore, was active at the end of 1399, and seems, from the length of his lease, still to have thought himself a good life, as he well might, if his age were only sixty; but his biographers (probably because they traced him in no later documents, and thought seventy-two a good old age) in the absence of any other positive evidence, than the date on a monument erected in the sixteenth century, have fixed his death in 1400.

We have thought it expedient not to mix up the facts proved by official documents, with the few others to be gleaned from passages in his works. Such as are attested by neither of these vouchers have no claim to implicit credit. In his Testament of Love, he speaks of having “endured penance in a dark prison.” Again, “Although I had little in respect of other great and worthy, yet had I a fair parcel, as methought for the time; I had riches sufficiently to wave need. I had dignity to be reverenced in worship; power methought that I had to keep from mine enemies, and me seemed to shine in glory of renown.” With this picture of former prosperity, he contrasts his present state. “For riches now have I poverty; instead of power, wretchedness I suffer; and for glory of renown, I am now despised and foully hated.” We cannot with certainty connect this reverse of personal fortune with any passage of general history. He alludes to it thus:—“In my youth I was drawn to be assenting, and in my might helping to certain conjurations, and other great matters of ruling of citizens, so painted and coloured, that at first to me seemed then noble and glorious to all the people.” He intimates that he had made some discoveries concerning certain transactions in the city. He was, consequently, exposed to calumny, and the charge of falsehood. To prove his veracity, he offered an appeal to arms, and “had prepared his body for Mars’s doing, if any contraried his saws.” He alludes to his escape out of the kingdom, when we are told by his biographers that he spent his time in Hainault, France, and Zealand, where he wrote many of his books. He himself says, that during his exile those whom he had served never refreshed him with the value of the least coined plate; those who owed him money would pay nothing, because they thought his return impossible. Mr. Godwin, like preceding biographers, refers these personal misfortunes to his support of John Comberton, generally styled John of Northampton, who, in 1382, attempted reform in the city on Wiclif’s principles. This was highly resented by the clergy; Comberton was taken into custody, and Chaucer is stated to have fled the kingdom. Mr. Turner thinks, that as the date assigned to these reverses is purely conjectural, they may be referred with more probability to a later period. He argues that, had Chaucer joined any party against the court, he would not have enjoyed Richard’s continued favour. The protection from the king, in 1398, implies that he was intermeddling in hazardous concerns; and in the Testament of Love, which may be considered as an autobiography composed of hints rather than facts, there is this remarkable passage. “Of the confederacies made by my sovereigns, I was but a servant; and thereof ought nothing in evil to be laid to me wards, sithen as repentant I am turned.” Mr. Turner infers, from the singular protection granted to Chaucer, in the very year when, after Gloucester’s murder, Richard adopted his most illegal and tyrannical measures, that the poet was prosecuted as an accomplice in those measures; that Henry might have thrown him into prison, as implicated in the deposed monarch’s unlawful acts; but on his professions of repentance, and in consideration of his connexion and alliance with his own father, might have pardoned him with others, at his coronation. In this difference of opinion, or rather of conjecture, between the biographers and the historian, we may, perhaps, be allowed to hazard the supposition, that those scattered allusions in the Testament may refer not to the same, but to different periods of evil fortune; indeed, the very expressions quoted seem hardly reconcileable with any one event. The “conjurations, noble and glorious to the people,” seem to point at some measures distasteful to the higher powers: and as both Chaucer and his patron the Duke of Lancaster had adopted many of Wiclif’s tenets, it seems not improbable that the conspiracy alluded to may be identified with that of John of Northampton. Delicately as the circumstance is glossed over by the poet, he appears to have turned what in homely phrase is called king’s evidence, the imputation of which he parries by a chivalrous appeal to “Mars’s doing.” This will account for his being received back into royal favour, and for his lending himself in after-time, no longer to the conjurations of the people, in plain English, the rebellion of the commons, but to the confederacies of his sovereigns. If his allusion to his personal misfortunes, and his expressions of conscientious remorse, may be referred to different periods, and to events of opposite character; in that view of the case, neither Mr. Godwin nor Mr. Turner may be in the wrong.

Few particulars of Chaucer’s private history are to be gathered from his poems. In his Dream, of which Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, is the subject, the poet describes himself as a victim to nervous melancholy from habitual want of sleep, accompanied with a dread of death. The translation of Boethius, and occasional quotations from Seneca and Juvenal, attest that he retained through life his juvenile acquaintance with the Latin classics. The chronology of his works must be rendered doubtful by the uncertainty respecting that of his life. Mr. Turner places the time of his death later than 1400, but before 1410. The poet is said to have had the unusual honour of being brother-in-law to a prince of the blood, by the marriage of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, with Catherine, widow of Sir Hugh Swinford, and sister to Chaucer’s wife. He is said to have lived at Woodstock at a late period of his life, and finally, to have retired to Donnington Castle on the Duke of Lancaster’s death. By his wife, Philippa, he had two sons, Thomas and Lewis. Thomas was Speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of Henry IV., ambassador to France and Burgundy, and discharged other public duties. Chaucer’s principal biographers are Leland, Thomas Speght, Mr. Tyrwhitt, and Mr. Godwin. The work of the latter would have been more valuable had it been less voluminous, less discursive, and less conjectural. Mr. Tyrwhitt’s edition of the Canterbury Tales is a model of criticism on an old English classic. His Introductory Discourse on the Language and Versification of Chaucer will enable its readers to form just and clear ideas of the history of our ancient tongue, and Chaucer’s peculiar use of it.

Chaucer was held in high estimation by his most distinguished contemporaries. John the Chaplain, who translated Boethius into English verse, as Chaucer had into prose, calls him the Flower of Rhetoric. Occleve laments him with personal affection as his father and master, and styles him the honour of English tongue. Lydgate, the monk of Bury, mentions him as a chief poet of Britain; the loadstar of our language; the notable rhetor. Dryden says, in the preface prefixed to his Fables,—“As Chaucer is the father of English poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or the Romans Virgil; he is a perpetual fountain of good sense, learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects; as he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace.”

Our account of his principal works must be brief. The Romaunt of the Rose is professedly a translation of the French Roman de la Rose. It is a long allegory, representing the difficulties and dangers encountered by a lover in the pursuit of his mistress, who is emblematically described as a Rose, and the plot, if so it may be called, ends with his putting her in a beautiful garden.

Troilus and Creseide is for the most part a translation of the Filostrato of Boccaccio, but with many variations and large additions. As a tale, it is barren of incident, although, according to Warton, as long as the Æneid; but it contains passages of great beauty and pathos.

The story of Queen Annelida and false Arcite is said to have been originally told in Latin. Chaucer names the authors whom he professes to follow. “First folwe I Stace, and after him Corinne.” The opening only is taken from Statius, so that Corinne must be supposed to have furnished the remainder; but who she was has never yet been discovered. False Arcite is a different person from the Arcite of the Knight’s Tale. It is probable therefore that this poem was written before Chaucer had become acquainted with the Teseide of Boccaccio.

The opening of the Assembly of Foules is built on the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero. The description of a garden and temple is almost entirely taken from the description of the Temple of Venus in the Fourth Book of the Teseide. Mr. Tyrwhitt suspects this poem to allude to the intended marriage between John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster, which took place in 1359.

Warton, in his History of English Poetry, intimates his belief that the House of Fame was originally a ProvenÇal composition. But Mr. Tyrwhitt differs from him in opinion, and states that he “has not observed, in any of Chaucer’s writings, a single phrase or word which has the least appearance of having been fetched by him from the South of the Loire.” With respect to the matter and manner of his compositions, Mr. Tyrwhitt adds, that he “shall be slow to believe that in either he ever copied the poets of Provence,” or that he had more than a very slender acquaintance with them. The poem is an allegorical vision; a favourite theme with all the poets of Chaucer’s time, both native and foreign.

The Flower and the Leaf was printed for the first time in Speght’s edition of 1597. Mr. Tyrwhitt suggests a doubt of its correct ascription to Chaucer; but it seems to afford internal evidence of powers at all events congenial with those of Chaucer, in its description of rural scenery and its general truth and feeling. Dryden has modernised it, without a suspicion of its authenticity.

Chaucer’s prose works are—his Translation of Boethius, the Treatise on the Astrolabe, and the Testament of Love. The Canterbury Tales were his latest work. The general plan of them is, that a company of Pilgrims, going to Canterbury, assemble at an inn in Southwark, and agree that each shall tell at least one tale in going and another on returning; and that he who shall tell the best tales shall be treated by the rest with a supper at the inn, before they separate. The characters of the Pilgrims, as exhibited in their respective Prologues, are drawn from the various departments of middle life. The occurrences on the journey, and the adventures of the company at Canterbury, were intended to be interwoven as Episodes, or connected by means of the Prologues; but the work, like its prototype the Decameron, was undertaken when the author was past the meridian of life, and was left imperfect. Chaucer has, in many respects, improved on his model, especially in variety of character and its nice discrimination; but the introductory machinery is not contrived with equal felicity. Boccaccio’s narrators indulge in the ease and luxury of a palace; a journey on horse-back is not the most convenient opportunity of telling long stories to a numerous company.

The works of Chaucer, notwithstanding the encomiums of four successive centuries, emanating from poets and critics of the highest renown and first authority, are little read excepting by antiquaries and philologers, unless in the polished versions of Dryden and Pope. This is principally to be attributed neither to any change of opinion respecting the merit of the poet, nor to the obsoleteness of the language; but to the progressive change of manners and feelings in society, to the accumulation of knowledge, and the improvement of morals. His command over the language of his day, his poetical power, and his exhibition of existing characters and amusing incidents, constitute his attractions; but his prolixity is ill suited to our impatient rapidity of thought and action. Unlike the passionate and natural creations of Shakspeare, which will never grow obsolete, the sentiments of Chaucer are not congenial with our own: his love is fantastic gallantry; he is the painter and panegyrist of exploded knight-errantry. Hence the preference of the Canterbury Tales above all his other works; because the manners of the time are dramatized, in other ranks of life than that of chivalry; his good sense, and capacity for keen observation are called forth, to the exclusion of conventional affectations. With respect to his prose, it is curious as that “strange English” and “ornate style,” adopted by him as a scholar for the sake of distinction, rather than as a specimen of the language and mode of expression characteristic of his age.