Doubtless Chaucer was a man of practical good sense, desirous of suitable employment and of a sufficient income; nor can we suppose him to have been one of those who look upon social life and its enjoyments with a jaundiced eye, or who, absorbed in things which are not of this world, avert their gaze from it altogether. But it is hardly possible that rank and position should have been valued on their own account by one who so repeatedly recurs to his ideal of the true gentleman, as to a conception dissociated from mere outward circumstances, and more particularly independent of birth or inherited wealth. At times, we know, men find what they seek;and so Chaucer found in Boethius and in Guillaume de Lorris that conception which he both translates and reproduces, besides repeating it in a little "Ballade," probably written by him in the last decennium of his life. By far the best-known and the finest of these passages is that in the "Wife of Bath's Tale," which follows the round assertion that the "arrogance" against which it protests is not worth a hen; and which is followed by an appeal to a parallel passage in Dante:--Look, who that is most virtuous alway Privy and open, and most intendeth aye To do the gentle deedes that he can, Take him for the greatest gentleman.
Christ wills we claim of Him our gentleness, Not of our elders for their old riches.
For though they give us all their heritage Through which we claim to be of high parage, Yet may they not bequeathe for no thing--To none of us--their virtuous living, That made them gentlemen y-called be, And bade us follow them in such degree.
Well can the wise poet of Florence, That Dante highte, speak of this sentence;Lo, in such manner of rhyme is Dante's tale:
"Seldom upriseth by its branches small Prowess of man; for God of His prowess Wills that we claim of Him our gentleness;For of our ancestors we no thing claim But temporal thing, that men may hurt and maim."(The passage in Canto 8 of the "Purgatorio" is thus translated by Longfellow:
"Not oftentimes upriseth through the branches The probity of man; and this He wills Who gives it, so that we may ask of Him."Its intention is only to show that the son is not necessarily what the father is before him; thus, Edward I of England is a mightier man than was his father Henry III. Chaucer has ingeniously, though not altogether legitimately, pressed the passage into his service.)By the still ignobler greed of money for its own sake there is no reason whatever to suppose Chaucer to have been at any time actuated; although, under the pressure of immediate want, he devoted a "Complaint" to his empty purse, and made known, in the proper quarters, his desire to see it refilled. Finally, as to what is commonly called pleasure, he may have shared the fashions and even the vices of his age; but we know hardly anything on the subject, except that excess in wine, which is often held a pardonable peccadillo in a poet, receives his emphatic condemnation. It would be hazardous to assert of him, as Herrick asserted of himself that though his "Muse was jocund, life was chaste;" inasmuch as his name occurs in one unfortunate connexion full of suspiciousness. But we may at least believe him to have spoken his own sentiments in the Doctor of Physic's manly declaration that --of all treason sovereign pestilence Is when a man betrayeth innocence.
His true pleasures lay far away from those of vanity and dissipation. In the first place, he seems to have been a passionate reader. To his love of books he is constantly referring; indeed, this may be said to be the only kind of egotism which he seems to take a pleasure in indulging. At the opening of his earliest extant poem of consequence, the "Book of the Duchess," he tells us how he preferred to drive away a night rendered sleepless through melancholy thoughts, by means of a book, which he thought better entertainment than a game either at chess or at "tables."This passion lasted longer with him than the other passion which it had helped to allay; for in the sequel to the well-known passage in the "House of Fame," already cited, he gives us a glimpse of himself at home, absorbed in his favourite pursuit:--Thou go'st home to thy house anon, And there, as dumb as any stone, Thou sittest at another book, Till fully dazed is thy look;And liv'st thus as a hermit quite, Although thy abstinence is slight.
