Canterbury Tales and Other Poems | Page 8

intimate acquaintance with the
divinity, the
philosophy, and the scholarship of his time, and show him to have had the sciences, as
then developed and
taught, "at his fingers' ends." Another proof of Chaucer's good birth
and fortune would he found in the statement that, after his University career was
completed, he entered the Inner Temple - - the expenses of which could be borne only by
men of noble and opulent families; but although there is a story that he was once fined
two shillings for thrashing a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street, we have no direct authority
for believing that the poet devoted himself to the uncongenial study of the law. No
special display of knowledge on that subject appears in his works; yet in the sketch of the
Manciple, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, may be found indications of his
familiarity with the internal economy of the Inns of Court; while numerous legal phrases
and references hint that his comprehensive information was not at fault on legal matters.
Leland says that he quitted the University "a ready logician, a smooth rhetorician, a
pleasant poet, a grave philosopher, an ingenious mathematician, and a holy divine;" and
by all accounts, when Geoffrey Chaucer
comes before us authentically for the first time,
at the age of thirty-one, he was possessed of knowledge and
accomplishments far
beyond the common standard of his day.
Chaucer at this period possessed also other qualities fitted to recommend him to favour in
a Court like that of Edward III. Urry describes him, on the authority of a portrait, as being
then "of a fair beautiful complexion, his lips red and full, his size of a just medium, and
his port and air graceful and majestic. So," continues the ardent biographer, -- "so that
every ornament that could claim the approbation of the great and fair, his abilities to
record the valour of the one, and celebrate the beauty of the other, and his wit and gentle
behaviour to converse with both, conspired to make him a complete courtier." If we
believe that his "Court of Love" had received such publicity as the literary media of the
time allowed in the somewhat narrow and select literary world -- not to speak of "Troilus
and Cressida," which, as Lydgate mentions it first among Chaucer's works, some have
supposed to be a youthful production -- we find a third and not less powerful
recommendation to the favour of the great cooperating with his learning and his gallant
bearing. Elsewhere
<2> reasons have been shown for doubt whether "Troilus and

Cressida" should not be assigned to a later period of Chaucer's life; but very little is
positively known about the dates and sequence of his various works. In the year 1386,
being called as witness with regard to a contest on a point of heraldry between Lord

Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor, Chaucer deposed that
he entered on his military
career in 1359. In that year Edward III invaded France, for the third time, in pursuit of his
claim to the French crown; and we may fancy that, in describing the
embarkation of the
knights in "Chaucer's Dream", the poet
gained some of the vividness and stir of his
picture from his recollections of the embarkation of the splendid and wellappointed

royal host at Sandwich, on board the eleven hundred
transports provided for the
enterprise. In this expedition the laurels of Poitiers were flung on the ground; after vainly

attempting Rheims and Paris, Edward was constrained, by cruel weather and lack of
provisions, to retreat toward his ships; the fury of the elements made the retreat more
disastrous than an overthrow in pitched battle; horses and men perished by
thousands,
or fell into the hands of the pursuing French.
Chaucer, who had been made prisoner at
the siege of Retters, was among the captives in the possession of France when the treaty
of Bretigny -- the "great peace" -- was concluded, in May, 1360. Returning to England, as
we may suppose, at the
peace, the poet, ere long, fell into another and a pleasanter
captivity; for his marriage is generally believed to have taken place shortly after his
release from foreign durance. He had already gained the personal friendship and favour
of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the King's son; the Duke, while Earl of Richmond,
had courted, and won to wife after a certain
delay, Blanche, daughter and co-heiress of
Henry Duke of
Lancaster; and Chaucer is by some believed to have written
"The
Assembly of Fowls" to celebrate the wooing, as he wrote "Chaucer's Dream" to celebrate
the wedding, of his patron. The marriage took place in 1359, the year of Chaucer's
expedition to France; and as, in "The Assembly of Fowls," the formel or
female eagle,
who is supposed to represent the Lady Blanche, begs that her choice of a mate may be