Chaucer | Page 5

out of date
and rusty. But there seems no sufficient reason for removing the date of
the composition of these lines to an earlier year than 1393; and poets as
well as other men since Chaucer have spoken of themselves as old and
obsolete at fifty. A similar remark might be made concerning the
reference to the poet's old age "which dulleth him in his spirit," in the
"Complaint of Venus," generally ascribed to the last decennium of
Chaucer's life. If we reject the evidence of a further passage, in the
"Cuckoo and the Nightingale," a poem of disputed genuineness, we
accordingly arrive at the conclusion that there is no reason for
demurring to the only direct external evidence in existence as to the
date of Chaucer's birth. At a famous trial of a cause of chivalry held at
Westminster in 1386, Chaucer, who had gone through part of a
campaign with one of the litigants, appeared as a witness; and on this
occasion his age was, doubtless on his own deposition, recorded as that
of a man "of forty years and upwards," who had borne arms for twenty-
seven years. A careful enquiry into the accuracy of the record as to the
ages of the numerous other witnesses at the same trial has established it
in an overwhelming majority of instances; and it is absurd gratuitously
to charge Chaucer with having understated his age from motives of
vanity. The conclusion, therefore, seems to remain unshaken, that he
was born about the year 1340, or some time between that year and
1345.
Now, we possess a charming poem by Chaucer called the "Assembly of
Fowls," elaborately courtly in its conception, and in its execution
giving proofs of Italian reading on the part of its author, as well as of a
ripe humour such as is rarely an accompaniment of extreme youth. This
poem has been thought by earlier commentators to allegorise an event
known to have happened in 1358, by later critics another which
occurred in 1364. Clearly, the assumption that the period from 1340 to
1345 includes the date of Chaucer's birth, suffices of itself to stamp the

one of these conjectures as untenable, and the other as improbable, and
(when the style of the poem and treatment of its subject are taken into
account) adds weight to the other reasons in favour of the date 1381 for
the poem in question. Thus, backwards and forwards, the disputed
points in Chaucer's biography and the question of his works are
affected by one another.
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Chaucer's life, then, spans rather more than the latter half of the
fourteenth century, the last year of which was indisputably the year of
his death. In other words, it covers rather more than the interval
between the most glorious epoch of Edward III's reign--for Crecy was
fought in 1346--and the downfall, in 1399, of his unfortunate successor
Richard II.
The England of this period was but a little land, if numbers be the test
of greatness--but in Edward III's time as in that of Henry V, who
inherited so much of Edward's policy and revived so much of his glory,
there stirred in this little body a mighty heart. It is only of a small
population that the author of the "Vision concerning Piers Plowman"
could have gathered the representatives into a single field, or that
Chaucer himself could have composed a family picture fairly
comprehending, though not altogether exhausting, the chief national
character-types. In the year of King Richard II's accession (1377),
according to a trustworthy calculation based upon the result of that
year's poll-tax, the total number of the inhabitants of England seems to
have been two millions and a half. A quarter of a century earlier--in the
days of Chaucer's boyhood-- their numbers had been perhaps twice as
large. For not less than four great pestilences (in 1348-9, 1361-2, 1369,
and 1375-6) had swept over the land, and at least one-half of its
population, including two-thirds of the inhabitants of the capital, had
been carried off by the ravages of the obstinate epidemic--"the foul
death of England," as it was called in a formula of execration in use
among the people. In this year 1377, London, where Chaucer was
doubtless born as well as bred, where the greater part of his life was
spent, and where the memory of his name is one of those associations

which seem familiarly to haunt the banks of the historic river from
Thames Street to Westminster, apparently numbered not more than
35,000 souls. But if, from the nature of the case, no place was more
exposed than London to the inroads of the Black Death, neither was
any other so likely elastically to recover from them. For the reign of
Edward III had witnessed a momentous advance