supposed to have been a prisoner in the Tower, he was sitting in parliament as a knight of the shire for one of the largest counties in England. In 1387 Chaucer lost his wife, and with her the pension settled upon her by Queen Philippa. Upon the accession of the Lancaster party in 1389 he was appointed clerk of the king's works—an important office which he was allowed to perform by deputy: this post he held till 1391. From that period we have nothing authentic in relation to the poet till 1394, when he obtained a grant from the king of £20 a year; but we learn that his circumstances were far from easy, and he was protected from arrest for debt by a royal letter. That Chaucer should have been in pecuniary difficulties is somewhat surprising, seeing that he had, with occasional interruptions, what must be considered, at the lowest, a competency. It is said he lived extravagantly, a supposition that some passages in his writings seem to favour. Be this as it may, the prosperity which had been interrupted by these circumstances happily returned to brighten the close of his career. Another grant of wine was made to him, and Henry IV. on his accession conferred on the poet an additional pension of £26. 13s. 4d. a year. Chaucer was now over seventy years old, residing, not at Dorrington castle in Berkshire, as is generally asserted, but in London in a house taken by him nearly upon the site of Henry VII.'s chapel at Westminster. His end was approaching, and he spent his last hours in tranquillity and resignation, having composed a poem entitled "Gode Counsaile of Chaucer," made by him "upon his dethe bed, leying in his gret anguyse." Chaucer died on the 25th October, 1400, about the age of seventy-two, and was buried in Westminster abbey, where a monument erected to him in 1556 may still be seen, though the inscriptions are nearly effaced. In his younger days Chaucer must have been handsome; he is described in his thirtieth year as being "of a fair and beautiful complexion, his lips full and red, his size of a just medium, and his port and air graceful and majestic." Later in life he became corpulent, and lost much of his grace of person, though his features retained their fairness. In addition to the portraiture he has given of himself in "The Canterbury Tales," we have several portraits, especially that of Occlave, which conveys "the perfect image of a character not less remarkable for its rare combination of power and sympathy, than for the variety of accomplishments by which it was graced."
We have next to speak of Chaucer as a poet. As such he stands pre-eminently before us as "the father of English poetry," as one who laid the foundations "that still support the fabric of our poetical literature, and will outlast the vicissitudes of taste and language." Amongst his own contemporaries this his position was accorded to him; successive ages continued it to him; and the present affirms it. The praises of Lydgate, and Gower, and Occlave, and Ascham, and Spenser, have received the imprimatur of Wharton and Drayton, Coleridge and Hallam, Byron and Tennyson, and every critic of taste and erudition. He was in England what his great contemporary or rather predecessor, Dante, was in Italy, each the maker of a language, which, as long as it shall last, will uphold the fame of its author. An elegant modern writer thus speaks of him—"Poet, soldier, and diplomatist, and master of the philosophy, science, and divinity of his time, the versatility of his genius is not more remarkable than the practical judgment he displayed in its employment. With a complete command of the springs of universal interest, the tragical and the humorous, the solemn and the gay, the sublime and the grotesque, he applied his knowledge of life and nature, his consummate art, the copious resources of an imagination that seemed incapable of exhaustion, and a power of expression as extensive as the empire of his genius, to the creation of works which, while they reflect in vivid colours the features of his own time, possess also an enduring value for all time to come." Mr. H. Reed, in his able lectures on English literature, portrays Chaucer with happy eloquence. "No poet ever held such large and free communion with the world and his fellowmen. He stood in the presence of kings and nobles, and became versed in the lore of chivalry—its principles and passions; he went forth from the pomp of a court to do a soldier's service, and, in the season of peace, to muse in the fields, to look with loving eyes upon the flowers, to sympathize with the simple hearts of children and of peasants, to honour womanhood alike in humble or in high estate, and to commune with the faithful and the zealous of the priesthood. What most distinguishes the genius of Chaucer is the comprehensiveness and variety of his powers. You look at him in his gay mood, and it is so genial that that seems to be his very nature, an overflowing comic power, touched with thoughtfulness and tenderness—"humour" in its finest estate. And then you turn to another phase of his genius, and with something of wonder and more of delight, you find it shining with a light as true and natural and beautiful into the deeper places of the human soul—its woes, its anguish, and its strength of suffering and of heroism. In this, the harmonious union of true tragic and comic powers, Chaucer and Shakspeare stand alone in our literature; it places these two above all the other great poets of our language, for such combination is the highest endowment of poetic genius."
It remains now to notice briefly the various works of Chaucer. It is impossible to ascertain their chronological order. "The Court of Love" was probably one of his earliest productions, and "Troilus and Creseide" may also be assigned to his youth. "The Assemblee of Foules" was written before the marriage of Blanche of Lancaster, probably about 1358; and "The Booke of the Duchesse" after her death. "The Legende of Good Women" must have been written before 1382, and "The House of Fame" somewhere about the same time. We are not able to assign a date to the "Romaunt of the Rose." It is a translation from the French poem commenced by William of Lorris, and concluded by John of Meun. In the hands of Chaucer it is infinitely improved and beautified. His other poems are "The Cockow and the Nightingale;" "The Flower and the Leaf"—the latter an exquisite composition; and "The Testament of Love." But the great work upon which the fame of Chaucer rests imperishably is "The Canterbury Tales." These were the occupation of the last ten years of his life. Wharton, following tradition, says that they were composed partly at Woodstock, and partly at Dorrington in Berkshire, but there is good reason to doubt that he occupied the latter place. The poem is unfinished, but for what it achieved, as well as what it proposed to accomplish, is worthy of high admiration. The design, suggested probably by the Decameron of Boccaccio, is extremely happy. A company of pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, set out from the Tabard inn at London, and, at the instance of the host, each tells a tale to beguile the way. The prologue presents us with the truest and liveliest picture of the state of society in England in the fourteenth century—we see the freedom and ease of intercourse between the personages, though ranging through every grade of life. Each character is drawn with the hand of a master, and stands out a living reality—a type of a class. The various tales exhibit the wondrous power of Chaucer, as various and flexible as it is deeply skilled in the heart of humanity and the soul of nature—the inward and the outward of mind and of matter. "After four hundred years have closed over the mirthful features which formed the living originals of the poet's descriptions, his pages impress the fancy with the momentary credence that they are still alive." All the powers of his learning, his experience, and his genius have here free scope, and place Chaucer next to Shakspeare as one, who, dealing not only with what is changing and evanescent in the times and in the character of man, but comprehending also what is enduring and essential to humanity, has written for all times, and will be read while the English language shall last.—J. F. W.
CHAUDET, Antoine-Denis, a French sculptor, born at Paris in 1763; died in 1810. After returning from Rome he executed for the Pantheon a group representing the emulation of glory. Not being of the vicious style then in vogue, it was at first neglected. Chaudet's next work was his fine statue of "Œdipus." "Paul and Virginia," "Surprise," "Belisarius," &c., followed, and raised him to the first rank among modern sculptors. His articles in the dictionary of the fine arts are said to be also admirable.—His wife, Jeanne-Elisabeth, who was also his pupil, gained a considerable reputation by her exquisite paintings of familiar subjects.—R. M., A.
CHAUDON, Louis Mayeul, born in Provence in 1737; a benedictine of the congregation of Cluny, who, like so many of that learned order, devoted himself to historical research. His "Nouveau Dictionnaire historique," first published in 1766, went through several editions. This was followed by his "Dictionnaire Antiphilosophique," directed against the Philosophical Dictionary of Voltaire. As the witty sceptic too often sacrificed dry fact to the desire of saying smart things, and rather loved
