That were constrayned in hir tender youthe
And in childhode, as it is ofte couthe[208]
Yentered were into religion[209]
Or they hade yeares of discresioun;
That al her life cannot but complein
In wide copes perfeccion to feine.
Occleve, who has even less poetic genius than Lydgate, is remembered chiefly because the manuscript of his Gouvernail of Princes (a poem of good advice, addressed to Prince Hal) contains the only authentic portrait of Chaucer—a sketch drawn in the margin by the author himself. The lines which accompany the portrait, sufficiently illustrate the estimation in which Chaucer was held. Their modesty and simple affection disarm criticism.
Symple is my goste, and scars my letterure[210]
Unto youre excellence for to write
My inward love, and yit in aventure
Wol I me put, thogh I can but lyte;
My dere maister—God his soule quyte,—[211]
And fader, Chaucer, fayne wold have me taught,
But I was dulle, and lerned lyte or naught.
Allas! my worthy maister honorable,
This londes verray tresour and richesse,
Dethe by thy dethe hath harm irreperable
Unto us done: hir vengeable duresse[212]
Dispoiled hath this londe of the swetnesse
Of rethoryk, for unto Tullius
Was never man so lyk amenges us.
······
She myght have taryed hir vengeaunce a whyle,
Tyl sum man hadde egal to thee be;
Nay, let be that; she wel knew that this yle[213]
May never man forth bringe like to thee,
And her office needes do must she;
God bad her soo, I truste as for the beste,
O maystir, maystir, God thy soule reste!
His consciousness of the superiority of his master did not, however, prevent him from venturing to make use of the same material, and in the Chaste Spouse of the Emperor Gerelaus he re-tells the story of Constance.
A number of minor poets make up the list. Benedict Burgh—the shadow of Chaucer’s shadow—completed The Secrets of the Philosophers, a peculiarly dull poem which Lydgate left unfinished at his death. Side by side with him worked George Ashby, clerk of the signet to Queen Margaret, and a little later comes Henry Bradshaw, a monk of St. Werburgh’s Abbey at Chester. They are all worthy, honest men, who utter moral platitudes with an air of conviction; painstaking but unskilful apprentices in the workshop of poetry, who conscientiously blunt their tools and cut their fingers in a vain effort to do the work of master craftsmen. One curious little development is, however, worth noticing. In the latter half of the fifteenth century two poets, Sir George Ripley and Thomas Norton, wrote treatises on alchemy, in verse. Ripley’s The Compound of Alchemy, or the Twelve Gates, and Norton’s Ordinall of Alchemy, owe their interest in the first place to the proof they afford that verse at the time was a natural means of instruction rather than an end in itself; and in the second to their adventitious connection with the Chanouns Yemannes Tale. Norton endeavours to copy the Chaucerian couplet, and Professor Saintsbury suggests that he is probably the Th. Norton whom Ascham, in his Scholemaster, classes with Chaucer, Surrey, Wyatt and Phaer, as having vainly attempted to replace accent by rhyme.
Stephen Hawes falls into a class somewhat apart. Writing at the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, he stands at the parting of the ways, and while his poetry shows signs of the new influences that were at work, his heart is evidently with the old conventions which are beginning to pass away. His chief poem, The Pastime of Pleasure, or the Historye of Graunde Amoure and la Bell Pucell: containing the Knowledge of the Seven Sciences and the Course of Man’s Life in this World, is sufficiently described by its title. It stands, as it were, half-way between Chaucer and Spenser, at one moment clearly recalling the love scenes of Troilus and Criseyde, at another reminding us equally forcibly of the elaborate and ingenious allegory of the Faerie Queene. The combination of chivalry and allegory was something new, and though Hawes himself proved incapable of making the most of its possibilities, English literature owes him a real debt. He never rises to any great height. Mr. Murison, in his chapter on Hawes in Vol. II of the Cambridge History of Literature, draws attention to certain verbal resemblances between the Passetyme of Pleasure and the Faerie Queene, but the passages quoted serve only to show how far removed the music of Spenser is from the speech of ordinary men. At his worst Hawes sinks beneath the lowest level of what can possibly be allowed to pass as verse. The dialogue between Graunde Amour and Dame Grammar defies parody:—
“Madame,” quod I, “for as much as there be
Eight partes of speche, I would knowe right faine,
What a noune substantive is in his degree;
And wherefore it is so called certaine?
To whom she answered right gentely againe
Saing alway that a noune substantive
Might stand without helpe of an adjective.
That the stanza of Troilus and Criseyde should be used for such stuff as this is unbearable.
The Scottish Chaucerians are of far more intrinsic importance. The love-allegory of the Kingis Quair shows the influence of Chaucer not only in its use of the Chaucerian stanza—henceforth to be known as the rhyme royal—but in the evidence it affords of its author’s acquaintance with the English version of the Romance of the Rose. Moreover, in it may be noticed that sympathy with the freshness and joy of nature which forms so strong a bond between Chaucer and his Scottish disciples, and is so conspicuous by its absence in the work of the English Chaucerians. Emily herself might well walk in the garden where
... on the smale grene twistis[214] sat
The little sweete nyghtingale, and song
So loud and clear, the hymnes consecrate
Of loves use, now softe now loud among,
That all the gard(e)nes and the walles rong
Ryght of their song, and on the copill[215] next
Of their sweet harmony, and lo the text:
“Worschippe, ye that loveres be(ne) this May,
For of your bliss the kalendes are begonne,
And sing with us, away winter, away,
Come sumer, come, the sweet season and sonne,
Awake, for schame! that have your heavenes wonne,
And amourously lift up your heades all,
Thank Love that list you to his merci call;”
and the picture of Joan Beaufort,
The fairest or the freschest yong(e) floure
That ever I sawe, me thoght, before that houre;
has something of Chaucer’s daintiness and grace.
The Scottish poets have, also, far more sense of form than the English. Henryson’s Testament of Cressid, written to satisfy its author’s thirst for poetic justice and to show Cressida paying the penalty of her misdeeds, with all its conventional morality, for sincerity of feeling and felicity of style will bear comparison with its great original. His fables show a quick sense of humour, a combination of tenderness and realism which recall Chaucer again and again. The feast spread by the Burgis Mouse for the Uplandis Mouse is delightful:—
After when they disposed were to dine,
Withouten grace they wash’d and went to meat,
With all the courses that cooks could define,
Mutton and beef laid out in slices greet;
And lordis fare thus could they counterfeit,
Except one thing, they drank the water clear
Instead of wine, but yet they made good cheer.
Gawain Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, was perhaps most nearly akin to the English Chaucerians. A scholar and a man of distinguished position, he has none of the lightness of Henryson. He takes poetry seriously, and inclines to trace a moral purpose even in the Æneid. His Palice of Honour well illustrates the manner in which Chaucer’s successors made free with the framework of his poems, while at the same time it shows th
e growing delight in picturesque effect which was one day to break into the Elizabethan glow of colour. The poet finds himself wandering in a dreary wilderness and breaks out in complaint against Fortune, who has led him there. As he laments, he sees approaching him a rout “of ladyis fair and gudlie men”:—
Amiddes(t) whom borne in a golden chair
O’er-fret with pearl and stones most preclair[216]
That draw(e)n was by hackneys all milk-white
Was set a Queen, as lily sweet of swair[217]
In purple robe, hemmed with gems each gair[218]
Which gemmed claspes closed all perfite[219]
A diadem, most pleasantly polite,
Set on the tresses of her golden hair.
The original form, which illustrates the comparatively modernness of the language used by Chaucer, is as follows:
Amiddes quhome, borne in ane goldin chair
Ourfret with perle and stanis maist preclair
That drawin was by haiknayis all milk quhite,
Was set a Quene, as lyllie sweit of swair
In purpor rob hemmit with gold ilk gair,
Quhilk gemmit claspis closit all perfite.
A diademe maist plesandlie polite.
Set on the tressis of her giltin hair.
And in her hand a scepter of delight.
This is Dame Sapyence, and with her come Diana, Jephtha’s daughter, Palamon, Arcite and Emily, Troilus and Cressida, David and Bathsheba, Delilah, Cleopatra, Jacob and Rachel, Venus (whose “hair as gold or topasis was hewit”) and a number more famous lovers of antiquity. A “ballet of inconstant love” follows. This offends Venus, and the poet is brought before her to answer for his lack of respect. Poetry, the Muses, and the Poets from Homer to Chaucer and Dunbar, form a Court. Calliope pleads for him, and he is allowed to atone for his misdeed by composing “A ballet for Venus’ pleasour,” which so delights the company that he is invited to join the cavalcade. After travelling through Germany, France, Italy, and other countries, they reach the Fountain of the Muses. Here they alight:—
Our horses pastured in ain pleasand plane,
Low at the foot of ain fair grene montane,
Amid ain mead shaddowit with cedar trees,
where
... beriall stremis rinnand ouir stanerie greis[220]
Made sober noise, the shaw dinned agane
For birdis song and sounding of the beis.[221]
In the midst of the field Douglas finds a gorgeous pavilion in which knights and ladies are feasting, while a poet relates the brave deeds of those who in the past proved “maist worthie of thair handis.” After listening to these heroic tales the company once more sets out. Beyond Damascus they reach their journey’s end. The poet is guided by a nymph to the foot of a steep mountain, at the summit of which stands the Palace of Honour. As he climbs he sees before him a dreadful abyss out of which proceed flames. His ears are filled with the sound of terrible cries; on either side lie dead bodies. These beings in torment are they who set out to pursue Honour, but “fell on sleuthfull sleip,” and so were “drownit in the loch of cair.” (It has been suggested by critics bent on finding an original for the Pilgrim’s Progress, that Bunyan found in this the idea of his “byway to Hell.”) At last he reaches the Palace, where he is shown many treasures, including Venus’ mirror, which reflects “the deidis and fatis of euerie eirdlie wicht.” Prince Honour is attended by all the virtues, and the poem ends by contrasting worldly and heavenly honour and commending virtue.
The gracious figure of Sapience, her dress gleaming with jewels, her head crowned with a diadem, is very different from any being of Lydgate’s or Occleve’s creation; already the first rays of Renaissance light are showing above the horizon, and the cold gray mists of fifteenth-century poetry are dispersing before its warmth and brilliance; but the radiance that heralds the new era is that of sunrise, flushing the world with a wonder of colour, rather than of that light of common day in which Chaucer is content to walk. In the great age to come, the Elizabethans are to show how the rapture and intoxication of beauty may be combined with the sternest realism, but in the early sixteenth century the children of the new birth walk with uncertain steps towards the dawn.
The poet who most clearly shows the growing love of beauty, and at the same time is most truly in sympathy with Chaucer, is William Dunbar. No other poet of the period has such skill in versification, such freshness and vigour, or such variety. His humour is as all-pervading as Chaucer’s. Now he addresses a daring poem to King James, slyly laughing at one of his numerous love affairs; now he writes the story of the Two Friars of Berwick, or the Treatise of the Two Married Women and the Widow, broadly comic fabliaux which might well have found a place among the Canterbury Tales. One of the wittiest of his poems is the Visitation of St. Francis, in which the poet describes how his patron saint appeared to him in a dream, bidding him wear the habit of a friar. Dunbar answers slyly that he has noticed more bishops than friars are among the saints, so perhaps it will be as well if St. Francis, to make all sure, provides him with a bishop’s robes instead, and then he is sure to go to heaven. Whereupon his visitant reveals himself in his true character and vanishes in a cloud of brimstone. Two little lyrics on James Dog, Keeper of the Queen’s wardrobe, are very characteristic. In the first, “whan that he had offendit him,” each verse ends with the refrain:—
Madame, ye have a dangerous Dog;
in the second, when the quarrel had been made up, the refrain runs:—
He is na Dog: he is a Lamb.
As Mr. Gregory Smith points out, “Dunbar is unlike Henryson in lacking the gentler and more intimate fun of their master. He is a satirist in the stronger sense; more boisterous in his fun, and showing, in his wildest frolics, an imaginative range which has no counterpart in the southern poet”; but his sincerity and virility, his boyish sense of fun, remind us of Chaucer again and again. The Reve would thoroughly have enjoyed telling the story of the flying friar of Tungland who courted disaster by using hen’s feathers. Chaucerian, too, in the truest sense, is Dunbar’s power of combining this keen sense of the ridiculous with a no less keen appreciation of beauty. The charm of his verse is incontestible, and his skill in making effective use of burdens and refrains shows an ear sensitive to music. The Thistle and the Rose, written in honour of the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor, borrows its idea from the Parlement of Foules, and has something of Chaucer’s tenderness and charm. Dame Nature commands all birds, beasts, and flowers to appear before her, and after some debate proceeds to crown the thistle with rubies, while the birds unite in singing the praises of the “freshe Rose of colour red and white.”
The Golden Targe, an allegorical poem of the conventional type, in which the shield of Reason proves no defence against the arrows of Beauty, contains a description of spring which Chaucer himself never equalled:—
Full angel-like the birdes sang their houres
Within their curtains green, into their boweres
Apparelled white and red with blossoms sweet;
Enamelled was the field with all coloures
The pearly dropes shook in silver showeres
While all in balm did branch and leaves flete[222]
To part from Phœbus did Aurora weep;
Her crystal tears I saw hang on the floweres
Which he for love all drank up with his heat.
·······
For mirth of May with skippes and with hoppes
The birdes sang upon the tender croppes[223]
With curious notes as Venus chapell clerkes;
The rose yong, new spreding of her knoppes[224]
War powdered bright with hevenly beriall[225] droppes
Through beames red, burning as ruby sparkes
The skyes rang for shouting of the larkes.
And in addition to all these, Dunbar writes serious religious poetry on such subjects as Love, Earthly and Divine, draws a by no means unimpressive picture of the Dance of the Seven
Deadly Sins, and in his Lament for the Makaris (poets), with its haunting refrain:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me
shows a sense of the transitoriness of all earthly pleasure.
Enough has already been said to show that the influences that moulded sixteenth-century literature in England were not such as to lead its poets to model themselves on Chaucer. In the Golden Targe, Dunbar gives expression to the popular view of Chaucer in his day:—
O reverend Chaucer, rose of rethoris[226] all,
As in our tongue a flower imperial,
That rose in Britain ever, who readeth right,
Thou bear’st, of makers[227] the triumph royal;
Thy fresh enamelled termes celestial
This matter could illumined have full bright,
Wert thou not of our English all the light,
Surmounting every tongue terrestrial
As far as Mayes morrow doth midnight?
And here again, as in Occleve, we see that it is for his language rather than for his invention that the poet is praised. But the sixteenth century saw the change from Middle English to Modern, a change which, for the time being, lost men the key to Chaucer’s verse. Old inflections had gradually dropped off, the accented “e” which ends so many of Chaucer’s words had become mute, and the result was that the poets of the new age found Chaucer’s lines impossible to scan. A generation whose taste was formed on Classical and Italian models, whose precisians urged the necessity of discarding “bald and beggarly rhymning” in favour of the classical system of accent, had not patience enough to rediscover the laws that governed Chaucer’s verse. It says much for the insight and genuine poetic taste of Elizabethan critics that they one and all speak of Chaucer with admiration and respect. Fresh editions of his works continued to appear at frequent intervals throughout the century, and frequent references to his name show that they were well known to the poets of the period. To Spenser he is “The God of shepheards”:—
Who taught me homely, as I can, to make.
He, whilst he lived, was the soueraigne head
Of shepheards all, that been with loue ytake;
and he goes on to protest that
... all hys passing skil with him is fledde,
The fame whereof doth dayly greater growe.
Chaucer and His Times Page 15