My dere maister--God his soule quyte--
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llas! my worthy maister honorable,This landes verray tresor and richesse!Deeth, by thy deeth, hath harm irreparableUnto us doon; hir vengeable duresseDespoiled hath this land of the swetnesseOf rethoryk; for unto[181] TulliusWas never man so lyk amonges us. Also who was heyr[182] in philosophyeTo Aristotle, in our tonge, but thou?The steppes of Virgyle in poesyeThou folwedest eek, men wot wel y-now.That combre-world, that thee (my maister) slow--Wolde I slayn werë--Deeth, was to hastyfTo renne on thee, and reve thee thy lyf.... She mighte han taried hir vengeance a whyleTil that som man had egal to thee be;Nay, lat be that! she knew wel that this yleMay never man forth bringe lyk to thee,And hir offyce nedes do mot she:God bad hir so, I truste as for the beste;O maister, maister, God thy soule reste! (3) From the same, p. 179, stanzas 712-4:-- The firste finder of our fair langageHath seyd in caas semblable, and othere mo,So hyly wel, that it is my dotageFor to expresse or touche any of tho.Allas! my fader fro the worlde is go,My worthy maister Chaucer, him I mene:Be thou advóket for him, hevenes quene? As thou wel knowest, O blessèd virgyne,With loving herte and hy devociounIn thyn honour he wroot ful many a lyne.O, now thy help and thy promocioun!To God, thy Sonë, mak a mociounHow he thy servaunt was, mayden Marië,And lat his lovë floure and fructifyë. Al-thogh his lyf be queynt, the résemblaunceOf him hath in me so fresh lyflinesseThat, to putte othere men in rémembraunceOf his persone, I have heer his lyknesseDo makë, to this ende, in sothfastnesse,That they, that have of him lest thought and minde,By this peynturë may ageyn him finde.' Here is given, in the margin of the MS., the famous portrait of Chaucerwhich is believed to be the best, and probably the only one that can beaccepted as authentic. A copy of it is prefixed to the present volume, andto Furnivall's Trial-Forewords, Chaucer Soc., 1871; and an enlarged copyaccompanies the Life-Records of Chaucer, part 2. It is thus described bySir H. Nicolas:--'The figure, which is half-length, has a back-ground ofgreen tapestry. He is represented with grey hair and beard, which isbiforked; he wears a dark-coloured dress and hood; his right hand isextended, and in his left he holds a string of beads. From his vest a blackcase is suspended, which appears to contain a knife, or possibly a'penner,' or pen-case[183]. The expression of the countenance isintelligent; but the fire of the eye seems quenched, and evident marks ofadvanced age appear on the countenance.' Hoccleve did not paint thisportrait himself, as is often erroneously said; he 'leet do make it,' i. e.had it made. It thus became the business of the scribe, and the portraitsin different copies of Hoccleve's works vary accordingly. There is afull-length portrait in MS. Reg. 17 D. vi, marked as 'Chaucers ymage'; andanother in a MS. copy once in the possession of Mr. Tyson, which wasengraved in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1792, vol. lxii. p. 614; perhapsthe latter is the copy which is now MS. Phillipps 1099. A representation ofChaucer on horseback, as one of the pilgrims, occurs in the Ellesmere MS.;an engraving of it appears as a frontispiece to Todd's Illustrations ofChaucer. A small full-length picture of Chaucer occurs in the initialletter of the Canterbury Tales, in MS. Lansdowne 851. Other portraits, suchas that in MS. Addit. (or Sloane) 5141, the painting upon wood in theBodleian Library, and the like, are of much later date, and cannot pretendto any authenticity. Lydgate has frequent references to his 'maister Chaucer.' The mostimportant is that in the Prologue to his Fall of Princes, which beginsthus:-- 'My maister Chaucer, with his fresh comédies,Is deed, allas! cheef poete of Bretayne,That somtym made ful pitous tragédies;The "fall of princes" he dide also compleyne,As he that was of making soverayne,Whom al this land of right[e] ought preferre,Sith of our langage he was the loodsterre.' The 'fall of princes' refers to the Monkes Tale, as explained in vol. iii.p. 431. He next refers to 'Troilus' as being a translation of a book 'whichcalled is Trophe' (see vol. ii. p. liv.); and to the Translation ofBoethius and the Treatise of the Astrolabe. He then mentions many of theMinor Poems (in the stanzas quoted below, p. 23), the Legend of Good Women(see vol. iii. p. xx.), and the Canterbury Tales; and concludes thus:-- 'This sayd poete, my maister, in his dayesMade and composed ful many a fresh ditee,Complaintes, balades, roundels, virelayes,Ful delectable to heren and to see;For which men shulde, of right and equitee,Sith he of English in making was the beste,Praye unto God to yeve his soule reste.' So also, in his Siege of Troye, fol. K 2:-- 'Noble Galfryde, chefe Poete of Brytayne,Among our English that caused first to rayneThe golden droppes of Rethorike so fyne,Our rudë language onely t'enlumine,' &c. And again, in the same, fol. R 2, back:-- 'For he our English gilt[e] with his layes,Rude and boystous first, by oldë dayes,That was ful fer from al perfecciounAnd but of lytel reputacioun,Til that he cam, and with his poetryeGan our tungë first to magnifye,And adourne it with his eloquence'; &c. And yet again, at fol. Ee 2:-- 'And, if I shal shortly him discryve,Was never noon [un]to this day alyve,To reken all[e], bothe of yonge and olde,That worthy was his inkhorn for to holde.' Similar passages occur in some of his other works, and shew that heregarded Chaucer with affectionate reverence. Allusions in later authors have only a literary value, and need not becited in a Life of Chaucer. * * * * * I subjoin (on p. lxii.) a List of Chaucer's genuine works, arranged, asnearly as I can conjecture, in their chronological order. Of his poeticalexcellence it is superfluous to speak; Lowell's essay on 'Chaucer' in MyStudy Windows gives a just estimate of his powers.
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