GEOFFREY CHAUCER AND HIS EFFECT ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Geoffrey Chaucer has been called the Father of the English language. He did for the English narrative what Shakespeare later did for drama. He was the first writer to use lines of poetry that had an appeal to those interested in nature and books. His writing was very modern for his time, even more modern than the writings of others after he died, but he stayed within the traditions of medieval poetry. Chaucer was born in London, no one knows exactly what date but sometime between 1340 and 1344. Chaucers father, John Chaucer, was a wine merchant although his last name from the French word chaussier indicates that his ancestors were shoemakers. He would sometimes hold positions in the royal administration and he was a significant member in the business community. Chaucer and his parents were lucky to escape the plague during the times of the Black Death, the epidemic that was spread to European lands from the Middle East. In June of 1348 it entered the coastal towns of England and within a few months two million out of five million inhabitants were dead. At this time, Chaucer was four to eight years old and very fortunate to not have been infected. 1300 Dante's Divine Comedy.

1300 Birth of Guillaume de Machaut, French musician and poet.

1304 Birth of Francis Petrarch http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/petrarch/.

1313 Birth of Giovanni Boccaccio http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/boccaccio/.

1321 Death of Dante Alighieri http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/dante/ (b.1265).

1330 Birth of John Gower <//icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/gower> (dies 1408).

1335 Boccaccio's Filostrato (source of Troilus).

1336-38 Boccaccio's Filocolo http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/boccaccio/filoc.html (possible source of The Franklin's Tale).

1337 Hundred Years War begins (ends 1453).

1339 Boccaccio begins Il Teseida delle Nozze d'Emilia (source of The Knight's Tale).

1340-45 Birth of Chaucer.

1346 Birth of Eustache Deschamps, French poet (dies c. 1406).

1346 English victory at Crecy; see Jean Froissart, on the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/froissart1.html.

1348-50 The Black Death; see the chilling description of the Plague in Boccaccio's Decameron http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/boccaccio/boc-1-1.html, the introduction to the First Day.

1349-51 Boccaccio's Decameron http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/boccaccio/.

1356 English victory at Poitiers; see Jean Froissart, on the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/froissart1.html.

1357 Chaucer a page in the household of the Countess of Ulster.

1359-60 Chaucer serves in the war in France <ch-camp.html>.

1360 Chaucer, captured by the French, is ransomed (for 16 pounds) <life-ran.html>.

1360 Peace with France, Treaty of Bretigny (lull in Hundred Years War; resumes in 1369).

1361-62 Severe recurrence of the Plague.

1360's Langland's Piers Plowman http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/langland/ (The "A text").

1361-67 Jean Froissart, French poet and chronicler (c. 1337-1404) serves in the household of Queen Phillippa.

1366 Chaucer marries Philippa Roet, a lady-in-waiting in the Queen's household.

1366 Chaucer travels to Spain.

1366 Death of John Chaucer, Chaucer's father.

1367 Birth of Chaucer's son, Thomas.

1367 Chaucer serves as a "valettus" <ch-valet.html> and later as a squire <ch-squ.html> in the court of Edward III; granted a payment of 20 marks per annum for life.

1368 Chaucer travels to the continent (France probably) on "the King's service."

1368 Birth of Thomas Hoccleve (dies 1450), who wrote poems as a "disciple" of Chaucer.

1368-72 Chaucer writes "Fragment A" of the Romaunt of the Rose, The Book of the Duchess, probably a good many lyrics in French and English, now lost, and such lyrics as The Complaint unto Pity and The Complaint to His Lady.

1369 Chaucer serves with John of Gaunt's army in France.

1370 Birth of John Lydgate http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/lydgate/, admirer and imitator of Chaucer (dies 1450).

1370 Chaucer again serves with the army in France.

1372 Chaucer's wife Philippa in the household of John of Gaunt's wife.

1372 Chaucer travels to Italy (Genoa and Florence) on a diplomatic mission.

1374 Death of Petrarch.

1374 Chaucer granted a gallon pitcher of wine daily for life.

1374 Chaucer is appointed controller of the customs; granted a lease on a dwelling over Aldgate <ch-algat.html>.

1375 Death of Boccaccio.

1375 Chaucer and Otho de Graunson (French knight and poet on whose poems Chaucer drew for his "Complaint of Venus") both receive grants from John of Gaunt.

1376-77 Several trips to France, negotiating for peace and the marriage of Richard.

1377 Edward III dies; Richard II becomes king.

1377 Pope Gregory XI condemns doctrines of John Wycliffe http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/varia/lollards/lollards.html (1335/38-1384); Lollard movement grows.

1378 The "Great Schism" -- rival Popes in Rome (Urban) and Avignon (Clement); See Deliberations of the University of Paris http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/grtschism2.html. The schism ends 1409.

1378 Chaucer travels to Italy (Milan) on diplomatic mission.

1378 John Gower and Richard Forester have Chaucer's power of attorney while he travels abroad.

Late 1370's Chaucer writes Saint Cecelia (possibly later); The House of Fame, Anelida and Arcite.

1380 Cecily Chaumpaigne <chris.htm> signs a document, releasing Chaucer from all actions in the case of my rape ("de raptu meo").

1380 Birth of Chaucer's second son, Lewis.

1380 Chaucer writes The Parliament of Fowls.

1381 The Peasants' Revolt; see the accounts in Gray's Scalacronica <wattyler.html> and the Anonimalle Chronicle http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/anon1381.html.

1381 Death of Chaucer's mother, Agnes Chaucer.

1382-86 Chaucer writes Boece, Troilus and Criseyede.

1382 Chaucer's controllorship of the customs is renewed, with permission to have a deputy.

1382 The Bible is translated into English (The "Wyclifite Bible"; a later versions is made in 1388).

1385 Chaucer is granted a permanent deputy in the customs.

1385 Eustache Deschamps sends Chaucer a poem of praise, hailing him as "great translator, noble Geoffrey Chaucer." See Chaucer's Reputation <ch-reput.html>.

1385-87 Chaucer writes "Palamoun and Arcite" (later used as The Knight's Tale); " The Legend of Good Women (though some parts are probably earlier and the prologue was later revised). 1385-89 Chaucer serves as justice of peace for Kent. 1386 Chaucer gives up the house in Aldgate; resigns from customs. 1386 Chaucer serves as member of Parliament for Kent (where he now probably lives). 1386/87 (Perhaps earlier) Chaucer is praised as a poet of Love and Philosophy by Thomas Usk, a younger contemporary (1350-88), author of The Testament of Love. 1387-90 John Gower's Confessio amantis http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/gower/ (first "published" 1390; later revised). 1387-92 Chaucer begins The Canterbury Tales. 1388 Some of Richard's closest supporters removed by the Lords Appellant; some (including Thomas Usk, an admirer and imitator of Chaucer) are executed. 1389 Chaucer is appointed clerk of the works at Westminster, Tower of London, and other royal estates. 1390 As clerk of the works, Chaucer has scaffolds built for jousts in Smithfield <ch-smith.html>. 1390 Chaucer is robbed of horse, goods, 20 pounds, 6 shillings, 8 pence at Hacham, Surrey (perhaps robbed again a bit later). 1391-92 Chaucer writes Treatise of the Astrolabe (with additions 1393 and later). 1392-95 Chaucer writes most of The Canterbury Tales, including probably "The Marriage Group." 1394 King Richard II grants Chaucer an annuity of 20 pounds a year, c. 1396 Chaucer writes "The Envoy to Bukton," in which the addressee is urged to read "The Wife of Bath." 1396-1400 Chaucer writes the latest of the Tales, including probably The Nun's Priest's Tale, The Canon's Yeoman's Tale (though part is probably earlier), the Parson's Tale, and several short poems, including the envoys to Scogan and Bukton and the "Complaint to His Purse." 1398 Chaucer is granted a tun of wine a year. 1399 Richard II is deposed <ch-rich.html>; Henry IV becomes king. 1399 Chaucer leases a tenement, for 53 years, in the garden of the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey. 1399 King Henry IV confirms, and adds to, Chaucer's royal annuities. 1400 "The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse." 1400 Chaucer's death (on 25 October, according to tradition).

Life and Career The known facts of Chaucers life are fragmentary and are based almost entirely on official records. He was born in London between 1340 and 1344, the son of John Chaucer, a vintner. In 1357 he was a page in the household of Prince Lionel, later duke of Clarence, whom he served for many years. In 135960 he was with the army of Edward III in France, where he was captured by the French but ransomed. 2 By 1366 he had married Philippa Roet, who was probably the sister of John of Gaunts third wife; she was a lady-in-waiting to Edward IIIs queen. During the years 1370 to 1378, Chaucer was frequently employed on diplomatic missions to the Continent, visiting Italy in 137273 and in 1378. From 1374 on he held a number of official positions, among them comptroller of customs on furs, skins, and hides for the port of London (137486) and clerk of the kings works (138991). The official date of Chaucers death is Oct. 25, 1400. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. 3 Early Works Chaucers literary activity is often divided into three periods. The first period includes his early work (to 1370), which is based largely on French models, especially the Roman de la Rose </65/ro/Romandel.html> and the poems of Guillaume de Machaut </65/ma/Machaut.html>. Chaucers chief works during this time are the Book of the Duchess, an allegorical lament written in 1369 on the death of Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, and a partial translation of the Roman de la Rose. 4 Italian Period Chaucers second period (up to c.1387) is called his Italian period because during this time his works were modeled primarily on Dante </65/da/DanteAli.html> and Boccaccio </65/bo/Boccaccio.html>. Major works of the second period include The House of Fame, recounting the adventures of Aeneas after the fall of Troy; The Parliament of Fowls, which tells of the mating of fowls on St. Valentines Day and is thought to celebrate the betrothal of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia; and a prose translation of Boethius De consolatione philosophiae. 5 Also among the works of this period are the unfinished Legend of Good Women, a poem telling of nine classical heroines, which introduced the heroic couplet (two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter) into English verse; the prose fragment The Treatise on the Astrolabe, written for his son Lewis; and Troilus and Criseyde, based on Boccaccios Filostrato, one of the great love poems in the English language (see Troilus and Cressida </65/tr/TroilusN.html>). In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer perfected the seven-line stanza later called rhyme royal. 6 The Canterbury Tales To Chaucers final period, in which he achieved his fullest artistic power, belongs his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales (written mostly after 1387). This unfinished poem, about 17,000 lines, is one of the most brilliant works in all literature. The poem introduces a group of pilgrims journeying from London to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. To help pass the time they decide to tell stories. Together, the pilgrims represent a wide cross section of 14th-century English life. 7 The pilgrims tales include a variety of medieval genres from the humorous fabliau to the serious homily, and they vividly indicate medieval attitudes and customs in such areas as love, marriage, and religion. Through Chaucers superb powers of characterization the pilgrimssuch as the earthy wife of Bath, the gentle knight, the worldly prioress, the evil summonercome intensely alive. Chaucer was a master storyteller and craftsman, but because of a change in the language after 1400, his metrical technique was not fully appreciated until the 18th cent. Only in Scotland in the 15th and 16th cent. did his imitators understand his versification.

Geoffrey Chaucer English poet, born in London between 1340 and 1345; died there, 25 October, 1400. John Chaucer, a vintner and citizen of London, married Agnes, heiress of one Hamo de Copton, the city moneyer, and owned the house in Upper Thames Street, Dowgate Hill (a site covered now by the arrival platform of Cannon Street Station), where his son Geoffrey was born. That his birth was not in 1328, hitherto the accepted date, is fully proved (Furnivall in The Academy, 8 Dec., 1888, 12 Dec., 1887). John Chaucer was connected with the Court, and once saw Flanders in the royal train. Geoffrey was educated well, but whether he was entered at either university remains unknown. He figures by name from the year 1357, presumably in the capacity of a page, in the household books of the Lady Elizabeth de Burgh, wife of Prince Lionel, third son of King Edward III (Bond in Fornightly Review, VI, 28 Aug., 1873). The lad followed this prince to France, serving through the final and futile Edwardian invasion, which ended in the Peace of Bretigny (1360), and was taken prisoner at "Retters", identified by unwary biographers as Retiers near Rennes, but by Skeat as Rethel near Reims, a place mentioned by Froissart in his account of this very campaign. Thence Chaucer was ransomed by the king, who, when the Lady Elizabeth died, took over her page and later (1367) pensioned him for life. Chaucer was married before 1374; probably the Philippa Chaucer named in the queen's grant of 1366 was then Geoffrey Chaucer's wife (Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, I, 95-7). It seems clear that he could not have been happy in his marriage (Hales in Dict. Nat. Biog., X, 157). He had two sons and a daughter, if not other children. Gascoigne tells us that his contemporary, Thomas Chaucer was the poet's son. This statement, long discredited, is now fully endorsed by the best authorities (Hales in Athenaeum, 31 March, 1888; Skeat, ibid., 27 Jan.1900). Thomas Chaucer's mother was Philippa Roet, daughter of Sir Paon or Payne de Roet Guienne king at arms. Roet had another daughter, Catherine, widow of Sir Hugh Swynford, who was for Gaunt's mistress and eventually his third wife. Thus Chaucer became the brother-in-law of the great duke, who from 1368 onwards had been his most powerful patron. Thomas Chaucer (b. about 1367; d. 1434), later of Woodstock and Ewelme, became chief butler to four sovereign, as well as Speaker of the House of Commons (in 1414). His sister Elizabeth (b.1365) at sixteen entered Barking Abbey as a novice, John of Gaunt providing fifty pounds as her religious dowry. Lewis Chaucer, the "litel sonne Lowys", for whom the "Astrolale" was written, is supposed to have died in childhood. From about his twenty-sixth year Chaucer was frequently employed on important diplomatic missions; the year 1372-3 marks the turning point of his literary life, for then he was sent to Italy; circumstances make it extremely probable that either in Florence or at Padua he made Petrarch's http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11778a.htm acquaintance (Lounsbury, Studies, I, 67-68). The young King Richard II granted Chaucer a second life pension. It is startling to find him, in 1380, concerned in a discreditable abduction http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01032b.htm (Athenaeum, 29 Nov., 1873; from the Close Roll of 3 of Richard II). He was made comptroller of the petty customs of the port of London and complains of the burden of official life in "The House of Fame" (lines 652-60); and it would appear from the prologue the "Legend of Good Women", and through the influence of the new queen, Anne of Bohemia, he was enabled by1385 to sucure a permanent deputy. At this time he gave up housekeeping in Aldgate, and settled in the country, presumably at Greenwich, where he had a garden and arbour. The intrigues of the partisans of the king's uncle, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, involved Chaucer's fortunes in partial ruin. The grants made to Philippa, his wife ceased in 1387, so that we may suppose she was then dead; during the springs of 1388 Chaucer was obliged to sell two of his pensions; in 1390 he was twice in one day robbed of the king's money, but was excused from repaying it. Until King Richard recovered power Chaucer had lean years to undergo. For a while he was Clerk of the Works at Windsor, Westminster and the Tower, but proved thriftless and unsuccessful in business affairs, and gave little satisfaction. Unrivalled opportunities and the fostering care of successive sovereigns could not keep hirn frorn anxiety, if not penury, towards the end. It is noticeable that his latest and most troubled period produced the "Canterbury Tales". Within four days after his accession King Henry IV, the son of Chaucer's first benefactor, increased Chaucer's remaining income by forty marks per annum. The poet then leased a pleasant house in the monastery garden at Westminster, and there, hard by the Lady Chapel of the Abbey (now replaced by the loftier erection of Henry VII ), he died. For a century and a half his only memorial in Westminster Abbey was a Latin epitaph written by Surigonius of Milan, engraved upon a leaden plate, and hung up, probably at Caxton's instigation, on a pillar near the grave. The present canopied grey marble altar-tomb, on the south side, was set up by Nicholas Brigham, in 1556, all trace of its votive portrait of the venerated master disappeared long ago. The "Canterbury Tales" were first printed by Caxton, from a faulty manuscript, in or about 1476-7; later by Pynson, and by Wynkyn de Worde. Other pieces were collected, and, between 1526-1602, often published with the "Tales". Many of these, attributed to Chaucer even by his earliest great modern editor, Tyrwhitt, are now known not to be his. (Skeat, "Chaucer's Minor Poems", Oxford, 1896; or, Idem "Chaucerian Pieces" in the "Complete Works", Oxford, 1897, suppl. vol.) Chaucer's genuine major poems are assigned to this chronological order: The "Romaunt of the Rose", that is, the first 1705 lines the remainder being rejected as not Chaucer's (see Chaucer Society Publications, 2nd Series, No 19, 1884), dates from about 1366, and "The A.B.C.", from the same period; the "Book of the Duchess" from 1369, the "Complaint of Pity" from 1372; "Anelida and False Arcite" from 1372-4; "Troilus and Cressid" from 1379-83, the "Parliament of Fowls" from 1382; the "House of Fame" from 1383-4; the "Legend of Good Women" from about 1385-6; and the "Canterbury Tales" as a whole, from 1386 onwards until after 1390. It is curious that the first draft of the lovely Tales by the Second Nun, the Man of Law, the Clerk, the Knight, and part of the Monk, should have been produced early; and that the Tales by the Miller, the Reeve, the Shipman, and the Merchant, as well as the Wife of Bath's Prologue, should have been produced after 1387. Chaucer's objectionable work is, therefore, not the work of his youth. To the intense affection, frequently expressed, of Hoccleve, we owe the first and best of Chaucer's portraits, familiar through reproduction. It appears in the margin of "The Governail of Princes", or "De Regimine Principum" (Harl. MS. 4866, in British Museum). In it we see Chaucer, limned from memory, in his familiar hood and gown, rosary http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13184b.htm in hand, plump, full-eyed, fork-bearded. (For detailed accounts see Spielman, "The Portraits of Geoffrey Chaucer", London, l900, first issued in the "Chaucer Memorial Lectures", 111-41.) Like Dryden, he was silent, and had a "down look"; this physical characteristic was partly due to a most genuine modesty, partly to the habit of constant reading. Chaucer indeed read and annexed everything, and transmuted everything into that vocabulary of his, all plasticity and all power. He is a cosmopolite, chiefly influenced by Ovid, by his own contemporary Italy, a debtor, if ever man was, to the whole spirit of his age; he has its fire, its impudence, its broad licentiousness; he has rather more than his share of its true-hearted pathos, its exquisite freshness and brightness, its sense of eternity. The so-called "Counsel of Chaucer" sums up, at a holy and serene moment, his philosophic outlook. He had unequalled powers of observation, and gave a highly ironic but most humane report. He is an artist through and through, and that artist had been a soldier and a diplomat, hence his genius, even in its extremes of mirth has balance and health, remoteness and neutrality -- it is never bitter, and never in the least "viewy". Matthew Arnold (Introduction to Ward's "English Poets" 1885, I, pp. xxxiv--v) accuses him of a lack of what Aristotle http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01713a.htm calls "high and excellent seriousness". But "high seriousness" is not quite the note of the fourteenth century. Chaucer's is the master-note (submerged all over Europe since the Reformation) of joy. This brings us to the question of his personal religion. Foxe (Acts and Monuments of the Church, 1583, II, 839) started the absurd theory that Chaucer was a follower of Wyclif. The poet's own abstract habit; his association with the prince who (probably actuated by no very high motives) withdrew his favour from the contemporary reformer when solicitude for a purer practice ran into heresy and threatened revolt; his close friendship with Strode, a Dominican of Oxford and a strong anti-Lollard--these things tend of themselves to denote Chaucer's views in the matter. The opposite inference is "due to a misconception of his language, based on a misconception of his character" (Lounsbury Studies, II, 469). Like Wyclif, Chaucer loved the priestly ideal; and he draws it incomparably in his "Poor Parson of Town". Yet, as has been said, that very "Parson's Tale", in its extant form, goes far to prove that its author, even by sympathy, was no Wyclifite (A.W. Ward, "Chaucer", London, 1879, p. 134, in "English Men of Letters Series"). Passionless justice was the bed-rock of Chaucer's mind. He paints that parti-coloured Plantagenet world as it was, not interfering to make it better, nor to wish it better. Where the churchman type was gross, he represents it grossly. It is well, however, to recall that the famous episode of his "beating a Friar in Fleet street" is the invention of Speght, further embroidered by Chatterton; and that the prose tractate, "Jack Upland", full of invective against the religious orders, is proved not to be Chaucer's. His attitude towards women is just as two-sided. He shows in many a theme a reverence toward them which must have been fed by that "hy devocioun" to Our Lady http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15464b.htm which is beautifully apparent in his pages, and which Hoccleve mentions in recalling his memory; but dramatic exigencies, Boccaccio's http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02607a.htm example, presumable hard domestic experience, a laughingly merciless psychology, and a paralyzing outspokenness, contrive too often, as readers regret, to fight it down. He has been held up as a rationalist, on the strength of a few passages, and against the enormous mass of testimony which he furnishes on the soundness of his Catholic ethos. Of that, after all, as of its absence, Catholics are the best judges. The "Nuns' Priest's Tale" (Skeat's ed., lines 4424-40) raises the question of predestination http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12378a.htm, only to drop it. The context shows that the poet thinks his sudden side-issue not trivial or tedious, but quite the contrary, he quits it only because he cannot "boult it to the bren", i.e., sift it down, analyze it satisfactorily. Again, the "Knight's Tale" (Skeat's ed., lines 2890--14) implies that the author has no mind to dogmatize upon the final destiny of poor Arcite, newly slain. Both these instances have been cited in the masterly chapter on "Chaucer as a Literary Artist" (Lounsbury, Studies, II, 512-15, 520), to prove, in the one ease, an easy dismissal of a mere scholastic dilemma; in the other, Chaucer's disbelief, or half-belief, in immortality. They prove, rather, a restraint in dogmatizing about the destiny of the individual, a restraint practiced by the church itself. "The Legend of Good Women" opens with some fifteen lines, the purport of which need never have been questioned. They mean nothing if they do not mean that knowledge by evidence is one thing, assurance by faith another thing; and that lack of sensible proof can never discredit revelation. A somewhat playful confession of belief has here been turned into a serious profession of agnosticism, through sheer lack of spiritual understanding. His "hostility to the Church", as Professor Lounsbury calls it, is certainly not borne out by Chaucer's going out of his way, as he does, to defend her from age-long calumnies; for instance, in the "Franklin's Tale", and in the section "De Ira" of the "Parson's Tale", he witnesses to her horror of superstitions and false sciences. Chaucer, in short, though none too supernatural a person, had a most orthodox grip on his catechism. The "Preces", or prose "retracciouns", which are usually painted at either end of the "Canterbury Tales" date from the evening of Chaucer's life. To Tyrwhitt, Hales, Ward, and Lounsbury, who suspect undue priestly influence, the "Preces" are, in their own words, "morbid", "reaction and weakness", "a betrayal of his poetic genius", "unbearable to have to accept as genuine". In the course of them, Chaucer disclaims of his books "thilke that sounen in-to sinne" i.e., those which are consonant with, or sympathetic with sin. Skeat is the only editor who understands Chaucer in his contrition (Notes to the "Canterbury Tales", in the Oxford Press complete edition, 475). Gascoigne (Theological Dictionary, Pt. II, 377, the manuscript of which is in the library of Lincoln College, Oxford) unwittingly parodies the situation, and represents the old sinner "Chawserus" as dying while lamenting over pages, quae male scripsi de malo et turpissimo amore. To the secular point of view it has all seemed, and may well seem, mistaken and deplorable. But nothing is manlier, or more touching and endearing, than this humble self-subordination to conscience and the moral law. "Except ye become as little children" is the hardest saying ever given to the intellectual world. These are great geniuses, Geoffrey Chaucer not least among them, to whom it was not given in vain. The standard recent editions of Chaucer are: (1) "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Annotated and Accented, with Illustrations of English Life in Chaucer's Time. New and revised edition, with illustrations from the Ellesmere MS." (Saunder's ed., London, 1894); (2) "The Student's Chaucer; being a Complete Edition of his Works" (Skeat ed., Oxford, 1895); (3) "The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, edited from numerous Manuscripts" (Skeat ed. 7 vols., Oxford, 1894-7); (4) "The Canterbury Tales done into Modern English, by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat" (The King's Classics Series, Gollancz ed., 1904).