Chaucer's political errors-and he considered his share in the late conspiracy as errors of judgment, though not of intention-had been committed while Richard was a minor, and the acknowledgment of them might seem less humiliating when made to the monarch himself, than to an usurping faction ruling in his name. He was charged too, by his loyalty, to make certain disclosures important to the peace of the kingdom; and his duty as a subject, independent of personal considerations, might well be put in competition with ties to associates already broken by their treachery 1.

While in prison, he began a prose work entitled The Testament of Love, in order to beguile the tedium of a confinement, which made every hour, he says, appear to him an hundred winters; and he seems to have published it to allay the obloquy attendant on his misfortunes, as an explanation of his past conduct. It is an allegory, in imitation of Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy; an universal favourite in the early literature of Europe. Never was an obscure affair conveyed in a more obscure apology; yet amidst the gloom of allegory and lamentation, the vanity of the poet sufficiently breaks out. It is the goddess of Love who visits him in his confinement, and accosts him as her own immor

"For my trothe and my conscience," he says in his Testament of Love," bene witnesse to me bothe, that this knowing sothe have I saide for troathe of my leigiaunce by which I was charged on my kinges behalfe."

tal bard. He descants to her on his own misfortunes, on the politics of London, and on his devotion to the Lady Marguerite, or pearl, whom he found in a muscle shell, and who turns out at last to mean the spiritual comfort of the Church'.

In 1389 the Duke of Lancaster returned from Spain, and he had once more a steady protector. In that year he was appointed clerk of the works at Westminster, and in the following year clerk of those at Windsor, with a salary of £36 per annum. His resignation of those offices, which it does not appear he held for more than twenty months, brings us to the sixty-fourth year of his age, when he retired to the country, most probably to Woodstock, and there composed his immortal Canterbury Tales, amidst the scenes which had inspired his youthful genius.

In 1394 a pension of £20 a year was granted to him, and in the last year of Richard's reign he had a grant of a yearly tun of wine, we may suppose in lieu of the daily pitcher, which had been stopped during his misfortunes.

Tradition assigns to our poet a residence in his old age at Donnington Castle, near Newbury, in Berkshire; to which he must have moved in 1397,

1 Mr. Todd has given, in his Illustrations, some poems supposed to be written by Chaucer during his imprisonment; in which, in the same allegorical manner, under the praises of Spring, he appears to implore the assistance of Vere, Earl of Oxford, the principal favourite of Richard II.

if he ever possessed that mansion: but Mr. Grose, who affirms that he purchased Donnington Castle in that year, has neglected to show the documents of such a purchase. One of the most curious particulars in the latter part of his life is the patent of protection granted to Chaucer in the year 1398, which his former inaccurate biographers had placed in the second year of Richard, till Mr. Tyrwhitt corrected the mistaken date. The deed has been generally supposed to refer to the poet's creditors; as it purports, however, to protect him contra aemulos suos, the expression has led Mr. Godwin to question its having any relation to his debtors and creditors. It is true that rivals or competitors are not the most obvious designation for the creditors of a great poet; but still, as the law delights in fictions, and as the writ for securing a debtor exhibits at this day such figurative personages as John Doe and Richard Roe, the form of protection might in those times have been equally metaphorical; nor, as a legal metonymy, are the terms rival and competitor by any means inexpressive of that interesting relation which subsists between the dun and the fugitive; a relation which in all ages has excited the warmest emulation, and the promptest ingenuity of the human mind. Within a year and a half from the date of this protection, Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, ascended the throne of England by the title of Henry IV.

It is creditable to the memory of that prince, that

however basely he abandoned so many of his father's friends, he did not suffer the poetical ornament of the age to be depressed by the revolution. Chaucer's annuity and pipe of wine were continued under the new reign, and an additional pension of forty marks à year was conferred upon him. But the poet did not long enjoy this accession to his fortune. He died in London, on the twenty-fifth of October, 1400, and was interred in the south cross aisle of Westminster Abbey. The monument to his memory was erected a century and a half after his decease, by a warm admirer of his genius, Nicholas Brigham, a gentleman of Oxford. It stands at the north end of a recess formed by four obtuse foliated arches, and is a plain altar with three quatrefoils and the same number of shields. Chaucer, in his Treatise of the Astrolabe, mentions his son Lewis, for whom it was composed in 1391, and who was at that time ten years of age. Whether Sir Thomas Chaucer, who was Speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of Henry IV. was another and elder son of the poet, as many of his biographers have supposed, is a point which has not been distinctly ascertained.

Mr. Tyrwhitt has successfully vindicated Chaucer from the charge brought against him by Verstegan and Skinner, of having adulterated English by vast importations of French words and phrases. If Chaucer had indeed naturalized a multitude of French words by his authority, he might be regarded as a

bold innovator, yet the language would have still been indebted to him for enriching it. But such revolutions in languages are not wrought by individuals; and the style of Chaucer will bear a fair comparison with that of his contemporaries, Gower, Wickliffe, and Mandeville. That the polite English of that period should have been highly impregnated with French is little to be wondered at, considering that English was a new language at court, where French had of late been exclusively used, and must have still been habitual. English must, indeed, have been known at court when Chaucer began his poetical career, for he would not have addressed his patrons in a language entirely plebeian; but that it had not been long esteemed of sufficient dignity for a courtly muse appears from Gower's continuing to write French verses, till the example of his great contemporary taught him to polish his native tongue1.

The same intelligent writer, Mr. Tyrwhitt, while he

1 Mr. Todd, in his Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer, p. 26. observes, that authors, both historical and poetical, in the century after the decease of these poets, in usually coupling their names, place Gower before Chaucer merely as a tribute to his seniority. But though Gower might be an older man than Chaucer, and possibly earlier known as a writer, yet unless it can be proved that he published English poetry before his Confessio Amantis, of which there appears to be no evidence, Chaucer must still claim precedency as the earlier English poet. The Confessio Amantis was published in the sixteenth year of Richard II.'s reign, at which time Chaucer had written all his poems except the Canterbury Tales.