But yet, for strength of matrimoine, That he ne mote algates plie2 And when they were a-bedde naked, 66 For "now," she saith, we be both one ;" But he lay still as any stone; And ever in one she spake and pray'd, And bade him think on that he said When that he took her by the hond. He heard, and understood the bond, How he was set to his penànce: And saw a lady lie him by 1 Excuse. Fr. 2 Yield. Fr. 3 Silk. Of eighteteene winter age', That ever in all the world he sigh'; For he shall not have bothe two. And he began to sorrow tho, In many a wise, and cast his thought, 1 The Saxons always computed time by winters and nights. Which is the best unto my choice. "My lord," she saide, "grand-merci'! That never hereafter shall be lassed' 1 Many thanks. 2 Lessened. 3 It befell. 4 Mis-shaped. The deede proveth it is so. Tho was pleasànce and joy enough; May well fortune a man to love, (Fol. 15, ed. 1532.) 1 Laughed. VOL. I. M 162 CHAPTER VIII. Reign of Edward III. continued. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. GEOFFREY CHAUCER has had many biographers; but the authentic documents respecting his life are so few, that his last editor, Mr. Tyrwhitt, to whom this great poet will be principally indebted for the rational admiration of posterity, has contented himself with a bare recital of the following genuine anecdotes, instead of attempting to work them into a connected narrative, in which much must have been supplied by mere conjecture, or by a forced interpretation of the allusions scattered through the works of the poet. The original inscription on his tombstone is said to have proved that he died in 1400, aged 72, so that he was born in 1328; and he has himself told us that his birth-place was London. Of his family we know absolutely nothing. From a passage in his Court of Love, where he calls himself " Philogenet of Cambridge, clerk,” it may be inferred that he was educated in that university; and it is presumed that he was afterwards entered at the Inner Temple, because the records of that inn are said to state that he was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet-street 1. 1 Mr. Ritson (Bibliogr. Poet. p. 19, note) says that this anecdote is "a hum of Thomas Chatterton." See his Miscellanies, p. 137.— But as the story is related in Speght's editions of Chaucer (1598, 1602), on the evidence of a Master Buckley, it remains for Mr. Ritson to prove that what he elegantly calls Chatterton's hum has had a retroactive effect on the understanding of the said Master Buckley, who lived, and probably died, in the 16th century. |