since in
that year Chaucer leased a house in the garden of a chapel at
Westminster for as many of fifty-three years as he should live. He had
occasion to use this house but ten months, for he died in 1400.

He may be said to have founded the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey,
as he was the first of the many great authors to be buried there.

Chaucer's Earlier Poems.--At the age of forty, Chaucer had probably
written not more than one seventh of a total of about 35,000 lines of
verse which he left at his death. Before he reached his poetic prime,
he showed two periods of influence,--French and Italian.

During his first period, he studied French models. He learned much
from his partial translation of the popular French _Romaunt of the
Rose_. The best poem of his French period is _Dethe of Blanche the
Duchesse_, a tribute to the wife of John of Gaunt, the son of Edward
III.

Chaucer's journey to Italy next turned his attention to Italian
models. A study of these was of especial service in helping him to
acquire that skill which enabled him to produce the masterpieces of
his third or English period. This study came at a specially opportune
time and resulted in communicating to him something of the spirit of
the early Renaissance.

The influence of Boccaccio and, sometimes, of Dante is noticeable in
the principal poems of the Italian period,--the _Troilus and Criseyde,
Hous of Fame_, and _Legende of Good Women_. The _Troilus and Criseyde_
is a tale of love that was not true. The _Hous of Fame_, an unfinished
poem, gives a vision of a vast palace of ice on which the names of the
famous are carved to await the melting rays of the sun. The _Legende
of Good Women_ is a series of stories of those who, like Alcestis, are
willing to give up everything for love. In _A Dream of Fair Women_
Tennyson says:--

"'The Legend of Good Women,' long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;
Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still."

In this series of poems Chaucer learned how to rely less and less on
an Italian crutch. He next took his immortal ride to Canterbury on an
English Pegasus.

General Plan of the Canterbury Tales.--People in general have always
been more interested in stories than in any other form of literature.
Chaucer probably did not realize that he