morbid familiarity with
the idea of suicide, and had written a last will and testament, "executed
in the presence of Omniscience," and full of wild and profane wit. The
magnitude of his tragedy is only realised when it is considered not only
that the poetry he left was of a high order of originality and
imaginative power, but that it was produced at an age at which our
greatest poets, had they died, would have remained unknown. Precocious
not only in genius but in dissipation, proud and morose as he was, an
unsympathetic age confined itself mainly to awarding blame to his
literary and moral delinquencies. Posterity has weighed him in a juster
balance, and laments the early quenching of so brilliant a light. His
_coll._ works appeared in 1803, and another ed. by Prof. Street in 1875.
Among these are _Elinoure and Juga_, _Balade of Charitie_, _Bristowe
Tragedie_, _AElla_, and _Tragedy of Godwin_.

The best account of his life is the Essay by Prof. Masson.

CHAUCER, GEOFFREY (1340?-1400).--Poet, was _b._ in London, the _s._ of
John C., a vintner of Thames Street, who had also a small estate at
Ipswich, and was occasionally employed on service for the King (Edward
III.), which doubtless was the means of his son's introduction to the
Court. The acquaintance which C. displays with all branches of the
learning of his time shows that he must have received an ample education;
but there is no evidence that he was at either of the Univ. In 1357 he
appears as a page to the Lady Elizabeth, wife of Lionel Duke of Clarence,
and in 1359 he first saw military service in France, when he was made a
prisoner. He was, however, ransomed in 1360. About 1366 he was married to
Philippa, _dau._ of Sir Payne Roet, one of the ladies of the Duchess of
Lancaster, whose sister Katharine, widow of Sir Hugh Swynford, became the
third wife of John of Gaunt. Previous to this he had apparently been
deeply in love with another lady, whose rank probably placed her beyond
his reach; his disappointment finding expression in his _Compleynt to
Pite_. In 1367 he was one of the valets of the King's Chamber, a post
always held by gentlemen, and received a pension of 20 marks, and he was
soon afterwards one of the King's esquires. In 1369 Blanche, the wife of
John of Gaunt, died, which gave occasion for a poem by C. in honour of
her memory, _The Dethe of Blaunche the Duchesse_. In the same year he
again bore arms in France, and during the next ten years he was