xercise of style. How far he had
already advanced in this respect, and how lightly our language was
already moulding itself in his hands, may be seen from several passages
in the poem; for instance, from that about the middle, where the old
and new theme of self-contradictoriness of love is treated in endless
variations. In short, Chaucer executed his task with facility, and
frequently with grace, though for one reason or another he grew tired
of it before he had carried it out with completeness. Yet the
translation (and this may have been among the causes why he seems to
have wearied of it) has notwithstanding a certain air of schoolwork;
and though Chaucer's next poem, to which incontestable evidence assigns
the date of the year 1369, is still very far from being wholly
original, yet the step is great from the "Romaunt of the Rose" to the
"Book of the Duchess."

Among the passages of the French "Roman de la Rose" omitted in
Chaucer's translation are some containing critical reflexions on the
character of kings and constituted authorities--a species of
observations which kings and constituted authorities have never been
notorious for loving. This circumstance, together with the reference
to Windsor quoted above, suggests the probability that Chaucer's
connexion with the Court had not been interrupted, or had been renewed,
or was on the eve of renewing itself, at the time when he wrote this
translation. In becoming a courtier, he was certainly placed within
the reach of social opportunities such as in his day he could nowhere
else have enjoyed. In England as well as in Italy during the
fourteenth and the two following centuries; as the frequent recurrence
of the notion attests, the "good" courtier seemed the perfection of the
idea of gentleman. At the same time exaggerated conceptions of the
courtly breeding of Chaucer's and Froissart's age may very easily be
formed; and it is almost amusing to contrast with Chaucer's generally
liberal notions of manners, severe views of etiquette like that
introduced by him at the close of the "Man of Law's Tale," where he
stigmatizes as a solecism the statement of the author from whom he
copied his narrative, that King Aella sent his little boy to invite the
emperor to dinner. "It is best to deem he went himself."

The position which in June, 1367, we find Chaucer holding at Court is
that of "Valettus" to the King, or, as a later document of May, 1368,
has it, of "Valettus C