seven years. A careful enquiry into the accuracy of the record
as to the ages of the numerous other witnesses at the same trial has
established it in an overwhelming majority of instances; and it is
absurd gratuitously to charge Chaucer with having understated his age
from motives of vanity. The conclusion, therefore, seems to remain
unshaken, that he was born about the year 1340, or some time between
that year and 1345.

Now, we possess a charming poem by Chaucer called the "Assembly of
Fowls," elaborately courtly in its conception, and in its execution
giving proofs of Italian reading on the part of its author, as well as
of a ripe humour such as is rarely an accompaniment of extreme youth.
This poem has been thought by earlier commentators to allegorise an
event known to have happened in 1358, by later critics another which
occurred in 1364. Clearly, the assumption that the period from 1340 to
1345 includes the date of Chaucer's birth, suffices of itself to stamp
the one of these conjectures as untenable, and the other as improbable,
and (when the style of the poem and treatment of its subject are taken
into account) adds weight to the other reasons in favour of the date
1381 for the poem in question. Thus, backwards and forwards, the
disputed points in Chaucer's biography and the question of his works
are affected by one another.

* * * * *

Chaucer's life, then, spans rather more than the latter half of the
fourteenth century, the last year of which was indisputably the year of
his death. In other words, it covers rather more than the interval
between the most glorious epoch of Edward III's reign--for Crecy was
fought in 1346--and the downfall, in 1399, of his unfortunate successor
Richard II.

The England of this period was but a little land, if numbers be the
test of greatness--but in Edward III's time as in that of Henry V, who
inherited so much of Edward's policy and revived so much of his glory,
there stirred in this little body a mighty heart. It is only of a
small population that the author of the "Vision concerning Piers
Plowman" could have gathered the representatives into a single field,
or that Chaucer himself could have composed a family picture fairly
comprehending, though not altogether exhausting, the chief national
character-types. In the year of King Richard II's accession (1377),
according to a trustworthy calculation based upon the result of that
year's poll-t