arth[485]; his real
neighbours were Dante and Virgil.

He wrote during this period, and chiefly in his tower of Aldgate, the
"Lyf of Seinte Cecile," 1373; the "Compleynt of Mars," 1380; a
translation of Boethius in prose; the "Parlement of Foules;" "Troilus
and Criseyde," 1382; the "Hous of Fame," 1383-4; the "Legend of Good
Women," 1385.[486] In all these works the ideal is principally an
Italian and Latin one; but, at the same time, we see some beginning of
the Chaucer of the last period, who, having moved round the world of
letters, will cease to look abroad, and, after the manner of his own
nation, dropping in a large measure foreign elements, will show himself
above all and mainly an Englishman.

At this time, however, he is as yet under the charm of Southern art and
of ancient models; he does not weary of invoking and depicting the gods
of Olympus. Nudity, which the image-makers of cathedrals had inflicted
as a chastisement on the damned, scandalises him no more than it did the
painters of Italy. He sees Venus, "untressed," reclining on her couch,
"a bed of golde," clothed in transparent draperies,

Right with a subtil kerchef of Valence,
Ther was no thikker cloth of no defence;

or with less draperies still:

I saw Beautee withouten any atyr[487];

or again:

Naked fleting in a see;

her brows circled with a "rose-garlond white and reed."[488] He calls
her to his aid:

Now faire blisful, O Cipris,
So be my favour at this tyme!
And ye, me to endyte and ryme
Helpeth, that on Parnaso dwelle
By Elicon the clere welle.[489]

His "Compleynt of Anelida" is dedicated to

Thou ferse god of armes, Mars the rede,

and to Polymnia:

Be favourable eek, thou Polymnia,
On Parnaso that, with thy sustres glade,
By Elicon, not fer from Cirrea,
Singest with vois memorial in the shade,
Under the laurer which that may not fade.[490]

Old books of antiquity possess for him, as they did for the learned men
of the Renaissance, or for Petrarch, who cherished a manuscript of Homer
without being able to decipher it, a character almost divine:

For out of olde feldes, as men seith,
Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere;
And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere.[491]

Poggio or Poliziano could not have spoken in more feeling words.

Glory and honour, Virgil Mantuan,
Be to thy name![492]