g friendship bound him to Gower[557]; the
young poets, Hoccleve, Scogan, Lydgate, came to him and proclaimed him
their master. His face, the features of which are known to us, thanks to
the portrait we owe to Hoccleve, had gained an expression of gentle
gravity; he liked better to listen than to talk, and, in the "Canterbury
Tales," the host rallies him on his pensive air and downcast eyes:

"What man artow?" quod he;
"Thou lokest as thou woldest finde an hare,
For ever up-on the ground I see thee stare."

Age had bestowed on him a corpulency which made him a match for Harry
Bailey himself.[558]

When Henry IV. mounted the throne, within the four days that followed
his accession, he doubled the pension of the poet (Oct. 3, 1399), who
then hired, for two pounds thirteen shillings and four pence a year, a
house in the garden of St. Mary's, Westminster. The lease is still
preserved in the archives of the Abbey.[559] He passed away in the
following year, in that tranquil retreat, and was interred at
Westminster, not far from the sepulchres where slept his patrons, Edward
III. and Richard II., in that wing of the transept which has since been
called the Poets' Corner, where lately we saw Browning's coffin lowered,
and where, but yesterday, Tennyson's was laid.

No English poet enjoyed a fame more constantly equal to itself. In the
fifteenth century writers did scarcely anything but lament and copy him:
"Maister deere," said Hoccleve,

O maister deere and fadir reverent,
Mi maister Chaucer, flour of eloquence,
Mirour of fructuous entendement,
O universal fadir of science,
Allas that thou thyn excellent prudence
In thi bed mortel mightist noght byquethe![560]

At the time of the Renaissance Caxton printed his works twice,[561] and
Henry VIII. made an exception in their favour in his prohibition of
"printed bokes, printed balades, ... and other fantasies."[562] Under
Elizabeth, Thynne annotated them,[563] Spenser declared that he "of
Tityrus," that is of Chaucer, "his songs did lere,"[564] and Sidney
exalted him to the skies.[565] In the seventeenth century Dryden
rejuvenates his tales, in the eighteenth century the admiration is
universal, and extends to Pope and Walpole.[566] In our time the learned
men of all countries have applied themselves to the task of commentating
his works and of disentangling his biography, a Society has been founded
to publish th