Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer

INTO eight monographs, contained in three large and beautifully printed volumes,¹ Professor Lounsbury has gathered the fruits of his long devotion to Chaucer. The modest title, Studies, is no index to the riches or the attractiveness of this book, which is not only indispensable to the scholar henceforth, — that was to be expected, — but is of unusual interest to the general reader. Mr. Lounsbury’s style has a peculiar charm : it is brilliant without overfinish, it abounds in humor, and it shows a decided turn for epigram. He takes his time, but is never long-winded. One sees so many rough-and-ready compendium s nowadays that it is refreshing to meet with a writer who will not be bullied into unseemly hurry.

The first and second chapters are closely related, and, taken together, make up Mr. Lounsbury’s life of Chaucer, — the best, beyond a doubt, that has yet been written. New facts were scarcely to be expected. A careful sifting of the accumulated material, however, with an appreciation of the hypotheses with which Chaucerians have eked out our scanty information, had become imperative.

In this arduous and delicate investigation Mr. Lounsbury has shown both judgment and acumen. Five moot points will at once occur to everybody who is familiar with the literary controversies of the last twenty or thirty years, — the date of Chaucer’s birth, his relation to Thomas Chaucer, his supposed meeting with Petrarch, the case of Cecilia Chaumpagne, and the history of his early love. For the date of Chaucer’s birth Mr. Lounsbury prefers to 1340 some year between 1331 and 1335, basing his opinion on certain passages in the works of the poet and of his contemporaries, which do not, after all, seem quite conclusive. Yet the earlier date is far from unreasonable. The Petrarch question is examined without sentiment, and with a keen feeling for the humors of the situation. Professor Skeat’s dictum that to deny the meeting is to charge Chaucer with " deliberate and unnecessary falsehood ” is treated with as much leniency as it deserves. As to Thomas Chaucer, Mr. Lounsbury decides that the weight of evidence is distinctly in favor of his being the poet’s son, and to this all sober reasoners will subscribe. The disagreeable guess elaborated by Mrs. Haweis is not even alluded to. The Chaumpagne affair is discussed with great good sense, and felicitously illustrated by an appeal to the manners of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Particularly happy is the criticism of that sad pageant of unrequited affection which the ingenuity of scholars has constructed out of shreds and patches of Chaucer’s poetry. — a tragedy in which Chaucer is made to play the pale complexion of true love, and a high-born lady, fair but unapproachable, enacts the red glow of scorn. This criticism is included in the second biographical chapter, The Chaucer Legend; for that is the limbo to which the author has banished “ all things transitory and vain ” that have exercised the pens of theorists. The whole chapter, we need hardly add, is highly diverting. One regrets only that the latest German suggestion, which identifies the hard-hearted mistress for whom Chaucer languished with “ die Freigebigkeit ” of the Duchess Blanche of Lancaster, did not appear in time to receive due honor in this essay.

The first chapter closes with a capital commentary on Chaucer’s ability in practical affairs, — a subject about which we have a right to draw inferences, but which has been pretty well neglected by his biographers.

In The Text of Chaucer (chapter iii.) Mr. Lounsbury speaks to laymen rather than to specialists; yet even the most advanced student will find his specimens of manuscript corruption useful, and his notices of the early editions exceedingly convenient. The gradual deterioration and the slow restoration of the text are traced with perspicuity; and to the whole of what is usually regarded as a sufficiently arid subject the charm of the author’s style and the titillation of his humor lend an attractiveness which philologists have not usually thought fit to impart to their lucubrations. To Tyrwhitt Mr. Lounsbury is liberal of praise, though not beyond desert; to Thomas Wright he is something less than just. The odd notions of Chaucer’s verse prevalent as late as the middle of the present century are described, and due credit is given to Professor Child for investigating, for the first time scientifically, the leading phenomena of Chaucerian grammar and metre. An account of the labors of Dr. Furnivall, and a sketch of what remains to be done in elucidation of Chaucer, bring the chapter to a close. Despite its excellence, the essay is not free from questionable statements and inferences. The most striking is, perhaps, the attempt to justify the Ellesmere reading in a famous couplet in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, where, to our thinking, the rejection of the vulgate would deprive us of a delightful bit of characteristic humor. Of less moment, although not without significance in view of arguments subsequently used to support the doubtful thesis that Chaucer is responsible for the extant English translation of the Roman de la Rose, is the assertion that “there must have been” in Caxton’s time “a body of students who recognized the existence of corruptions in the copies, and were laudably interested in preserving the text of the poet in its purity.” This may be true, but it is scarcely a warrantable inference from Caxton’s words, which indicate merely the existence of a body of intelligent and enthusiastic readers, — quite a different thing. The misprint " 1513 ” for “ 1413 ” occurs twice in this chapter (pages 240, 341), to enforce what Mr. Lounsbury says about the difficulty of attaining typographical accuracy.

The essay on the Writings of Chaucer (chapter iv.) deals with the higher criticism, attempting to separate from the genuine works of the poet the many pieces ascribed to him by the ignorant zeal of the earlier editors. To this end, much space is given to a minute scrutiny of those “internal " criteria on which scholars have come to rely in such a process. A long excursus on the authorship of the English Romaunt of the Rose forms a sort of appendix. With regard to all the other apocrypha, Mr. Lounsbury’s judgment agrees with that of most modern scholars. As to the Romaunt, however, he is flatly opposed to the prevailing view; for he is convinced that Chaucer is the author of the whole of the fragmentary version that long went under his name. He is led into this position by considerations of style, his chief document being a large collection of parallel passages. Though fully aware of the difficulties in the way of his theory, — difficulties which most students regard as insuperable, — he believes that the grammatical, metrical, and dialectic tests cannot hold their ground against his proofs. To discuss fully Mr. Lounsbury’s extraordinarily clever argument would carry us into technical details for which we have no room, and for which this is not the proper place. We are satisfied, however, that all his affirmative arguments can be met, and that he has in no wise vacated the all but conclusive evidence on the other side. His parallel passages, on which he is almost ready to rest his case, can in very many instances be themselves paralleled from the metrical romances, and the stylistic and philological evidence which he adduces is in many respects untrustworthy. An example or two will illustrate what seem to us his errors in matters of detail. Smiited (Troilus, v. 1545) may well be from smitten, to pollute, to disgrace : there is then no irregularity, and the form is useless for Mr. Lounsbury’s purpose. Again, it is unsafe to assert that houne (Troilus, iv. 210) is the same as hound, unless here, in the same line, can be satisfactorily accounted for, and this has not yet been done. Shortly to tell, which is said not to occur in Gower, is found in the Confessio Amantis at least twice. Such tautological turns of phrase as “ ful pale and nothing red,”to which Mr. Lounsbury seems disposed to attach importance, are met with again and again in Gower and in the romances. If I may, in the sense of if I can help it, is, in one of the cases in which it is found in the Romaunt, a mere translation of si je puis: this is enough to destroy its demonstrative force, even if it did not occur elsewhere (as it does, for example, twice in Twain and Gawain). It is useless to compare “ Although he sought oon intyl Inde ” with “ Though that I walked into Inde ” when Havelok the Dane contains the line, “Thou [= though] I southe hethen into Ynde.” But enough of this.

In one instance Mr. Lounsbury has suffered his enthusiasm to get the better of the fairness with which he usually treats his opponents in this debate. One of the proofs that the English Romaunt as we have it is the work of more than one hand is the fact that an important personage in the allegory is called “ Bial-Acoil ” in one part of the poem, “ Fair - Welcoming ” in the rest. This argument Mr. Lounsbury dismisses with contempt that is almost hilarious. “ Sadly hampered would a poet be if he were not at liberty to use equivalent expressions, either when the necessities of the verse demanded it, or when, after using one form, he settled upon another that recommended itself, for any reason, to his taste.... In the general Prologue, [Chaucer] speaks of the Reeve’s horse as ‘ all pomely gray.’ In the prologue to the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, the horse of the Canon who overtook the party is ‘ all pomely grys.’ As if this were not enough, the steed that Sir Thopas bestrode was ‘ all dapple gray.’ Here we have three ways of stating the same thing. Does any one seriously think of maintaining that these differences of phraseology suggest in the slightest degree difference of authorship ? ” Another question: Does any one seriously think that, by showing that Chaucer used three different words to describe a dapple-gray horse (or rather, three dapplegray horses !), Mr. Lounsbury has in the slightest degree answered an argument based on the variety of names given to a single character in the Romaunt ? Far be it from us to wish to restrict genius in the exercise of its reasonable privileges ; but surely liberty becomes license when an author is to be allowed to vary at will the names of his dramatis personœ. We should surely have a right to complain if a German translator of Henry IV. indulged his dislike for sameness by calling the hostess of the Boar’s Head “ Dame Quickly ” or “ Frau Hurtig ” indifferently, and it might dizzy the arithmetic of memory if we were obliged to greet the same man in the same poem now as " Fortinbras” and now as " Johnie Armstrong.”

A long monograph of over two hundred and fifty pages on the Learning of Chaucer follows the excursus just commented on. This is one of the most valuable parts of the work. It would be difficult to speak too highly of the solid acquirements and the expository talent which it displays. It exhausts the subject without tiring the reader. We can mention but a point here and there. Mr. Lounsbury is clearly right in denying that the House of Fame is a travesty of the Divine Comedy, or can be identified with the Dante in English of Lydgate’s catalogue. His opinions on Chaucer’s relations to Boccaccio and Petrarch will provoke digladiation. There is no evidence, he maintains, that Chaucer ever read a line of the Decamerone. This statement is so opposed to current beliefs that we must expect to see it assailed with passion. It is true, notwithstanding. The remark that Chaucer owed to this work the plan of his Canterbury Tales continues to be made in every new history of English literature, though the latest worker in that field, Professor Brandl, in Paul’s Grundriss, has had the caution to employ a qualifying “ wohl.” Yet so great a genius as Chaucer, as Mr. Lounsbury reminds us, might well have hit upon the idea of having people tell stories, — for in that point alone are the plans of the two works alike, — without consultation with Boccaccio. The “ Lollius ” puzzle tempts Mr. Lounsbury into an ingenious but highly improbable theory. He suggests that those works of Boccaccio which Chaucer unquestionably knew (the Filostrato, for example) were supposed by him to be works of Petrarch, and that by " Lollius ” Petrarch is always and everywhere meant. But this is difficile per difficilius. The influence of French literature on Chaucer is traced with discrimination. It is to be hoped that this part of the book will meet the eye of Mr. Churton Collins, who, in a recent much-commended polemic, On the Study of English Literature, has not shrunk from declaring that “ the fathers of Chaucer ” were " Boccaccio, the authors of the Roman de la Rose, Machault, Granson, Froissart. ” Acquaintance with Horace and Livy, Mr. Lounsbury is inclined to think, Chaucer had none. The Doctor’s Tale is no proof that he knew the story of Virginia in the Latin form, for the details of the narrative show that he drew directly from the Roman de la Rose.

The most serious defect in this otherwise admirable chapter is the very inadequate treatment of Chaucer’s obligations to the metrical romances. Sir Thopas has always been allowed to have too much weight in this question. Chaucer satirizes one class of the romances, not all classes ; for there were good romances and bad in the fourteenth century, as there are good and bad novels in the nineteenth. That Chaucer enjoyed the best of them would be a priori extremely probable : their excellences, the existence of which Mr. Lounsbury is too hasty in refusing to recognize, were of a kind to appeal to him. Indeed, he must have had a kindness for the poorest of them. The satire of the Thopas is rather that of a man who is indulging in raillery at the amiable weaknesses of his friends than of a man who is branding the despicable follies of the objects of his literary antipathy. It is as reasonable to argue from Rebecca and Rowena that Thackeray had no liking for Ivanhoe as to argue from Sir Thopas that Chaucer had no liking for Beves of Hampton or Guy of Warwick. At all events, the style of Chaucer shows the plainest marks of the influence of the romances. He uses their phraseology and their formulæ with freedom, and apparently with satisfaction ; and indeed a considerable number of the parallel passages which Mr. Lounsbury has collected in a previous chapter, to prove that Chaucer and the translator of the Roman de la Rose were one and the same person, are destitute of all value as evidence simply because they are literary commonplaces derived from these compositions. It is odd to find Mr. Lounsbury appealing to the language of the Nun’s Priest to prove that Chaucer had no respect for “ the book of Launcelot de Lake.” To say nothing of the fun of the passage in question, it is dangerous to gauge Chaucer’s sentiments by those of the Nun’s Priest.

The essay on Chaucer’s Relation to the Religion of his Time, which takes up the more original part of the next chapter, — for that portion of the chapter which deals with Chaucer’s relation to the English language, though useful and generally sound, does not pretend to contain anything new, — is in some ways in striking contrast with the rest of the Studies. It exhibits Mr. Lounsbury in the character of a special pleader, not in the character of a judicial critic. The main thesis is that the poet, though not a Wycliffite, was so affected by the religious and political agitations of the times that he yielded to the impulses of his naturally skeptical spirit and grew less and less an orthodox Christian as he grew older, till he came at last to question the fundamental articles of the faith. In a word, an attempt is made to approximate the attitude of Chaucer in his riper years to that of “ the modern agnostic.” That there may possibly be some truth in this view few will deny. That the poetical passages which Mr. Lounsbury brings forward as evidence substantially support it we cannot admit. This is notably the case with regard to the opening lines of the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women, on which Mr. Lounsbury lays great stress. So far are these from bearing the meaning which he wishes to attach to them that a friend suggests that they might well have been used by Dean Mansel as a motto for his famous Bampton Lectures on the limits of religious thought. Notwithstanding all this, the whole paper is so interesting and suggestive that one could better spare a better part of the book.

The third volume of the Studies is entirely devoted to literary history and literary criticism. It consists of two masterly articles, — Chaucer in Literary History, and Chaucer as a Literary Artist. The object of the first of these is “ to trace the history of Chaucer’s reputation.” In his own day and by his immediate successors Chaucer was regarded as the prince of poets, and there is the testimony of Eustache Deschamps to prove that his fame had crossed the Channel. The vogue of the poet in Scotland in the fifteenth century was also very great. All this is pointed out by Mr. Lounsbury, whose remarks on the Kingis Quair will save his opponents the trouble of putting into excellent language a strong point against the Chaucerian authorship of the English Romaunt of the Rose. Similarly, what he has to say of the “ singular fact that the anonymous productions [of the fifteenth century] exceed those of the authors of repute in everything which makes poetry readable ” may easily be used against him by one who wishes to expose the fallacy of his argument that we must ascribe the Romaunt to Chaucer because it is too good to be ascribed to any other known writer. Of the popularity of the poet in the sixteenth century, four editions of his complete works, published within a period of thirty years, are the best evidence. Such testimony is striking enough, even if we allow for the factitious reputation which he enjoyed mainly on the strength of the spurious Plowman’s Tale, a violent invective against the Roman Church. Mr. Lounsbury’s treatment of these matters leaves nothing to be desired. Equally well done is his account of the relation of Spenser to Chaucer, and of the general effect which the fourteenth-century master exercised on the Elizabethan revival. From this he passes to the eclipse which Chaucer’s fame suffered in the latter half of the seventeenth century, when he appears to have been read by a select circle only, though of course he continued to be talked about by everybody. The renewed interest in Chaucer which followed Dryden’s modernizations carries Mr. Lounsbury into country seldom explored even by the professional student. He has given a history of the attempts made at different times to reproduce the works of the poet in modern English, as well as a sketch of various entertaining futilities in the way of imitations of his language. And all this is not mere compilation. Mr. Lounsbury has written a chapter of literary history for which no one has ever attempted even to collect the material, and he has written it so well that it need never be written again. His criticism of Dryden is particularly gratifying; for it is rarer now to find an appreciative judge of Dryden than to find a judicious admirer of Chaucer.

In the concluding pages of this chapter Mr. Lounsbury has agitated a question of much practical importance : How is Chaucer to be spelled, and how pronounced ? His answer is not quite what one would expect. For the great body of cultivated readers he advocates a spelling and a pronunciation reduced as nearly to nineteenth-century standards as is consistent with the preservation of metrical form. In no other garb, he thinks, can Chaucer be familiar to our sight; in no other voice can he speak to us with a familiar sound. Space fails us to discuss these unwelcome and, as we think, mistaken utterances. But in practice they will refute themselves. It is only an approximate familiarity that such changes will effect ; and this delusive benefit will be won through a very real and very lamentable loss. One test is easy. Let the beginner who is halting between two opinions examine a consecutive hundred of Chaucer’s rhymewords, and observe what happens to them when pronounced in modern fashion. Yet bad rhymes are not the only evils that follow in the train of modernization.

In the final chapter of the book we have Mr. Lounsbury at bis best as a critic. He is clear, logical, and convincing, without taint of sentimentality or “impressionist” nonsense. Of the affected jargon which some critics seem to think essential to their art there is not a trace. Not only is the essay valuable for its contents, but as an object lesson which our day and generation would do well to lay to heart.

We cannot take leave of this remarkable work without congratulating the cause of sound scholarship and good taste on the possession of one proof more in rebuttal of the too prevalent notion that philology and the study of literature should be divorced. Mr. Lounsbury’s book would demonstrate, if demonstration were needful, that learning is not inconsistent with the ability to write good English, and that superficiality is not a necessary accoutrement for a literary critic.