Few particulars of Chaucer’s private history are to be gathered from his poems. In his Dream, of which Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, is the subject, the poet describes himself as a victim to nervous melancholy from habitual want of sleep, accompanied with a dread of death. The translation of Boethius, and occasional quotations from Seneca and Juvenal, attest that he retained through life his juvenile acquaintance with the Latin classics. The chronology of his works must be rendered doubtful by the uncertainty respecting that of his life. Mr. Turner places the time of his death later than 1400, but before 1410. The poet is said to have had the unusual honour of being brother-in-law to a prince of the blood, by the marriage of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, with Catherine, widow of Sir Hugh Swinford, and sister to Chaucer’s wife. He is said to have lived at Woodstock at a late period of his life, and finally, to have retired to Donnington Castle on the Duke of Lancaster’s death. By his wife, Philippa, he had two sons, Thomas and Lewis. Thomas was Speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of Henry IV., ambassador to France and Burgundy, and discharged other public duties. Chaucer’s principal biographers are Leland, Thomas Speght, Mr. Tyrwhitt, and Mr. Godwin. The work of the latter would have been more valuable had it been less voluminous, less discursive, and less conjectural. Mr. Tyrwhitt’s edition of the Canterbury Tales is a model of criticism on an old English classic. His Introductory Discourse on the Language and Versification of Chaucer will enable its readers to form just and clear ideas of the history of our ancient tongue, and Chaucer’s peculiar use of it.
Chaucer was held in high estimation by his most distinguished contemporaries. John the Chaplain, who translated Boethius into English verse, as Chaucer had into prose, calls him the Flower of Rhetoric. Occleve laments him with personal affection as his father and master, and styles him the honour of English tongue. Lydgate, the monk of Bury, mentions him as a chief poet of Britain; the loadstar of our language; the notable rhetor. Dryden says, in the preface prefixed to his Fables,—“As Chaucer is the father of English poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or the Romans Virgil; he is a perpetual fountain of good sense, learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects; as he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace.”