English Poets: Chaucer to Donne

by Thomas Humphry Ward

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903. ... GEOFFREY CHAUCER. geoffrey Chaucer, born in London probably about 1340, died at Westminster in 1400. He was the son of a vintner; was page in Prince Lionel's household, served in the army, was taken prisoner in France. He was afterwards valet and squire to Edward III, and went as king's commissioner to Italy in 1372, and later. He was Controller of the Customs in the port of London from 1381 to 1386, was M.P. for Kent in 1386, Clerk of the King's Works at Windsor in 1389, and died poor. Mr. Fumivall divides his poetical history into four (1) up to 1371, including the early poems, viz the A.B.C, the Compleynte to Pile, the Bote of the Duchesse, and the Compleynte 0f Mars; (a) from 1372 to 1381, including the Troylus and Criseyde, Anellda, and the Former Age; (3) the best period, from 1381 to 1389, including the Parlement of Foules, the Horn of Fame, the Legende of Goode Women, and the chief of the Canterbury Tales; (4) from 1390 to 1400, including the latest Canterbury Tales, and the Ballades and Poems of Reflection and later age, of which the last few, like the Steadfastness, show failing power. It is natural that a book which aims at including the best that has been done in English verse should begin with Chaucer, to whom no one has ever seriously denied the name which Dryden gave him, of the Father of English poetry. The poems of an earlier date, the Brut and the Ormulum, the Romances and the Homilies, have indeed an interest of their own; but it is a purely antiquarian interest, and even under that aspect it does not exist for the reader of Chaucer, who cannot in any sense be said to have been inspired by them. English poetry, distinguished on the one hand from the ' rym dogereF of the romancers, which is not poetry, and on the other from Beow...

4 pages, Hardcover

About the author

Thomas Humphry Ward, English author and journalist.