CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH POETS. CHAPTER I. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. (1340-1400.) I.—HIS LIFE, CHARACTER, AND WORKS. To regard Chaucer as the first genial day in the spring of English poetry, is to take, perhaps, a somewhat insular view of his position. On a more comprehensive view, it would appear more apposite to call him a fine day, if not the last fine day, in the autumn of medieval European poetry. He may be described as the father of English poetry-the first great poet that used the English language; but it is more instructive to look upon him as the English son and heir of a great family of French and Italian poets. He was the great English master in a poetic movement that originated in the south of Europe, among the provinces of the Langue d'Oc, which had been going on with brilliant energy for more than two centuries before his birth, and had produced among its masterpieces the 'Romance of the Rose,' and the poetry of Dante and Petrarch. How the Troubadours came by their poetry is not, and perhaps cannot be, sufficiently ascertained. Probably great significance Α |