as they considering his age and opportunities,--a poet who
constantly improved as he advanced in life, and whose greatest work
was written in his old age.

Unfortunately, we know but little of Chaucer's habits and
experiences, his trials and disappointments, his friendships or his
hatreds. What we do know of him raises our esteem. Though
convivial, he was temperate; though genial, he was a silent
observer, quiet in his manners, modest in his intercourse with the
world, walking with downcast eye, but letting nothing escape his
notice. He believed in friendship, and kept his friends to the
end, and was stained neither by envy nor by pride,--as frank as he
was affectionate, as gentle as he was witty. Living with princes
and nobles, he never descended to gross adulation, and never wrote
a line of approval of the usurpation of Henry IV., although his
bread depended on Henry's favor, and he was also the son of the
king's earliest and best friend. He was not a religious man, nor
was he an immoral man, judged by the standard of his age. He
probably was worldly, as he lived in courts. We do not see in him
the stern virtues of Dante or Milton; nothing of that moral
earnestness which marked the only other great man with whom he was
contemporary,--he who is called the "morning star" of the
Reformation. But then we know nothing about him which calls out
severe reprobation. He was patriotic, and had the confidence of
his sovereign, else he would not have been employed on important
missions. And the sweetness of his character may be inferred from
his long and tender friendship with Gower, whom some in that age
considered the greater poet. He was probably luxurious in his
habits, but intemperate use of wine he detested and avoided. He
was portly in his person, but refinement marked his features. He