distinctly trace the poet's relationship with any of these
namesakes or antecessors, we find excellent ground for belief
that his family or friends stood well at Court, in the ease with
which Chaucer made his way there, and in his subsequent
career.

Like his great successor, Spencer, it was the fortune of Chaucer
to live under a splendid, chivalrous, and high-spirited reign.
1328 was the second year of Edward III; and, what with Scotch
wars, French expeditions, and the strenuous and costly struggle
to hold England in a worthy place among the States of Europe,
there was sufficient bustle, bold achievement, and high ambition
in the period to inspire a poet who was prepared to catch the
spirit of the day. It was an age of elaborate courtesy, of high-
paced gallantry, of courageous venture, of noble disdain for
mean tranquillity; and Chaucer, on the whole a man of peaceful
avocations, was penetrated to the depth of his consciousness
with the lofty and lovely civil side of that brilliant and restless
military period. No record of his youthful years, however,
remains to us; if we believe that at the age of eighteen he was a
student of Cambridge, it is only on the strength of a reference in
his "Court of Love", where the narrator is made to say that his
name is Philogenet, "of Cambridge clerk;" while he had already
told us that when he was stirred to seek the Court of Cupid he
was "at eighteen year of age." According to Leland, however,
he was educated at Oxford, proceeding thence to France and
the Netherlands, to finish his studies; but there remains no
certain evidence of his having belonged to either University. At
the same time, it is not doubted that his family was of good
condition; and, whether or not we accept the assertion that his