and wed his people--not himself--"again to steadfastness." However, even
a quasi-political poem of this description, whatever element of implied
flattery it may contain, offers pleasanter reading than those least
attractive of all occasional poems, of which the burden is a cry for
money. The "Envoy to Scogan" has been diversely dated, and diversely
interpreted. The reference in these lines to a deluge of pestilence,
clearly means, not a pestilence produced by heavy rains, but heavy rains
which might be expected to produce a pestilence. The primary purpose of
the epistle admits of no doubt, though it is only revealed in the
postscript. After bantering his friend on account of his faint-
heartedness in love:--

"Because thy lady saw not thy distress,
Therefore thou gavest her up at Michaelmas--"

Chaucer ends by entreating him to further his claims upon the royal
munificence. Of this friend, Henry Scogan, a tradition repeated by Ben
Jonson averred that he was a fine gentleman and Master of Arts of Henry
IV's time, who was regarded and rewarded for his Court "disguisings" and
"writings in ballad-royal." He is therefore appropriately apostrophised
by Chaucer as kneeling

--at the streames head
Of grace, of all honuor and worthiness,

and reminded that his friend is at the other end of the current. The
weariness of tone, natural under the circumstances, obscures whatever
humour the poem possesses.

Very possibly the lines to Scogan were written not before, but immediately