CHAPTER 2. CHAUCER'S LIFE AND WORKS.

CHAPTER 3. CHARACTERISTICS OF CHAUCER AND OF HIS POETRY.

CHAPTER 4.
EPILOGUE.

GLOSSARY.

INDEX.




CHAUCER.



CHAPTER 1. CHAUCER'S TIMES.

The biography of Geoffrey Chaucer is no longer a mixture of unsifted
facts, and of more or less hazardous conjectures. Many and wide as are
the gaps in our knowledge concerning the course of his outer life, and
doubtful as many important passages of it remain--in vexatious contrast
with the certainty of other relatively insignificant data--we have at
least become aware of the foundations on which alone a trustworthy account
of it can be built. These foundations consist partly of a meagre though
gradually increasing array of external evidence, chiefly to be found in
public documents,--in the Royal Wardrobe Book, the Issue Rolls of the