to an earlier year than 1393; and poets as well as other men since Chaucer
have spoken of themselves as old and obsolete at fifty. A similar remark
might be made concerning the reference to the poet's old age "which
dulleth him in his spirit," in the "Complaint of Venus," generally
ascribed to the last decennium of Chaucer's life. If we reject the
evidence of a further passage, in the "Cuckoo and the Nightingale," a poem
of disputed genuineness, we accordingly arrive at the conclusion that
there is no reason for demurring to the only direct external evidence in
existence as to the date of Chaucer's birth. At a famous trial of a cause
of chivalry held at Westminster in 1386, Chaucer, who had gone through
part of a campaign with one of the litigants, appeared as a witness; and
on this occasion his age was, doubtless on his own deposition, recorded as
that of a man "of forty years and upwards," who had borne arms for twenty-
seven years. A careful enquiry into the accuracy of the record as to the
ages of the numerous other witnesses at the same trial has established it
in an overwhelming majority of instances; and it is absurd gratuitously to
charge Chaucer with having understated his age from motives of vanity.
The conclusion, therefore, seems to remain unshaken, that he was born
about the year 1340, or some time between that year and 1345.

Now, we possess a charming poem by Chaucer called the "Assembly of Fowls,"
elaborately courtly in its conception, and in its execution giving proofs
of Italian reading on the part of its author, as well as of a ripe humour
such as is rarely an accompaniment of extreme youth. This poem has been
thought by earlier commentators to allegorise an event known to have
happened in 1358, by later critics another which occurred in 1364.
Clearly, the assumption that the period from 1340 to 1345 includes the
date of Chaucer's birth, suffices of itself to stamp the one of these
conjectures as untenable, and the other as improbable, and (when the style
of the poem and treatment of its subject are taken into account) adds