treated in endless variations. In short, Chaucer executed his task with
facility, and frequently with grace, though for one reason or another he
grew tired of it before he had carried it out with completeness. Yet the
translation (and this may have been among the causes why he seems to have
wearied of it) has notwithstanding a certain air of schoolwork; and though
Chaucer's next poem, to which incontestable evidence assigns the date of
the year 1369, is still very far from being wholly original, yet the step
is great from the "Romaunt of the Rose" to the "Book of the Duchess."

Among the passages of the French "Roman de la Rose" omitted in Chaucer's
translation are some containing critical reflexions on the character of
kings and constituted authorities--a species of observations which kings
and constituted authorities have never been notorious for loving. This
circumstance, together with the reference to Windsor quoted above,
suggests the probability that Chaucer's connexion with the Court had not
been interrupted, or had been renewed, or was on the eve of renewing
itself, at the time when he wrote this translation. In becoming a
courtier, he was certainly placed within the reach of social opportunities
such as in his day he could nowhere else have enjoyed. In England as well
as in Italy during the fourteenth and the two following centuries; as the
frequent recurrence of the notion attests, the "good" courtier seemed the
perfection of the idea of gentleman. At the same time exaggerated
conceptions of the courtly breeding of Chaucer's and Froissart's age may
very easily be formed; and it is almost amusing to contrast with Chaucer's
generally liberal notions of manners, severe views of etiquette like that
introduced by him at the close of the "Man of Law's Tale," where he
stigmatizes as a solecism the statement of the author from whom he copied
his narrative, that King Aella sent his little boy to invite the emperor
to dinner. "It is best to deem he went himself."