description might probably be applied to Chaucer. With such sentiments a
personal orthodoxy was fully reconcileable in both patron and follower;
and the so-called "Chaucer's A. B. C.," a version of a prayer to the
Virgin in a French poetical "Pilgrimage," might with equal probability
have been put together by him either early or late in the course of his
life. There was, however, a tradition, repeated by Speght, that this
piece was composed "at the request of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, as a
prayer for her private use, being a woman in her religion very devout."
If so, it must have been written before the Duchess's death, which
occurred in 1369; and we may imagine it, if we please, with its twenty-
three initial letters blazoned in red and blue and gold on a flyleaf
inserted in the Book of the pious Duchess,--herself, in the fervent
language of the poem, an illuminated calendar, as being lighted in this
world with the Virgin's holy name.

In the autumn of 1369, then, the Duchess Blanche died an early death; and
it is pleasing to know that John of Gaunt, to whom his marriage with her
had brought wealth and a dukedom, ordered services, in pious remembrance
of her, to be held at her grave. The elaborate elegy which--very possibly
at the widowed Duke's request--was composed by Chaucer, leaves no doubt as
to the identity of the lady whose loss it deplores:--

--Goode faire "White" she hight;
Thus was my lady named right;
For she was both fair and bright.

But, in accordance with the taste of his age, which shunned such sheer
straightforwardness in poetry, the "Book of the Duchess" contains no
further transparent reference to the actual circumstances of the wedded
life which had come to so premature an end--for John of Gaunt had married