did in the writing, of other books:--

--when thy labour done all is,
And hast y-made reckonings,
Instead of rest and newe things
Thou go'st home to thine house anon,
And there as dumb as any stone
Thou sittest at another book.

The house at home was doubtless that in Aldgate, of which the lease to
Chaucer, bearing date May, 1374, has been discovered; and to this we may
fancy Chaucer walking morning and evening from the riverside, past the
Postern Gate by the Tower. Already, however, in 1376, the routine of his
occupations appears to have been interrupted by his engagement on some
secret service under Sir John Burley; and in the following year, and in
1378, he was repeatedly abroad in the service of the Crown. On one of his
journeys in the last-named year he was attached in a subordinate capacity
to the embassy sent to negotiate for the marriage with the French King
Charles V's daughter Mary to the young King Richard II, who had succeeded
to his grandfather in 1377,--one of those matrimonial missions which, in
the days of both Plantagenets and Tudors, formed so large a part of the
functions of European diplomacy, and which not unfrequently, as in this
case at least ultimately, came to nothing. A later journey in May of the
same year took Chaucer once more to Italy, whither he had been sent with
Sir Edward Berkeley to treat with Bernardo Visconti, joint lord of Milan,
and "scourge of Lombardy," and Sir John Hawkwood--the former of whom finds
a place in that brief mirror of magistrates, the "Monk's Tale." It was on
this occasion that of the two persons whom, according to custom, Chaucer
appointed to appear for him in the Courts during his absence, one was John
Gower, whose name as that of the second poet of his age is indissolubly