together with two of the "Canterbury Tales," which had either been put
forth independently, or (as seems much less probable) had formed the first
instalment of his great work. A further proof of the relatively late date
of this "Prologue" occurs in the contingent offer which it makes of the
poem to "the Queen," who can be no other than Richard II's young consort
Anne. At the very outset we find Chaucer as it were reviewing his own
literary position--and doing so in the spirit of an author who knows very
well what is said against him, who knows very well what there is in what
is said against him, and who yet is full of that true self-consciousness
which holds to its course--not recklessly and ruthlessly, not with a
contempt for the feelings and judgments of his fellow-creatures, but with
a serene trust in the justification ensured to every honest endeavour.
The principal theme of his poems had hitherto been the passion of love,
and woman who is the object of the love of man. Had he not, the superfine
critics of his day may have asked--steeped as they were in the
artificiality and florid extravagance of chivalry in the days of its
decline, and habituated to mistranslating earthly passion into the
phraseology of religious devotion--had he not debased the passion of love,
and defamed its object? Had he not begun by translating the wicked satire
of Jean de Meung, "a heresy against the law" of Love, and had he not, by
cynically painting in his Cressid a picture of woman's perfidy, encouraged
men to be less faithful to women

That be as true as ever was any steel?

In Chaucer's way of meeting this charge, which he emphasises by putting it
in the mouth of the God of Love himself, it is, to be sure, difficult to
recognise any very deeply penitent spirit. He mildly wards off the
reproach, sheltering himself behind his defender, the "lady in green," who
afterwards proves to be herself that type of womanly and wifely fidelity