worth about 200 pounds in our money, now a grant of a daily pitcher
of wine besides a salary of "71/2d. a day and two robes yearly."

Chaucer's wife, too, had a pension, so the poet was well off. He
had powerful friends also, among them John of Gaunt. And when
the Duke's wife died Chaucer wrote a lament which is called the
Dethe of Blaunche the Duchess, or sometimes the Book of the
Duchess. This is one of the earliest known poems of Chaucer, and
although it is not so good as some which are later, there are
many beautiful lines in it.

The poet led a busy life. He was a good business man, and soon
we find him in the civil service, as we would call it now. He
was made Comptroller of Customs, and in this post he had to work
hard, for one of the conditions was that he must write out the
accounts with his own hand, and always be in the office himself.
If we may take some lines he wrote to be about himself, he was so
busy all day long that he had not time to hear what was happening
abroad, or even what was happening among his friends and
neighbors.

"Not only from far countree,
That there no tidings cometh to thee;
Not of thy very neighbours,
That dwellen almost at thy doors,
Thou hearest neither that nor this."

Yet after his hard office work was done he loved nothing better
than to go back to his books, for he goes on to say: