SOME GENERAL POINTS


INTRODUCTION


The researches of Sir Harris Nicolas, Dr. Furnivall, Mr. Selby and
others have provided us with a considerable mass of detailed information
regarding the life and career of Geoffrey Chaucer. Since the publication
of Nicolas's biography of the poet prefixed to the Aldine edition of
Chaucer's works in 1845, the old traditional biography of conjecture and
inference, based often on mere probability or the contents of works
erroneously ascribed to Chaucer, has disappeared and in its place has
been developed an accurate biography based on facts. In the sixty-five
years since Nicolas's time, however, a second tradition--connected in
some way with fact, to be sure--has slowly grown up. Writers on
Chaucer's life have not been content merely to state the facts revealed
in the records, but, in their eagerness to get closer to Chaucer, have
drawn many questionable inferences from those facts. Uncertain as to the
exact significance of the various appointments which Chaucer held, his
engagement in diplomatic missions and his annuities, biographers have
thought it necessary to find an explanation for what they suppose to be
remarkable favors, and have assumed--cautiously in the case of careful
scholars but boldly in that of popular writers--that Chaucer owed every
enhancement of his fortune to his "great patron" John of Gaunt. In
greater or less degree this conception appears in every biography since
Nicolas. Professor Minto in his Encyclopedia Britannica article
[Footnote: Ed. Scribners 1878, vol. 5, p. 450.] says with regard to the
year 1386: "that was an unfortunate year for him; his patron, John of
Gaunt, lost his ascendancy at court, and a commission which sat to