satisfied with the munificence of his royal master. The mark of silver, in which these grants are estimated, contained eight ounces, and consequently was equal to 40 shillings, as the pound was to £4. of our present denomination; and as the representative value of silver is generally supposed to have been five times greater in the reign of Edward III. than it is at present, it will follow that the value of the mark in our present money may be. estimated at £10. and Chaucer's original annuity at £200. The grant of wine was of the same value, because it was afterwards exchanged for an annuity of 20 marks. The two gratifications in money, amounting together to £175. 4s, 6d. were, upon the same principles of calculation, equivalent to £3500.; so that Chaucer appears to have received, during the three last years of this reign, a sum equal to the present value of £4700. (including the two annuities), without taking into account his receipts as comptroller of the customs, which were probably much greater, nor the rewards of his mission to France, which may be supposed to have been considerable.

It has been already observed, that Mr. Tyrwhitt was a little displeased with Edward III. for having exposed Chaucer's genius to the petrifying influence of custom-house accounts: but it is to be observed,

that Chaucer voluntarily exposed his talents to an almost equal risk, by composing a treatise on the astrolabe: that his mathematical skill was perhaps not very uselessly employed, in unravelling the confusion of the public accounts; that the task thus imposed upon him was at least no mean compli ment to his probity; and that, after all, it produced no fatal effect on his genius if, as Mr. Tyrwhitt conjectures, it did not prevent him from writing his "Book of Fame" during the intervals of his labour.

The succeeding reign was by no means equally propitious to the fortunes of Chaucer. The grant of his pension was, indeed, confirmed to him, and his grant of wine replaced by an equivalent annuity of 20 marks, at the accession of Richard II.; but his real or supposed interference in the intrigues of city politics, during the mayoralty of John of Northampton, appears to have drawn upon him the displeasure of the king, and to have involved him in pecuniary distresses, from which he was never after able to extricate himself. In 1388 he was obliged to part with his two pensions, and though, by the intervention, as it seems, of the Duke of Lancaster, he was in 1390 restored to favour, and successively appointed clerk of the works at Westminster and Windsor, besides which he received

in 1397 a grant of a new pension of 20 marks, we find him obliged to accept, in 1398, a protection for two years, a proof that he had by no means recovered his former affluence. In the last year of this reign, he obtained a new annual grant of a pipe of wine, and the revolution in favour of Henry IV. the son of his constant benefactor, would probably have raised him to greater affluence than he had ever enjoyed, but he died in the next year, after having received a confirmation of the last favours bestowed on him by Richard II. and a farther grant of an annuity of 40 marks.

After reading, in the circumstantial accounts of Chaucer's biographers, that he was married in 1360 to Philippa Rouet, by whom he had issue Thomas Chaucer and other children, we are surprised to learn that it is doubtful whether Thomas Chaucer was his son; that the earliest known' evidence of his marriage, is a record of 1381, in which he receives a half-year's annuity of 10 marks, granted by Edward III. to his wife, as one of the maids of honour (domicella), lately in the service of Queen Philippa; that the name of Philippa Rouet does not occur in the list of these maids of honour, but that Chaucer's wife may possibly have been Philippa Pykard; that, notwithstanding this, his said wife was certainly sister to Catherine Rouet,

who married a Sir John Swynford, and was the favourite mistress, and ultimately the wife, of the Duke of Lancaster; and that Chaucer himself mentions no son but Lewis, whom he states to have been born in 1381, a date which seems to agree with the record above mentioned, and to place the date of his marriage in 1380. The task of unravelling these obscurities must be left to future biographers.

As our principal concern is with the literary character of this poet, it would be unpardonable to omit the following estimate of his writings, extracted from Dr. Johnson's introduction to his Dictionary.

"He may, perhaps, with great justice, be styled "the first of our versifiers who wrote poetically. "He does not, however, appear to have deserved "all the praise which he has received, or all the

censure that he has suffered. Dryden, who "mistakes genius for learning, and, in confidence ❝of his abilities, ventured to write of what he had "not examined, ascribes to Chaucer the first refine"ment of our numbers, the first production of easy "and natural rhymes, and the improvement of " our language, by words borrowed from the more

polished languages of the continent. Skinner, contrarily, blames him in harsh terms for having

"vitiated his native speech by whole cart-loads of "foreign words. But he that reads the works of "Gower will find smooth numbers, and easy "rhymes, of which Chaucer is supposed to have "been the inventor, and the French words, good "or bad, of which Chaucer is charged as the "importer. Some innovations he might probably

و make, like others, in the infancy of our poetry “

"which the paucity of books does not allow us to

،، discover with particular exactness; but the works "of Gower and Lydgate sufficiently evince that "his diction was in general like that of his con"temporaries; and some improvements he un"doubtedly made by the various dispositions of "his rhymes, and by the mixture of different "numbers, in which he seems to have been happy ،، and judicious."

This compendious piece of criticism contains a full refutation of Skinner's very absurd charge, at the same time that the severe. and unnecessary censure on Dryden, exhibits a strong instance of the very haste and inaccuracy which it condemns. It is scarcely credible that Dryden, while he was employed in paraphrasing the Knight's Tale and the Flower and the Leaf, which are perhaps the most finished specimens of his poetry, and at the same time very faithful copies of his original,