THE first thing which forcibly strikes our attention in tracing the Homes and Haunts of the Poets, is the devastation which Time has made among them. As if he would indemnify himself for the degree of exemption from his influence in their works, he lays waste their homes and annihilates the traces of their haunts with an active and a relentless hand. If this is startingly apparent in the cases of those even who have been our cotemporaries, how much more must it be so in the cases of those who have gone hence centuries ago. We begin with the father of our truly English poetry, the genial old GEOFFREY CHAUCER, and, spite of the lives which have been written of him, Tyrwhitt tells us that just nothing is really known of him. The whole of his account of what he considers well-authenticated facts regarding him amounts to but twelve pages, including notes and comments. The facts themselves do not fill more than four pages. Of his birth-place, further than VOL. I.-A

that it was in London, as he tells us himself in The Testament of Love, fol. 321, nothing is known. The place of his education is by no means clear. It has been said that he was educated first at Cambridge, and then at Oxford. He himself leaves it pretty certain that he was at Cambridge, styling himself, in The Court of Love," Philogenet of Cambridge, Clerk." Leland has asserted that he was at Oxford; and Wood, in his Annals, gives a tradition that, "when Wickliffe was guardian or warden of Canterbury College, he had for his pupil the famous poet called Jeffrey Chaucer, father of Thomas Chaucer, Esq., of Ewelme, in Oxfordshire, who, following the steps of his master, reflected much upon the corruptions of the clergy."

He is then said to have entered himself of the Inner Temple. Speght states that a Mr. Buckley had seen a record in the Inner Temple of "Geffrey Chaucer being fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleetstreet." This, Tyrwhitt says, was a youthful sally, and points out the fact that Chaucer studied in the Inner Temple on leaving college, and before his travels abroad, which is contrary to the account of Leland, who makes him, after his travels, reside in the Inner Temple. These travels even in France resting solely on the authority of Leland, Tyrwhitt disputes, but of their reality there can be little doubt.

Chaucer, having finished his education, became a courtier. The first authentic memorial, says Tyrwhitt, that we have of him, is the patent in Rymer, 41 E. III., by which the king grants him an annuity of twenty marks, by the title of Valettus noster. He was then in the 39th year of his age. Speght mentions a succeeding grant by the title of Valettus hospitii. By those titles it appears that he was a royal page or groom. In this situation he enjoyed various grants from the king. In the 48 E. III., he had, according to Rymer, a grant for life of a pitcher of wine dayly; in the same year a grant, during pleasure, of the office of Con

troller of the Custom of Wools, &c., in the port of London. The next year the king granted him the wardship of Sir Edmund Staplegate's heir, for which he received £104; and in the following year, some forfeited wool to the value of £71, 4s., 6d. His annuity of twenty marks was confirmed to him on the accession of Richard II., and another annuity of twenty marks was granted him in lieu of the dayly pitcher of wine. It is probable, too, that he was confirmed in his office of controller, though the instrument has not been produced. In the 13th of Richard II. he appears to have been clerk of the works at Westminster, &c., and in the following year at Windsor. In the 17th of Richard II. the king granted him a new annuity of twenty pounds; in the 22d, a pipe of wine. On the accession of Henry IV. his two grants of the annuity of twenty pounds and of the pipe of wine were confirmed to him, with an additional grant of forty marks.

Thus it appears that Chaucer did not miss the profitable part of court patronage. He also reaped some of its honorable employments. Edward III., in the 46th year of his reign, appointed him, with two others, his envoy to Genoa, with the title of Scutifer noster, Our Squire. This great and able king, it is evident, regarded Chaucer as a good man of business, and that he proved himself so, is pretty well denoted by the chief grants of his life immediately fol lowing his return; namely, that of the pitcher of wine dayly, the controllership of the customs of wool and wine in the port of London, and in the following year of the wardship of Sir Edmund Staplegate's heir, &c. At the heels of these grants came also another embassy to France, with Sir Guichard d'Angle and Richard Stan, according to Froissart, to treat of a marriage between the Prince of Wales, afterward Richard II., and a daughter of the French king. Other historians assert that the original object of his mission was to complain of some infringement of the truce concluded with France, and which was so well pushed by