Duchesse, originally appears to have been written as a separate poem, and between 1369 and 1379 we find no fewer than seven works, in prose and poetry, which were afterwards embodied in the Canterbury Tales: the Lyf of St. Cecyle (afterwards used for the Second Nonnes Tale); parts of the Monkes Tale; the greater part of the Clerkes Tale; Palamon and Arcite (which forms the basis of the Knightes Tale); the Tale of Melibeus; the Persones Tale; and the Man of Lawe’s Tale. In addition to these come the Compleint to his Lady; An Amorous Compleint; Womanly Noblesse; Compleint unto Pitè; Anelida and Arcite (containing ten stanzas from Palamon); Of the Wretched Engendring of Mankind (a prose translation of Innocent III’s De Miseria Humanæ Conditionis, of which the title alone remains, though fragments of it are used in the Man of Lawe’s Tale); a translation of Boëthius’s Consolations of Philosophy; the Complaint of Mars; Troilus and Criseyde; Wordes to Adam Scriveyn; The Former Age; Fortune. Apart from Troilus and Criseyde and the poems afterwards used in the Canterbury Tales, none of these works are of any great importance in themselves, but in them we see a steady development in technical skill. The verse of the Book of the Duchesse is easy and flowing but not distinguished. The Compleint unto Pitè shows a freedom and boldness in the use of the French seven-lined stanza which marks a new departure in English versification. Chaucer tries his hand at roundels and balades, at narrative poetry and love laments, and the result is that he attains a suppleness and melody unknown to his predecessors and unfortunately ignored by his immediate successors. The music of his verse is not the least of his contributions to a literature, whose exponents could placidly remark

And trouthe of metre I sette also a-syde;
For of that art I hadde as tho no guyde
Me to reduce when I went a-wronge:
I toke none hede nouther of shorte nor longe.

Lydgate did not begin to write until after Chaucer’s death, but the lines quoted above from the Troy Book exactly express the point of view of the majority of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century poets.

In 1372, as we have seen, Chaucer went to Italy, and the influence of Italian poetry upon him can hardly be exaggerated. Professor Ten Brink believes that the influence of Dante was largely responsible for a sudden quickening and deepening of religious feeling in Chaucer, and he attributes the A.B.C., the Lyf of St. Cecyle, and the translation of the De Miseria Humanæ Conditionis to this period. Whether he is right or wrong in this respect (and Professor Skeat dates both the A.B.C. and the Lyf of St. Cecyle before the Italian journey) there can be no question as to Chaucer’s profound admiration for the author of the Divina Commedia. The Inuocacio ad Mariam which prefaces the Second Nonnes Tale is drawn from the concluding canto of the Paradiso, the most striking of all the Monk’s tales

Of him that stood in greet prosperitee
And is y-fallen out of heigh degree
Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly,

is that of Count Hugo of Pisa, which is drawn direct from Canto XXXIII of the Inferno, and it is impossible not to feel that the intense reverence for things holy which underlay all Chaucer’s shrewdness and humour, may have been due—at least in part—to the influence of one of the greatest of all religious poets. Of Petrarch he speaks with admiration in the preface to the tale which he borrows from him, but except for a translation of the eighty-eighth sonnet which is inserted in Book I of Troilus and Criseyde, under the heading Cantus Troili, there is little evidence of any direct influence. From Boccaccio he borrowed freely, with a royal bettering in the borrowing. Troilus and Criseyde is taken bodily from the Filostrato, though with numerous additions, omissions, alterations, and adaptations: the Knightes Tale is condensed from the twelve books of the Teseide: the idea of the Canterbury Tales is taken from that of the Decamerone, though with the very significant difference that whereas Boccaccio’s story-tellers are all drawn from one class and are shut off from intercourse with the outer world, Chaucer’s range from knight to miller, from aristocratic prioress to bourgeois wife of Bath, and the fact of their being on a pilgrimage affords opportunity for incident on the way and for the introduction of fresh characters, thus giving scope for far greater variety and keeping far more closely in touch with actual life.

Between 1377 and 1382 he translated Boëthius’s De Consolatione Philosophiæ, a work which evidently produced a deep impression upon him.

In 1382 Chaucer produced another topical poem. So far he had addressed himself to John of Gaunt—for whom not only the Book of the Duchesse, but the scandalous Compleint of Mars is said to have been written; now he addresses King Richard, and after the fashion of the day clothes in allegorical compliment the story of his wooing of Anne of Bohemia, who had twice before been engaged to other suitors. The wedding festivities lasted over February 14, when St. Valentine marries every year,

The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove,
The sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher;

and the opportunity was too good a one to be lost. Chaucer saluted his king and queen in the Parlement of Foules, which though partially based on the fabliau of Hucline and Eglantine and containing passages from Dante and Boccaccio, is in all essentials a thoroughly original work. The poet, as usual, falls asleep and has a dream. He is taken by Scipio Africanus (he had just been reading the Somnium Scipionis), to the gate of a park which he is told none but the servants of Love may enter. Although he himself is but dull and has lost the taste of love he is permitted to see what passes in order that he may describe it, and is led into a beautiful garden in which many fair ladies, such as Beautee and Jolyte, are disporting themselves under the eye of Cupid. A number of women are dancing round a temple of brass, before whose door

Dame Pees sat with a curteyn in hir hond.

A long description of the temple and its occupants (Venus, Bacchus, Ceres, etc.) follows, and the poet then passes once more into the open air where