Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The World's Cyclopedia of Biography, Vol. 1: Containing: Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Burns, Byron, Scott
Chaucer's birth. At a famous trial of a cause of chivalry held at Westminster in 1386, Chaucer, who had gone through part of a campaign with one of the litigants, appeared as a witness and on this occasion his age was, doubtless on his own deposition, te corded as that of a man of forty years and upwards, who had borne arms for twenty-seven years. A careful enquiry into the accuracy of the record as to the ages of the numerous other wit nesses at the same trial has established it in an overwhelming majority of instances and it is absurd gratuitously to charge Chaucer with having understated his age from motives of vanity. The conclusion, therefore, seems to remain unshaken, that he was born about the year 1340, or some time between that year and 1345.
Now, we possess a charming poem by Chaucer called the As sembly of Fowls, elaborately courtly in its conception, and in its execution giving proofs of Italian reading on the part of its author, as well as of a ripe humour such as is rarely an accompaniment of extreme youth. This poem has been thought by earlier commenta tors to allegorise an event known to have happened in 1358 by later critics another which occurred in 1364. Clearly, the assumption that the period from 1340 to 1345 includes the date of Chaucer's birth suffices of itself to stamp the one of these conjectures as um tenable, and the other as improbable, and (when the style of the poem and treatment of its subject are taken into account) adds weight to the other reasons in favour of the date 1381 for the poem in question. Thus, backwards and forwards, the disputed points in Chaucer's biography and the question of his works are affected by one another.
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