Reversal of Fortune. When Chaucer was working at the Legend and planning the Canterbury Tales, he was still an official of the crown

Controller of Customs in London.

POETS' CORNER, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

The bust in the foreground is of Longfellow.

In 1386 he represented the county of Kent in Parliament; but from now on his fortunes were at a low ebb for many years, probably through no incompetence, and through no

fault save his attachment to John of Gaunt. John lost his influence with the King, and Chaucer was deprived of his position.

Not long after this Philippa Chaucer died, and her pension was discontinued. He was compelled to dispose of his own pensions for a fixed sum; and after receiving in 1394 another pension of £20 a year had frequently to procure loans before the payments were due. During these years of financial embarrassment he wrote little; no long work except the Astrolabe, a prose treatise on astronomy written for "little Lewis my son," about whom we know nothing more.

Last Days. With the accession of Henry IV in 1399, Chaucer's prospects improved. Another substantial pension was granted to him, on the basis of which he leased a house in Westminster. Fate did not allow him a long residence here: by the best information we have, it appears that he died in less than a year on October 25, 1400. He was the first poet to be buried in that portion of the Abbey now known as Poets' Corner.

CHAPTER III

FROM THE DEATH OF CHAUCER TO THE ACCESSION

OF ELIZABETH (1400-1558)

1. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

Fifteenth-century Literature. Fifteenth-century literature was strikingly inferior to that of the fourteenth. No poet appeared who showed more than occasional traces of Chaucer's professed disciples, Lydgate and Occleve, failed utterly to give evidence of profit by study of their master. Some Scotch poets, notably William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas, showed talent of a somewhat higher order; but they would scarcely deserve mention except in a rather barren period. With a single exception, Malory, no prose writer appeared who would be read with pleasure to-day; and in the case of Malory our interest is rather in his subject-matter and the use of his work by poets of later ages than in any great literary merit of his own.

A Period of Unrest. The century was marked by much unrest, yet was without any great movement or accomplishment. The insurrection of the Percies and the religious persecutions under Henry IV; the war with France, begun by Henry V, and brought to an inglorious close under Henry VI; Jack Cade's rebellion, under the last-named sovereign; the Wars of the Roses, the civil conflict which distracted the country from 1455 to 1485: - these events occupied the people with other things than literature.

War does, it is true, often bring out the best there is in a people, including fit record in prose and verse of their deeds; but England's wars and fightings in the fifteenth century were not of that sort. The Percies fought because the King did not live up to his pre-coronation promises to them; Henry V fought as a means of gaining wealth, and at the same time quieting his own dominions; the Wars of the Roses were the outcome of the disregard by Henry IV of the direct order of succession to the throne; Cade's rebellion, the result of restrictions of the franchise, was utterly lacking in heroic elements.

Importance of the Period. It must not, however, be assumed that this period is unimportant in English literature. A great number of those poems known as "popular" ballads (i.e., poems originating with the people, the folk), seem to have been committed to writing at this time, though many may have been composed earlier. An event of the greatest significance to literature took place about the middle of the century—the invention of printing from movable types. The invention reached England about a quarter of a century later; and before the year 1500 nearly 400 books had been printed. The use that subsequent writers made of Malory's great work on the legends of Arthur has been mentioned. Through the century also the drama was making slow but sure progress.

The "Popular" Ballad: (1) Definition. In taking up the ballads the first thing necessary is a definition. We are here not concerned with such poems as Tennyson's The Revenge (sub-title, "A Ballad of the Fleet "); or Kipling's Ballad of East and West; or Oliver Wendell Holmes's Ballad of the Oysterman; or any of the poems in the volume of Wordsworth and Coleridge called Lyrical Ballads. By “ballad "

in this book we mean a narrative poem of limited extent, unknown authorship, originally intended to be sung, and handed down among the folk by oral tradition. In the great collection of Professor Child are more than three hundred ballads, of which very few can be traced to a date earlier than 1400, and very few are believed to have originated after 1500.

(2) Subjects. The subjects of the ballads are as varied as the interests of the age that produced them. Many deal with the outlaws, particularly Robin Hood and his "merry men," who robbed the rich and befriended the poor. Many deal with various aspects of the supernatural; as Thomas Rymer, the hero of which was carried off by a fairy, or Kemp Owyne, telling a story of disenchantment by kissing. Great battles are the subjects of not a few, of which the most famous perhaps is The Battle of Otterburn. One of the best is Sir Patrick Spens, recounting the ready self-sacrifice of a Scotch sailor knight for his king. There is much more tragedy than comedy in the ballads, reflecting doubtless an age when love and hate were strong, when feuds were numerous, and when life was held not so dear.

(3) Style. As to style, the ballads are notably direct and simple. They often begin abruptly, apparently assuming among the auditors knowledge of events or stories unknown to-day. The narrative is often so condensed that much reading between the lines is necessary; and not seldom the ending is as abrupt as was the beginning of the story. Figures of speech are few, and the vocabulary is that of everyday conversation rather than of men of letters. Simple rhyme and stanza forms are the rule.

Still another characteristic that even the casual reader of a few ballads would observe is repetition. In all five stanzas