reading, as we know he did in the writing, of other books:--

--when thy labour done all is,
And hast y-made reckonings,
Instead of rest and newe things
Thou go'st home to thine house anon,
And there as dumb as any stone
Thou sittest at another book.

The house at home was doubtless that in Aldgate, of which the lease to
Chaucer, bearing date May, 1374, has been discovered; and to this we
may fancy Chaucer walking morning and evening from the riverside, past
the Postern Gate by the Tower. Already, however, in 1376, the routine
of his occupations appears to have been interrupted by his engagement
on some secret service under Sir John Burley; and in the following
year, and in 1378, he was repeatedly abroad in the service of the
Crown. On one of his journeys in the last-named year he was attached
in a subordinate capacity to the embassy sent to negotiate for the
marriage with the French King Charles V's daughter Mary to the young
King Richard II, who had succeeded to his grandfather in 1377,--one of
those matrimonial missions which, in the days of both Plantagenets and
Tudors, formed so large a part of the functions of European diplomacy,
and which not unfrequently, as in this case at least ultimately, came
to nothing. A later journey in May of the same year took Chaucer once
more to Italy, whither he had been sent with Sir Edward Berkeley to
treat with Bernardo Visconti, joint lord of Milan, and "scourge of
Lombardy," and Sir John Hawkwood--the former of whom finds a place in
that brief mirror of magistrates, the "Monk's Tale." It was on this
occasion that of the two persons whom, according to custom, Chaucer
appointed to appear for him in the Courts during his absence, one was
John Gower, whose name as that of the second poet of his age is
indissolubly linked with Chaucer's own.

So far, the new reign, which had opened amidst doubts and difficulties
for the country, had to the faithful servant of the dynasty brought an
increase of royal goodwill. In 1381--after the suppression of the
great rebellion of the villeins--King Richard II had married the
princess whose name for a season linked together the history of two
countries the destinies of which had before that age, as they have
since, lain far asunder. Yet both Bohemia and England, besides the
nations which received from the former the impulses communicated to it
by the latter, have reason to remember Queen Anne the learned and the
good; since to