the poet's sympathy with his struggle against the opponents
of the royal policy, which was a thoroughly autocratical one.
Considering the nature of the relations between the pair, nothing could
be more unlikely than that Chaucer should have taken upon himself to
exhort his sovereign and patron to steadfastness of political conduct.
And in truth, though the loyal tone of this address is (as already
observed) unmistakeable enough, there is little difficulty in
accounting for the mixture of commonplace reflexions and of admonitions
to the king, to persist in a spirited domestic policy. He is to

"Dread God, do law, love truth and worthiness,"

and wed his people--not himself--"again to steadfastness." However,
even a quasi-political poem of this description, whatever element of
implied flattery it may contain, offers pleasanter reading than those
least attractive of all occasional poems, of which the burden is a cry
for money. The "Envoy to Scogan" has been diversely dated, and
diversely interpreted. The reference in these lines to a deluge of
pestilence, clearly means, not a pestilence produced by heavy rains,
but heavy rains which might be expected to produce a pestilence. The
primary purpose of the epistle admits of no doubt, though it is only
revealed in the postscript. After bantering his friend on account of
his faint-heartedness in love:--

"Because thy lady saw not thy distress,
Therefore thou gavest her up at Michaelmas--"

Chaucer ends by entreating him to further his claims upon the royal
munificence. Of this friend, Henry Scogan, a tradition repeated by Ben
Jonson averred that he was a fine gentleman and Master of Arts of Henry
IV's time, who was regarded and rewarded for his Court "disguisings"
and "writings in ballad-royal." He is therefore appropriately
apostrophised by Chaucer as kneeling

--at the streames head
Of grace, of all honour and worthiness,

and reminded that his friend is at the other end of the current. The
weariness of tone, natural under the circumstances, obscures whatever
humour the poem possesses.

Very possibly the lines to Scogan were written not before, but
immediately after, the accession of Henry IV. In that case they belong
to about the same date as the wellknown and very plainspoken "Complaint
of Chaucer to his Purse," addressed by him to the new Sovereign without
loss of time, if not indeed, as it would be hardly uncharitable to
suppose, prepared befor