assumptions
there seems nothing probable--he at all events did not wear his heart
on his sleeve, or use his poetry, allegorical or otherwise, as a
vehicle of his wishes, hopes, or fears on these heads. The true breath
of freedom could hardly be expected to blow through the precincts of a
Plantagenet court. If Chaucer could write the pretty lines in the
"Manciple's Tale" about the caged bird and its uncontrollable desire
for liberty, his contemporary Barbour could apostrophise Freedom itself
as a noble thing, in words the simple manliness of which stirs the
blood after a very different fashion. Concerning his domestic
relations, we may regard it as virtually certain that he was unhappy as
a husband, though tender and affectionate as a father. Considering how
vast a proportion of the satire of all times--but more especially that
of the Middle Ages, and in these again pre-eminently of the period of
European literature which took its tone from Jean de Meung--is directed
against woman and against married life, it would be difficult to decide
how much of the irony, sarcasm, and fun lavished by Chaucer on these
themes is due to a fashion with which he readily fell in, and how much
to the impulse of personal feeling. A perfect anthology, or perhaps
one should rather say a complete herbarium, might be collected from his
works of samples of these attacks on women. He has manifestly made a
careful study of their ways, with which he now and then betrays that
curiously intimate acquaintance to which we are accustomed in a
Richardson or a Balzac. How accurate are such incidental remarks as
this, that women are "full measurable" in such matters as sleep--not
caring for so much of it at a time as men do! How wonderfully natural
is the description of Cressid's bevy of lady-visitors, attracted by the
news that she is shortly to be surrendered to the Greeks, and of the
"nice vanity" i.e. foolish emptiness--of their consolatory gossip. "As
men see in town, and all about, that women are accustomed to visit
their friends," so a swarm of ladies came to Cressid, "and sat
themselves down, and said as I shall tell. 'I am delighted,' says one,
'that you will so soon see your father.' 'Indeed I am not so
delighted,' says another, 'for we have not seen half enough of her
since she has been at Troy.' 'I do hope,' quoth the third, 'that she
will bring us back peace with her; in which case may Almighty God guide
her on her departure.' And C