her (Pandarus) observes, that the
harm which is in this world springs as often from folly as from malice.
But a deeper feeling animates the lament of the "good Alceste," in the
Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women," that among men the betrayal of
women is now "held a game." So indisputably it was already often
esteemed, in too close an accordance with examples set in the highest
places in the land. If we are to credit an old tradition, a poem in
which Chaucer narrates the amours of Mars and Venus was written by him
at the request of John of Gaunt, to celebrate the adultery of the
duke's sister-in-law with a nobleman, to whom the injured kinsman
afterwards married one of his own daughters! But nowhere was the
deterioration of sentiment on this head more strongly typified than in
Edward III himself. The King, who (if the pleasing tale be true which
gave rise to some beautiful scenes in an old English drama) had in his
early days royally renounced an unlawful passion for the fair Countess
of Salisbury, came to be accused of at once violating his conjugal duty
and neglecting his military glory for the sake of strange women's
charms. The founder of the Order of the Garter--the device of which
enjoined purity even of thought as a principle of conduct--died in the
hands of a rapacious courtesan. Thus, in England, as in France, the
ascendancy is gained by ignobler views concerning the relation between
the sexes,--a relation to which the whole system of chivalry owed a
great part of its vitality, and on the view of which prevailing in the
most influential class of any nation, the social health of that nation
must inevitably in no small measure depend. Meanwhile, the
artificialities by means of which in France, up to the beginning of the
fifteenth century, it was sought to keep alive an organised system of
sentimentality in the social dealings between gentlemen and ladies,
likewise found admission in England, but only in a modified degree.
Here the fashion in question asserted itself only, or chiefly, in our
poetic literature, and in the adoption by it of such fancies as the
praise and worship of the daisy, with which we meet in the Prologue to
Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women," and in the "Flower and the Leaf," a
most pleasing poem (suggested by a French model), which it is
unfortunately no longer possible to number among his genuine works.
The poem of the "Court of Love," which was likewise long erroneously
attributed to h