ritics, were greatly needed, were eagerly
adopted, and constituted him the "well of English undefiled," as he was
called by Spenser. It is no part of our plan to consider Chaucer's
language or diction, a special study which the reader can pursue for
himself. Occleve, in his work "_De Regimine Principium"_ calls him "the
honour of English tonge," "floure of eloquence," and "universal fadir in
science," and, above all, "the firste findere of our faire language." To
Lydgate he was the "Floure of Poetes throughout all Bretaine." Measured by
our standard, he is not always musical, "and," in the language of Dryden,
"many of his verses are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a
whole one;" but he must be measured by the standards of his age, by the
judgment of his contemporaries, and by a thorough intelligence of the
language as he found it and as he left it. Edward III., a practical
reformer in many things, gave additional importance to English, by
restoring it in the courts of law, and administering justice to the people
in their own tongue. When we read of the _English_ kings of this early
period, it is curious to reflect that these monarchs, up to the time of
Edward I., spoke French as their vernacular tongue, while English had only
been the mixed, corrupted language of the lower classes, which was now
brought thus by king and poet into honorable consideration.

HIS DEATH.--Chaucer died on the 25th of October, 1400, in his little
tenement in the garden of St. Mary's Chapel, Westminster, and left his
works and his fame to an evil and unappreciative age. His monument was not
erected until one hundred and fifty-six years afterward, by Nicholas
Brigham. It stands in the "poets' corner" of Westminster Abbey, and has
been the nucleus of that gathering-place of the sacred dust which once
enclosed the great minds of England. The inscription, which justly styles
him "Anglorum vates ter maximus," is not to be entirely depended upon as
to the "annus Domini," or "tempora vitae," because of the turbulent and
destructive reigns that had intervened--evil times for literary effort,
and yet making material for literature and history, and producing that
wonderful magician, the printing-press, and paper, by means of which the
former things might be disseminated, and Chaucer brought nearer to us than
to them.

HISTORICAL FACTS.--The year before Chaucer died, Richard II. was starved
in his dungeon. Henry, the son of John of Gaunt, r