ON READING CHAUCER.  The difficulties of reading Chaucer are more apparent than real, being due largely to obsolete spelling, and there is small necessity for using any modern versions of the poet’s work, which seem to miss the quiet charm and dry humor of the original.  If the reader will observe the following general rules (which of necessity ignore many differences in pronunciation of fourteenth-century English), he may, in an hour or two, learn to read Chaucer almost as easily as Shakespeare:  (1) Get the lilt of the lines, and let the meter itself decide how final syllables are to be pronounced.  Remember that Chaucer is among the most musical of poets, and that there is melody in nearly every line.  If the verse seems rough, it is because we do not read it correctly. (2) Vowels in Chaucer have much the same value as in modern German; consonants are practically the same as in modern English. (3) Pronounce aloud any strange-looking words.  Where the eye fails, the ear will often recognize the meaning.  If eye and ear both fail, then consult the glossary found in every good edition of the poet’s works. (4) Final e is usually sounded (like a in Virginia) except where the following word begins with a vowel or with h.  In the latter case the final syllable of one word and the first of the word following are run together, as in reading Virgil.  At the end of a line the e, if lightly pronounced, adds melody to the verse.[70]

In dealing with Chaucer’s masterpiece, the reader is urged to read widely at first, for the simple pleasure of the stories, and to remember that poetry and romance are more interesting and important than Middle English.  When we like and appreciate Chaucer—­his poetry, his humor, his good stories, his kind heart—–­it will be time enough to study his language.

LIFE OF CHAUCER.  For our convenience the life of Chaucer is divided into three periods.  The first, of thirty years, includes his youth and early manhood, in which time he was influenced almost exclusively by French literary models.  The second period, of fifteen years, covers Chaucer’s active life as diplomat and man of affairs; and in this the Italian influence seems stronger than the French.  The third, of fifteen years, generally known as the English period, is the time of Chaucer’s richest development.  He lives at home, observes life closely but kindly, and while the French influence is still strong, as shown in the Canterbury Tales, he seems to grow more independent of foreign models and is dominated chiefly by the vigorous life of his own English people.

Chaucer’s boyhood was spent in London, on Thames Street near the river, where the world’s commerce was continually coming and going.  There he saw daily the shipman of the Canterbury Tales just home in his good ship Maudelayne, with the fascination of unknown lands in his clothes and conversation.  Of his education we know nothing, except that he was a great reader.  His father was a wine merchant, purveyor to the royal household, and from this accidental relation between trade and royalty may have arisen the fact that at seventeen years Chaucer was made page to the Princess Elizabeth.  This was the beginning of his connection with the brilliant court, which in the next forty years, under three kings, he was to know so intimately.