It was with this literature that Chaucer had till now been familiar, and it was this which he followed in his earlier work.  But from the time of his visits to Milan and Genoa his sympathies drew him not to the dying verse of France but to the new and mighty upgrowth of poetry in Italy.  Dante’s eagle looks at him from the sun.  “Fraunces Petrark, the laureat poete,” is to him one “whose rethorique sweete enlumyned al Itail of poetrie.”  The “Troilus” which he produced about 1382 is an enlarged English version of Boccaccio’s “Filostrato”; the Knight’s Tale, whose first draft is of the same period, bears slight traces of his Teseide.  It was indeed the “Decameron” which suggested the very form of the “Canterbury Tales,” the earliest of which, such as those of the Doctor, the Man of Law, the Clerk, the Prioress, the Franklin, and the Squire, may probably be referred like the Parliament of Foules and the House of Fame to this time of Chaucer’s life.  But even while changing, as it were, the front of English poetry Chaucer preserves his own distinct personality.  If he quizzes in the rime of Sir Thopaz the wearisome idleness of the French romance he retains all that was worth retaining of the French temper, its rapidity and agility of movement, its lightness and brilliancy of touch, its airy mockery, its gaiety and good humour, its critical coolness and self-control.  The French wit quickens in him more than in any English writer the sturdy sense and shrewdness of our national disposition, corrects its extravagance, and relieves its somewhat ponderous morality.  If on the other hand he echoes the joyous carelessness of the Italian tale, he tempers it with the English seriousness.  As he follows Boccaccio all his changes are on the side of purity; and when the Troilus of the Florentine ends with the old sneer at the changeableness of woman Chaucer bids us “look Godward,” and dwells on the unchangeableness of Heaven.

[Sidenote:  The Canterbury Tales]

The genius of Chaucer however was neither French nor Italian, whatever element it might borrow from either literature, but English to the core; and from the year 1384 all trace of foreign influence dies away.  Chaucer had now reached the climax of his poetic power.  He was a busy, practical worker, Comptroller of the Customs in 1374, of the Petty Customs in 1382, a member of the Commons in the Parliament of 1386.  The fall of the Duke of Lancaster from power may have deprived him of employment for a time, but from 1389 to 1391 he was Clerk of the Royal Works, busy with repairs and building at Westminster, Windsor, and the Tower.  His air indeed was that of a student rather than of a man of the world.  A single portrait has preserved for us his forked beard, his dark-coloured dress, the knife and pen-case at his girdle, and we may supplement this portrait by a few vivid touches of his own.  The sly, elvish face, the quick walk, the plump figure and portly waist were those of a genial and humorous man; but men jested at his silence,