The Portland daily press., 1895-01-17
WORKS OF cHAucER.
Professor Chapman of Bowdoin Begins an
Interesting Series of Lectures in the Cur
rent Events Club Course.

rent Events Club Course.
At the Second Advent church Wednes-
day. evening, Professor Henry l.. Chap
man of Bowdoin College, began the Cur
rent Events Club course with scholar
ly lecture on the works of the Poet
Chaucer. There was present an appre-
ciative and good-sizeds audience in spite
of the snow storm.
Chaucer has been called the first of
English poets by Southey, but this title
the lecturer questioned and went further
back by seven hundred years to the
time of the poetic Caldmon, who, in the
monastery of -Whitby, gave forth the
frst strains of poetic literature, rude
but sweet. Chaucer himself gives great
credit to the poets who preceded him,
when he speaks of himself as a CLEANER
merely, following after the reapers.
The reason we know little of the liter
allure preceding Chaucer is because they
wrote in Anglo-Saxon French or Latin.
But while Chaucer's position is mid
way in the stream of English poetry 1t
is true also that he stands at the begin
ming of distinctively new era in Ii terra
ry and social life. Tennyson speaks
affectionately of Dan Chaucer as "The
morning star of BONG. Chaucer was
original and threw aside the old models
and conventionalities to deal with the
realities of human existence. The last
half of the Fourteenth Century was the
time of great upheavals politically,
religiously and socially. 1t was the time
OF Wyckliffe when the church was at the
height of it's temporal power and at the
lowest depth of it's spiritual life. Foreign
priests and bishops overIan England.
The Pope drew out of England tribute
ive-fold greater than the revenue of the
kingdom. The church held half the
land of England and lazy and dissolute
monks fattened on the land. But there
were expressions other than religious.
The reign of Edward III. was one of the
longest and most brilliant. But in spito
of the glamour of chivalry there was I'M
der it's fair exterior cruel contempt and
oppression for the laboring man. Taxes
were exhorbitant. and the exactions OF
| church and state were exhorbitant and
| continual. Three times the Black Death
swept over the nation. taking of one
| half of it's population. The poor people
| were swept away by hundreds, and when
| the plague was over and the survivors
attempted to take advantage of the
scarcity in the labor market, an act of
Parliament decreed that they should
have the same wages as before tho
plague. Then sixty thousand men
marched up from Kent.under Wat Tyler,
to riot and murder in London. They
were finally suppressed. but the discon-
| tent remained.
William Langland, in his Piers Plow-
man, ana Wyckliffe, from the Universe
ty of Oxford, had already raised their
voices against feudal and papal oppres-
sion. Then, two years after Wyckliffe's
death, appeared the Canterbury Tales.
| In spirit these Tales place him with
Langland and Wyckliffe, in the demand
for a better order of religious and social
life.
| In poetic worth the Canterbury Tales
give their author place in literature
next to Shakespeare himself With the
gentleness of a kindly spirit, Chaucer
| condemned the abuses of his time
While a fayorite of the court, and allied
| in family to princes, Chaucer dared to
hold that "churls" as well as knights
might be gentlemen. Freedom and JUS
| tice are breathed through his works.
Yet he was a poet before he was re-
| former.
| Chaucers's service to the English
tongue was great. 1t had just taken the
| place of French in the courts of justice
and become the national speech, after
| three centuries of punishment. But
| there was needed someone to place the
| crown of beauty on its head, and the
| scepter of authority in It's hand. This
| Chaueer did. In his hands our English
language first exhi bitea the range, deli
,acy and power of which it was capable.
| Chaucer was the first English poet
near to the heart of nature, and also the
| first to STOW the dramatic sense after
| w ar5s az O. Iorjouslv deyeiODed in Shakes.