ILLUSTRATIONS From the portrait by Zucchero in the National Portrait Gallery From the portrait by Jonathan Richardson in 1732, in the posses- GREAT ENGLISH WRITERS GEOFFREY CHAUCER GEOFFREY CHAUCER is rightly called the father of English poetry. There were English poets before him, but the language which they spoke and wrote needs to be studied by their descendants of to-day as if it were a foreign tongue. The great chasm of the Conquest sunders these Old English or Anglo-Saxon poets from Chaucer's time; except in scattered dialects English literature had ceased as a national institution. The period covered by Chaucer's life witnessed the birth of a new English nation and a new English language. Of this new nation Chaucer is a worthy representative, and indeed by the last years of his century he was the greatest poet in Europe; by writing in English, moreover, he established the traditions of our standard or literary speech, which has been, with few changes, the dialect of London and the Thames valley. By his persistent use of English Chaucer showed his profound appreciation of the forces which were at work about him. In 1300 French had been deliberately chosen as the language which the people at large would best understand; in 1362, when the poet was barely twenty years of age, a famous statute provided that all pleas in the courts should be carried on in English, because French was no longer known by the average client. By 1385, says a chronicler of the time, even the gentry were neglecting to teach their children French. Once more, too, national |