Chaucer [64]
its words express, writing, as follows:--
A thousand times I have heard men tell, That there is joy in Heaven, and pain in hell; And I accorde well that it is so But natheless, yet wot I well also, That there is none doth in this country dwell That either hath in heaven been or hell, Or any other way could of it know, But that he heard, or found it written so, For by assay may no man proof receive. But God forbid that men should not believe More things than they have ever seen with eye! Men shall not fancy everything a lie Unless themselves it see, or else it do; For, God wot, not the less a thing is true, Though every wight may not it chance to see.
The central thought of these lines, though it afterwards receives a narrower and more commonplace application, is no other than that which has been so splendidly expressed by Spenser in the couplet:--
Why then should witless man so much misween That nothing is but that which he hath seen?
The NEGATIVE result produced in Chaucer's mind by this firm but placid way of regarding matters of faith was a distrust of astrology, alchemy, and all the superstitions which in the "Parson's Tale" are noticed as condemned by the Church. This distrust on Chaucer's part requires no further illustration after what has been said elsewhere; it would have been well for his age if all its children had been as clear-sighted in these matters as he, to whom the practices connected with these delusive sciences seemed, and justly so from his point of view, not less impious than futile. His "Canon Yeoman's Tale," a story of imposture so vividly dramatic in its catastrophe as to have suggested to Ben Jonson one of the most effective passages in his comedy "The Alchemist," concludes with a moral of unmistakeable solemnity against the sinfulness, as well as uselessness, of "multiplying" (making gold by the arts of alchemy):--
--Whoso maketh God his adversary, As for to work anything in contrary Unto His will, certes ne'er shall he thrive, Though that he multiply through all his life.
But equally unmistakeable is the POSITIVE side of this frame of mind in such a passage as the following--which is one of those belonging to Chaucer himself, and not taken from his French original--in the "Man of Law's Tale." The narrator is speaking of the voyage of Constance, after her escape from the massacre in which, at a feast, all her fellow- Christians had been killed, and of how she was borne by the "wild wave" from "Surrey" (Syria) to the Northumbrian shore:--
Here men might aske, why she was not slain? Eke at the feast who might her body save? And I answere that demand again: Who saved Daniel in th' horrible cave, When every wight save him, master or knave, The lion ate--before he could depart? No wight but God, whom he bare in his heart.
"In her," he continues, "God desired to show His miraculous power, so that we should see His mighty works. For Christ, in whom we have a remedy for every ill, often by means of His own does things for ends of His own, which are obscure to the wit of man, incapable by reason of our ignorance of understanding His wise providence. But since Constance was not slain at the feast, it might be asked: who kept her from drowning in the sea? Who, then, kept Jonas in the belly of the whale, till he was spouted up at Ninive? Well do we know it was no one but He who kept the Hebrew people from drowning in the waters, and made them to pass through the sea with dry feet. Who bade the four spirits of the tempest, which have the power to trouble land and sea, north and south, and west and east, vex neither sea nor land nor the trees that grow on it? Truly these things were ordered by Him who kept this woman safe from the tempest, as well when she awoke as when she slept. But whence might this woman have meat and drink, and how could her sustenance last out to her for three years and more? Who, then, fed Saint Mary the Egyptian in the cavern or in the desert? Assuredly no one but Christ. It was a great miracle to feed five thousand folk with five loaves and two fishes;
A thousand times I have heard men tell, That there is joy in Heaven, and pain in hell; And I accorde well that it is so But natheless, yet wot I well also, That there is none doth in this country dwell That either hath in heaven been or hell, Or any other way could of it know, But that he heard, or found it written so, For by assay may no man proof receive. But God forbid that men should not believe More things than they have ever seen with eye! Men shall not fancy everything a lie Unless themselves it see, or else it do; For, God wot, not the less a thing is true, Though every wight may not it chance to see.
The central thought of these lines, though it afterwards receives a narrower and more commonplace application, is no other than that which has been so splendidly expressed by Spenser in the couplet:--
Why then should witless man so much misween That nothing is but that which he hath seen?
The NEGATIVE result produced in Chaucer's mind by this firm but placid way of regarding matters of faith was a distrust of astrology, alchemy, and all the superstitions which in the "Parson's Tale" are noticed as condemned by the Church. This distrust on Chaucer's part requires no further illustration after what has been said elsewhere; it would have been well for his age if all its children had been as clear-sighted in these matters as he, to whom the practices connected with these delusive sciences seemed, and justly so from his point of view, not less impious than futile. His "Canon Yeoman's Tale," a story of imposture so vividly dramatic in its catastrophe as to have suggested to Ben Jonson one of the most effective passages in his comedy "The Alchemist," concludes with a moral of unmistakeable solemnity against the sinfulness, as well as uselessness, of "multiplying" (making gold by the arts of alchemy):--
--Whoso maketh God his adversary, As for to work anything in contrary Unto His will, certes ne'er shall he thrive, Though that he multiply through all his life.
But equally unmistakeable is the POSITIVE side of this frame of mind in such a passage as the following--which is one of those belonging to Chaucer himself, and not taken from his French original--in the "Man of Law's Tale." The narrator is speaking of the voyage of Constance, after her escape from the massacre in which, at a feast, all her fellow- Christians had been killed, and of how she was borne by the "wild wave" from "Surrey" (Syria) to the Northumbrian shore:--
Here men might aske, why she was not slain? Eke at the feast who might her body save? And I answere that demand again: Who saved Daniel in th' horrible cave, When every wight save him, master or knave, The lion ate--before he could depart? No wight but God, whom he bare in his heart.
"In her," he continues, "God desired to show His miraculous power, so that we should see His mighty works. For Christ, in whom we have a remedy for every ill, often by means of His own does things for ends of His own, which are obscure to the wit of man, incapable by reason of our ignorance of understanding His wise providence. But since Constance was not slain at the feast, it might be asked: who kept her from drowning in the sea? Who, then, kept Jonas in the belly of the whale, till he was spouted up at Ninive? Well do we know it was no one but He who kept the Hebrew people from drowning in the waters, and made them to pass through the sea with dry feet. Who bade the four spirits of the tempest, which have the power to trouble land and sea, north and south, and west and east, vex neither sea nor land nor the trees that grow on it? Truly these things were ordered by Him who kept this woman safe from the tempest, as well when she awoke as when she slept. But whence might this woman have meat and drink, and how could her sustenance last out to her for three years and more? Who, then, fed Saint Mary the Egyptian in the cavern or in the desert? Assuredly no one but Christ. It was a great miracle to feed five thousand folk with five loaves and two fishes;