This charming little poem may almost be taken as a type of the excellencies of Chaucer. It shows us his love of nature, his vivacity, his humour. Like all that he has written, it reflects faithfully the spirit of his age, and breathes the very atmosphere of chivalry.
Chaucer was no doubt strongly influenced by the French Trouvères. Though first amongst the great English poets, he was an outcome of the poetic movement which had been going on for two centuries in the south of France and in Italy. He was the English representative of the great burst of mediæval poetry, but came late in its development, and originated no great movement in England. He had some few successors and imitators; but after his death there is no great name in English literature till the revival of letters under the Tudors.
It is not difficult to see how French influences were brought to bear upon Chaucer. In those days there was constant intercourse between France and England. Chaucer himself went to France, as we have seen, with the royal army, in 1359, and remained there a year, till he was ransomed by Edward III. He also later on in his life visited Italy, and was intimately acquainted with the writings of Bocaccio and Petrarch, from whom he borrowed largely. But it was from the French Trouvères that he received his great impulse; he belonged to their school, and adopted their form and imagery. One of his first works was a translation of the _Romance of the Rose_. Yet he was no imitator. He was inspired by the spirit of the Trouvères, but every thing he did is stamped with his own strong individuality, and has a decidedly English character. His greatest work, the _Canterbury Tales_, is most distinctively English.
He wrote another poem on the occasion of the death of the Duchess Blanche, in 1369, called the _Book of the Duchess_, in which he expresses the grief of the Duke of Lancaster. The setting of this poem is again quite in the character of the Trouvères. He employs his favourite machinery of a dream, which opens with the singing of birds on a May morning as
"They sat along Upon my chamber roof without, Upon the tiles over all about, And songen everych in his wise The mosté solemné servise By note that ever man I trow Had heard."