Age had bestowed on him a corpulency which made him a match for Harry Bailey himself.[558] When Henry IV. mounted the throne, within the four days that followed his accession, he doubled the pension of the poet (Oct. 3, 1399), who then hired, for two pounds thirteen shillings and four pence a year, a house in the garden of St. Mary's, Westminster. The lease is still preserved in the archives of the Abbey.[559] He passed away in the following year, in that tranquil retreat, and was interred at Westminster, not far from the sepulchres where slept his patrons, Edward III. and Richard II., in that wing of the transept which has since been called the Poets' Corner, where lately we saw Browning's coffin lowered, and where, but yesterday, Tennyson's was laid. No English poet enjoyed a fame more constantly equal to itself. In the fifteenth century writers did scarcely anything but lament and copy him: "Maister deere," said Hoccleve, O maister deere and fadir reverent, Mi maister Chaucer, flour of eloquence, Mirour of fructuous entendement, O universal fadir of science, Allas that thou thyn excellent prudence In thi bed mortel mightist noght byquethe![560] At the time of the Renaissance Caxton printed his works twice,[561] and Henry VIII. made an exception in their favour in his prohibition of "printed bokes, printed balades, ... and other fantasies."[562] Under Elizabeth, Thynne annotated them,[563] Spenser declared that he "of Tityrus," that is of Chaucer, "his songs did lere,"[564] and Sidney exalted him to the skies.[565] In the seventeenth century Dryden rejuvenates his tales, in the eighteenth century the admiration is universal, and extends to Pope and Walpole.[566] In our time the learned men of all countries have applied themselves to the task of commentating his works and of disentangling his biography, a Society has been founded to publish the best texts of his writings,[567] and but lately his "Legend of Good Women" inspired with an exquisite poem the Laureate who sleeps to-day close to the great ancestor, beneath the stones of the famous Abbey. FOOTNOTES: [448] The date 1328 has long but wrongly been believed to be the true one. The principal documents concerning Chaucer are to be found in the Appendix to his biography by Sir H. Nicolas, in "Poetical Works," ed. R. Morris, Aldine Poets, vol. i. p. 93 ff., in the "Trial Forewords," of Dr. Furnivall, 1871, and in the "Life Records of Chaucer," 1875 ff., Chaucer Society. One of the municipal ordinances meant to check the frauds of the vintners is signed by several members of the corporation, and among others by John Chaucer, 1342. See Riley, "Memorials, of London," p. 211. [449] See the view of London, painted in the fifteenth century, obviously from nature, reproduced at the beginning of this vol., from MS. Royal 16 F ii, in the British Museum, showing the Tower, the Bridge, the wharfs, Old St. Paul's, etc.