It was behind the bars of a gloomy window in the Tower, where "every hour appeared to be a hundred winters," that Chaucer, recent from exile, and sore from persecution, was reminded of a work popular in those days, and which had been composed in a dungeon--"The Consolations of Philosophy," by Boethius--and which he himself had formerly translated. He composed his "TESTAMENT OF LOVE," substituting for the severity of an abstract being the more genial inspiration of love itself. But the fiction was a reality, and the griefs were deeper than the fancies. In this chronicle of the heart the poet mourns over "the delicious hours he was wont to enjoy," of his "richesse," and now of his destitution--the vain regret of his abused confidence--the treachery of all that "summer-brood" who never approach the lost friend in "the winter hour" of an iron solitude. The poet energetically describes his condition; there he sate "witless, thoughtful; and sightless, looking." This work the poet has composed in prose; but in the leisure of a prison the diction became more poetical in thoughts and in words than the language at that time had yet attained to, and for those who read the black letter it still retains its impressive eloquence. But this apology which Chaucer has left of his conduct in this political transaction has incurred a fatal censure. "Never," observes Mr. Campbell, "was an obscure affair conveyed in a more obscure apology." His political integrity has been freely suspected. Chaucer has even been struck by the brilliant arrow of the Viscount de Chateaubriand. "Courtisan, Lancastrien, Wickliffist, infidèle à ses convictions, traitre à son parti, tantôt banni, tantôt voyageur, tantôt en faveur, tantôt en disgrace." No, thou eloquent Gaul! Chaucer never was out of favour, however he may have been more than once dismissed from his office; nor can we know whether the poet was ever "infidèle à ses convictions." Obscure must ever remain the tale of justification in a political transaction which terminated on the part of the apologist by revealing "disclosures for the peace of the kingdom," denied by those whom they implicated, though their truth was offered to be maintained by the accuser, in the custom of the times, by single combat; and by confessions which acknowledge errors of judgment, but not of intention; and by penitence, which, if the patriot designed what was "glorious to all the people," he should never have repented of.