We can see this conviction of Dante's with perfect certainty when we read the _Divina Commedia_. For Dante's poetry is highly subjective; on every page his own personal thoughts and feelings are revealed quite openly. Chaucer's poetry, on the other hand, is objective; he tells us almost nothing directly about himself and what we learn of him in his writings is almost entirely by inference. Chaucer's frequent use of astrology in his poetry would make it hard to believe that he was not considerably influenced by its philosophical aspects, at least in the general way that Dante was. Part and parcel of the dramatic action in most of his poems is the idea of stellar influences. Yet we cannot assert, with the same assurance that we can say it of Dante, that Chaucer believed, even in a general way, in the influence of the stars on human life. In Dante's poetry, as we have said, the poet himself is always before us. Chaucer, with Socratic irony, always makes it plain to the reader that his attitude is purely objective, that he is only the narrator of what he has seen or dreamed, only the copyist of another's story. Even when Chaucer makes himself one of the protagonists, as in the _Hous of Fame_ and the _Canterbury Tales_, it is only that his narrative may be the more convincing. He tells a story and makes its protagonists actually live before us, as individual men and women. It is possible to imagine all of his use of astrology in his poetry not as the reflection of his own faith in its cosmic philosophy, but the expression of his genius for understanding people and truthfully describing life and character. Considerable discussion as to Chaucer's attitude towards astrology has been called forth by passages in which he speaks in words of scorn with regard to some of the practices and magic arts that were often used in connection with astrology. In the _Astrolabe_ after describing somewhat at length the favorable and unfavorable positions of planets he says: "Natheles, thise ben observauncez of iudicial matiere and rytes of payens, in which my spirit ne hath no feith, ne no knowing of hir horoscopum."[141] Again in the _Franklin's Tale_ he speaks in a similar disdainful tone of astrological magic: "He him remembred that, upon a day, At Orliens in studie a book he say Of magik naturel, which his felawe, That was that tyme a bacheler of lawe, Al were he ther to lerne another craft, Had prively upon his desk y-laft; Which book spak muchel of the operaciouns, Touchinge the eighte and twenty mansiouns That longen to the mone, and swich folye, As in our dayes is not worth a flye: For holy chirches feith in our bileve Ne suffreth noon illusion us to greve."[142] And elsewhere in the same tale he writes: "So atte laste he hath his tyme y-founde To maken his Iapes and his wreccednesse Of switch a supersticious cursednesse."[143]