The scheme of the poem is simple, the idea is borrowed from French laments, and whole passages are translated from de Machault's _Le Dit de la Fontaine Amoureuse_ and _Remède de la Fortune_, but through all the stiffness and conventionality, all the obvious immaturity, there flash unmistakable signs of vigorous and original genius. Every poet of the day finds himself wandering in a forest, but Chaucer alone meets A whelp that fauned me as I stood, That hadde y-followed, and coude no good, Hit com and creep to me as lowe, Right as hit hadde me y-knowe, Hild doun his heed and joyned his eres And leyde al smothe doun his heres; or notices with tender amusement the many squirelles, that sete Ful hye upon the trees, and ete, And in hir maner made festes. The praises of many fair ladies were sung by troubadour and minstrel, but it would be hard to find another heroine possessed of the gaiety and vigour and charm of Blanche:-- I saw hir daunce so comlily Carole and singe so swetely, Laughe and pleye so womanly, And loke so debonairly, So goodly speke and so frendly, That certes I trow that evermore Nas seyn so blisful a tresore * * * * Therewith hir liste so wel to live, That dulnesse was of hir a-drad. Already Chaucer shows that truth to life, that impatience of artificiality which are to become two of his most striking characteristics. A number of experiments in verse follow. Chaucer had a habit of rough-casting a poem, then leaving it for some time, and eventually using it in a more or less modified form in some later work. The story of _Ceys and Alcioun_, which forms part of the introduction to the _Book of the Duchesse_, originally appears to have been written as a separate poem, and between 1369 and 1379 we find no fewer than seven works, in prose and poetry, which were afterwards embodied in the _Canterbury Tales_: the _Lyf of St. Cecyle_ (afterwards used for the _Second Nonnes Tale_); parts of the _Monkes Tale_; the greater part of the _Clerkes Tale_; _Palamon and Arcite_ (which forms the basis of the _Knightes Tale_); the _Tale of Melibeus_; the _Persones Tale_; and the _Man of Lawe's Tale_. In addition to these come the _Compleint to his Lady_; _An Amorous Compleint_; _Womanly Noblesse_; _Compleint unto Pitè_; _Anelida and Arcite_ (containing ten stanzas from Palamon); _Of the Wretched Engendring of Mankind_ (a prose translation of Innocent III's _De Miseria Humanæ Conditionis_, of which the title alone remains, though fragments of it are used in the _Man of Lawe's Tale_); a translation of Boëthius's _Consolations of Philosophy_; the _Complaint of Mars_; _Troilus and Criseyde_; _Wordes to Adam Scriveyn_; _The Former Age_; _Fortune_. Apart from _Troilus and Criseyde_ and the poems afterwards used in the _Canterbury Tales_, none of these works are of any great importance in themselves, but in them we see a steady development in technical skill.