Chaucer’s ‘Complaint to his Purse’ was written, according to Mr. Furnivall, in September, 1399, when Chaucer was in distress for money, and sent to Henry IV. as a broad hint,--which was at once attended to. It is a very clever piece of versification, like the ‘Good Counsel,’ &c., each line rhyming with the corresponding line in the other verses. He addresses his hapless purse as though it were his lady-love, and comically entreats her mercy, when he sees her inclined to be ‘light.’ Mr. Furnivall’s ingenious suggestion, that Chaucer’s penury may possibly be due to his having dabbled in alchemy (an empirical branch of chemistry), is borne out by the technical knowledge displayed in the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale. We may add here--to defend our great man’s character--that alchemy was believed in by many men of exceptional mental power. Roger Bacon, discoverer of gunpowder and the magnifying glass, is perhaps the greatest name among them; and vain as seemed much of their toil with crucibles and furnaces, alembics and aludels, we owe a great deal to the first meritorious alchemists, who really paved the way to modern chemistry. There is no reason to suppose Chaucer had any vice likely to affect his pocket; but alchemy was the scientific mania of the day, and high and low were ready to risk fortune and health in pursuit of the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, the way to manufacture gold. And, at the same time, there is no other sufficient reason for the extreme poverty which the poet had fallen into. The two Roundels and the Virelai have been asserted and denied to be the work of Chaucer, but there is no clear evidence for either side. They may well be a portion of those many lost ‘ditties and songs glad’ with which Gower said ‘the land fulfilled is over all,’ written ‘in the floures of his youth.’ The second Roundel seems, on the other hand, to belong to his later life, when he so often alluded to his corpulence. As to the Virelai, this species of lyric was nery fashionable in Chaucer’s time. It is skilful work, each stanza rhyming six lines together (which I have failed to follow in the translation). Good Counsel of Chaucer. Fle fro the pres, and duelle with sothfastnesse, mob, honesty Suffice the thy good, though hit be smale, thee, it For horde hath hate, and clymbyng tikelnesse, hoards, uncertainty Pres hath envye, and wele is blent over alle. deceived everywhere Savour no more then the behove shalle; taste Rede[199] well thy self, that other folke canst rede, And trouthe the shal delyver, hit ys no drede. without fear