having married the sister of Catherine Swinford, first the mistress and ultimately the wife of “time-honored Lancaster;” and the poet’s varied and uncertain career seems to have faithfully followed all the vicissitudes of John of Gaunt’s eventful life. Geoffrey Chaucer was born, as he informs us himself, in London; and for the date of an event so important to the destinies of English letters, we must fix it, on the authority of the inscription upon his tomb, as having happened in the year 1328; that is to say, at the commencement of the splendid and chivalrous reign of Edward III. The honor of having been the place of his education has been eagerly disputed by the two great and ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the former, however, of the two learned sisters having apparently the best established right to the maternity—or at least the fosterage—of so illustrious a nursling. Cambridge founds her claim upon the circumstance of Chaucer’s having subscribed one of his early works “Philogenet _of_ _Cambridge_, clerk.” He afterward returned to London, and there became a student of the law. His detestation of the monks appears, from a very curious document, to have begun even so early as his abode in the grave walls of the Temple; for we find the name of Jeffrey Chaucer inscribed in an ancient register as having been fined for the misdemeanor of beating a friar in Fleet street. The first efforts of a revival of letters will always be made in the path of translation; and to this principle Chaucer forms no exception. He was an indefatigable translator; and the whole of many—nay, a great part of _all_—his works bears unequivocal traces of the prevailing taste for imitation. How much he has improved upon his models, what new lights he has placed them in, with what skill he has infused fresh life into the dry bones of obscure authors, it will hereafter be our business to inquire. He was the poetical pupil of Gower, and, like Raphael and Shakspeare, he surpassed his master: Gower always speaks with respect of his illustrious pupil in the art of poetry; and, in his work entitled “Confessio Amantis,” places in the mouth of Venus the following elegant compliment;— And grate wel Chaucer, when ye mete, As my disciple and my poéte: For in the flowers of his youth, In sundry wise, as he well couthe, Of ditees and of songés glade The which he for my sake made, etc. These lines also prove that Chaucer began early to write; and probably our poet continued during the whole course of his eventful life, to labor assiduously in the fields of letters.