the task of writing “The Legend of Good Women” (see introductory note to that poem). About this period, too, we may place the composition of Chaucer’s A. B. C., or The Prayer of Our Lady, made at the request of the Duchess Blanche, a lady of great devoutness in her private life. She died in 1369; and Chaucer, as he had allegorised her wooing, celebrated her marriage, and aided her devotions, now lamented her death, in a poem entitled “The Book of the Duchess; or, the Death of Blanche.<3> In 1370, Chaucer was employed on the King’s service abroad; and in November 1372, by the title of “Scutifer noster” — our Esquire or Shield-bearer — he was associated with “Jacobus Pronan,” and “Johannes de Mari civis Januensis,” in a royal commission, bestowing full powers to treat with the Duke of Genoa, his Council, and State. The object of the embassy was to negotiate upon the choice of an English port at which the Genoese might form a commercial establishment; and Chaucer, having quitted England in December, visited Genoa and Florence, and returned to England before the end of November 1373 — for on that day he drew his pension from the Exchequer in person. The most interesting point connected with this Italian mission is the question, whether Chaucer visited Petrarch at Padua. That he did, is unhesitatingly affirmed by the old biographers; but the authentic notices of Chaucer during the years 1372-1373, as shown by the researches of Sir Harris Nicolas, are confined to the facts already stated; and we are left to answer the question by the probabilities of the case, and by the aid of what faint light the poet himself affords. We can scarcely fancy that Chaucer, visiting Italy for the first time, in a capacity which opened for him easy access to the great and the famous, did not embrace the chance of meeting a poet whose works he evidently knew in their native tongue, and highly esteemed. With Mr Wright, we are strongly disinclined to believe “that Chaucer did not profit by the opportunity . . . of improving his acquaintance with the poetry, if not the poets, of the country he thus visited, whose influence was now being felt on the literature of most countries of Western Europe.” That Chaucer was familiar with the Italian language appears not merely from his repeated selection as Envoy to Italian States, but by many passages in his poetry, from “The Assembly of Fowls” to “The Canterbury Tales.” In the opening of the first poem there is a striking parallel to Dante’s inscription on the gate of Hell. The first Song of Troilus, in “Troilus and Cressida”, is a nearly literal translation of Petrarch’s 88th Sonnet. In the Prologue to “The Legend of Good Women”, there is a reference to Dante which can hardly have reached the poet at second- hand. And in Chaucer’s great work — as in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and The Monk’s Tale — direct reference by name is made to Dante, “the wise poet of Florence,” “the great