Chaucer Author:Alfred William Pollard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the chief literary influences which swayed his career as a poet is based upon the industry of the scholars who have tracked to their sources the references, quot... more »ations, and parallels which they found in his works, and have thus enabled us to identify the books which he had read, so we may fairly conclude, with the greatest interest. Both in the one field and in the other fresh discoveries may yet be made, but we have good reason to be grateful for what has already been done. The prosaic realities of Chaucer's life are ten times more varied and interesting than the career which Leland provided for him; and if he was by no means so " acute" a "logician," so "profound" a "philosopher," or so "able" a "mathematician" as Leland would have us believe, abundant proof has been obtained of both the width and the wisdom of his reading. When we remember the costliness of books in the fourteenth century, we may well rejoice that Chaucer was lucky enough to obtain so many that were really useful to the development of his genius. CHAPTER III THE CONTENTS AND ORDER OF CHAUCER'S WRITINGS § 34. Early Printed Editions of Chaucer.—In the days when all books were in manuscript it was only very rarely indeed that the writings of an author were collected into a single volume, or set of volumes, and labelled his " Works." No such manuscript of Chaucer is known to exist, and when William Caxton, with wise promptitude, probably the year after he set up his press at Westminster, began to print Chaucer's writings, he issued those he was able toobtain in at least six different volumes. To his edition of the Book of Fame Caxton added a commendation of the poem and its author, which shows the estimation in which Chaucer was held towards the close of the first century after his death. " For he touch...« less