But Chaucer was the ideal book-lover: knowing Dante,
Boccaccio, and in some degree "Franceys Petrark, the
laureat poete," who "enlumined al Itaille of poetry," Virgil,
Cicero, Seneca, Ovid--his favourite author--and Boethius;
as well as Guido delle Colonne's prose epic of the story of
Troy, the poems of Guillaume de Machaut, the Roman de
la Rose, and a work on the astrolabe by Messahala.[1] We
have some excellent pictures of Chaucer's habit of reading.
When his day's work is done he goes home and buries
himself with his books--
"Domb as any stoon,
Thou sittest at another boke,
Til fully daswed is thy loke."[2]
[1] Skeat's Chaucer, vi. 381.
[2] Hous of Fame, Works, iii. bk. ii. l. 656-58.
In the Parliament of Fowls he tells us that he read books
often for instruction and pleasure, and the coming on of
night alone would force him to put away his book. He
would not have been a true reader had he not developed
the habit of reading in bed.
". . . Whan I saw I might not slepe,
Til now late, this other night,
Upon my bedde I sat upright
And bad oon reche me a book,
A romance, and he hit me took
To rede and dryve the night away;
.
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