The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland

red him the name of a traytor; but the king, who regarded him as one beloved by his grandfather, was pleased to pardon him. Thus fallen from a heighth of greatness, our poet retired to bemoan the fickleness of fortune, and then wrote his Testament of Love, in which are many pathetic exclamations concerning the vicissitude of human things, which he then bitterly experienced. But as he had formerly been the favourite of fortune, when dignities were multiplied thick upon him, so his miseries now succeeded with an equal swiftness; he was not only discarded by his majesty, unpensioned, and abandoned, but he lost the favour of the duke of Lancaster, as the influence of his wife's sister with that prince was now much lessened. The duke being dejected with the troubles in which he was involved, began to reflect on his vicious course of life, and particularly his keeping that lady as his concubine; which produced a resolution of putting her out of his house, and he made a vow to that purpose. Chaucer, thus reduced, an