Characteristics.—The reason of the success of the Confessio Amantis was naturally the fact that it supplied a popular need. After endeavouring to ‘give an account of his stewardship’ in various ways as a moralist, the author at length found his true vocation, and this time happily in his native tongue, as a teller of stories. The rest is all machinery, sometimes poetical and interesting, sometimes tiresome and clumsy, but the stories are the main thing. The perception of the popular taste may have come to him partly through the success of Chaucer in the Legend of Good Women, and the simple but excellent narrative style which he thereupon developed must have been a new revelation of his powers to himself as well as to others. It is true that he does not altogether drop the character of the moralist, but he has definitely and publicly resigned the task of setting society generally to rights,

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He covers his retreat indeed by dwelling upon the all-pervading influence of Love in the world and the fact that all the evils of society may be said to spring from the want of it; but this is little more than a pretext. Love is the theme partly because it supplies[Pg xi] a convenient framework for the design, and partly perhaps out of deference to a royal command. There is no reason to doubt the statement in the first version of the Prologue about the meeting of the author with Richard II on the river, and that he then received suggestions for a book, which the king promised to accept and read. It may easily be supposed that Richard himself suggested love as the subject, being a matter in which, as we know from Froissart, he was apt to take delight. ‘Adont me demanda le roy de quoy il traittoit. Je luy dis, “D’amours.” De ceste response fut-il tous resjouys, et regarda dedens le livre en plusieurs lieux et y lisyB.’ It was certainly to the credit of the young king that he should have discerned literary merit in the work of the grave monitor who had so lectured him upon his duties in the Vox Clamantis, and should have had some part in encouraging him to set his hand to a more promising task; and if it be the fact that he suggested 

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