" Another proof of Chaucer's good
birth and fortune would he found in the statement that, after his
University career was completed, he entered the Inner Temple -
- the expenses of which could be borne only by men of noble
and opulent families; but although there is a story that he was
once fined two shillings for thrashing a Franciscan friar in Fleet
Street, we have no direct authority for believing that the poet
devoted himself to the uncongenial study of the law. No special
display of knowledge on that subject appears in his works; yet
in the sketch of the Manciple, in the Prologue to the Canterbury
Tales, may be found indications of his familiarity with the
internal economy of the Inns of Court; while numerous legal
phrases and references hint that his comprehensive information
was not at fault on legal matters. Leland says that he quitted the
University "a ready logician, a smooth rhetorician, a pleasant
poet, a grave philosopher, an ingenious mathematician, and a
holy divine;" and by all accounts, when Geoffrey Chaucer
comes before us authentically for the first time, at the age of
thirty-one, he was possessed of knowledge and
accomplishments far beyond the common standard of his day.
Chaucer at this period possessed also other qualities fitted to
recommend him to favour in a Court like that of Edward III.
Urry describes him, on the authority of a portrait, as being then
"of a fair beautiful complexion, his lips red and full, his size of a
just medium, and his port and air graceful and majestic.
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