By his Travel also in France and Flanders, where he spent much time in his young years, but more in the latter end of the Reign of King Richard the Second; he attained to a great perfection in all kind of Learning, as Bale and Leland report of him:  Circa postremos Richardi Secundi annos, Galliis floruit, magnamque illic ex assidua in Literis exercitatione gloriam sibi comparavit.  Domum reversus Forum Londinense; _& Collegia_ Leguleiorum, qui ibidem Patria Jura interpretantur frequentavit, &c.  About the latter end of King Richard the Second’s Days, he flourished in France, and got himself into high esteem there by his diligent exercise in Learning:  After his return home, he frequented the Court at London, and the Colledges of the Lawyers, which there interpreted the Laws of the Land.  Amongst whom was John Gower, his great familiar Friend, whose Life we wrote before.  This Gower, in his Book entituled Confessio Amantis, termeth Chaucer a worthy Poet, and maketh him as it were the Judge of his Works.

This our Chaucer had always an earnest desire to enrich and beautifie our English Tongue, which in those days was very rude and barren; and this he did, following the example of Dantes and Petrarch. who had done the same for the Italian Tongue, Alanus for the French, and Johannes Mea for the Spanish:  Neither was Chaucer inferior to any of them in the performance hereof; and England in this respect is much beholding to him; as Leland well noteth: 

  Anglia Chaucerum veneratur nostra Poetam;
  Cui veneris debet Patria Lingua suas.

  Our England honoureth Chaucer Poet, as principal;
  To whom her Country-Tongue doth owe her Beauties all.

He departed out of this world the 25th. day of October 1400, after he had lived about seventy two years.  Thus writeth Bale out of Leland, Chaucerus ad Canos devenit, sensitque Senectutem morbum esse; _& dum Causas suas_ Londini curaret, &c. Chaucer lived till he was an old man, and found old Age to be grievous; and whilst he followed his Causes at London, he died, and was buried at Westminster.

The old Verses which were written on his Grave at the first, were these;

  Galfridus Chaucer, Vates & Fama Poesis,
  Maternae haec sacra sum tumulatus humo.

Thomas Occleue, or Okelefe, of the Office of the Privy Seal, sometime Chaucer’s Scholar, for the love he bore to the said Geoffrey his Master, caused his Picture to be truly drawn in his Book, De Regimine Principis, dedicated to Henry the Fifth; according to which, that his Picture drawn upon his Monument was made, as also the Monument it self, at the Cost and Charges of Nicolas Brigham Gentleman, Anno 1555. who buried his Daughter Rachel, a Child of four years of Age, near to the Tomb of this old Poet, the 21th. of June 1557.  Such was his Love to the Muses; and on his Tomb these Verses were inscribed: