ABSTRACT
Thomas Hoccleve earned his living as a clerk in the office of the Privy Seal, but he also employed his pen in the copying of poetry, his own included. Hoccleve entirely lacked his master Chaucer’s ability to speak in voices other than his own. When Hoccleve goes on to his threnody for Chaucer, lamenting the loss of one who was a Cicero in rhetoric, an Aristotle in philosophy, and a Virgil in poetry, he is following a literary tradition already established in the vernaculars: the lament for a dead master. The question of Hoccleve’s friendship with Chaucer is not in itself very important; but Mitchell’s discussion of the matter may be taken as representative of a general approach which can be seriously disabling. Hoccleve would have every reason to know that the Lord Treasurer received quite enough straight hard-luck stories in the ordinary way of business.
