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And when next we do hear of him, he is valet de chambre in the household of Edward III. Then a few years later he married one of Queen Philippa's maids-in-waiting. Of Chaucer's life with his wife and family again we know nothing except that he had at least one son, named Lewis. We know this because he wrote a book, called A Treatise on the Astrolabe, for this little son.
Theon, a professor in the museum, wrote on the smaller astrolabe the instrument then used to measure the star orbits and on the rise of the Nile, a subject always of interest to the mathematicians of Egypt, from its importance to the husbandman.
The two strangers proved to be the Bussole and Astrolabe, which sailed from Brest in June, 1785, upon discoveries, and were commanded by Mons. de la Perouse; Mons. de L'Angle, who commanded one of the ships when they left France, had been lately, when the ships were at the Islands of Navigators, murdered, with several other officers and seamen, by the natives; who had, before that unfortunate day, always appeared to be upon the most friendly and familiar terms with them.
And they had learned from a whaler that some medals and a cross of St. Louis had been found in the hands of some savages of Louisiade and New Caledonia. Dumont d'Urville, commander of the Astrolabe, had then sailed, and two months after Dillon had left Vanikoro he put into Hobart Town.
The chief instrument was the astrolabe, which was an improvement on the primitive quadrant then in use for taking the altitude of the sun. As will be seen from the illustration, its broad principle was that of a metal circle with a graduated circumference and two arms pivoted in the centre.
Chaucer was certainly a good father, and attended as far as he could to the education of his boys. His "Astrolabe," a work on astronomy, was written for his little Lewis, who was probably his father's pet.
In the month of August, 1867, some men were engaged in cultivating a piece of ground on the rear half of lot number twelve, in the second range of the township of Ross, in the county of Renfrew, Ontario, while turning up the soil, as it is said, they came upon a queer looking instrument, which upon examination proved to be an astrolabe an instrument used in former times to mark the position of the stars, and to assist in computing latitudes, but long since gone out of use.
Judging from the chart in Freycinet's "Atlas," I should have supposed that it had been regularly fringed; but as nothing is said in the "Hydrog. TONGATABOU: In the "Atlas of the Voyage of the 'Astrolabe'," the whole south side of the island is represented as narrowly fringed by the same reef which forms an extensive platform on the northern side.
In speaking these words, he clapped his astrolabe in his case, took up his razor, and passing it over the strap which was fixed to his belt, fell to shaving me again; but all the while he was thus employed, the dog could not forbear prattling.
An astrolabe was an instrument used in astronomy to find out the distance of stars from the earth, the position of the sun and moon, the length of days, and many other things about the heavens and their bodies. Chaucer calls his book A Treatise on the Astrolabe, Bread and Milk for Children.
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