Here the host reminded the companions of their undertaking; and all, at his bidding, drew out slips by way of lot. Whoever had the shortest should begin. This wholesome device excluded all questions of precedence of rank among the fellow-pilgrims. The lot fell to the knight, whereat all were glad; and with the courtesy of prompt assent he began.

The knight's tale is the tale of "Palamon and Arcite," Englished by Chaucer, in spirit as well as language, from the "Teseide" of Boccaccio. The monk is asked for the next story; but the miller is drunk, and forces on his companions what he calls a noble tale. This is a coarse tale, told with vivid master-touches; and, as its jest is against a carpenter, Oswald the reeve is provoked to match it with a coarser jest against a miller. An honest warning of their nature is placed by Chaucer before these two stories, which belong to the broad view of life, but show the low animal part of it:—

"And therefore whoso list it not to hear,

Turn over the leaf, and choose another tale;
For he shall find ynow both great and smale
Of storial thing that toucheth gentilesse,
And eke morality and holiness."

In plainest words the reader is warned beforehand, by the pure-hearted poet, of the character of these two stories, in order that they may be passed over by those who would avoid their theme. The miller's tale has in its coarseness a rough moral at the close. The reeve's tale paints a form of life that we can well spare from the picture; yet it is taken from the "Decameron," and was put by Boccaccio, not, as by Chaucer, in a churl's mouth, but upon the lips of one of his fine ladies. After this, we find throughout, what we found in the knight's tale, Chaucer's sense of the pure beauty of womanhood. There is the whole range of character to be included in his picture; but on the fleshly side most natural and genial are the touches with which he gives the wife of Bath her place among the company. Chaucer began a cook's tale of a riotous apprentice, as if he meant to read a lesson to the Perkin revellers of the day; but he broke off, weary of low themes. "The Tale of Gamelyn," a bright piece of the class of poetry to which the Robin Hood ballads belong, is here placed, as a cook's tale, in Chaucer's series. It may have been among his papers; but it probably is from another hand. "The Man of Law's Tale" is of a good woman, the pious Constance, and seems to have been taken from the second book of Gower's "Confessio Amantis." "The Wife of Bath's Tale," of a knight, Florentius, who by obedience won a perfect bride, is again one of the tales of the "Confessio Amantis." "The Friar's Tale" contemns the cruel rapacity of sompnours, and "The Sompnour's Tale" scorns hypocritical rapacity in friars. "The Clerk's Tale" is the story of the patience of Griselda,

the last tale in the "Decameron," and one which Petrarch said none had been able to read without tears. Chaucer's poem is distinctly founded, not on the tale as it stands in the "Decameron," but upon Petrarch's moralized version. This we find throughout, from the form of opening down to the religious application at the end, and the citation of the general Epistle of St. James, in the stanzas beginning,—

"For sith a woman was so patiënt

Unto a mortal man, well more we ought

Receiven all in gree that God us sent."

But the poetical treatment of the story is so individual, that it all comes afresh out of the mind of Chaucer. Its pathos is heightened by the humanizing touch with which the English poet reconciles the most matter-of-fact reader to its questionable aspects. He feels that the incidents of the myth are against nature, and at every difficult turn in the story he disarms the realist with a light passage of fence, and wins to his own side the host of readers who have the common English turn for ridicule of an ideal that conflicts with reason. Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale" is that afterwards modernized by Pope in his "January and May." His "Squire's Tale" is of the Tartar Cambys Kan, or Cambuscan, of his two sons Algarsif and Camballo, and of his daughter Canace, who had a ring enabling her to hear the speech of birds, and a mirror which showed coming adversity, or falsehood in a lover. This is a tale of enchantment left unfinished, with stately promise of a sage and solemn tune, and which suggested to Milton the wish that the grave spirit of thoughtfulness would raise Musæus or Orpheus,

"Or call up him that left half told
The story of Camouscan bold;
Of Camball and of Algarsife,

And who had Canace to wife

That owned the virtuous ring and glass;
And of the wondrous horse of brass

On which the Tartar king did ride."

"The Franklin's Tale," to be found also in the "Decameron," was of a wife true of word as true of heart. The second "Nun's Tale" was of St. Cecilia, from "The Golden Legend," a treatise on church festivals, written at the end of the thirteenth contury by an archbishop of Genoa, Jacobus à Voragine, and translated into French by Jehan de Vignoy. "The Pardoner's Tale" is a lesson against riotous living. Three profligates would slay death, the slayer of the young. An old man said they would find him under an oak in the wood. They found there nearly eight bushels of gold florins. At this they rejoiced, and cast lots which of them should go to the town to fetch bread and wine while the others watched the treasure. The lot fell on the youngest. While he was gone, his comrades plotted to kill him on his return, that the gold might be divided between two only; and he himself plotted to poison two of the bottles of wine he brought, that all the gold might belong to himself

alone. So they slew him, and had short mirth afterwards over the wine he had poisoned.

"The Shipman's Tale," from the "Decameron," was of a knavish young monk. The prioress told the legend of a Christian child killed by the Jews in Asia. The child when living loved the Virgin, who appeared to it when dying and put a grain under its tongue, so that the dead child-martyr still sang, "O alma Redemptoris Mater." Until the grain was removed, the song continued. Chaucer himself began "The Rhyme of Sir Thopas," a merry burlesque upon the metrical romances of the day, ridiculing the profusion of trivial detail that impeded the progress of a story of tasteless adventures. Sir Thopas rode into a forest, where he lay down, and, as he had dreamed all night that he should have an elfqueen for his love, got on his horse again to go in search of the elfqueen; met a giant, whom he promised to kill next day, the giant throwing stones at him; and came again to town to dress himself for the adventure. The pertinacity with which the rhyme proceeds to spin and hammer out all articles of clothing and armor worn by Sir Thopas makes the host exclaim at the story-teller, "Mine earës aken for thy drasty speech," and cry, "No more!" The device, too, is ingenious, which puts the poet out of court in his own company, so far as regards the question who won the supper. His verse having been cried out upon, Chaucer answers the demand upon him for a tale in prose with "The Tale of Melibus," a moral allegory upon the duties of life. "The Monk's Tale" is of men in high estate who have fallen into hopeless adversity, a series of short "tragedies," suggested by a popular Latin prose-book of Boccaccio's on the "Falls of Illustrious Men." Among the monk's examples is that of Ugolino, whereof Chaucer writes that they who would hear it at length should go to Dante, "the gretë poete of Itaille," as he had said of any reader curious to hear more of Zenobia, "Let him unto my maister Petrarch go." The host at last stopped Piers the monk because his tales were dismal; and Sir John, the nun's priest, asked for something merry, told a tale of the Cock and the Fox, taken from the fifth chapter of the "Roman de Renart."

Thus the pilgrims made for themselves entertainment by the way till they reached Boughton-under-Blean, seven miles from Canterbury, where they were overtaken by a canon's yeoman, who was followed by his master. These had ridden after the pilgrims for three miles. They seem to have followed them from Faversham, where the canon, a ragged, joyless alchemist, who lived in a thieves' lane of the suburb, was on the watch for travellers whom he might join, and dupe with his pretensions to a power of transmuting metals. This canon, said his man, after other flourishing as herald of his master, could pave all their road to Canterbury with silver and gold. "I wonder, then," said Harry Bailly, "that your lord is so sluttish, if he can buy better clothes. His overslop is not worth a mite; it is all dirty and torn." Chaucer proceeds then skilfully to represent the gradual but quick slide of the yeoman's faith from his

master, who, when he caught up the company, found his man owning that they lived by borrowing gold of men who think that of a pound they can make two:

"Yet it is false; and ay we have good hope

It is for to doon, and after it we grope."

The canon cried at his man for a slanderer. The host bade the man tell on, and not mind his master, who then turned and fled for shame, leaving the company to be entertained with "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale," preluded with experience of alchemy.

The manciple related after this the tale, from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," of the turning of the crow from white to black for having told Apollo of the falsehood of his Coronis. There is then an indication of the time of day-four o'clock in the afternoon-before "The Parson's Tale," which evidently was meant to stand last; for it is a long and earnest sermon in prose on a text applying the parable of a pilgrimage to man's heavenward journey. The text is from Jeremiah, vi. 16, "Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls."

23. Much debate is now going on among scholars respecting the genuineness of some of the writings attributed to Chaucer. By F. J. Furnivall, for example, the genuineness of the following works is vehemently denied, "The Court of Love; "The Craft of Lovers, and Remedy of Love;""The Lamentation of Mary Magdalene;" "The Romaunt of the Rose;" "The Complaint of the Black Knight;""Chaucer's Dream; "The Flower and the Leaf; " and "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale." The argument against them is, that, in the earliest extant MSS., Chaucer is not named as their author; that they contain many violations of Chaucer's usages in rhyme; that some of them are ridiculously inferior to his certified works; and, finally, that some of them are obviously of a date later than his life. The trial of the case, however, is still in progress, and the final verdict cannot yet be rendered.

CHAPTER II.

SECOND HALF OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. CHAUCER'S LITERARY CONTEMPORARIES.

1. John Gower; his Balades; "Speculum Meditantis;” “Vox Clamantis;” “Confessio Amantis;" his Later Years; "Tripartite Chronicle."— 2. William Langland; "The Vision of Piers Ploughman;" Imitations of it.-3. John Barbour; "Bruce.”—4. Sir John Mandeville; "Travels.”—5. John Wielif.6. John Trevisa; “Translation of Higden's Polychronicon.” — 7. Ralph Strode.

1. THOUGH Chaucer had no peer in genius during his own time, there were among his contemporaries several strong men of letters, of whom three were poets, John Gower, William Langland, and John Barbour; and three were prose-writers, Sir John Mandeville, John Wiclif, and John Trevisa.

John Gower was a gentleman of Kent, close kindred to a wealthy knight, Sir Robert Gower. The date of his birth is not known; but he survived Chaucer eight years, dying, a blind old man, in the year 1408. It is likely that he was born two or three years before Chaucer. He was well educated; wrote with ease in French, Latin, and English; and used coat armor at a time when such matters had significance. We know that he had landed property in several counties, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent. Among the pleasant hills of Otford in Kent, Gower was at home in the reign of Edward III. as a country gentleman who had neither wish nor need to live at court. He wrote, in these his earlier days, verse, not merely according to the fashion of France, but in French. There remains a collection of his French exercises in love-poetry, "Balades," a form of Provençal verse not in the least related to the Northern ballad. A balade is a love-poem in three stanzas of seven or eight (usually seven) lines, and a final quatrain. Gower wrote five of his balades for those who "look for