by his flattery, Chanticlere stood high upon his toes, stretched his neck, held his eyes closed, and began to crow, whereupon Daun Russel by the garget (throat) hente Chanticlere and on his back toward the wood him bore. Such cry and lamentation was never made by the ladies of Troy when Pyrrhus hent King Priam by the beard, as made the hens when they beheld this sight. The noise roused the widow who owned the chickens and her daughters two; they cried, "Out! Harrow and welaway!" And after the fox they ran, as did likewise many another man and woman with a distaff in her hand. Ran cow and calf and also the very hogs. The ducks cried. The geese for fear flew over the trees. Out of the hive

came the swarm of bees. "If I were you," said Chanticlere to Daun Russel," I would say to these pursuers:

“Turneth again, ye proude cherles alle;
A verray pestilence upon you falle.
Now am I come unto this woodes syde,
Maugre your hede, the cok shal heer abyde;
I wol him ete in faith, and that anon.'

[Despite]

The fox answered: "In faith it shall be done." As soon, however, as he opened his mouth, the cock broke nimbly away, and high upon a tree he flew at once. The moral, to quote the words of the fox when he perceived that his prey had escaped, is: "God give him mischance that jangleth when he should hold peace."

Harry Bailey applauds this tale, and with it the second day ends. The third day opens with the story of the Doctor of Phisik. There is no introduction. The story is that of Virginius, which can be read in a modern form in Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome." It has a deep effect on Harry Bailey.

"Harrow!" quod he, 'by nayles and by blood.

This was a cursed thief, a fals justice.'"

The Pardoner follows, but has to stop for a glass of ale and a cake before beginning. His story tells how riotous persons were undone by their own vice. Three revellers are directed by an old man to a wood in which he tells them they will find death. They go thither intending to slay him. Instead of death they find more than eight bushels of gold florins. One of their number is sent for bread and wine, while the others guard the treasure. While he is gone, they plot his death. He, in turn, poisons two of the three

bottles of wine which he brings. Thus all meet Death, and the prophecy of the beggar is accomplished. At this point the Pardoner begins to try to sell pardons to the company, which nearly causes a riot. After order has been to some extent restored, the Wyf of Bath has her opportunity. She is probably the most remarkable character of the work. She has had five husbands and would like another. She tells all about these unfortunate gentlemen and how she got rid of them. The Pardoner has been flirting with her, but her prologue, which, quite in keeping with her character, is much longer than her story, seems to cool his ardor somewhat.

Her story is of the Knight Florentius, who was condemned to death unless he could, within a certain time, answer the question, "What do all women most desire?" He was returning to his death, when he met a horrible hag in a wood, who offered to save his life if he would marry her. He consented; she told him to answer that what women most desire is sovereignty over man; his life was saved in consequence, and he married her, though with loathing, whereupon she was transformed into a lovely maiden. Asked whether he would have her fair at night or by day, he replied that she might decide; by this proof of perfect obedience, the spell which bound her was completely broken and henceforth she was lovely both day and night.

The Summoner and Friar follow with tales intended to heap ridicule on each other. The pilgrims are now 40 miles from London and they stop for dinner. Meanwhile the Clerk is called upon, and tells the story of Patient Griselda, "The flower of wifely patience," which he professes to have learned from Petrarch. Griselda's husband pretends to kill her children and heaps all sorts of other indignities upon her, all of which she bears without complaint.

The merchant thinks Griselda is too good to be real, so he relates his own experience, and tells a story of an old man married to a young wife. With this the third day ends. They are now 46 miles from London.

In the morning, the Squyer tells the story of Cambuscan (Ghenghis Khan-1227-the terror of China), a most beautiful tale, though

unfinished.

It drew from Milton the wish that we might have

back Musæus or Orpheus, or

"him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Cambell 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."

(Il Penseroso, 109-115)

Next a rather uninteresting story from the second nun is interrupted by the appearance of a rascally alchemist and his servant. The former announces to the company that he can make gold; but Harry Bailey shrewdly asks why he doesn't get himself some decent clothes, if that is really the case. Thereupon his servant declares that the alchemist is a fraud, and tells a story of a similar deceit by a similar trickster, while his master for very shame runs away.

Everybody but the parson has now entertained the company, but he refuses to tell an idle tale, and insists on giving a long moral sermon in prose. The subject is penitence. Some critics hold that Chaucer was a Wickliffite, and that his homily was originally in defence of Wickliffe's views, but has failed to come down to us as he wrote it.

Chaucer did not invent these plots. Like Shakespeare, he originated none of them. In common with Virgil, Milton, Pope, and Tennyson, he drew without scruple from every source that he knew and all that he touched he improved. Here, indeed, is the true alchemy. A tale goes into the crucible of his genius base iron or brass; it comes forth pure gold. For those days, he was learned. With Latin, French, and Italian he was familiar. He knew Ovid and Lucan and Virgil. He pillaged from the Seven Sages and the "Disciplina Clericalis." He borrowed several tales from Boccaccio. He was indebted also, though not to any great extent, to Petrarch; and he owes to Dante obligations which, though less apparent than his obligations to those already mentioned, are far deeper and greater than they.

Of Chaucer's dialect a word must be said. The difficulties of understanding him have been much exaggerated. Matthew Arnold

says they are no greater than the difficulties of understanding Burns; and like them ought to be unhesitatingly met and overcome. The principal facts that the student should keep in mind are that many of his words still retain the French accent; that the final e is to be pronounced as a separate syllable except when it is followed by a word beginning with a vowel or the letter h; and that the past termination of the verb, "ed," is usually a separate syllable. Some traces of Anglo-Saxon grammar, like the inflections of the personal and possessive pronouns, and a few Teutonic verb forms are still retained. In spite of this, the service which Chaucer performed for the language, by harmonizing its elements and creating a uniform standard for written speech, in place of the chaos that reigned before his day, was incalculable.

Many writers have endeavored to modernize his tales, but without success. Dryden, Pope, and Wordsworth can reproduce the substance of his verse, but its charm is so subtle and evanescent that it vanishes when an attempt is made even by the most skilful and loving hands to transplant it from its quaint mediæval soil into our modern speech. Their attempts to modernize Chaucer remind one, indeed, of Emerson's experience when, charmed by the beauty of the shells on the seashore, he gathered a few of them:

"I fetched my seaborn treasures home,

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore

With the wind and the waves and the wild uproar."

In Chaucer's own day he was very popular. One of his contemporaries called him " the grete translateur." Another hailed him as the "floure of eloquence." A third gave him the epithet of "the noble rethor poete of Britayne." His works were among the first printed by Caxton. Gower, Occleve, Lydgate, and James I, to say nothing of scores of inferior writers in the generation immediately following his death, were enthusiastic disciples and at times slavish imitators of his methods. Occleve made our only portrait of him and bewailed his death in lines that ring clear with sincerity:

"O mayster dere and fadir reverent,

My mayster Chaucer, floure of eloquence,
Mirrour of fructuous entendement,

O universal fadir in science."

Posterity has regarded Chaucer with varying favor. Caxton declared him the first of English poets. Dryden called him a perpetual fountain of good sense. Spenser's " well of English undefiled" has become proverbial. Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Howitt, Warton, Waller, Akenside, Thomson, Lowell, Taine, are loud in his praise. Cowley thought he was unmusical. To Byron he seemed contemptible. Johnson grudgingly admitted his merit. But his place in literature is fixed. His fame is secure. Spenser is more richly fanciful than he, Dryden more vigorous, Pope smoother and wittier, Milton more sublime, Byron more fiercely passionate, Swinburne and Tennyson more varied and splendid in technique, Wordsworth higher and purer from a moral standpoint, Shelley and Browning fuller of the essential fire and essence of purely spiritual thingsbut none of our other poets, except Shakespeare himself, is so natural, so gay, so easy, and so thoroughly at home and in sympathy with the little things that after all go to make up the greater part of the vast majority of lives as Geoffrey Chaucer.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. What is the historic background that makes the career of Geoffrey Chaucer a plea for the affirmative upon the question, "Are periods of literary activity usually associated with periods of great political and material activity?"

2. From the standpoint of historical importance, what is the radical difference between Chaucer and his contemporaries?

3. What three national points of view played a special part in the shaping of Chaucer's mind?

4. Why is it better to overcome the difficulties of dialect and read Chaucer in the original than to read modernized versions?

5. Is the character of Chaucer revealed in his works?

6. Make a three-minute speech concerning the things that Chaucer would enjoy in our day.

7. Why should an American man or woman read Chaucer?

8. Name three romances of Chaucer other than those found in the "Canterbury Tales."

9. Name eight of the characters who went upon the Canterbury Pilgrimage. 10. Write a five-hundred-word sketch presenting the itinerary, the characters, and the stories told on the Canterbury pilgrimage.

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Suggested Readings. By all means the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," the Knight's Tale," and the Nun's Priest's Tale," all in the original, even if it seems a bit hard at first. Lowell's "Essay on Chaucer" is also too good to omit reading.