PROSE FRAGMENTS. ON HIS PICTURE OF THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS. THE time chosen is early morning before sunrise, when the jolly company are leaving the Tabarde Inn. The Knight and Squire with the Squire's yoeman lead the Procession; next follow the youthful Abbess, her nun, and three priests ;-her greyhounds attend her Of small hounds had she, that she feed With roast flesh, milk, and wastel bread. Next follow the Friar and Monk, and then the Tapiser, the Pardoner, and the Sompnour and Manciple. After this 'Our Host,' who occupies the centre of the cavalcade, and directs them to the Knight, as the person who would be likely to commence their task of each telling a tale in their order. After the Host follows the Shipman, the Haberdasher, the Dyer, the Franklin, the Physician, the Ploughman, the Lawyer, the Poor Parson, the Merchant, the Wife of Bath, the Miller, the Cook, the Oxford Scholar, Chaucer himself; and the Reeve comes as Chaucer has described: 'And ever he rode hindermost of the rout.' These last are issuing from the gateway of the Inn; the Cook and the Wife of Bath are both taking their morning's draught of comfort. Spectators stand at the gateway of the Inn, and are composed of an old Man, a Woman, and a Child. The Landscape is an eastward view of the country from the Tabarde Inn, in Southwark, as it may be supposed to have appeared in Chaucer's time; interspersed with cottages and villages. The first beams of the sun are seen above the horizon; some buildings and spires indicate the position of the Great City. The Inn is a Gothic building which Thynne in his Glossary says was the lodging of the Abbot of Hyde by Winchester. On the Inn is inscribed its title, and a proper advantage is taken of this circumstance to describe the subject of the picture. The words written over the gateway of the Inn are as follows: 'The Tabarde Inn, by Henry Baillie, the lodgynge house for Pilgrims who journey to St. Thomas' Shrine at Canterbury.' The characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations. As one age falls another rises different to mortal sight, but to immortals only the same; for we see the same characters repeated again and again, in animals, vegetables, minerals, and in men. Nothing new occurs in identical existence; accident ever varies. Substance can never suffer change or decay. Of Chaucer's characters as described in his Canterbury Tales some of the names or titles are altered by time, but the characters themselves ever remain unaltered; and consequently they are the physiognomies or lineaments of universal human life beyond which Nature never steps. Names alter; things never alter. I have known multitudes of those who would have been monks in the age of monkery, and who in this deistical age are deists. As Newton numbered the stars, and as Linneus has numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes of men. The painter has consequently varied the heads and forms of his personages into all Nature's varieties. The horses he has also varied to accord to their riders; the costume is correct according to authentic monuments. The Knight and the Squire and the Squire's Yeoman lead the procession, as Chaucer has also placed them first in his prologue. The Knight is a true hero, a good, great, and wise man; his whole-length portrait on horseback as written by Chaucer cannot be surpassed. He has spent life in the field, has ever been a conqueror, and is that species of character which in every |