was somewhat advanced in years. He was indebted in a great measure for their general arrangement, and in many instances for the design of the tales themselves; but the personages of his pilgrims and the circumstances of their journey are essentially his own, and some of their stories appear to be wholly original.

Boccacio in his Decameron had imagined the assembly of ten young persons at a country house, when the plague in Florence began to abate, and every day each narrated some story for their common amusement. Chaucer collected at the Tabard Inn in Southwark a company of pilgrims about to journey to the shrine of the Martyr Becket, at Canterbury; when, to enliven the way, it was agreed that each should tell at least one tale in going and another in returning; and that he who told the best should be treated by the others with a supper on again reaching the Inn where they first assembled. It appears that the poet intended to describe their journey " and all the remenent of their pilgrimage; " but the undertaking was extensive, and more than one half the tales are wanting.

The pilgrims are persons of different rank and station. There is the knighte, the millere, the reve, the coke, the sergeant of the lawe, the wif of Bathe, the frere 'wanton and merrie,' the soumpnoure, the clerk of Oxenford, who rode_a a horselene as is a rake,' and

C

Not a word spake he more than there was nede,
And that was said in forme and reverence,
And short and quike, and ful of high sentence;
Souning in moral vertue was his speche,

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

the marchante, the yonge squire, the frankeleine, the doctoure, the pardonere, the shipmanne, the prioress and her attendant nonnes, our author, the monk, the yeman, the manciple, and the poor parsone of a toun,

But riche he was of holy thought and werk.

The tales of all these persons are preserved. There were also a haberdasher, carpenter, webbe, deyer, and tapiser,

(Alle yclothed in o livere

Of a solempne and grete fraternite.)

together with a plowman, whose tales do not appear, although some of them have been supplied by an inferior author. All these characters are described in the prologue with a truth and humor that at once carry us back to the times of the poet, and call up the beings by whom he was surrounded in real and substantial form before our eyes. They are not mere images dressed up for the occasion, and brought forward to display their inanimation, but living flesh and blood-our actual ancestors as they existed in those times, before the refinements of society had tempered their rough virtues, or subdued their

natures.

I will quote two characters :-that of the yeoman who accompanied the squire, a genuine picture of the sturdy countryman equipped for an expedition; and that of the prioress, a prim and courtly personage, with an affectation of genteel manners and stately dignity.

? A saint who presided over the weather, the patron of field sports.
Her ¶ Seinte Loi, i. e. Saint Louis. ** Neatly.

accomplishment of much moment by the by in those days, when the banquets of our ancestors had more materielle and less elegance than the feasts of modern times—we are next told of the sentimentality of her disposition, her dress and personal appearance.

But for to speken of hire conscience,
She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous
Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde.
Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde
With rosted flesh, and milke, and wastel brede,
But sore wept she if on of hem were dede,
Or if men smote it with a yerde* smert:
And all was conscience, and tendre herte.

Full semely hire wimple ypinched was,
Hire nose tretis,+ hire eyen grey as glas;
Hire mouth full smale, and therto soft and red;

But sikerly she hadde a fayre forehed;

It was almost a spanne brode I trowe,

For hardily she was not undergrowe.

Ful fetise was hire cloke, as I was ware.
Of smale corall about hire arm she bare
A pair of bedes gauded all with grene,
And thereon heng a broche of gold ful shene,
On whiche was first ywritten a crouned ‘A,'
And after,' Amor vincit omnia.'

Another Nonne also with hire had she

That was hire chapelleine, and Preestes thre.

The knight's tale, § one of the best sustained and most

* Stick.

+ Long and well proportioned.

In soothe.

? Dryden's Palemon and Arcite, the glorious paraphrase of this tale, is familiar to every one. Warton calls it "the most animated and harmonious

piece of versification in the English language."

lofty in action and gorgeous in description, appears to have been imitated from Boccacio's Theseid; but the groundwork of some of the descriptions may be found. in the Thebaid of Statius. The squire's tale is a

The

mixture of Arabian fiction and Gothic chivalry. frankelein's is founded on the miracles of natural magic. The clerk of Oxenford tells the story of Patient Grisilde, premising that he learnt it from Petrarch, at Padua.*

The tales narrated by the nonne's preeste,† the merchant, and the wife of Bath, have been modernised by Dryden and Pope; but they are surpassed in breadth and humor by the stories of the miller and the reve, which however have a grossness of plot offensive to modern taste. The soumpnour presents us with a lively satire on the tricks and impositions of the mendicant friars; and Chaucer, in his own person, with great gravity pours forth the mock heroic Rime of Sire Thopas.

The Canterbury Tales were printed by William Caxton, the first English printer, about the year 1476, and again in 1491; and by Pynson in 1493 and 1526;

*I wol you tell a Tale which that I
Learned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,
As preved by his wordes and his werk:
He is now ded and nailed in his cheste,
I pray to God so yeve his soule reste.
Fraunceis Petrark, the Laureat poete,
Highte this clerk, whos rhetorike swete
Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie.

Prologue to the Clerk's Tale.

But the tale, which is Boccacio's, is the last in the Decameron. Petrarch translated it into Latin.

+ See Dryden's Fables, the Cock and the Fox.

See Pope's January and May.