identified, but Up-and-Down means Hill, and Babb's Hill, near Canterbury, is possibly the place where the Manciple began the tale which should be immediately preceded by the Canon's Yeoman's.

The Manciple's Tale is from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," (Bk. II., lines 534-50), of the crow that was white being turned black for telling Apollo of the falsehood of his Coronis. Chaucer calls the wife's lover her leman, then accounted a rude name, and applied only to the lower classes; but he justifies use of the rougher word :

"The wisé Plato saith, as ye may rede,

The word mot neede accordé with the dede;

and declares that between a wife of high degree who misconducts herself and a poor wench there is no difference:

"And, God it wot, my goodé lievé brother,

Men layn that oon as lowe as lyth that other."

The crow's punishment suggests also much moralising on restraint in which the tongue ought to be kept.

After the Manciple's Tale we have again an astronomical indication of the time, and an hour named, which was perhaps four o'clock in the afternoon.* The Host says to the poor Parson that every man else hath told

*Of this Sir Harris Nicolas says: "In the Parson's prologue, which introduces the last tale upon the journey to Canterbury, Chaucer has again pointed out to us the time of day, but the hour of the clock is very differently represented in the MSS. In some it is ten, in others two, in most of the best MSS. four, and in one five. According to the phenomena here mentioned, the sun being 29° high, and the length of the shadow to the projecting body as 11 to 6, it was between four and five. As by this reckoning there were at least three hours left to sunset, one does not well see with what propriety the Host admonishes the Parson to haste him because the sonne wol adoune,' and to be 'fructuous in litel space;' and, indeed, the Parson, knowing probably how much time he had good, seems to have paid not the least regard to his admonition; for his tale, if it may so be called, is twice as long as any of the others."

his tale (not tales; the scheme of two stories from each pilgrim each way being now clearly abandoned), and he must now tell them a fable. He will tell no fable, he says, for why should he sow chaff when he can sow wheat; but he would willingly give them pleasure, and he will tell them a merry tale in prose—

"To knyt up al this fest, and make an ende;

And Jhesu for his gracé wit me sende

To schewé yow the way, in this viege,
Of thilké parfyt glorious pilgrimage
That hatte Ierusalem celestial."

The Parson's Tale is, in fact, 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 the 6th chapter of Jeremiah, v. 16: "Stand ye in the old 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." Its essential theme is Penitence. It has been argued by H. Simon, of Schmalkalden, that Chaucer was a Wycliffite, and that the Wycliffite character of the Parson's Tale was obscured by large interpolations of matter touching the seven deadly sins taken from the "Sermone de Vices et de Vertus" of Frère Lorens, which had been formerly reproduced by Dan Michel in his "Ayenbite of Inwit." Dr. Wilhelm Eilers has worked out this argument by reference to texts, showing large interpolations of orthodoxy, soon after Chaucer's death, enlarging a short treatise on Penitence shaped to the mind of Wyclif.* A fabulous "recantation" that is added partly justifies this view, and I agree in belief that the Parson's Tale is longer than Chaucer made it.

The Spirit of
Chaucer.

What need I say more of Chaucer? When he planned this close to the incomplete first part of his great enterprise, he must have felt that his own pilgrimage of life was near its end; and when he laid down his pen at the last words of the Parson's Tale, to thilke life he us bring that bought us with his precious blood, Amen," it was a prayer for himself, the Amen to his

See Nos. IX. and XVI. of the Chaucer Society's Essays on Chaucer.

own life's work. So shrewd, so simple of cheer, genial and joyous as he was, rich in true humour and wit unattainable by triflers, we have seen how small a part of the great poet was the sprinkling of a form of jest now obsolete. England herself shall have become obsolete when the source of her strength, in that spirit which gave life to the works of Chaucer, has passed out of date. For there, as we have seen, lies under all the daily cheerfulness of life, a child-like trust in God, a manly conflict against wrong and corruption, reverence for the simple home virtues that made Alcestis; the ideal wife, Queen of Love under Venus, with the modest daisy for her flower; strength of shrewd sense; book-study that does not kill knowledge of the world; kindly and just perception of the characters of men; goodhumour, making a clear atmosphere about realities of life, that all have God's will written on some part of them, and tell a man his duty.