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with an offer to tell his tale, which should be about a summoner, of whom all knew no good could be said. To this the Summoner replied that he was ready for the worst, and would give as good as was sent.

The Friar's story was about a summoner who was carried off by the arch fiend. It made the member of the party at whom it was aimed more angry than he expected to be, but he asked only to be allowed to tell his tale about the friar, which he proceeded to do. After this the pilgrims seem to have halted for dinner, at Sittingbourne, forty miles from London.

After dinner, if the above supposition is correct, the Host abruptly called for a tale from the Clerk of Oxenford, who gave the story of the extravagant patience of Griselda, which was older than Boccaccio, who had recounted it. Chaucer followed a Latin version. In a few stanzas which he added, he indulged in a sly thrust at Griselda, and referred to the storied beast of mediæval times, called "Chichevache," who fed upon patient wives, of whom

1

1 The word Chichevache seems to contain a reference to the lean kine of Pharaoh, and is a corruption of the French chicheface, one whose meanness is impressed on his face. (Chiche, stingy; jace, Ince; vache, cow.)

he found so small a supply as to be usually half starved.

The tale of Griselda led the Merchant to hemoan his matrimonial infelicity, upon hearing which the Host demanded a story founded upon his experience, but he declined to probe his own sore further, and gave an account of the troubles of January and May, of which a version had long been extant in Latin. It led to a few words by the Host à-propos of bad wives, a topic upon which experience made him fluent, after which the stories ceased for the day, the party resting at Ospring, forty-six miles from London.

The next morning the Host called out the Squire, who gave the tale, a fruit of Oriental fancy, by which Milton characterizes Chaucer's genius, full of picturesque descriptions and gorgeous imagery. Mr. Skeat says that the materials for the story came from the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments" and the travels of Marco Polo. Notwithstanding that he story is, as Milton says, but "half told," and ends in the midst of a sentence, the Frank

1 The reader of the Squire's Tale who does not refer to the admira ble remarks of Mr. Skeat, in his introduction to his edition of it published by the Clarendon Press, will be the loser. All that Mr Skeat has written bears the marks of his acute and exact scholarship

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în proceeded and told how carefully he snubbed his son when he played with dice and went into low society, in order to train him in “gentilesse." "A straw for your gentilesse!" ex claimed the Host, "tell on thy tale withouten wordes mo!" With an apology for his want of polish, the Franklin told a story that he said he had derived from an ancient Breton lay. It was the fiction of the magical removal of rocks from the Armorican coast, which had been used by Boccaccio in his "Decamerone” and "Filicopo." In the midst of its low morality occurs the line so highly praised by Mr. Lowell,

"Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe.”1

The Second Nun's tale of St. Cecilia followed, but the words of connection, if ever written, have been lost. It is a translation from the "Legenda Aurea," a work written before 1300, and had evidently been prepared by Chaucer as a complete work, and long after incorporated into the Canterbury Tales. The arty was then overtaken, at Boughton-under Blean, by a Canon and his Yeoman. former was a schemer, wnose tricks his servant so circumstantially exposed that he in

Line 16,255. See My Study Windows, page 231.

The

continently left in shame. The Yeoman's tale which was then told, proved to be a vigorous satire of the alchemists, in the form of an account of the deception practiced by a false canon, not the one who had just fled.

At this point an altercation ensued between the Cook and the Manciple, in the course of which the former was thrown from his horse. He was, by dint of much tugging, reseated, after which the Manciple gave an amusing version of Ovid's story of the Crow. Chaucer seems to have forgotten that the Cook had told a tale on the first morning, or perhaps he did not count it, as it was unfinished, and asked him for another, but the man had drunk too much to be able to do anything but quarrel.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when the Manciple concluded, upon which the Host made a second demand upon the Parson, and was successful in getting a sermon. It was long enough to dismay those who had feared lest the good man should prove a Wiclifite who would sow tares in their orthodox hearts.1 It may well have been sundown before the readed "predication" was finished. It was

1 For a discussion of the question of the theological sympathies of the Parson, see Chaucer a Wiclifit, by M. H. Simon, of Schmal talden, Hesse-Carsel, published by the Chaucer Societv

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evidently intended to complete the work, but it is equally plain that all the stories were not written that were to have gone before it.

It is followed by a prayer or retraction, in which Chaucer asks his readers to pray God to have mercy on him for his sins in general, and especially for the "worldly vanities" in his books, some of which he mentions by name; and he prays himself that he may be blessed in this life and saved "at the day of doom.” The authenticity of this has been much discussed, but there appears to be no conclusive reason for rejecting it. It may well express the poet's feelings as he closed his life in the garden of St. Mary's, and if it does not, it still remains an eminently orthodox appendage to his writings, and must have been accepted as such by his first readers, who would never have thought of questioning its authenticity. Indeed, doubt was almost unknown in the fourteenth century.1

XIV. Good Counsel of Chaucer. A poem of venty-eight lines in praise of truth.

1 In all of the above remarks upon the Canterbury Tales, it has been thought best not to criticise the arrangement of them, nor their distribution through the four days, because no better scheme has yet been worked out, and this one, though not in all respects satisfactory, has a certain consistency; besides, the entire fabric is an incomplete fabic, though a wonderfully life-like and brilliant one.