Doctour of Phisike.-Temperate, cynical.

"Of his diete mesurable was he."

"His studie was but litel on the Bible."

Wif of Bathe.-Low, coarse, garrulous-the most ignorant character.

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'Bold was hire face, and fayre and rede of hew.”

"Housbondes at the chirche dore had she had five."

In felawship wel coude she laughe and carpe."

Persone.-Devout, humble, sincere-the best character.

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'But riche he was of holy thought and werk."

"He was to sinful men not dispitous,

Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne,
But in his teching discrete and benigne.
To drawen folk to heven, with fairnesse,
By good ensample, was his besinesse.”
"He waited after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne maked him no spiced conscience,
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,

He taughte, but first he folwed it himselve."

His Parson is still unmatched, though Dryden and Goldsmith have both tried their hands in emulation of him.— JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. [The Parson is thought by some to have been intended as a portraiture of Wycliffe.] Plowman.-Humble, upright.

"Living in pees, and parfite charitee."

Miller. Dishonest, treacherous.

"Wel coude he stelen corne, and tollen thries."

Manciple.-Crafty.

And yet this manciple sette hir aller cappe."

Reve.-Calculating, prudent.

"Wel coude he kepe a garner and a binne:
Ther was non auditour coude on him winne.
Wel wiste he by the drought, and by the rain,
The yielding of his seed, and of his grain."

Sompnour.-Gluttonous-most loathsome character.
"Wel loved he garlike, onions, and lekes,

And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood."

Pardonere. Most hypocritical.

“He saide, he hadde a gobbet of the seyl
Thatte seint Petre had, whan that he went
Upon the see, till Jesu Crist him hent."

Harry Baily.-Frank, honest, jolly.

"Bold of his speche, and wise and wel ytaught,
And of manhood him lacked righte naught."

He is the ancestor of a long line of descendants, including mine Host of the Garter in "The Merry Wives of Windsor."-A. W. WARD.

FAMOUS QUOTATIONS.

"For many a man so hard is of his herte,

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He may not wepe although him sore smerte."-Prologue.

'His eyen twinkeled in his hed aright,

As don the sterres in a frosty night.”—Ibid.

"Now in the crop, and now doun in the breres,

Now up, now doun, as boket in a well.”—Knightes Tale. "And eke his herte had compassion

Of wimmen, for they wepten ever in on.”—Ibid.

"For wimmen, as to speken in commune,

They folwen all the favour of fortune."-Ibid. "The reufullest of all the compagnie."-Ibid.

"The fruit of every tale is for to say;

They ete and drinke, and dance, and sing, and play."

"But highe God somtime senden can

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Man of Lawes Tale.

His grace unto a litel oxes stall."-Clerkes Tale.

'A wif is Goddes yefte veraily."-Marchantes Tale.

"I am not swiche, I mote speke as I can.”—Squieres Tale.

'In all the halle ne was ther spoke a word."—Ibid.

"As many heds, as many wittes ben."-Ibid.

'Love is a thing, as any spirit, free."-Frankeleines Tale. "Trouth is the hiest thing that man may kepe."-- Ibid.

'Evil shal he have, that evil wol deserve."-Prioresses Tale. "For certain whan that fortune list to flee,

Ther may no man of hire the cours withholde."-Monkes Tale.

Womennes conseil brought us first to wo."-Nonnes Preestes Tale.

CRITICISMS.

The English Homer.-ROGER ASCHAM.

No poetry was ever more human than Chaucer's; none ever came more frankly and genially home to men than his "Canterbury Tales." The framework which Chaucer chose—that of a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury— not only enabled him to string these tales together, but lent itself admirably to the peculiar characteristics of his poetic temper, his dramatic versatility, and the universality of his sympathy. His tales cover the whole field of mediæval poetry; the legend of the priest, the knightly romance, the wonder-tale of the traveller, the broad humor of the fabliau, allegory, and apologue--all are there. He finds a yet wider scope for his genius in the persons who tell these stories, the thirty pilgrims who start in the May morning from the Tabard, in Southwark-thirty distinct figures, representatives of every class of English society, from the noble to the ploughman. . . . It is the first time in English poetry that we are brought face to face, not with characters or allegories or reminiscences of the past, but with living and breathing men, men distinct in temper and sentiment, as in face or costume or mode of speech; and with this distinctness of each maintained throughout the story by a thousand shades of expression and action. It is the first time, too, that we meet with the dramatic power which not only creates each character, but combines it with its fellows; which not only adjusts each tale or jest to the temper of the person who utters it, but fuses all into a poetic unity. It is life in its largeness, its variety, its complexity, which surrounds us in "The Canterbury Tales." In some of the stories, indeed, which were composed, no doubt, at an earlier time, there is the tedium of the old romance or the pedantry of the schoolman; but, taken as a whole, the poem is the work not of a man of letters, but of a man of action. Chaucer has received his training from war, courts, business, travel-a training not of books, but of life. And it is life that he loves-the

delicacy of its sentiment, the breadth of its farce, its laughter and its tears, the tenderness of its Griseldas, or the Smollett-like adventures of the miller and the clerk. It is this largeness of heart, this wide tolerance, which enables him to reflect man for us as none but Shakespeare has ever reflected him, and to do this with a pathos, a shrewd sense, and kindly humor, a freshness and joyousness of feeling, that even Shakespeare has not surpassed.-JOHN RICHARD GREEN: History of the English People.

Perhaps in the entire range of ancient and modern literature there is no work that so clearly and freshly paints for future times the picture of the past; certainly no Englishman has ever approached Chaucer in the power of fixing forever the fleeting traits of his own time.-D. LAING PURVES.

Such is the power of reflection which begins to dawn, such the high art. Chaucer studies here rather than aims at amusement; he ceases to gossip, and thinks; instead of surrendering himself to the facility of flowing improvisation, he plans. Each tale is suited to the teller: the young squire relates a fantastic and Oriental history; the tipsy miller a loose and comical story; the honest clerk the touching legend of Griselda. All these tales are bound together, and that much better than by Boccaccio, by little veritable incidents, which spring from the characters of the personages, and such as we light upon in our travels. They pass judgment on the stories they listen to, declaring that there are few Griseldas in the world; laughing at the misadventures of the tricked carpenter; drawing a lesson from the moral tale. The poem is no longer, as in the contemporary literature, a mere procession, but a painting in which the contrasts are arranged, the attitudes chosen, the general effect calculated, so that it becomes life and motion; we forget ourselves at the sight, as in the case of every life-like work, and we long to get on horseback on a fine sunny morning, and canter along green meadows with the pilgrims to the shrine of the good saint of Canterbury. -H. A. TAINE.

Antiquities Associated with "The Canterbury Tales."The Tabard Inn, Southwark, from which the pilgrims set out, still exists, or at least partly so, under the name of The Talbot. This old inn is within view of London Bridge, on the left hand going thence down High Street in the borough. It is evidently the very inn which Dickens had in view when he described the one where Pickwick originally encountered Sam Weller. . . . There are life and trade here still, but the antiquity and dignity of the ancient Tabard are broken up. The frontage and about half the premises were once destroyed by fire; the remainder, occupying the lower end of the court, exists in all its antiquity. The old wooden gallery, supported on stout wooden pillars, and with a heavy wooden balustrade, is roofed over; above are steep red-tiled roofs, with dormer-windows bearing every mark of being very old. In front of this gallery hangs a large painting, long said to be a picture of the pilgrims entering Canterbury. A horseman is disappearing through the city gate-way, and others are following; but the whole is so weather-beaten that it is difficult to make out. . . . Within the gallery was a large table, said to be the one where the pilgrims were entertained. It is now divided into four bedrooms, where the guests of the inn still sleep, on the very floor occupied by the pilgrims upward of five hundred years ago.... The inn is one of the greatest antiquities and curiosities of London, so few of the like kind being spared by the fire, and still fewer by modern changes and improvements. The following inscription is still to be read upon the inn: "This is the inn where Sir Geoffrey Chaucer and his twenty-nine pilgrims lodged in their journey to Canterbury, anno 1383."

In Canterbury, also, the pilgrim's inn is said to have continued to the present time, no longer, indeed, existing as an inn, but divided into a number of private tenements in High Street. The old inn mentioned by Chaucer was called "The Checkers."... Its situation was just that which was most convenient for the pilgrims to Thomas à Becket's tomb. It was a very large inn, as was necessary