r Elizabeth's time, when voluptuousness and folly began to be
accounted beautiful.

Her companion and her three Priests were no doubt all perfectly
delineated in those parts of Chaucer's work which are now lost; we
ought to suppose them suitable attendants on rank and fashion.

The Monk follows these with the Friar. The Painter has also grouped
with these the Pardoner and the Sompnour and the Manciple, and has
here also introduced one of the rich citizens of London--characters
likely to ride in company, all being above the common rank in life, or
attendants on those who were so.

For the Monk is described by Chaucer, as a man of the first rank in
society, noble, rich, and expensively attended; he is a leader of the
age, with certain humorous accompaniments in his character, that do
not degrade, but render him an object of dignified mirth, but also
with other accompaniments not so respectable.

The Friar is a character of a mixed kind:

A friar there was, a wanton and a merry;

but in his office he is said to be a 'full solemn man'; eloquent,
amorous, witty and satirical; young, handsome and rich; he is a
complete rogue, with constitutional gaiety enough to make him a
master of all the pleasures of the world:

His neck was white as the flour de lis,
Thereto strong he was as a champioun.

It is necessary here to speak of Chaucer's own character, that I may
set certain mistaken critics right in their conception of the humour
and fun that occur on the journey. Chaucer is himself the great
poetical observer of men, who in every age is born to record and
eternize its acts. This he does as a master, as a father and superior,
who looks down on their little follies from the Emperor to the Miller,
sometimes with severity, oftener with joke and sport.

Accordingly Chaucer has made his Monk a great tragedian, one who
studied poetical art. So much so that the generous Knight is, in the
compassionate dictates of his soul, compelled to cry out:

'Ho,' quoth the Knyght, 'good Sir, no more of this;
That ye have said is right ynough, I wis,
And mokell more; for little heaviness
Is right enough for much folk, as I guesse.
I say, for me, it is a great disease,
Whereas men have been in wealth and ease,
To heare of their sudden fall, alas!
And the contrary is joy and solas.'

The Monk's definition of tragedy in the proem to his tale is worth
repeating:

Tragedie is to tell a c