As lene was his hors as is a rake,
And he was not right fat, I undertake;
But loked holwe, and therto soberly,
Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy,
For he had geten him yet no benefyce,
Ne was so worldly for to have offyce.
For him was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he might of his freendes hente,
On bokes and on lerninge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scoleye,
Of studie took he most cure and most hede,
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche.
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche."

An account of life in the medieval University might well take the (p. 002)
form of a commentary upon the classical description of a medieval
English student. His dress, the character of his studies and the
nature of his materials, the hardships and the natural ambitions of
his scholar's life, his obligations to founders and benefactors,
suggest learned expositions which might

in judicious hands
Extend from here to Mesopotamy,

and will serve for a modest attempt to picture the environment of one
of the Canterbury pilgrims.

Chaucer's famous lines do more than afford opportunities of
explanation and comment; they give us an indication of the place
assigned to universities and their students by English public opinion
in the later Middle Ages. The monk of the "Prologue" is simply a
country gentleman. No accusation of immorality is brought against him,
but he is a jovial huntsman who likes the sound of the bridle jingling
in the wind better than the call of the church bells, a lover of dogs
and horses, of rich clothes and great feasts. The portrait of the
friar is still less sympathetic; he is a frequenter of taverns, a
devourer of widows' houses, a man of gross, perhaps of evil, life. The
monk abandons his cloister and its rules, the friar despises the poor
and the leper. The poet is making no socialistic attack upon the (p. 003)
foundations of society, and no heretical onslaught upon the Church; he
draws a portrait of two types of the English regular clergy. His
description of two type