r
effort for effect. He paints his age as Moliere paints the times of
Louis XIV., and Homer the heroic periods of Grecian history. This
fidelity to nature and inexhaustible humor and living freshness and
perpetual variety are the eternal charms of the "Canterbury Tales." They
bring before the eye the varied professions and trades and habits and
customs of the fourteenth century. We see how our ancestors dressed and
talked and ate; what pleasures delighted them, what animosities moved
them, what sentiments elevated them, and what follies made them
ridiculous. The same naturalness and humor which marked "Don Quixote"
and the "Decameron" also are seen in the "Canterbury Tales." Chaucer
freed himself from all the affectations and extravagances and
artificiality which characterized the poetry of the Middle Ages. With
him began a new style in writing. He and Wyclif are the creators of
English literature. They did not create a language, but they formed and
polished it.

The various persons who figure in the "Canterbury Tales" are too well
known for me to enlarge upon. Who can add anything to the Prologue in
which Chaucer himself describes the varied characters and habits and
appearance of the pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas a Becket at
Canterbury? There are thirty of these pilgrims, including the poet
himself, embracing nearly all the professions and trades then known,
except the higher dignitaries of Church and State, who are not supposed
to mix freely in ordinary intercourse, and whom it would be unwise to
paint in their marked peculiarities. The most prominent person, as to
social standing, is probably the knight. He is not a nobleman, but he
has fought in many battles, and has travelled extensively. His cassock
is soiled, and his horse is strong but not gay,--a very respectable man,
courteous and gallant, a soldier corresponding to a modern colonel or
captain. His son, the esquire, is a youth of twenty, with curled locks
and embroidered dress, shining in various colors like the flowers of
May, gay as a bird, active as a deer, and gentle as a maiden. The yeoman
who attends them both is clad in green like a forester, with arrows and
feathers, bearing the heavy sword and buckler of his master. The
prioress is another respectable person, coy and simple, with dainty
fingers, small mouth, and clean attire,--a refined sort of a woman for
that age, ornamented with corals and brooch, so stately as to be held in
reverence, yet so