they had
plotted their comrade's death, so they slew him, and that at once. And
when they had done this, the one who had counselled the deed said, "Now
let us sit and drink and make merry, and then we will bury his body."
And it happened to him by chance to take one of the bottles which
contained the poison; and he drank, and gave drink of it to his fellow;
and thus they both speedily died.

The plot of this story is, as observed, not Chaucer's. But how
carefully, how artistically the narrative is elaborated, incident by
incident, and point by point! How well every effort is prepared, and
how well every turn of the story is explained! Nothing is superfluous,
but everything is arranged with care, down to the circumstances of the
bottles being bought, for safety's sake, in the next street to the
apothecary's, and of two out of three bottles being filled with poison,
which is at once a proceeding natural in itself, and increases the
chances against the two rioters when they are left to choose for
themselves. This it is to be a good story-teller. But of a different
order is the change introduced by Chaucer into his original, where the
old hermit--who, of course, is Death himself--is fleeing from Death.
Chaucer's Old Man is SEEKING Death, but seeking him in vain--like the
Wandering Jew of the legend. This it is to be a poet.

Of course it is always necessary to be cautious before asserting any
apparent addition of Chaucer's to be his own invention. Thus, in the
"Merchant's Tale," the very naughty plot of which is anything but
original, it is impossible to say whether such is the case with the
humorous competition of advice between Justinus and Placebo, ("Placebo"
seems to have been a current term to express the character or the ways
of "the too deferential man." "Flatterers be the Devil's chaplains,
that sing aye Placebo."--"Parson's Tale."), or with the fantastic
machinery in which Pluto and Proserpine anticipate the part played by
Oberon and Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." On the other hand,
Chaucer is capable of using goods manifestly borrowed or stolen for a
purpose never intended in their original employment. Puck himself must
have guided the audacious hand which could turn over the leaves of so
respected a Father of the Church as St. Jerome, in order to derive from
his treatise "On Perpetual Virginity" materials for the discourse on
matrimony delivered, with illustrations essentially her own, by the