enery," and whom his tastes and capabilities
would have well qualified for the dignified post of abbot. He had
"full many a dainty horse" in his stable, and the swiftest of
greyhounds to boot; and rode forth gaily, clad in superfine furs and a
hood elegantly fastened with a gold pin, and tied into a love-knot at
the "greater end," while the bridle of his steed jingled as if its
rider had been as good a knight as any of them--this last, by the way,
a mark of ostentation against which Wyclif takes occasion specially to
inveigh. This Monk (and Chaucer must say that he was wise in his
generation) could not understand why he should study books and unhinge
his mind by the effort; life was not worth having at the price; and no
one knew better to what use to put the pleasing gift of existence.
Hence mine host of the Tabard, a very competent critic, had reason for
the opinion which he communicated to the Monk:--

It is a noble pasture where thou go'st;
Thou art not like a penitent or ghost.

In the Orders of nuns, certain corresponding features were becoming
usual. But little in the way of religious guidance could fall to the
lot of a sisterhood presided over by such a "Prioress" as Chaucer's
Madame Eglantine, whose mind--possibly because her nunnery fulfilled
the functions of a finishing school for young ladies--was mainly
devoted to French and deportment, or by such a one as the historical
Lady Juliana Berners, of a rather later date, whose leisure hours
produced treatises on hunting and hawking, and who would probably have
on behalf of her own sex echoed the "Monk's" contempt for the prejudice
against the participation of the Religious in field-sports:--

He gave not for that text a pulled hen
That saith, that hunters be no holy men.

On the other hand, neither did the Mendicant Orders, instituted at a
later date purposely to supply what the older Orders, as well as the
secular clergy, seemed to have grown incapable of furnishing, any
longer satisfy the reason of their being. In the fourteenth century
the Dominicans or Black Friars, who at London dwelt in such
magnificence that king and Parliament often preferred a sojourn with
them to abiding at Westminster, had in general grown accustomed to
concentrate their activity upon the spiritual direction of the higher
classes. But though they counted among them Englishmen of eminence
(one of these was Chaucer's friend, "the philosophical Strode"), they
in truth nev