boured with his pen till his death in =1384=.
His followers, known by the nickname of Lollards,[22] were, however,
for some time still popular amongst the poorer classes.

[Footnote 22: The name is said to have been derived from a low
German word, _lollen_, to sing, from their habit of singing, but
their clerical opponents derived it from the Latin _lolium_ (tares),
as if they were the tares in the midst of the wheat which remained
constant to the Church.]

[Illustration: Portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer.]

8. =Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales.'=--A combination between the great
nobles and the higher clergy might, at the end of the fourteenth
century, meet with temporary success; but English society was too
diversified, and each separate portion of it was too closely linked to
the other to make it possible for the higher classes to tyrannise over
the others for any long time. What that society was like is best seen
in Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_. Chaucer was in many ways the exact
opposite of Langland, and was the precursor of modern literature as
Wycliffe was the precursor of modern religion. He was an inimitable
story-teller, with an eye which nothing could escape. He was ready to
take men as he found them, having no yearning for the purification of
a sinful world. Heroic examples of manly constancy and of womanly
purity and devotion, are mingled in his pages with coarse and ribald
tales; still, coarse and ribald as some of his narratives are, Chaucer
never attempts to make vice attractive. He takes it rather as a matter
of course, calling, not for reproof, but for laughter, whenever those
who are doing evil place themselves in ridiculous situations.

9. =The Prologue of the 'Canterbury Tales.'=--Whilst, however, there
is not one of the _Canterbury Tales_ which fails to bring vividly
before the reader one aspect or another of the life of Chaucer's day,
it is in the prologue that is especially found evidence of the close
connection which existed between different ranks of society. Men and
women of various classes are there represented as riding together on
a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and beguiling
the way by telling stories to one another. No baron, indeed, takes
part in the pilgrimage, and the villein class is represented by the
reeve, who was himself a person in authority, the mere cultivator of
the soil being excluded. Yet, within these limits, the whole circle of
society