is admirably represented. The knight, just returned from deeds
of chivalry, is on the best of terms with the rough-spoken miller and
the reeve, whilst the clerk of Oxford, who would gladly learn and
gladly teach, and who followed in his own life those precepts which he
commended to his parishioners, has no irreconcilable quarrel with the
begging friar or with the official of the ecclesiastical courts, whose
only object is to make a gain of godliness.

[Illustration: A gentleman riding out with his hawk: from the Luttrell
Psalter.]

10. =Chaucer and the Clergy.=--In his representation of the clergy,
Chaucer shows that, like Langland, he had no reverence for the merely
official clergy. His "poor parson of a town," indeed, is a model for
all helpers and teachers. The parson is regardless of his own comfort,
ever ready to toil with mind and body for his parishioners, and, above
all, resolved to set them an example, knowing

That if gold ruste, what schulde yren doo?
For if a prest be foul, on whom we truste,
No wondur is a lewid man to ruste.[23]

[Footnote 23: _i.e._, if a priest, who is like gold, allow himself
to rust, or fall into sloth or sin, how can he expect the 'lewid
man' or layman, who is as iron to him, to be free from these
faults?]

The final character given to him is:--

A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is.
He waytud after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne maked him a spiced conscience;[24]
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taught, and ferst he folwed[25] it himselve.

[Footnote 24: A nice conscience; to see offence where there is
none.]

[Footnote 25: Followed.]

The majority amongst Chaucer's clergy are, however, of a very
different kind. There is the parish clerk, who, when he is waving the
censer in church thinks more of the pretty women there than of his
duty; the monk who loves hunting, and hates work and reading; the
friar who is ready to grant absolution to any one who will give money
to the friars; who has a word and a jest for every man, and presents
of knives and pins for the women; who takes a farthing where he cannot
get a penny, but turns aside from those who have not even a farthing
to give; the pardoner, who has for sale sham relics--a piece of the
sail of the ship which carried St. Peter on the sea of Galilee, and a
glass of pigs' bones, which he was ready to sell as bones of saints,
if he could thereby extract something eve