etal.

It is almost impossible to describe clearly the head-dresses--the
great gold net bags which encased the hair--for they were ornamented
in such different ways, always, or nearly always, following some
pattern in diaper in contrast to the patterns which came later when
the design followed such lines as are formed by wire-netting, while
later still the connecting-thread of the patterns was done away with
and the inside decoration alone remained.

Well, Richard the King no longer can whistle to Matthew, his favourite
greyhound, and Anne the Queen lies stately in the Abbey at Westminster
without solace of her little lap-dog; but we are not all modern in our
ways, and ladies hang charms about them, from scarabs to queer evil
eye coral hands, from silver shoes to month-stones. Crowns of flowers
have been worn and crowns of jewels too, just as men and women wore
them then, except on Fridays and the eves of fetes.

These things we do, and other ancient things beside, but let us hope
that Fashion has lost her cruel mood, and deems it wise to leave our
ladies' eyebrows where they be, nor schemes to inspire her faithful
devotees with mad desires to hide their hair and shave their napes.

The crinoline is threatened--let it come; sandals are here, with short
hair and the simple life, but leave me, I pray thee, royal dame, an
eyebrow on my lady, if only to give occupation to the love-lorn
sonneteer.

THE END OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

[Illustration: Chaucer.]

In the last year of the fourteenth century there were still living two
men whose voices have made the century live for us. One of
them--Chaucer--remains to-day the father of English poetry, the
forerunner of Shakespeare; the other--Gower--less known to most of us,
was the author of three long poems--'Speculum Meditantis,' in French;
'Vox Clamantis,' in Latin; 'Confessio Amantis,' in English. Boccaccio
had written his 'Decameron,' and it was this method of writing a
series of poems or stories by means of connecting-links of narrative
that should run through the series, that inspired the form of the
'Confessio Amantis' and the 'Canterbury Tales'; indeed, many stories
in both of these works are retold out of the 'Decameron.'

Gower wrote of his age as a man giving advice, philosophically; he
did not attempt character studies, but framed his poems as narratives
with morals fit for application to his times.

Chaucer drew his characters clearly--so clearly