delightfully humorous and life-like. He is the kindliest of satirists.
The knavery, greed, and hypocrisy of the begging friars and the sellers
of indulgences are exposed by him as pitilessly as by Langland and
Wiclif, though his mood is not, like theirs, one of stern, moral
indignation, but rather the good-natured scorn of a man of the world.
His charity is broad enough to cover even the corrupt sompnour, of whom
he says,

And yet in sooth he was a good felawe.

Whether he shared Wiclif's opinions is unknown, but John of Gaunt, the
Duke of Lancaster and father of Henry IV., who was Chaucer's life-long
patron, was likewise Wiclif's great upholder against the persecution of
the bishops. It is, perhaps, not without significance that the poor
parson in the _Canterbury Tales_, the only one of his ecclesiastical
pilgrims whom Chaucer treats with respect, is suspected by the host of
the Tabard to be a "loller," that is, a Lollard, or disciple of Wiclif,
and that, because he objects to the jovial innkeeper's swearing "by
Goddes bones."

Chaucer's English is nearly as easy for a modern reader as Shakspere's,
and few of his words have become obsolete. His verse, when rightly read,
is correct and melodious. The early English was, in some respects, "more
sweet upon the tongue" than the modern language. The vowels had their
broad Italian sounds, and the speech was full of soft gutterals and
vocalic syllables, like the endings en, es, e, which made feminine
rhymes and kept the consonants from coming harshly together.

Great poet as Chaucer was, he was not quite free from the literary
weakness of his time. He relapses sometimes into the babbling style of
the old chroniclers and legend writers; cites "auctours" and gives long
catalogues of names and objects with a _naive_ display of learning; and
introduces vulgar details in his most exquisite passages. There is
something childish about almost all the thought and art of the Middle
Ages--at least outside of Italy, where classical models and traditions
never quite lost their hold. But Chaucer's artlessness is half the
secret of his wonderful ease in story-telling, and is so engaging that,
like a child's sweet unconsciousness, one would not wish it otherwise.

The _Canterbury Tales_ had shown of what high uses the English language
was capable, but the curiously trilingual condition of literature still
continued. French was spoken in the proceedings of Parliament as late as
the reig