a medium for short-story narration
cannot have been accidental or unreasoned on his part; nor can it be
altogether accounted for by the explanation that "he was by nature a
poet," for he _did_ experiment with the prose medium to the extent of
using it twice. He had the brilliant and innovating precedent of
the _Decameron_, and yet, while adopting some of its materials, he
abandoned its medium. He was given the opportunity of ante-dating the
introduction of technique into the English prose short-story by four
hundred and fifty years, and he disregarded it almost cavalierly. How
is such wilful neglect to be accounted for? Only by his instinctive
feeling that the technique, which Boccaccio had applied in the
_Decameron_, belonged by right to the realm of poetry, had been
learned in the practising of the poetic art, and could arrive at its
highest level of achievement only in that medium.

That in Chaucer's case this choice was justified cannot be disputed;
the inferiority of the short-story technique contained in his two
prose efforts, when compared with that displayed in the remainder
of the _Canterbury Tales_, is very marked. Take, for instance,
the _Prioress' Tale_ and apply to it the five short-story tests
established by Poe, as a personal discovery, four and a half centuries
later; it survives them all. It attains, in addition, the crowning
glory, coveted by Stevenson, of appearing _typical_. There may never
have been a Christian child who was martyred by the Jews in the
particularly gruesome way described--probably there never was; but, in
listening to the Prioress, it does not enter into our heads to doubt
her word--the picture which she leaves with us of how the Christian
regarded the Jew in the Middle Ages is too vivid to allow any
breathing-space for incredulity. No knowledge of mediaeval anti-Jewish
legislation, however scholarly, can bring us to realize the fury of
race-hatred which then existed more keenly than this story of a little
over two thousand words. By its perusal we gain an illuminating
insight into that ill-directed religious enthusiasm which led men on
frenzied quests for the destruction of the heretic in their own land
and of the Saracen abroad, causing them to become at one and the same
time unjust and heroic. In a word, within the compass of three hundred
lines of verse, Chaucer contrives to body forth his age--to give us
something which is _typical_.

The _Morte D'Arthur_ of Malory is again a