mbellishments which still continued to please
great men and great ladies, and that is why the story is told by the
knight, and Chaucer retains purposely all the faults of that particular
sort of story. In opposition to his usual custom, he contents himself
here with lending a little life to illuminations of manuscripts.[539]

Grave personages relate grave stories, like canticles or sermons,
coloured as with the light of stained glass, perfumed with incense,
accompanied by organ music: story of the pious Constance, of St.
Cecilia, of a child killed by the Jews; dissertations of dame Prudence
(a tale of wondrous dulness,[540] which Chaucer modestly ascribes to
himself); story of the patient Griselda; discourse of the poor parson. A
while ago we were at the inn; now we are in church; in the Middle Ages
striking colours and decided contrasts were best liked; the faded tints
that have since been in fashion, mauve, cream, old-green, did not touch
any one; and we know that Chaucer, when he was a page, had a superb
costume, of which one leg was red and the other black. Laughter was
inextinguishable; it rose and fell and rose again, rebounding
indefinitely; despair was immeasurable; the sense of _measure_ was
precisely what was wanting; its vulgarisation was one of the results of
the Renaissance. Panegyrics and satires were readily carried to the
extreme. The logical spirit, propagated among the learned by a
scholastic education, was producing its effect: writers drew apart one
single quality or characteristic and descanted upon it, neglecting all
the rest. Thus it is that Griselda becomes Patience, and Janicola
Poverty, and that by an easy and imperceptible transition the abstract
personages of novels and the drama are created: Cowardice, Valiance,
Vice. Those typical beings, whose names alone make us shudder, were
considered perfectly natural; and, indeed, they bore a striking
resemblance to Griselda, Janicola, and many other heroes of the most
popular stories.

The success of Griselda is the proof of it. That poor girl, married to
the marquis of Saluces, who repudiates her in order to try her patience,
and then gives her back her position of wife, enjoyed an immense
popularity. Boccaccio had related her misfortunes in the "Decameron";
Petrarch thought the story so beautiful that it appeared to him worthy
of that supreme honour, a Latin translation: Chaucer translated it in
his turn from Latin into English, and made of it his