Unto his poure parishens aboute,
Of his offring, and eke of his substance.
He coude in litel thing have suffisance.
Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder,
But he ne left nought for no rain ne thonder,
In sikenesse and in mischief to visite
The ferrest in his parish, moche and lite,
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf.

* * * * *

And though he holy were, and vertuous,
He was to sinful men not dispitous,
Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne,
But in his teching discrete and benigne.
To drawen folk to heven, with fairenesse,
By good ensample, was his besinesse.

* * * * *

He waited after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne maked him no spiced conscience,
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve."

_Chaucer, Prol. to Cant. Tales, v._ 485.

We may surely conclude with a line from the same poem,

"A better preest I trowe that nowher non is."

IV.

A MEER DULL PHYSICIAN.

His practice is some business at bedsides, and his speculation an urinal:
he is distinguished from an empiric, by a round velvet cap and doctor's
gown, yet no man takes degrees more superfluously, for he is doctor
howsoever. He is sworn to Galen and Hippocrates, as university men to
their statutes, though they never saw them; and his discourse is all
aphorisms, though his reading be only Alexis of Piedmont,[9] or the
Regiment of Health.[10] The best cure he has done, is upon his own purse,
which from a lean sickliness he hath made lusty, and in flesh. His
learning consists much in reckoning up the hard names of diseases, and the
superscriptions of gally-pots in his apothecary's shop, which are ranked
in his shelves, and the doctor's memory. He is, indeed, only languaged in
diseases, and speaks Greek many times when he knows not. If he have been
but a by-stander at some desperate recovery, he is slandered with it
though he be guiltless; and this breeds his reputation, and that his
practice, for his skill is merely opinion. Of all odours he likes best the
smell of urine, and holds Vespasian's[11] rule, that no gain is unsavory.
If you send this once to him you must resolve to be sick howsoever, for he
will never leave examining your water, till he has shaked it into a
disease:[12] then follows a writ to his drugger in a strange tongue, which
he