-the Squire the Oxford Scholar-the Gaptoothed Wife of Bath, and the rest, speak for themselves. To take one or two of these at random: "There was also a nonne, a Prioresse, That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy; And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly, * And sikerly she was of great disport, But for to speken of hire conscience, Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was; Hire mouth ful smale; and therto soft and red; It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe." "A monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie, An out-rider, that loved venerie: A manly man, to ben an abbot able. Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable: And eke as loude, as doth the chapell belle, Ther as this lord was keper of the celle. The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit, Because that it was olde and somdele streit, He yave not of the text a pulled hen, I saw his sleves purfiled at the hond His botes souple, his hors in gret estat,` The Serjeant at Law is the same identical individual as Lawyer Dowling in Tom Jones, who wished to divide himself into a hundred pieces, to be in a hundred places at once. "No wher so besy a man as he ther n'as, The Frankelein, in "whose hous it snewed of mete and drinke;" the Shipman, "who rode upon a rouncie, as he couthe;" the Doctour of Phisike, "whose studie was but litel of the Bible;" the Wif of Bath, in "All whose parish ther was non, That to the offring before hire shulde gon, -the poure Persone of a toun, "whose parish was wide, and houses fer asonder;" the Miller, and the Reve, "a slendre colerike man," are all of the same stamp. They are every one samples H of a kind; abstract definitions of a species. Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the classes of men, as Linnæus numbered the plants. Most of them remain to this day: others that are obsolete, and may well be dispensed with, still live in his descriptions of them. Such is the Sompnoure: "A Sompnoure was ther with us in that place, In danger hadde he at his owen gise A bokeler hadde he made him of a cake. With him ther rode a gentil Pardonere- It would be a curious speculation (at least for those who think that the characters of men never change, though manners, opinions, and institutions may) to know what has become of this character of the Sompnoure in the present day; whether or not it has any technical representative in existing professions; into what channels and conduits it has withdrawn itself, where it lurks unseen in cunning obscurity, or else shows its face boldly, pampered into all the insolence of office, in some other shape, as it is deterred or encouraged by circumstances. Chaucer's characters modernised, upon this principle of historic derivation, would be an useful addition to our knowledge of human nature. But who is there to undertake it? The descriptions of the equipage, and accoutrements of the two kings of Thrace and Inde, in the Knight's Tale, are as striking and grand, as the others are lively and natural: "Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red. |