The fragment which terminates so brilliantly with this tale unmistakably belongs to the parts composed towards the end of the whole collection. As the Shipman's Tale was originally intended for the Wife of Bath, so also in another place a previous stage of the Canterbury Tales is assumed as past. On the other hand the mention of the town of Rochester, in the prologue to the Monk's Tale (1. 38), shows that it was intended to give the fragment an earlier place in the poetic chronology of the Pilgrimage than we might assume from the present arrangement of the parts. The poet, who here collected all his strength once more, and saw the idea of the whole taking form clearly and vividly within him, had intended this piece, with all its rich, compact, and characteristic fullness, for a place between the beginning and the middle, but nearer to the middle, when the person of the poet himself appropriately advanced from the background to take its place.

Three fragments still remain to be considered; one with two pieces, and two with one piece each.

The first is very similar in construction to the fragment devoted to the Doctor-Pardoner group. Like that, it begins immediately with a tale which is really one of the poet's old productions; indeed, here it is a poem from a very early period, viz., the Legend of Saint Cecilia. Since he had already provided for the Prioress, he attributed this tale to the Nun accompanying her. When this legend is ended, the Pilgrimage is met by two travelers at Boughton-under-Blee, some five miles from Canterbury. Men and horses are sweating profusely, for they had ridden hard for three miles to catch up the jolly company who had left the inn before them. These are a Canon and his servant or yeoman, who are most vividly introduced by the poet, and whose appearance and character become more and more distinct and transparent. The Host begins a conversation with the servant, in order to learn something about his master.

Strictly speaking, there follows another short connecting piece, which is not without use for the characterization of the Nun's Priest; but as it was unfinished and kept in suspense, it has been left out of most manuscripts.

+ See Appendix,

In this conversation it gradually comes out that the Canon is a practiced Alchemist. The evil conscience of the Canon makes him regard with suspicion the increasing confidence of the two speakers, till at length he bids his servant be silent; but encouraged by the Host the servant is not intimidated; then, fearing a complete exposure, the Canon rides off at full speed, burning with rage and shame. The servant now gives a detailed account of the acts and doings of the master in whose service he had fooled away his time, money, health, and strength. Chaucer's satire had already Scourged many of the superstitions of his time, such as natural magic, astrology, and dream-reading; but if we omit the superstition practiced under the mask of religion, there is none which he brands with such power and pungency as alchemy. We receive a detailed description, founded on an exact knowledge of facts, of the instruments, materials, and methods of the alchemists. In the story of their ever-renewed and ever-futile attempts we see nothing but human greed, incredulity, and exaggerated confidence, in their typical forms. see the sophistry of passion, which makes self-deception easy, and the nice psychical transitions which turn the deceived into deceivers. The Canon, who has just left the company, belongs to the class of deceivers. picture of the accomplished sharper, who goes about in cold blood taking advantage of the credulous, and robbing the simple of their goods and chattels by means of his jugglery, is well shown up in another alchemistalso a Canon-whom the servant well knew during his long years of practice. This Tartuffe in alchemy forms the hero, and the vile deception which he practiced on a London priest forms the contents, of the story, which is attached to the general description by the way of supplement and illustration.

We

The

The story seems not to have been invented, but to have been taken in substance from real life. Certain peculiarities of tone and diction in this Tale enable us to see that it is the poet himself who is here speaking under the guise of the Canon's servant, and leave the impression that he had a personal interest in the exposure of

that mock science and its deceitful adepts. Was Chaucer ever in his later years, when constantly pressed by want of money, and when gold must, therefore, have been the more desirable, a prey to the Alchemists, or had he seen some of his friends sacrificed by these swindlers? However this may be, the vengeance which he, as a poet, took on the deceivers was brilliant and complete. And perhaps a part of the credit of having introduced those. laws against the practice of alchemy which were passed * a few years after his death belongs to his energetic exposure of their tricks.

The Manciple's Tale takes us back to the old mythology. It treats in a very clever way a subject which has been frequently dealt with since the Metamorphoses of Ovid (ii. 542 ff.), viz.: The adultery of Coronis, the treachery of the raven, Apollo's vengeance on the adulterous wife, his repentance, and the consequent punishment of the raven, which had told him of her guilt. Chaucer's story replaces the raven by a crow, and appears in other points to have been influenced by a story similar to the classical myth and certainly related to this one, viz.: the story of the magpie in the Seven Wise Masters. Certain singularities in his poem necessarily result from the object he had in view. In addition to the practical lesson that "speech is silver, silence gold," the essential lesson with him is the theoretic discernment of the fact that natural impulses cannot be eradicated. The way in which he realizes this idea reminds us, at times, of Shakspere's words in Hamlet (i. 5, 53-58):

But virtue, as it never will be moved,

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,

And prey on garbage.

In the Manciple's discourse we see a talent for brisk narrative, not going too deep into details, united with a strong moralizing vein; we have reminiscences from Cato's distichs, from the Romance of the Rose, from Horace; and many common proverbs are also frequently

*See Appendix.

found. The Manciple attributes to his mother much of his wisdom. The Tale is introduced by a connecting piece, which, besides the Manciple and the never failing Host, brings also the Cook upon the scene. It seems that early that morning the Cook had been making himself dull and stupid with drinking-a circumstance which gives the poet the occasion for a long scene of drastic comedy. The place of action is a village in the neighborhood of Canterbury; but we cannot exactly make out whether the poet originally wrote this piece for the outjourney, or for the beginning of the journey home the latter seems to us the more probable.

The fragment containing the Parson's Tale was unquestionably intended as the conclusion of the whole. It was probably composed at a time when the poet no longer entertained the hope of accompanying his pil grims back from Canterbury to Southwark. This, no doubt, was the reason for joining this fragment to the Manciple's Tale; but, although done perhaps by the poet himself, such a junction was for more than one reason impossible. There is, therefore, a certain obscurity about the statements in the last fragment. All the pilgrims have fulfilled their obligations to tell a Tale, with the single exception of the Parson. The day is drawing to a close, and there is a feeling that their place of destination is now not far distant. But it is not of this journey's ending that the Parson speaks, but of that heavenly Jerusalem to which he wishes here to show his listeners the way.

In his introductory words the venerable Parson appears earnest, modest, simple, and quite in keeping with his character in the general Prologue. Like Wiclif he does not deal in rhymes or fables, but declares himself ready to speak plain prose, and to offer pious doctrines and reflections. But with this serious bent of mind he unites the decided wish to remain within the existing church, and to avoid suspicion of heterodoxy. He emphasizes the fact of his being born in the South, and his consequent inability to speak in alliterative style, as some of Wiclif's disciples, following in Langland's footsteps, frequently did. But above all, and at the very

beginning, he delares himself ready to listen to the instruction and correction of the learned, for he does not pretend to be able to interpret the Bible, and therefore takes merely his theme from it.*

His sermon treats of repentance. But we need not dwell long upon it, for it has not been preserved in its original form. Different hands, whose work is badly matched, may be distinctly seen in the Parson's Tale. No divergence in religious principles, or, we should rather say, in the religious party tendencies, can at all be noticed in the text before us; and to scrape up the original text would be very difficult, since we have no exact idea how much of it is Chaucer's independent work, nor of his talent as a preacher, especially in prose.t

We must therefore rest satisfied with the recognition of the fact that Chaucer's great poem closes with a sermon, with a pious exhortation to repentance. At the end of the motley crowd of his Canterbury Pilgrims we see the pure and venerable figure of the country Parson, teaching and working in the very spirit of the Gospel, as he points all men to that universal and eternal goal of the great Earthly Pilgrimage.

Such a conclusion is not strange; on the contrary, it is in perfect harmony with the spirit of the Middle Ages. And yet it is most significant as showing Chaucer's frame of mind when he gave the final touches to his great master-work.

XIV.

In this great symphony of medieval poetry there is found no echo of the English popular song; in the unfinished state of the Canterbury Tales this is of all things the most to be regretted. The oldest manuscripts of the work contain, indeed, a tale, viz., the Tale of Gamelyn, attached to the first fragment, closely related to the popular song; but then, no critical acumen is

*See Appendix.

+ The Tale of Melibœus is, indeed, nothing but a translation, and the Parson's Tale may also be a translation, such as it flowed from Chaucer's pen; but SEG Appendix.