‘Within this Hall, neither rich nor yet poor
Would do for me aught, although I should die.
Which seeing, I got me out of the door,
Where Flemings began on me for to cry,
“Master, what will you copen or buy?
Fine felt hats, or spectacles to read?
Lay down your silver and here you may speed.” ’
At Westminster Gate:—
‘Cooke’s to me they took good intent,
And proffered me bread with ale and wine,
Ribs of beef, both fat and full fine,
A faire cloth they gan for to sprede,
But wanting money I might not then speed.’
No doubt the countryman had sufficient cause for many of his complaints, but we cannot but ask, Why should he expect to obtain things without paying for them?
He proceeds to London and hears the various cries of the streets—‘Hot peascodes,’ ‘Strawberry ripe,’ ‘Cherries in the rise’ (i.e., on the bough). Some of the tradesmen offered spice, pepper and saffron. In Cheapside he saw velvet, silk and lawn, and ‘Paris thread, the fin’st in the land.’ He goes by London Stone through Cannon Street, where drapers offered him much cloth. Others cried ‘Hot sheep’s feet,’ ‘Mackerel,’ ‘Rushes green.’ In East Cheap there were ribs of beef, many a pie, and pewter pots in a heap. A taverner in Cornhill took him by the sleeve:—
‘Sir,’ saith he, ‘will you our wine assay?’
He was now tired of his excursion, and walked to Billingsgate, where he prayed a bargeman to take him in his boat for nothing. All this is a groundless complaint; but he was also robbed at Westminster of his hood, in Cannon Street he was asked to buy a new one, and in Cornhill, among much stolen property, he saw his own hood hanging up for sale. This reminds one of the oft-repeated story of the man who, walking through Petticoat Lane, was robbed as he entered and found the object stolen from him ticketed for sale as he turned out of it. The countryman soon has enough of London and its ways, and conveys himself back into Kent, ending his account of adventures with these words:—
‘Save London, and send true lawyers their meed.
For whoso wants money with them shall not speed.’
The words of the poets already referred to are of the greatest value to us, and we are grateful for the vivid pictures of mediæval life they have left us, but we have in Chaucer an ideal Londoner, far beyond the others in the charm of his writing, one who loved the city in which he lived and died.
Langland was too much occupied in denouncing the evils of his time to be able to see the good. Lydgate, Hoccleve and Gower also took partial views of the life around them. It is the great genius and large-heartedness of Chaucer that enables us to see the mixed good and evil.