What sinking of heart must have come to laymen like the merchant and the yeoman when the parson on the pleasant road to Canterbury called their attention to the resemblance between their journey and
| "...thilke parfit, glorious pilgrymage, |
| That highte Jerusalem celestial." |
They knew the symptoms. When the homilist has got scent of an analogy he will run it down, however long the chase.
It would be interesting to discover the origin of the impression so persistent in the lay mind that sermons are long. A sermon is seldom as long as it seems. But it is always with trepidation that the listener observes in a discourse a constitutional tendency to longevity. In his opinion the good die young. As it is to-day so it was on the afternoon when the host, with ill-concealed alarm, called upon the good parson to take his turn.
| "Telleth," quod he, "youre meditacioun; |
| But hasteth yow, the sonne wole adoun. |
| Beth fructuous, and that in litel space." |
It is needless to say that what the parson called his "little tale in prose" proved to be one of his old sermons which he delivered without notes. He was very unskillful in concealing his text, which was Jeremiah vi. 16.
We are familiar with that interesting picture of the pilgrims as they set out in the morning, each figure alert. I wonder that some one has not painted a picture of them about sunset, as the parson was in the middle of his discourse. It is said that in every battle there is a critical moment when each side is almost exhausted. The side which at this moment receives reinforcements or rallies for a supreme effort gains the victory. So one must have noticed in every over-long discourse a critical moment when the speaker and his hearers are equally exhausted. If at that moment the speaker, who has apparently used up his material, boldly announces a new head, the hearers' discomfiture is complete. This point of strategy the parson, guileless as he was, understood and so managed to get in the last word, so that "The Canterbury Tales" end with the Canterbury sermon.
By the way, there was one ministerial weakness from which Chaucer's parson was free,—the love of alliteration. One is often struck, when listening to a fervent discourse against besetting sins, with the curious fact that all the transgressions begin with the same letter of the alphabet. There is something suspicious in this circumstance. Not a great many years ago a political party suffered severely because its candidate received an address from a worthy clergyman who was addicted to this habit, and instead of the usual three R's enumerated "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." The chances are that he meant no offense to his Roman Catholic fellow citizens; but once on the toboggan slide of alliteration he could not stop. If instead of rum he had begun with whiskey, his homiletic instinct would have led him to assert that the three perils of the Republic were whiskey, war, and woman-suffrage.
It is to the credit of Chaucer's parson that he distinctly repudiated alliteration with all its allurements, especially in connection with the seductive letter R.
| "I kan nat geeste 'rum, ram, ruf,' by lettre; |
| Ne, God woot, rym holde I but litel bettre." |