All manera of minstrellis,
And gestours, that tellen tales
Both of weping and eke of game;
and the most renowned harpers—Orpheus, Arion, Chiron, and the Briton Glaskeirion. In the hall he meets an infinite multitude of heralds, on whose surcoats are embroidered the arms of the most redoubted champions. At the upper end, on a lofty shrine of carbuncle, sits Fame. Her figure is like those of Virgil and Ovid. Above her, as if sustained on her shoulders, sate Alexander and Hercules. From the throne to the gates of the hall ran a range of pillars with respective inscriptions. On the first pillar, made of lead and iron, stood Josephus, the Jewish historian, with seven other writers on the same subject. On the second, made of iron, and painted with the blood of tigers, stood Statius. On another, higher than the rest, stood Homer, Dares Phrygius, Livy, Lollius, Guido of Colonna, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, writers on the Trojan story. On a pillar of ‘tinnid iron clere’ stood Virgil; and next him, on a pillar of copper, appeared Ovid. The figure of Lucan was placed upon a pillar of iron ‘wrought full sternly,’ accompanied by many Roman historians. On a pillar of sulphur stood Claudian. The hall is filled by crowds of minor authors. In the meantime crowds of every nation and condition fill the temple, each presenting his claim to the queen. A messenger is sent to summon Eolus from his cave in Thrace, who is ordered to bring his two clarions, Slander and Praise, and his trumpeter Triton. The praises of each petitioner are then sounded, according to the partial or capricious appointment of Fame! and equal merits obtain very different success. The poet then enters the house or labyrinth of Rumor. It was built of willow twigs, like a cage, and therefore admitted every sound. From this house issue tidings of every kind, like fountains and rivers from the sea. Its inhabitants, who are eternally employed in hearing or telling news, raising reports, and spreading lies, are then humorously described: they are chiefly sailors, pilgrims, and pardoners. At length our author is awakened by seeing a venerable person of great authority; and thus the vision abruptly terminates. From the few lines we have quoted, it may be seen that this poem, like the “Romaunt of the Rose,” is written in the octosyllabic measure. Though full of extravagances, exaggerations of the already too monstrous personifications of Ovid, this work extorts our admiration by the inexhaustible richness and splendor of its ornaments; a richness as perfectly in accordance with Middle Age art, as it is extravagant and puerile in the tinsel pages of the Roman poet. That multiplicity of parts and profusion of minute embellishment which forms the essential characteristic of a Gothic cathedral is displaced and barbarous when introduced into the severer outlines of a Grecian temple or a Roman amphitheatre.
It now becomes our delightful duty to speak of the “Canterbury Tales;” and we can hardly trust ourselves to confine within reasonable limits the examination of this admirable work, containing in itself, as it does, merits of the most various and opposite kinds. It is a finished picture, delineating almost every variety of human character, crowded with figures, whose lineaments no lapse of time, no change of manners, can render faint or indistinct, and which will retain, to the latest centuries, every stroke of outline and every tint of color, as sharp and as vivid as when they came from the master’s hand. The Pilgrims of Chaucer have traversed four hundred and fifty years—like the Israelites wandering in the wilderness—arid periods of neglect and ignorance, sandy flats of formal mannerism, unfertilized by any spring of beauty, and yet “their garments have not decayed, neither have their shoes waxed old.”
Besides the lively and faithful delineation—i. e. descriptive delineation of these personages, nothing can be more dramatic than the way in which they are set in motion, speaking and acting in a manner always conformable to their supposed characters, and mutually heightening and contrasting each other’s peculiarities. Further yet, besides these triumphs in the framing of his Tales, the Tales themselves, distributed among the various pilgrims of his troop, are, in almost every case, master-pieces of splendor, of pathos, or of drollery.
Chaucer, in the Prologue to the “Canterbury Tales,” relates that he was about to pass the night at the “Tabarde” inn in Southwark, previous to setting out on a pilgrimage to the far-famed shrine of St. Thomas of Kent—i. e. Thomas à Becket—at Canterbury. On the evening preceding the poet’s departure there arrive at the hostelry—
Wel nine and twenty in a compagnie
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-fulle
In felowship, and pilgrimes wer they alle,