And yet he semed besier than he was.’
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,
And if ther did, certain so wroth was she,
That she was out of alle charitee;’
—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 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,
That hadde a fire-red cherubinnes face,
For sausefleme he was, with eyen narwe,