Chaucer and His England Part 8

The Miller's story proved an apple of discord in its small way, but poetically effective in the variety which it and its fellows lent to the journey--

Diverse folk diversely they said, But for the moste part they laughed and played; Nor at this tale I saw no man him grieve, But it were only Osewold the Reeve,

who, though chiefly sensible to the slur upon his own profession, lays special stress on the indecorum of the Miller's proceeding. Some men (he says) are like medlars, never ripe till they be rotten, and with all the follies of youth under their grizzling hairs--

When that our host had heard this sermoning, He gan to speak as lordly as a King: He saide 'What amounteth all this wit?

What shall we speak all day of holy writ? [why The devil made a Reeve for to preach, And of a cobbler a shipman or a leech!

Say forth thy tale, and tarry not the time, Lo, Depeford, and it is halfway prime.

Lo Greenewich, there many a shrew is in; It were all time thy tale to begin.'

The story records, by way of natural revenge, the domestic misfortunes of a Miller; and, for all the Reeve's moral indignation, it is as essentially "churlish" as its predecessor, and as popular with at least one section of the party--

The Cook of London, while the Reeve spake, For joy, him thought, he clawed him on the back, 'Ha, ha!' quoth he, 'for Christes pa.s.sioun, This Miller had a sharp conclusion ...

But G.o.d forbidde that we stinten here; And therefore, if that ye vouchsafe to hear A tale of me, that am a poore man, I will you tell as well as ever I can A little j.a.pe that fell in our citie.' [jest

The Host gives leave on the one condition that the tale shall be fresher and wholesomer than the Cook's victuals sometimes are--

'For many a pasty hast thou letten blood, And many a Jack of Dover hast thou sold [meat pie That hath been twyes hot and twyes cold!

Of many a pilgrim hast thou Christes curse, For of thy parsley yet they fare the worse That they have eaten with thy stubble-goose; For in thy shop is many a flye loose!'

The Cook's "little j.a.pe," however, to judge by its commencement, was even more fly-blown than his stubble-goose. The Miller seemed to have let loose every riotous element, and to have started the company upon a downward slope of accelerating impropriety. But this to Chaucer would have been more than a sin, it would have been an obvious artistic blunder; and when the ribaldry begins in earnest, the best ma.n.u.scripts break off with "of this Cook's tale maked Chaucer no more." In other MSS. the Cook himself breaks off in disgust at his own story, and tells the heroic tale of Gamelyn, which Chaucer may possibly have meant to rewrite for the series.

Here end the tales of the first day; incomplete enough, as indeed the whole book is only a fragment of Chaucer's mighty plan. The pilgrims probably slept at Dartford, fifteen miles from London.

Next morning the Host seems to have found it hard to keep his team together; it is ten o'clock when he begins to bewail the time already wasted, and prays the Man of Law to tell a tale. The lawyer a.s.sents in a speech interlarded with legal French and legal metaphors, and referring at some length to Chaucer's other poems. He then launches into a formal prologue, and finally tells the pious Custance's strange adventures by land and sea. This, if not so generally popular with the company as other less decorous tales before and after it, enjoyed at least a genuine _succes d'estime_. Thereupon followed one of the liveliest of all Chaucer's dialogues. The Host called upon the Parish Priest for a tale, adjuring him "for G.o.ddes bones" and "by G.o.ddes dignitie." "_Benedicite!_"

replied the Parson; "what aileth the man, so sinfully to swear?" upon which the Host promptly scents "a Lollard in the wind," and ironically bids his companions prepare for a sermon.[161] The Shipman, professionally indifferent to oaths of whatever description, and bold in conscious innocence of all puritanical taint, here interposes an emphatic veto--

'Nay, by my father's soul, that shall he not,'

Saide the Shipman; 'here he shall not preach.

He shall no gospel glosen here nor teach. [expound We believe all in the great G.o.d,' quoth he, 'He woulde sowen some difficultee, Or springen c.o.c.kle in our cleane corn; And therefore, Host, I warne thee beforn, My jolly body shal a tale tell, And I shall clinken you so merry a bell That I shall waken all this companye; But it shall not be of philosophye, Nor _physices_, nor termes quaint of law, There is but little Latin in my maw.'

The bluff skipper is as good as his word; his tale is frankly unprofessional, and its infectious jollity must almost have appealed to the Parson himself, even though it reeked with the most orthodox profanity, and showed no point of contact with puritanism except a low estimate of average monastic morals.

'Well said, by _Corpus Dominus_,' quoth our Host, 'Now longe mayest thou saile by the coast, Sir gentle master, gentle mariner! ...

Draw ye no monkes more unto your inn!

But now pa.s.s on, and let us seek about Who shall now telle first, of all this rout, Another tale;' and with that word he said, As courteously as it had been a maid, 'My lady Prioresse, by your leave, So that I wist I shoulde you not grieve, I woulde deemen that ye tellen should A tale next, if so were that ye would.

Now will ye vouchesafe, my lady dear?'

'Gladly,' quoth she, and said as ye shall hear.

The gentle lady tells that charming tale which Burne-Jones so loved and adorned, of the little scholar murdered by Jews for his devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and sustained miraculously by her power. Chaucer loved the Prioress; and he makes us feel the reverent hush which followed upon her tale--

When said was all this miracle, every man So sober was, that wonder was to see, Till that our Hoste j.a.pen then began, And then at erst he looked upon me, And saide thus: 'What man art thou?' quoth he; 'Thou lookest as thou wouldest find an hare, For ever upon the ground I see thee stare.

Approache near, and look up merrily.

Now ware you, sirs, and let this man have place!

He in the waist is shape as well as I; This were a puppet in an arm to embrace For any woman, small and fair of face!

He seemeth elvish by his countenance, For unto no wight doth he dalliance.

Say now somewhat, since other folk have said; Tell us a tale of mirth, and that anon....'

Chaucer executes himself as willingly as the rest, and enters upon a long-winded tale of knight-errantry, parodied from the romances in vogue; but the Age of Chivalry is already half past. Before the poet has even finished the preliminary catalogue of his hero's accomplishments--

'No more of this, for G.o.ddes dignitee,'

Quoth our Hoste, 'for thou makest me So weary of thy very lewedness [folly That (all so wisely G.o.d my soule bless) Mine eares achen of thy drasty speech [trashy Now, such a rhyme the devil I biteche! [commit to This may well be rhyme doggerel,' quoth he.

Chaucer suffers the interruption with only the mildest of protests, and proceeds to tell instead "a lytel thing in prose," a translation of a French translation of a long-winded moral allegory by an Italian friar-preacher. The monumental dulness of this "Tale of Melibee and of his wife Prudence" is no doubt a further stroke of satire, and Chaucer must have felt himself amply avenged in recounting this story to the bitter end. Yet there was a moral in it which appealed to the Host, who burst out--

... as I am a faithful man And by that precious _corpus Madrian_ [St. Mathurin I hadde liever than a barrel ale That goode lief my wife had heard this tale.

For she is nothing of such patience As was this Melibeus' wife Prudence.

By G.o.ddes bones, when I beat my knaves, She bringeth me forth the greate clubbed staves, And crieth 'Slay the dogges every one.

And break them, bothe back and every bone!'

And if that any neighebour of mine, Will not in churche to my wife incline, Or be so hardy to her to trespa.s.s, When she com'th home she rampeth in my face And crieth 'False coward, wreak thy wife!

By corpus bones! I will have thy knife, And thou shalt have my distaff and go spin!'

The Host has plenty more to say on this theme; but presently he remembers his duties, and calls upon the Monk for a tale, though not without another long digression on monastic comforts and monastic morals, from the point of view of the man in the street. The Monk takes all his broad jesting with the good humour of a man who is used to it, and offers to tell some tragedies, "of which I have an hundred in my cell." After a few harmless pedantries by way of prologue, he proceeds to reel off instalments of his hundred tragedies with the steady, self-satisfied, merciless drone of a man whose office and cloth generally a.s.sure him of a patient hearing.

Here, however, we are no longer in the minster, but in G.o.d's own sunlight and fresh air; the Pilgrim's Way is Liberty Hall; and while Dan Piers is yet moralizing with d.a.m.nable iteration over the ninth of his fallen heroes, the Knight suddenly interrupts him--the Knight himself, who never yet no villainy ne said, in all his life, unto no manner wight!

'Ho!' quoth the Knight, 'good sir, no more of this!

What ye have said is right enough, ywis [certainly And muckle more; for little heaviness Is right enough to many folk, I guess.

I say for me it is a great dis-ease, Where as men have been in great wealth and ease To hearen of their sudden fall, alas!

And the contrary is joy and great solace ...

And of such thing were goodly for to tell.'

'Yea,' quoth our Host, 'by Sainte Paules Bell! ...

Sir Monk, no more of this, so G.o.d you bless, Your tale annoyeth all this companye; Such talking is not worth a b.u.t.terflye, For therein is there no desport nor game.

Wherefore, sire Monk, or Dan Piers by your name, I pray you heartily, tell us somewhat else; For surely, but for clinking of your bells That on your bridle hang on every side, By Heaven's King, that for us alle died, I should ere this have fallen down for sleep, Although the slough had never been so deep ...

Sir, say somewhat of hunting, I you pray.'

'Nay,' quoth this Monk, 'I have no l.u.s.t to play; Now let another tell, as I have told.'

Then spake our Host with rude speech and bold, And said unto the Nunnes Priest anon, 'Come near, thou Priest, come hither, thou Sir John!

Tell us such thing as may our heartes glad; Be blithe, though thou ride upon a jade.

What though thine horse be bothe foul and lean?

If it will serve thee, reck thou not a bean; Look that thine heart be merry evermo!'

The domestic confessor of stately Madame Eglantine is possibly accustomed to sudden and peremptory commands; in any case, he obeys readily enough here. "'Yes, sir,' quoth he, 'yes, Host'" ... and proceeds to recount that tragi-comedy of Reynard and Chanticleer which, well-worn as the plot is, shows off to perfection many of Chaucer's rarest artistic qualities.

The tale is told, and the Host shows his appreciation by saluting the Nuns' Priest with the same broad gibes and innuendoes with which he had already greeted the Monk. Here probably ends the second day; the Pilgrims would sleep at Rochester, which was in sight when the Monk began his Tale.

CHAPTER XIII

"CANTERBURY TALES"--THIRD AND FOURTH DAYS

"... quasi peregrin, che si ricrea Nel tempio del suo voto riguardando, E spera gia ridir com' ello stea."

"Paradiso," x.x.xi., 43

On the morning of the third day we find the Physician speaking; he tells the tragedy of Virginia, not straight from Livy, whom Chaucer had probably never had a chance of reading, but from its feebler echo in the "Roman de la Rose." Even so, however, the pity of it comes home to his hearers.