68 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



sand vocables. What a change, too, In the number speak ing- 

 that language and the area in which it is spoken. Chaucer 

 wrote for a few readers scattered among a population of less 

 than four millions. The great writer of to-day appeals to an 

 English speaking public of more than a hundi'ed millions that 

 has fewer illiterates to the mass than" ever before, a fact which 

 calls to mind these words of Grimm : " The English tongue, 

 " like the English stock, seems chosen to rule in future, in a 

 " greater degree, in all corners of the earth." 



The Canterbury Tales are Chaucer's masterpiece. The 

 offspring of his mature powers, their original plan of nai-ration, 

 and finished style, betoken long training and rare gifts. Of 

 cunning pattern deftly wrought, the frame of the picture is like 

 the setting of some Eastern story, while the picture itself por- 

 trays in unique manner the life of that age. Boccaccio's 

 prologue to the Decameron adds to the interest of his stories ; 

 and the epilogues to the tales written by Marguerite of Navarre 

 a century later are pleasing and instructive; still both are sur- 

 passed by Chaucer, whose work carries all the force and 

 realism of life with the attractive charm of art. The poet 

 introduces to his reader with grace, yet directness, a partv of 

 pilgrims casually met to rest over night at the Tabard hosteh-y, 

 Southwark. They are on their way to the shrine of Becket, 

 the Archbishop murdered in his Church by four knights of 

 Henry II in gruesome answer to their Sovereign's prayer that 

 he might be " rid of that turbulent priest." Canonized as St. 

 Thomas of Canterbury, miracles surpassing those at the Rood 

 of Bromholme, or for Our Lady of Walsingham. were by 

 repute wrought at his shrine. Henry II did penance in the 

 Church for his murder ; and in after years his shrine was 

 despoiled and his bones scattered by Henry VIIT. Pilgrim- 

 ages to Canterbury were common in Chaucer's day ; chiefly 

 from motives of piety, to which secondary pleasures of fashion 

 and perhaps a tinge of politics are also to be added. The word 

 canter remains in the English language as a reminder of the 

 easv pace of a pilgrim's horse towai'ds Becket's shrine. 



The spring of the year so beautifully described in the 



