m
considerations of grammar, logic, and the truth and nature of things,
confirmed by the authority of works, whose fame is not of ONE country
nor of ONE age.

WILLIAM BLAKE

1757-1827

THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS (1809)

SIR GEFFREY CHAUCER AND THE NINE-AND-TWENTY PILGRIMS ON THEIR JOURNEY
TO CANTERBURY[6]

[6] From _A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures_.

The time chosen is early morning, before sunrise, when the jolly
company are just quitting the Tabarde Inn. The Knight and Squire with
the Squire's Yeoman lead the Procession; next follow the youthful
Abbess, her Nun, and three Priests; her greyhounds attend her:

Of small hounds had she that she fed
With roast flesh, milk, and wastel bread.

Next follow the Friar and Monk; then the Tapiser, the Pardoner, and
the Sompnour and Manciple. After these 'Our Host', who occupies the
centre of the cavalcade, directs them to the Knight as the person who
would be likely to commence their task of each telling a tale in their
order. After the Host follow the Shipman, the Haberdasher, the Dyer,
the Franklin, the Physician, the Ploughman, the Lawyer, the Poor
Parson, the Merchant, the Wife of Bath, the Miller, the Cook, the
Oxford Scholar, Chaucer himself; and the Reeve comes as Chaucer has
described:

And ever he rode hinderest of the rout.

These last are issuing from the gateway of the Inn the Cook and the
Wife of Bath are both taking their morning's draught of comfort.
Spectators stand at the gateway of the Inn, and are composed of an old
Man, a Woman, and Children.

The Landscape is an eastward view of the country, from the Tabarde Inn
in Southwark, as it may be supposed to have appeared in Chaucer's
time, interspersed with cottages and villages. The first beams of the
Sun are seen above the horizon; some buildings and spires indicate the
situation of the Great City. The Inn is a Gothic building, which
Thynne in his Glossary says was the lodging of the Abbot of Hyde, by
Winchester. On the Inn is inscribed its title, and a proper advantage
is taken of this circumstance to describe the subject of the Picture.
The words written over the gateway of the Inn are as follow: 'The
Tabarde Inn, by Henry Baillie, the lodgynge-house for Pilgrims who
journey to Saint Thomas's Shrine at Canterbury.'

The characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose
all ages and nations. As one age falls, another rises, different to
mortal sight, but