em, not as ideal heroes, but as his own neighbors. Chaucer not
only attempted this new realistic task, but accomplished it so well that
his characters were instantly recognized as true to life, and they have
since become the permanent possession of our literature. Beowulf and Roland
are ideal heroes, essentially creatures of the imagination; but the merry
host of the Tabard Inn, Madame Eglantyne, the fat monk, the parish priest,
the kindly plowman, the poor scholar with his "bookes black and red,"--all
seem more like personal acquaintances than characters in a book. Says
Dryden: "I see all the pilgrims, their humours, their features and their
very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped with them at the Tabard in
Southwark." Chaucer is the first English writer to bring the atmosphere of
romantic interest about the men and women and the daily work of one's own
world,--which is the aim of nearly all modern literature.

The historian of our literature is tempted to linger over this "Prologue"
and to quote from it passage after passage to show how keenly and yet
kindly our first modern poet observed his fellow-men. The characters, too,
attract one like a good play: the "verray parfit gentil knight" and his
manly son, the modest prioress, model of sweet piety and society manners,
the sporting monk and the fat friar, the discreet man of law, the well-fed
country squire, the sailor just home from sea, the canny doctor, the
lovable parish priest who taught true religion to his flock, but "first he
folwed it himselve"; the coarse but good-hearted Wyf of Bath, the thieving
miller leading the pilgrims to the music of his bagpipe,--all these and
many others from every walk of English life, and all described with a
quiet, kindly humor which seeks instinctively the best in human nature, and
which has an ample garment of charity to cover even its faults and
failings. "Here," indeed, as Dryden says, "is God's plenty." Probably no
keener or kinder critic ever described his fellows; and in this immortal
"Prologue" Chaucer is a model for all those who would put our human life
into writing. The student should read it entire, as an introduction not
only to the poet but to all our modern literature.

THE KNIGHT'S TALE. As a story, "Palamon and Arcite" is, in many respects,
the best of the _Canterbury Tales_, reflecting as it does the ideals of the
time in regard to romantic love and knightly duty. Though its dialogues and
descriptions are som