the class of _fabliaux_, a few of which existed in
English, such as _Dame Siriz_, the _Lay of the Ash_, and the _Land of
Cokaygne_, already mentioned. The _Nonne Preste's Tale_, likewise,
which Dryden modernized with admirable humor, was of the class of
_fabliaux_, and was suggested by a little poem in forty lines, _Dou Coc
et Werpil_, by Marie de France, a Norman poetess of the 13th century.
It belonged, like the early English poem of _The Fox and the Wolf_, to
the popular animal-saga of _Reynard the Fox_. The _Franklin's Tale_,
whose scene is Brittany, and the _Wife of Baths' {39} Tale_, which is
laid in the time of the British Arthur, belong to the class of French
_lais_, serious metrical tales shorter than the romance and of Breton
origin, the best representatives of which are the elegant and graceful
_lais_ of Marie de France.

Chaucer was our first great master of laughter and of tears. His
serious poetry is full of the tenderest pathos. His loosest tales are
delightfully humorous and life-like. He is the kindliest of satirists.
The knavery, greed, and hypocrisy of the begging friars and the sellers
of indulgences are exposed by him as pitilessly as by Langland and
Wiclif, though his mood is not like theirs, one of stern, moral
indignation, but rather the good-natured scorn of a man of the world.
His charity is broad enough to cover even the corrupt sompnour of whom
he says,

"And yet in sooth he was a good felawe."

Whether he shared Wiclif's opinions is unknown, but John of Gaunt, the
Duke of Lancaster and father of Henry IV., who was Chaucer's life-long
patron, was likewise Wiclif's great upholder against the persecution of
the bishops. It is, perhaps, not without significance that the poor
parson in the _Canterbury Tales_, the only one of his ecclesiastical
pilgrims whom Chaucer treats with respect, is suspected by the host of
the Tabard to be a "loller," that is, a Lollard, or disciple of Wiclif,
and that because he objects to the jovial inn-keeper's swearing "by
Goddes bones."

{40} Chaucer's English is nearly as easy for a modern reader as
Shakspere's, and few of his words have become obsolete. His verse,
when rightly read, is correct and melodious. The early English was, in
some respects, more "sweet upon the tongue" than the modern language.
The vowels had their broad Italian sounds, and the speech was full of
soft gutturals and vocalic syllables, like the endings en, es, and e,
which made