tions and the most humorous
associations. And this without anything grotesque in the collocation,
such as is involved in the notion of men telling anecdotes at a
funeral, or forgetting a pestilence over love-stories. Chaucer's
dramatis personae are a company of pilgrims, whom at first we find
assembled in a hostelry in Southwark, and whom we afterwards accompany
on their journey to Canterbury. The hostelry is that "Tabard" inn
which, though it changed its name, and no doubt much of its actual
structure, long remained both in its general appearance, and perhaps in
part of its actual self, a genuine relic of mediaeval London. There,
till within a very few years from the present date, might still be had
a draught of that London ale of which Chaucer's "Cook" was so thorough
a connoisseur; and there within the big courtyard, surrounded by a
gallery very probably a copy of its predecessor, was ample room for

--well nine and twenty in a company
Of sundry folk,

with their horses and travelling gear sufficient for a ride to
Canterbury. The goal of this ride has its religious, its national, one
might even say its political aspect; but the journey itself has an
importance of its own. A journey is generally one of the best of
opportunities for bringing out the distinctive points in the characters
of travellers; and we are accustomed to say that no two men can long
travel in one another's company unless their friendship is equal to the
severest of tests. At home men live mostly among colleagues and
comrades; on a journey they are placed in continual contrast with men
of different pursuits and different habits of life. The shipman away
from his ship, the monk away from his cloister, the scholar away from
his books, become interesting instead of remaining commonplace, because
the contrasts become marked which exist between them. Moreover, men
undertake journeys for divers purposes, and a pilgrimage in Chaucer's
day united a motley group of chance companions in search of different
ends at the same goal. One goes to pray, the other seeks profit, the
third distraction, the fourth pleasure. To some the road is
everything; to others, its terminus. All this vanity lay in the mere
choice of Chaucer's framework; there was accordingly something of
genius in the thought itself; and even an inferior workmanship could
hardly have left a description of a Canterbury pilgrimage unproductive
of a wide variety of dramatic effects.