et;[12]
Full fair and thicke be the pointes set.
And thereupon he had a gay surplice,
As white as is the blossom on the rise.[13]
A merry child he was, so God me save;
Well could he letten blood, and clip, and shave,
And make a charter of land and a quittance.
In twenty manners could he trip and dance,
After the school of Oxenforde tho',[14]
And with his legges caste to and fro;
And playen songes or a small ribible;[15]
Thereto he sung sometimes a loud quinible.[16]
And as well could he play on a gitern.[17]
In all the town was brewhouse nor tavern
That he not visited with his solas,[18]
There as that any gaillard tapstere[19] was.
This Absolon, that jolly was and gay
Went with a censor on the holy day,
Censing the wives of the parish fast:
And many a lovely look he on them cast,

* * * * *

Sometimes to show his lightness and mast'ry
He playeth Herod on a scaffold high."

[Footnote 6: Called.]

[Footnote 7: Stretched.]

[Footnote 8: Head of hair.]

[Footnote 9: Complexion.]

[Footnote 10: His shoes were decked with an ornament like a rose-window
in old St. Paul's.]

[Footnote 11: Daintily.]

[Footnote 12: A kind of cloth.]

[Footnote 13: A bush.]

[Footnote 14: The Oxford school of dancing is satirised by the poet.]

[Footnote 15: A kind of fiddle.]

[Footnote 16: Treble.]

[Footnote 17: Guitar.]

[Footnote 18: Sport, mirth.]

[Footnote 19: Tavern-wench.]

I fear me Master Absolon was a somewhat frivolous clerk, or his memory
has been traduced by the poet's pen, which lacked not satire and a
caustic but good-humoured wit. Here was a parish clerk who could sing
well, though he did not confine his melodies to "Psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs." He wore a surplice; he was an accomplished scrivener,
and therefore a man of some education; he could perform the offices of
the barber-surgeon, and one of his duties was to cense the people in
their houses. He was an actor of no mean repute, and took a leading part
in the mysteries or miracle-plays, concerning which we shall have more
to tell. He even could undertake the prominent part of Herod, which
doubtless was an object of competition among the amateurs of the period.
Such is the picture which Chaucer draws of the frivolous clerk, a sketch
which is accurate enough as far as it goes, and one that w