anctioned lewdness and debauchery.

There was a great difference indeed between the _regular_ clergy, or
those belonging to orders and monasteries, and the _secular_ clergy or
parish priests, who were far better; and there was a jealous feud between
them. There was a lamentable ignorance of the Scripture among the clergy,
and gross darkness over the people. The paraphrases of Caedmon, the
translations of Bede and Alfred, the rare manuscripts of the Latin Bible,
were all that cast a faint ray upon this gloom. The people could not read
Latin, even if they had books; and the Saxon versions were almost in a
foreign language. Thus, distrusting their religious teachers, thoughtful
men began to long for an English version of that Holy Book which contains
all the words of eternal life. And thus, while the people were becoming
more clamorous for instruction, and while Wiclif was meditating the great
boon of a translated Bible, which, like a noonday sun, should irradiate
the dark places and disclose the loathsome groups and filthy
manifestations of cell and cloister, Chaucer was administering the
wholesome medicine of satire and contempt. He displays the typical monk
given up to every luxury, the costly black dress with fine fur edgings,
the love-knot which fastens his hood, and his preference for pricking and
hunting the hare, over poring into a stupid book in a cloister.

THE FRIAR AND THE SOMPNOUR.--His satire extends also to the friar, who has
not even that semblance of virtue which is the tribute of the hypocrite to
our holy faith. He is not even the demure rascal conceived by Thomson in
his Castle of Indolence:

... the first amid the fry,

* * * * *

A little round, fat, oily man of God,
Who had a roguish twinkle in his eye,
When a tight maiden chanced to trippen by,

* * * * *

Which when observed, he shrunk into his mew,
And straight would recollect his piety anew.

But Chaucer's friar is a wanton and merry scoundrel, taking every
license, kissing the wives and talking love-talk to the girls in his
wanderings, as he begs for his Church and his order. His hood is stuffed
with trinkets to give them; he is worthily known as the best beggar of his
house; his eyes alight with wine, he strikes his little harp, trolls out
funny songs and love-ditties. Anon, his frolic over, he preaches to the
collected crowd violent de