hrough the rain, to visit a distant cottage. The
poet's sympathy is broad; he loves, as he hates, with all his heart.

One after another, all these persons of such diverse conditions have
gathered together, twenty-nine in all. For one day they have the same
object in view, and are going to live a common life. Fifty-six miles
from London is the shrine, famous through all Europe, which contains the
remains of Henry the Second's former adversary, the Chancellor Thomas
Becket, assassinated on the steps of the altar, and canonised.[531]
Mounted each on his steed, either good or bad, the knight on a beast
sturdy, though of indifferent appearance; the hunting monk on a superb
palfrey, "as broun as is a berye"; the Wife of Bath sitting astride her
horse, armed with great spurs and showing her red stockings, they set
out, taking with them mine host of the "Tabard," and there they go, at
an easy pace, along the sunny road lined with hedges, among the gentle
undulations of the soil. They will cross the Medway; they will pass
beneath the walls of Rochester's gloomy keep, then one of the principal
fortresses of the kingdom, but sacked recently by revolted peasantry;
they will see the cathedral built a little lower down, and, as it were,
in its shade. There are women and bad riders in the group; the miller
has drunk too much, and can hardly sit in the saddle; the way will be
long.[532] To make it seem short, each one will relate two tales, and
the troop, on its return, will honour by a supper the best teller.

Under the shadow of great romances, shorter stories had sprung up. The
forest of romance was now losing its leaves, and the stories were
expanding in the sunlight. The most celebrated collection was
Boccaccio's, written in delightful Italian prose, a many-sided work,
edifying and licentious at the same time, a work audacious in every way,
even from a literary point of view. Boccaccio knows it, and justifies
his doings. To those who reproach him with having busied himself with
"trifles," neglecting "the Muses of Parnassus," he replies: Who knows
whether I have neglected them so very much? "Perhaps, while I wrote
those tales of such humble mien, they may have come sometimes and seated
themselves at my side."[533] They bestowed the same favour on Chaucer.

The idea of "Troilus and Criseyde," borrowed from Boccaccio, had been
transformed; the general plan and the setting of the "Tales" are
modified more profoundly yet. In Boccacci