finger at; but they
forget that the Church uses strong arguments with perverse adversaries.

To find Chaucer's merchant you need not go further than a few yards from
Milk Street. There you will see him at any stall, grave, and with forked
beard; on his head a Flemish beaver hat, and his boots "full fetishly"
clasped. He talks much of profits and exchanges, and the necessity of
guarding the sea from the French between Middleburgh and the Essex
ports.

Chaucer's poor lean Oxford clerk you will find in Paul's, peering about
the tombs, as if looking for a benefice. All his riches, worthy man! are
some twenty books at his bed's head, and he is talking philosophy to a
fellow-student lean and thin as himself, to the profound contempt of
that stiff serjeant-at-law who is waiting for clients near the font, on
which his fees are paid.

Any procession day in the age of Edward you can meet, in Westminster
Abbey, near the royal shrines and tombs, Chaucer's franklin, or country
gentleman, with his red face and white beard. His dagger hangs by his
silk purse, and his girdle is as white as milk, for our friend has been
a sheriff and knight of the shire, and is known all Buckinghamshire over
for his open house and well-covered board. Aye, and many a fat partridge
he has in his pen, and many a fat pike in his fish-pond.

Chaucer's shipman we shall be certain to discover near Billingsgate. He
is from Dartmouth, and wears a short coat, and a knife hanging from his
neck. A hardy good fellow he is, and shrewd, and his beard has shaken in
many a tempest. Bless you! the captain of the _Magdalen_ knows all the
havens from Gothland to Cape Finisterre, aye, and every creek in
Brittany and Spain; and many a draught of Bordeaux wine he has tapped at
night from his cargo.

Nor must we forget that favourite pilgrim of Chaucer--the poor parson of
a town, who is also a learned clerk, and who is by many supposed to
strongly resemble Wycliffe himself, whom Chaucer's patron, John of
Gaunt, protects at the hazard of his life. He is no proud Pharisee, like
the fat abbot who has just gone past the church door; but benign and
wondrous diligent, and in adversity full patient. Rather than be cursed
for the tithe he takes, he gives to the poor of his very subsistence.
Come rain, come thunder, staff in hand, he visits the farthest end of
his parish; he has no spiced conscience--

"For Christe's love, and his apostles twelve,
He taught, _but first h