his way to and from the school, he sang it aloud in the gladness of his innocent heart, little thinking that many of the Israelites were regarding him with louring murderous looks. In the end, they seized the poor child and cut his throat, and cast his body into a loathsome pit.

"This pooré widwe awaiteth al that night
After her litel child, but he cam noght;
For which, as sone as it was dayés lyght,
With facé pale of drede and bisy thoght,
She hath at scole, and ellés where him soght,
Til finally she gan so far espye

That he last seyn was in the Jewerye."

The mother, half distracted, went everywhere asking for her child, but all the Jews denied any knowledge of him. At last, in her sad search, she came near the place where he, murdered, lay; and there, in the sweet childish voice she knew and loved so well, she heard the "Alma Redemptoris Mater" song ringing clear into the air. It was a great miracle, and disclosed the cruel deed which had been done. The provost of the town seized the cursed Jews one by one, and put them to death with bitter torture. But still the child continued to sing his song, and did so when he was laid on a bier and borne through a weeping multitude to the nearest church; and there the abbot,

with holy hands and voice, besought him to tell why he thus continued to sing after the life had departed out of him. And the child said that he had been commanded to do so by the Blessed Mother herself, and that he must continue to sing the holy song until he was absolved from the command. Then the abbot pronounced the words of absolution, and the poor body was still at last, and they buried it in a tomb of white marble, for all men to see. "And," said the Prioress," where he is gone may we all go at laste." Stories of the cruelties of the Jews were common in the middle ages, and the Prioress adds

"Oh yongé Hugh of Lincoln! sleyn also
With cursed Jewés, as it is notable,

For it nis but a litel whyle ago,

Pray eke for us, we sinful folk unstable,
That of his mercy God so merciable,

On us his greté mercy multiplye,

For reverence of his moder Marye. Amen."

After the tale was told a great awe fell upon all the company, and they went onwards in deep silence for a time.

But by-and-by, Chaucer tells us, the Host proceeded again to business, and this time victimised no less a personage than the poet himself. "What

sort of man is this?" said he; "he seems as fat, as well kept, and as comfortable as I am myself, but yet he rides along absorbed in himself, and with his eyes steadfastly fixed on the ground. I do not think I have heard him make a single merry remark during the whole of the journey. His thoughts seem always to be wool-gathering in the clouds. Come down to earth, sir; remember that we are a company of pleasure-seekers, and do what you can for our amusement as the others have done."

Chaucer said that he would be willing to do his best, but that the only thing he could remember was an old ballad which he had learned a long time before. The Host said that that would do very well, and that, if he did his best, he was sure from his looks that they would get something good from him. Chaucer then proceeded to recite "The Rime of Sir Thopas." It is a parody on the pompous platitudes and prosaic details of the senseless tales of chivalry which formed the stock-in-trade of many of the long-winded rhymesters and balladmongers of the day. He slyly places many of their phrases side by side in ridiculous connection, and delights in showing the difficulties under which they must have laboured in finding lines which would rhyme. He several times had to re

quest the attention of his audience, and he each time proses on just as before, until the Host can

stand it no longer, and shouts out—

"No more of this, for Goddes dignity!
Thou makest me

So weary of thy verray lewednesse
That, al so wisly God my soulé blesse,
Myn erés aken of thy drasty speche;
Thou dost nought ellés but dispendest tyme;
Sir, at o word, thou shalt no lenger ryme;

and then the poet is called upon, since he has utterly failed to give them anything worth hearing in verse, to do what he can in prose, and to see that what he did give them contained some amusement, or if not that, then at least some instruction. Chaucer pretends to feel aggrieved that he has been checked

"Syn that it is the besté rym I

can;"

but he consents to give them "a litel thing in prose," and then proceeds to present the long tale of "Melibeus," running on for more than sixteen hundred lines. At the commencement a good many disguised blank-verse lines occur; but the tale is so dull and tedious, that one even wishes that "The Rime of Sir Thopas" had not been broken off, but continued instead. It is a long

moral sermon, like the "Parson's Tale" at the close of the series, or rather a long curtain lecture, delivered with all kind intentions by Dame Prudence to Melibeus, that model spouse, in which she hurls wise saws at him by the bushel, culled from Job, David, Solomon, Jesus the Son of Sirach, Paul and all the Apostles, Ovid, Cicero, Cato, Seneca, and many more, all of which Melibeus receives with gratitude, and, as he ought to do, thanks God "that hym sente a wyf of so gret discretioun."

The Host declares himself to be full of admiration of her, and wishes that he had such a one at home. As it is, he says, the Mistress of the Tabard is by no means blessed with the benignity of disposition which characterised Dame Prudence. She is up in arms when the least thing is wrong; when the knaves that serve in the inn offend her, she wishes them beaten black and blue; and when she does not receive all the deference from others to which she thinks herself entitled, she calls her husband "milksop" and "coward ape," and suchlike names, if he will not at once agree to take up her quarrel. But, he says, the only thing for it, he supposes, is to bear it with what grace he may, and, in the meantime, to get some one to tell another tale. He calls upon the Monk, whose