and prose-fiction of Boccaccio, had the opportunity to choose between
these two mediums of short-story narration; and he chose the former.
He was as familiar with Boccaccio's poetic method, as exemplified
in the _Teseide_, as with his prose, as exemplified at much greater
length in the _Decameron_, for he borrowed from them both. Yet in only
two instances in the _Canterbury Tales_ does he relapse into prose.

The _Teseide_ in Chaucer's hands, retaining its poetic medium, is
converted into the _Knight's Tale_; while the _Reeve's Tale_, the
_Franklin's_, and the _Shipman's_, each borrowed from the prose
version of the _Decameron_, are given by him a poetic setting. This
preference for poetry over prose as a medium for short-story narration
cannot have been accidental or unreasoned on his part; nor can it be
altogether accounted for by the explanation that "he was by nature a
poet," for he _did_ experiment with the prose medium to the extent of
using it twice. He had the brilliant and innovating precedent of
the _Decameron_, and yet, while adopting some of its materials, he
abandoned its medium. He was given the opportunity of ante-dating the
introduction of technique into the English prose short-story by four
hundred and fifty years, and he disregarded it almost cavalierly. How
is such wilful neglect to be accounted for? Only by his instinctive
feeling that the technique, which Boccaccio had applied in the
_Decameron_, belonged by right to the realm of poetry, had been
learned in the practising of the poetic art, and could arrive at its
highest level of achievement only in that medium.

That in Chaucer's case this choice was justified cannot be disputed;
the inferiority of the short-story technique contained in his two
prose efforts, when compared with that displayed in the remainder
of the _Canterbury Tales_, is very marked. Take, for instance,