the _Prioress' Tale_ and apply to it the five short-story tests
established by Poe, as a personal discovery, four and a half centuries
later; it survives them all. It attains, in addition, the crowning
glory, coveted by Stevenson, of appearing _typical_. There may never
have been a Christian child who was martyred by the Jews in the
particularly gruesome way described--probably there never was; but, in
listening to the Prioress, it does not enter into our heads to doubt
her word--the picture which she leaves with us of how the Christian
regarded the Jew in the Middle Ages is too vivid to allow any
breathing-space for incredulity. No knowledge of mediaeval anti-Jewish
legislation, however scholarly, can bring us to realize the fury of
race-hatred which then existed more keenly than this story of a little
over two thousand words. By its perusal we gain an illuminating
insight into that ill-directed religious enthusiasm which led men on
frenzied quests for the destruction of the heretic in their own land
and of the Saracen abroad, causing them to become at one and the same
time unjust and heroic. In a word, within the compass of three hundred
lines of verse, Chaucer contrives to body forth his age--to give us
something which is _typical_.

The _Morte D'Arthur_ of Malory is again a collection of traditional
stories, as is the _Gesta Romanorum_, and not the creative work of a
single intellect. As might be expected, it straggles, and overlays its
climax with a too-lavish abundance of incidents; it lacks the
_harmony of values_ which results from the introduction of a unifying
purpose--_i.e_., of art. Imaginative and full of action though the
books of the _Morte D'Arthur_ are, it remained for the latter-day
artist to exhaust their individual incidents of their full dramatic
possibilities. From the eyes of the majority of modern men the
brilliant quality of their magic was concealed, until it had