continually improved as he advanced in life. His last works are his
best, showing the care and labor he bestowed, as well as his fidelity to
nature. I am amazed, considering his time, that he was so great an
artist without having a knowledge of the principles of art as taught by
the great masters of composition.

But, as has been already said, his distinguishing excellence is vivid
and natural description of the life and habits, not the opinions, of the
people of the fourteenth century, described without exaggeration or
effort for effect. He paints his age as Molière paints the times of
Louis XIV., and Homer the heroic periods of Grecian history. This
fidelity to nature and inexhaustible humor and living freshness and
perpetual variety are the eternal charms of the "Canterbury Tales." They
bring before the eye the varied professions and trades and habits and
customs of the fourteenth century. We see how our ancestors dressed and
talked and ate; what pleasures delighted them, what animosities moved
them, what sentiments elevated them, and what follies made them
ridiculous. The same naturalness and humor which marked "Don Quixote"
and the "Decameron" also are seen in the "Canterbury Tales." Chaucer
freed himself from all the affectations and extravagances and
artificiality which characterized the poetry of the Middle Ages. With
him began a new style in writing. He and Wyclif are the creators of
English literature. They did not create a language, but they formed and
polished it.

The various persons who figure in the "Canterbury Tales" are too well
known for me to enlarge upon. Who can add anything to the Prologue in
which Chaucer himself describes the varied characters and habits and
appearance of the pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at
Canterbury? There are thirty of these pilgrims, including the poet