hymn to the Virgin. The clerk of Oxford, who prefers to wealth and
luxury his "twenty bookes clad in blak or reede," contributes the story
of the patient Griselda.

The "Canterbury Tales" are so familiar that an extended notice of them
here would be superfluous, especially as we are dealing with narratives
in prose form. But in seeking to trace the origin and progress of the
English novel as it is now written, we must record the first appearance
of its special characteristics in the works of Chaucer. Here are first
to be seen real human beings, endowed with human virtues and subject to
human frailties; here fictitious characters are first represented amid
the homely scenes of daily life; here they first become living
realities whose nature and dispositions every one may understand, and
with whose thoughts every one may sympathize. We must notice, also, the
significant fact that of the thirty-two pilgrims who jogged along
together that April day, four were of a military character, eleven
belonged to the clergy, and seventeen were of the common people. A
century before Chaucer's time, when the feudal spirit was still
all-powerful, there were but two classes of men thought worthy of
consideration, the knighthood and the clergy; and in the romances of
chivalry knights and priests exclusively composed the _dramatis
personæ_. But the slow progress of the masses, in whom lies the chief
strength of a nation, becomes visible in Chaucer's time. In the towns
the tradesmen were rising to wealth and consideration. In the country
the yeomanry--the laborers and farmers--were throwing off their
serfdom, and emerging from the chrysalis of obscurity in which they had
long been hidden. At Cressy and Poitiers the English archers disputed
with the knighthood the honors of victory. While Chaucer was planning
the "Canterbury Tales," introducing into his gallery of contemporary
portraits more figures of tradesmen than of knights or priests, the