live mostly among colleagues and comrades; on a journey they are placed in
continual contrast with men of different pursuits and different habits of
life. The shipman away from his ship, the monk away from his cloister,
the scholar away from his books, become interesting instead of remaining
commonplace, because the contrasts become marked which exist between them.
Moreover, men undertake journeys for divers purposes, and a pilgrimage in
Chaucer's day united a motley group of chance companions in search of
different ends at the same goal. One goes to pray, the other seeks
profit, the third distraction, the fourth pleasure. To some the road is
everything; to others, its terminus. All this vanity lay in the mere
choice of Chaucer's framework; there was accordingly something of genius
in the thought itself; and even an inferior workmanship could hardly have
left a description of a Canterbury pilgrimage unproductive of a wide
variety of dramatic effects.

But Chaucer's workmanship was as admirable as his selection of his
framework was felicitous. He has executed only part of his scheme,
according to which each pilgrim was to tell two tales both going and
coming, and the best narrator, the laureate of this merry company, was to
be rewarded by a supper at the common expense on their return to their
starting-place. Thus the design was, not merely to string together a
number of poetical tales by an easy thread, but to give a real unity and
completeness to the whole poem. All the tales told by all the pilgrims
were to be connected together by links; the reader was to take an interest
in the movement and progress of the journey to and fro; and the poem was
to have a middle as well as a beginning and an end:--the beginning being
the inimitable "Prologue" as it now stands; the middle the history of the
pilgrims' doings at Canterbury; and the close their return and farewell
celebration at the Tabard inn. Though Chaucer carried out only about a
fourth part of this plan, yet we can see, as clearly as if the whole poem