The "Miller" "tells his churlish tale in his manner," of which manner the
less said the better; while in the "Reeve's Tale," Chaucer even, after the
manner of a comic dramatist, gives his Northern undergraduate a vulgar
ungrammatical phraseology, probably designedly, since the poet was himself
a "Southern man." The "Pardoner" is exuberant in his sample-eloquence;
the "Doctor of Physic" is gravely and sententiously moral--

--a proper man,
And like a prelate, by Saint Runyan,

says the "Host." Most sustained of all, though he tells no tale, is, from
the nature of the case, the character of Harry Bailly, the host of the
Tabard, himself--who, whatever resemblance he may bear to his actual
original, is the anecestor of a long line of descendants, including mine
Host of the Garter in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." He is a thorough
worldling, to whom anything smacking of the precisian in morals is as
offensive as anything of a Romantic tone in literature; he smells a
Lollard without fail, and turns up his nose at an old-fashioned ballad or
a string of tragic instances as out of date or tedious. In short, he
speaks his mind and that of other more timid people at the same time, and
is one of those sinners whom everybody both likes and respects. "I
advise," says the "Pardoner," with polite impudence (when inviting the
company to become purchasers of the holy wares which he has for sale),
that

--our host, he shall begin,
For he is most enveloped in sin.

He is thus both an admirable picture in himself, and an admirable foil to
those characters which are most unlike him--above all to the "Parson" and