chance does the "Clerk," following Petrarch's Latin version of a story
related by the same author, tell the even more improbable, but, in the
plainness of its moral, infinitely more fructuous tale of patient
Griseldis. How well the "Second Nun" is fitted with a legend which
carries us back a few centuries into the atmosphere of Hrosvitha's
comedies, and suggests with the utmost verisimilitude the nature of a
Nun's lucubrations on the subject of marriage. It is impossible to go
through the whole list of the "Tales"; but all may be truly said to be in
keeping with the characters and manners (often equally indifferent) of
their tellers--down to that of the "Nun's Priest," which, brimful of
humour as it is, has just the mild naughtiness about it which comes so
drolly from a spiritual director in his worldlier hour.

Not a single one of these "Tales" can with any show of reason be ascribed
to Chaucer's own invention. French literature--chiefly though not solely
that of fabliaux--doubtless supplied the larger share of his materials;
but that here also his debts to Italian literature, and to Boccaccio in
particular, are considerable, seems hardly to admit of denial. But while
Chaucer freely borrowed from foreign models, he had long passed beyond the
stage of translating without assimilating. It would be rash to assume
that where he altered he invariably improved. His was not the unerring
eye which, like Shakspere's in his dramatic transfusions of Plutarch,
missed no particle of the gold mingled with the baser metal, but rejected
the dross with sovereign certainty. In dealing with Italian originals
more especially, he sometimes altered for the worse, and sometimes for the
better; but he was never a mere slavish translator. So in the "Knight's
Tale" he may be held in some points to have deviated disadvantageously
from his original; but, on the other hand, in the "Clerk's Tale," he
inserts a passage on the fidelity of women, and another on the instability
of the multitude, besides adding a touch of nature irresistibly pathetic