Why then should witless man so much misween
That nothing is but that which he hath seen?

The NEGATIVE result produced in Chaucer's mind by this firm but placid way
of regarding matters of faith was a distrust of astrology, alchemy, and
all the superstitions which in the "Parson's Tale" are noticed as
condemned by the Church. This distrust on Chaucer's part requires no
further illustration after what has been said elsewhere; it would have
been well for his age if all its children had been as clear-sighted in
these matters as he, to whom the practices connected with these delusive
sciences seemed, and justly so from his point of view, not less impious
than futile. His "Canon Yeoman's Tale," a story of imposture so vividly
dramatic in its catastrophe as to have suggested to Ben Jonson one of the
most effective passages in his comedy "The Alchemist," concludes with a
moral of unmistakeable solemnity against the sinfulness, as well as
uselessness, of "multiplying" (making gold by the arts of alchemy):--

--Whoso maketh God his adversary,
As for to work anything in contrary
Unto His will, certes ne'er shall he thrive,
Though that he multiply through all his life.

But equally unmistakeable is the POSITIVE side of this frame of mind in
such a passage as the following--which is one of those belonging to
Chaucer himself, and not taken from his French original--in the "Man of
Law's Tale." The narrator is speaking of the voyage of Constance, after
her escape from the massacre in which, at a feast, all her fellow-
Christians had been killed, and of how she was borne by the "wild wave"
from "Surrey" (Syria) to the Northumbrian shore:--