points of likeness to establish a kinship with the structure
visualized in Chaucer's lines. It is true the poet describes the inn
more by suggestion than set delineation, but such hints that it was
"a gentle hostelry," that its rooms and stables were alike spacious,
that the food was of the best and the wine of the strongest go
further with the imagination than concrete statements.

[Illustration: GEOFFREY CHAUCER.]

Giving faith for the moment to that theory which credits the
Canterbury Tales with being based on actual experience, and
recalling the quaint courtyard of the inn as it appeared on that
distant April day of 1388, it is a pleasant exercise of fancy to
imagine Chaucer leaning over the rail of one of the upper galleries
to watch the assembling of his nine-and-twenty "sondry folk." They
are, as J. R. Green has said, representatives of every class of
English society from the noble to the ploughman. "We see the
'verray-perfight gentil knight' in cassock and coat of mail, with
his curly-headed squire beside him, fresh as the May morning, and
behind them the brown-faced yeoman in his coat and hood of green
with a mighty bow in his hand. A group of ecclesiastics light up for
us the mediaeval church--the brawny hunt-loving monk, whose bridle
jingles as loud and clear as the chapel bell--the wanton friar,
first among the beggars and harpers of the courtly side--the poor
parson, threadbare, learned, and devout ('Christ's lore and his
apostles twelve he taught, and first he followed it himself')--the
summoner with his fiery face--the pardoner with his wallet 'full of
pardons, come from Rome all hot'--the lively prioress with her
courtly French lisp, her soft little red mouth, and _Amor vincit
omnia_ graven on her brooch. Learning is there in the portly