Of this motley company of pilgrims, I have already spoken of the prioress,—­a woman of high position.  In contrast with her is the wife of Bath, who has travelled extensively, even to Jerusalem and Rome; charitable, kind-hearted, jolly, and talkative, but bold and masculine and coarse, with a red face and red stockings, and a hat as big as a shield, and sharp spurs on her feet, indicating that she sat on her ambler like a man.

There are other characters which I cannot stop to mention,—­the sailor, browned by the seas and sun, and full of stolen Bordeaux wine; the haberdasher; the carpenter; the weaver; the dyer; the tapestry-worker; the cook, to boil the chickens and the marrow-bones, and bake the pies and tarts,—­mostly people from the middle and lower ranks of society, whose clothes are gaudy, manners rough, and language coarse.  But all classes and trades and professions seem to be represented, except nobles, bishops, and abbots,—­dignitaries whom, perhaps, Chaucer is reluctant to describe and caricature.

To beguile the time on the journey to Canterbury, all these various pilgrims are required to tell some story peculiar to their separate walks of life; and it is these stories which afford the best description we have of the manners and customs of the fourteenth century, as well as of its leading sentiments and ideas.

The knight was required to tell his story first, and it naturally was one of love and adventure.  Although the scene of it was laid in ancient Greece, it delineates the institution of chivalry and the manners and sentiments it produced.  No writer of that age, except perhaps Froissart, paints the connection of chivalry with the graces of the soul and the moral beauty which poetry associates with the female sex as Chaucer does.  The aristocratic woman of chivalry, while delighting in martial sports, and hence masculine and haughty, is also condescending, tender, and gracious.  The heroic and dignified self-respect with which chivalry invested woman exalted the passion of love.  Allied with reverence for woman was loyalty to the prince.  The rough warrior again becomes a gentleman, and has access to the best society.  Whatever may have been the degrees of rank, the haughtiest nobleman associated with the penniless knight, if only he were a gentleman and well born, on terms of social equality, since chivalry, while it created distinctions, also levelled those which wealth and power naturally created among the higher class.  Yet chivalry did not exalt woman outside of noble ranks.  The plebeian woman neither has the graces of the high-born lady, nor does she excite that reverence for the sex which marked her condition in the feudal castle.  “Tournaments and courts of love were not framed for village churls, but for high-born dames and mighty earls.”