The Canterbury Tales were begun in 1386, when Chaucer was fifty-eight years old, and in a period of comparative quiet, after the minority of Richard II. was over, and before his troubles had begun.  They form a beautiful gallery of cabinet pictures of English society in all its grades, except the very highest and the lowest; and, in this respect, they supplement in exact lineaments and the freshest coloring those compendiums of English history which only present to us, on the one hand, the persons and deeds of kings and their nobles, and, on the other, the general laws which so long oppressed the lower orders of the people, and the action of which is illustrated by disorders among them.  But in Chaucer we find the true philosophy of English society, the principle of the guilds, or fraternities, to which his pilgrims belong—­the character and avocation of the knight, squire, yeoman, franklin, bailiff, sompnour, reeve, etc., names, many of them, now obsolete.  Who can find these in our compendiums? they must be dug—­and dry work it is—­out of profounder histories, or found, with greater pleasure, in poems like that of Chaucer.

CHARACTERS.—­Let us consider, then, a few of his principal characters which most truly represent the age and nation.

The Tabard inn at Southwark, then a suburb of “London borough without the walls,” was a great rendezvous for pilgrims who were journeying to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket, at Canterbury—­that Saxon archbishop who had been murdered by the minions of Henry II.  Southwark was on the high street, the old Roman highway from London to the southeast.  A gathering of pilgrims here is no uncommon occurrence; and thus numbers and variety make a combination of penitence and pleasure.  The host of the Tabard—­doubtless a true portraiture of the landlord of that day—­counts noses, that he may distribute the pewter plates.  A substantial supper smokes upon the old-fashioned Saxon-English board—­so substantial that the pilgrims are evidently about to lay in a good stock, in anticipation of poor fare, the fatigue of travel, and perhaps a fast or two not set down in the calendar.  As soon as they attack the viands, ale and strong wines, hippocras, pigment, and claret, are served in bright pewter and wood.  There were Saxon drinks for the commoner pilgrims; the claret was for the knight.  Every one drinks at his will, and the miller, as we shall see, takes a little more than his head can decently carry.

First in the place of honor is the knight, accompanied by his son, the young squire, and his trusty yeoman.  Then, in order of social rank, a prioress, a nun and three priests, a friar, a merchant, a poor scholar or clerk of Oxford, a sergeant of the law, a frankelein, a haberdasher, a weaver, a tapster, a dyer, a cook, a shipman, a doctor of physic, a wife of Bath, a poor parson, a ploughman, a miller, a manciple or college steward, a reeve or bailiff, a sompnour or summoner to the ecclesiastical courts, a pardoner or seller