THE POOR PARSON.—­With what eager interest does he portray the lovely character of the poor parson, the true shepherd of his little flock, in the midst of false friars and luxurious monks!—­poor himself, but

Riche was he of holy thought and work,

* * * * *

That Cristes gospel truely wolde preche,
His parishers devoutly wolde teche.

* * * * *

Wide was his parish and houses fer asonder,
But he left nought for ne rain no thonder,
In sickness and in mischief to visite
The ferrest in his parish, moche and lite. 
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf,
This noble example to his shepe he yaf,
That first he wrought and afterward he taught.

Chaucer’s description of the poor parson, which loses much by being curtailed, has proved to be a model for all poets who have drawn the likeness of an earnest pastor from that day to ours, among whom are Herbert, Cowper, Goldsmith, and Wordsworth; but no imitation has equalled this beautiful model.  When urged by the host,

    Tell us a fable anon, for cocke’s bones,

he quotes St. Paul to Timothy as rebuking those who tell fables; and, disclaiming all power in poetry, preaches them such a stirring discourse upon penance, contrition, confession, and the seven deadly sins, with their remedies, as must have fallen like a thunderbolt upon this careless, motly crew; and has the additional value of giving us Chaucer’s epitome of sound doctrine in that bigoted and ignorant age:  and, eminently sound and holy as it is, it rebukes the lewdness of the other stories, and, in point of morality, neutralizes if it does not justify the lewd teachings of the work, or in other words, the immorality of the age.  This is the parson’s own view:  his story is the last which is told, and he tells us, in the prologue to his sermon: 

    To knitte up all this feste, and make an ende;
    And Jesu for his grace wit me sende
    To showen you the way in this viage
    Of thilke parfit glorious pilgrimage,
    That hight Jerusalem celestial.

In an addendum to this discourse, which brings the Canterbury Tales to an abrupt close, and which, if genuine, as the best critics think it, was added some time after, Chaucer takes shame to himself for his lewd stories, repudiates all his “translations and enditinges of worldly vanitees,” and only finds pleasure in his translations of Boethius, his homilies and legends of the saints; and, with words of penitence, he hopes that he shall be saved “atte the laste day of dome.”

JOHN WICLIF.[18]—­The subject of this early reformation so clearly set forth in the stories of Chaucer, cannot be fully illustrated without a special notice of Chaucer’s great contemporary and co-worker, John Wiclif.

What Chaucer hints, or places in the mouths of his characters, with apparently no very serious intent, Wiclif, himself a secular priest, proclaimed boldly and as of prime importance, first from his professor’s chair at Oxford, and then from his forced retirement at Lutterworth, where he may well have been the model of Chaucer’s poor parson.