On their way the pilgrims tell tales, and these are as various as their relaters; in fact, the Prologue is the soil out of which they all grow.  Dramatic propriety is everywhere instinctively preserved.  “The Knight’s Tale” is noble, splendid, and chivalric as his own nature; the tale told by the Wife of Bath is exactly what one would expect.  With what good-humour the rosy sinner confesses her sins! how hilarious she is in her repentance!  “The Miller’s Tale” is coarse and full-flavoured,—­just the kind of thing to be told by a rough, humourous fellow who is hardly yet sober.  And here it may be said that although there is a good deal of coarseness in the “Canterbury Tales,” there is not the slightest tinge of pruriency.  There is such a single-heartedness and innocence in Chaucer’s vulgarest and broadest stories, such a keen eye for humour, and such a hearty enjoyment of it, and at the same time such an absence of any delight in impurity for impurity’s sake, that but little danger can arise from their perusal.  He is so fond of fun that he will drink it out of a cup that is only indifferently clean.  He writes often like Fielding, he never writes as Smollett sometimes does.  These stories, ranging from the noble romance of Palamon and Arcite to the rude intrigues of Clerk Nicholas,—­the one fitted to draw tears down the cheeks of noble ladies and gentlemen; the other to convulse with laughter the midriffs of illiterate clowns,—­give one an idea of the astonishing range of Chaucer’s powers.  He can suit himself to every company, make himself at home in every circumstance of life; can mingle in tournaments where beauty is leaning from balconies, and the knights, with spear in rest, wait for the blast of the trumpet; and he can with equal ease sit with a couple of drunken friars in a tavern laughing over the confessions they hear, and singing questionable catches between whiles.  Chaucer’s range is wide as that of Shakspeare,—­if we omit that side of Shakspeare’s mind which confronts the other world, and out of which Hamlet sprang,—­and his men and women are even more real, and more easily matched in the living and breathing world.  For in Shakspeare’s characters, as in his language, there is surplusage, superabundance; the measure is heaped and running over.  From his sheer wealth, he is often the most undramatic of writers.  He is so frequently greater than his occasion, he has no small change to suit emergencies, and we have guineas in place of groats.  Romeo is more than a mortal lover, and Mercutio more than a mortal wit; the kings in the Shakspearian world are more kingly than earthly sovereigns; Rosalind’s laughter was never heard save in the Forest of Arden.  His madmen seem to have eaten of some “strange root.”  No such boon companion as Falstaff ever heard chimes at midnight.  His very clowns are transcendental, with scraps of wisdom springing out of their foolishest speech.  Chaucer, lacking Shakspeare’s excess and prodigality of genius,