Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/62

 gold, fashioned like a love-knot, fastened the humbug's hood under his chin. His bald head shone like glass, his face glowed as if it had been anointed, for he was a fat lord and in good case, his deep-sunk eyes rolled in his head, that steamed as a furnace of lead. His boots were supple, his nut-brown palfrey was in first-rate order. He was not pale like a tormented ghost, this worthy monk, but loved a roast swan before any dish.

Nor is the friar who rode near this monk one whit nobler or purer. He, too, was riding in the district where he had license to beg. Many a marriage he had paid for at his own cost, and is hand-in-glove with half the rich franklins (gentlemen farmers) in his country, and also with many women. He was a licentiate of his order; pleasant was his absolution and easy his penance, and he used to boast that he had more power to confess than the curate himself. The great sign of repentance with him was a good gift: some silver to the poor friars was in his opinion worth all the tears ever shed. His tippet was stuffed full of pretty little presents for fair wives. He sang and played well. His neck was as white as a lily, he was stalwart as a champion, and in every town well he knew the taverns, and cared more for sly hostler and gay tapster than poor leper or shivering beggar. He cared not for such cattle, but preferred rich men and "sellers of vitaille;" and yet this rogue he could be courteous and deprecating, and was avowedly the best beggar in all his house. If a poor widow had only one shoe he would get a farthing out of her, on arbitration days. He was no poor cloisterer with threadbare cope, like a poor scholar, but he looked a very pope; his semicope was of double worsted, and for very wantonness he lisped —

and when he harped and he sang his eyes twinkled in his head like stars on a frosty night.

Then how dark Chaucer's colours grow when he sketches that tool of the monks, the rascally summoner. Look at him, with his fire-red pimply cherubim head. His coarse brows are thick, and his beard scurvy and thin. Quicksilver, litharge, brimstone, borax, ceruse, and oil of tartar, nothing could cure those pimples. Right well loved this summoner onions, leeks, and garlic; and right well he relished the strong wines red as blood. Then he would shout as he were mad, and when the wine was well in his head not a word would he speak. Doubtless he had a few phrases that he had learned out of some decree, and as a jay can chatter, and aye "Quæstio quid juris" would he cry. Yet he was a good worthy fellow, and for a quart of wine would pardon many an offence. He had at his control the youth of the diocese, and was in their councils. This worthy summoner wore a garland on his head, as large as for a maypole, and he carried a big cake for a buckler.

Then, ye honest but misguided Ritualists, only read Chaucer's description of the pardoner (seller of indulgences) who rides beside the summoner. He was just fresh from Rome, and sang loudly the popular love-ditty, "Come, hither, love, to me," and to that ditty the summoner sang in deep chorus. The pardoner had yellow hair that hung smooth as flax over his shoulders. He wore no hood, but kept it in his wallet; and rode bare and dishevelled. His eyes stared like a hare's; he had got a handkerchief from Rome miraculously stained with the figure of Christ; his wallet lay on his lap, brimful of pardons hot from the pope. His voice was small as a goat's; he had no beard, his chin was smooth as it were new-shaven. Yet after all there was no pardoner like him from Berwick to Ware. In his mail he carried a pillow-case, which he said was Our Lady's veil, and he swore that he had a fragment of the sail of the boat in which Saint Peter went upon the sea of Galilee to meet Christ. He had a brass cross, full of sham stones, and in a glass he kept pigs' bones. With these remarkable relics, whenever he found a credulous poor person, he got more money in a day than the parson got in two months; and thus with flattery and humbug he made the parson and his people his puppets. But, after all, says the inimitable old poet, he was in church "a noble ecciesiast." He could read well a lesson or a story, and best of all he sang the offertory, for that was what brought in the silver, and therefore he sang merry and loud indeed.

That our poet's satire had a foundation in observed facts we cannot possibly doubt; though a satirical picture is far from being a representation of the whole truth.

The following extracts from the rules of the grey or Francisian friars serve very well to show the original high ideal of the order. The treatment of candidates' wives is perhaps somewhat monastic in its severity, but how can men know the charm of ties which they have never felt? The many possible abuses hinted at 