(_c_) The third or English group contains work of the greatest individual accomplishment. The achievement of this period is _The Canterbury Tales_, though one or two of the separate tales may be of slightly earlier composition. For the general idea of the tales Chaucer may be indebted to Boccaccio, but in nearly every important feature the work is essentially English. For the purposes of his poem Chaucer draws together twenty-nine pilgrims, including himself. They meet at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark, in order to go on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. The twenty-nine are carefully chosen types, of both sexes, and of all ranks, from a knight to a humble plowman; their occupations and personal peculiarities are many and diverse; and, as they are depicted in the masterly _Prologue_ to the main work, they are interesting, alive, and thoroughly human. At the suggestion of the host of the Tabard, and to relieve the tedium of the journey, each of the pilgrims is to tell two tales on the outward journey, and two on the return. In its entirety the scheme would have resulted in an immense collection of over a hundred tales. But as it happens Chaucer finished only twenty, and left four partly complete. The separate tales are linked with their individual prologues, and with dialogues and scraps of narrative. Even in its incomplete state the work is a small literature in itself, an almost unmeasured abundance and variety of humor and pathos, of narrative and description, and of dialogue and digression. There are two prose tales, Chaucer’s own _Tale of Melibœus_ and _The Parson’s Tale_; and nearly all the others are composed in a powerful and versatile species of the heroic couplet. To this last stage of Chaucer’s work several short poems are ascribed, including _The Lack of Stedfastness_ and the serio-comic _Compleynte of Chaucer to his Purse_. There is also mention of a few short early poems, such as _Origines upon the Maudeleyne_, which have been lost. During his lifetime Chaucer built up such a reputation as a poet that many works were at a later date ascribed to him without sufficient evidence. Of this group the best examples are _The Flower and the Leaf_, quite an excellent example of the dream-allegory type, and _The Court of Love_. It has now been settled that these poems are not truly his. =3. His Prose.= The two prose tales cannot be regarded as among Chaucer’s successful efforts. Both of them--that is, _The Tale of Melibœus_ and _The Parson’s Tale on Penitence_--are lifeless in style and full of tedious moralizings. Compared with earlier prose works they nevertheless mark an advance. They have a stronger grasp of sentence-construction, and in vocabulary they are copious and accurate. The other prose works of Chaucer are an early translation of Boëthius, and a treatise, composed for the instruction of his little son Lewis, on the astrolabe, then a popular astronomical instrument.