I went down that night just after sunset and crossed the river in the dusk. Resting in the middle of the bridge and looking over the dim reflections to the far-distant bank, with its grove of huge trees, and the tower of the church with the outline of the gateway on the hill behind just showing against the sky, I dreamed that I was back in the old days, when the minstrel was giving place to the scholar, and that up there on the hill, in the little town of Meung, was Jean, Doctor of Divinity, poring at his books. I remembered the bust by Desvergnes, that beautiful scholar's face, and thought how strong a personality his must have been, to leave after six hundred years and more the memory of himself and the feeling of his time so vividly impressed upon the town. For even now, though they do not read his book in Meung, they know all about it, and talk of him with that reverence in speaking that children use when they talk of a master whom they do not often see. I could not help feeling that their attitude was traditional. It has been the same for all these years, and perhaps long ago the townsfolk, passing in the narrow streets, hushed themselves before one door, and whispered, 'Yes; he is in there writing a book; there are not many who can do that,' while old Jean Clopinel inside nursed his lame leg and dipped from folio to folio, as he took gem and pebble from the dead tongue and put his vivid thought and gleeful knowledge in black letter on the parchment, in black-lettered French, the speech of his own people, that all might see how fine a thing it was to look into antiquity and to be wise. CHAUCER AND BOCCACCIO CHAUCER AND BOCCACCIO [The Romancers before Chaucer.] THE Franklin of Chaucer's pilgrims introduces his own story by remarking that, 'Thise olde gentil Britons in hir dayes Of diverse aventures maden layes, Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge; Which layes with hir instruments they songe, Or elles redden hem for hir pleasaunce; And oon of hem have I in remembraunce Which I shal seyn with good wil as I can.' Chaucer had many of them 'in remembraunce,' and though he shared the knowledge of Jean de Meung, and was not, like the Franklin, a man who 'sleep never on the mount of Parnaso, Ne lerned Marcus Tullius Cithero,' these tales, whether made by the 'olde gentil Britons' or the French, must not be forgotten in considering him.