And the "Clerk" follows the spirit of the injunction both by omitting, as impertinent, a proeme in which his original, Petrarch, gives a great deal of valuable, but not in its connexion interesting, geographical information, and by adding a facetious moral to what he calls the "unrestful matter" of his story. Even the "Squire," though, after the manner of young men, far more than his elders addicted to the grand style, and accordingly specially praised for his eloquence by the simple "Franklin," prefers to reduce to its plain meaning the courtly speech of the Knight of the Brazen Steed. In connexion with what was said above, it is observable that each of the "Tales" in subject suits its narrator. Not by chance is the all-but-Quixotic romance of "Palamon and Arcite," taken by Chaucer from Boccaccio's "Teseide," related by the "Knight"; not by chance does the "Clerk," following Petrarch's Latin version of a story related by the same author, tell the even more improbable, but, in the plainness of its moral, infinitely more fructuous tale of patient Griseldis. How well the "Second Nun" is fitted with a legend which carries us back a few centuries into the atmosphere of Hrosvitha's comedies, and suggests with the utmost verisimilitude the nature of a Nun's lucubrations on the subject of marriage. It is impossible to go through the whole list of the "Tales"; but all may be truly said to be in keeping with the characters and manners (often equally indifferent) of their tellers--down to that of the "Nun's Priest," which, brimful of humour as it is, has just the mild naughtiness about it which comes so drolly from a spiritual director in his worldlier hour.