Chaucer excels in drawing characters of this type. His young men are not unlike the heroes of Shakespearean comedy. They are real enough, but they have no very marked individuality. The Squire is by far the best of them. In him we see the charm and freshness of youth, and it would be ungracious to ask more of so fair a promise. But Troilus, with his tearfulness and emotionalism, his readiness to procrastinate and to look to others to help him out of his difficulties, with something of Bassanio's gallantry and attractiveness, has also Bassanio's pliability. His is too slight a nature to form the centre of a tragedy. Palamon and Arcite are as indistinguishable as Demetrius and Lysander. There are critics who profess to see subtle differences of character between them, but to the majority of readers they are mere types of chivalry. Dorigen's husband, Averagus, is little more than an embodiment of loyal truth, and Griselda's, were one to regard him as anything but the means of testing wifely patience, would be a monster of cruelty. Compare with these, the Pardoner, the Friar, the Somnour, the Canon's Yeoman, the Miller, and all the other commonplace, practical men whom Chaucer describes. Most of them strike us as elderly; certainly none of them have any of the freshness or idealism of youth. The remarkable thing about them is that they are so ordinary and yet so interesting. The fussy self-importance of Chauntecleer; the garrulous vulgarity of Pandarus; the senile uxoriousness of January, are all drawn to the life, without one touch of bitterness or exaggeration. We listen to the jests and squabbles of the pilgrims on the road to Canterbury, or the story of some drama of everyday life, and we feel as if we had been made free of the ale-house and were listening to the village gossips of our own day. But if the best drawn of Chaucer's men are confined to one comparatively narrow class, his women show no such limitation. He draws no great tragedy-queen, no Guenever or Vittoria Corrombona, but with this great exception he depicts women of almost every type. Before going on to discuss his heroines in detail, however, it might, perhaps, be well to say a few words as to Chaucer's attitude towards women in general. It must be evident even to the most superficial observer, that Chaucer had an innate reverence for womanhood. The cult of the Virgin Mary, which had done so much to exalt woman among all Christian nations, appealed to him strongly, and, as we have seen, he more than once goes out of his way to introduce some invocation to the "flour of virgines alle." His love of children no doubt inclined him to look with tenderness on the relation of mother and child, and among his most beautiful pictures are those of Constance, with her baby in her arms, and Griselda bidding farewell to her "litel yonge mayde":-- And in her barm[90] this litel child she leyde With ful sad face, and gan the child to kisse And lulled it, and after gan it blisse.[91]