SATIRE.--His touches of satire and irony are as light as the hits of an accomplished master of the small-sword; mere hits, but significant of deep thrusts, at the scandals, abuses, and oppressions of the age. Like Dickens, he employed his fiction in the way of reform, and helped to effect it. Let us illustrate. While sitting at the table, Chaucer makes his sketches for the Prologue. A few of these will serve here as specimens of his powers. Take the _Doctour of Physike_ who Knew the cause of every maladie, Were it of cold or hote or wet or drie; who also knew ... the old Esculapius, And Dioscorides and eke Rufus, Old Hippocras, Rasis, and Avicen, and many other classic authorities in medicine. Of his diete mesurable was he, And it was of no superfluite; nor was it a gross slander to say of the many, His studie was but litel on the Bible. It was a suggestive satire which led him to hint that he was ... but esy of dispense; He kepte that he wan in pestilence; For gold in physike is a cordial; Therefore he loved gold in special. Chaucer deals tenderly with the lawyers; yet, granting his sergeant of the law discretion and wisdom, a knowledge of cases even "from the time of King Will," and fees and perquisites quite proportional, he adds, Nowher so besy a man as he ther n' as, And yet he seemed besier than he was. HIS PRESENTATIONS OF WOMAN.--Woman seems to find hard judgment in this work. Madame Eglantine, the prioress, with her nasal chanting, her English-French, "of Stratford-atte-Bow," her legion of smalle houndes, and her affected manner, is not a flattering type of woman's character, and yet no doubt she is a faithful portrait of many a prioress of that day. And the wife of Bath is still more repulsive. She tells us, in the prologue to her story, that she has buried five husbands, and, buxom still, is looking for the sixth. She is a jolly _compagnon de voyage_, had been thrice to Jerusalem, and is now seeking assoil for some little sins at Canterbury. And the host's wife, as he describes her, is not by any means a pleasant helpmeet for an honest man. The host is out of her hearing, or he would not be so ready to tell her character: I have a wif, tho' that she poore be; But of her tongue a blabbing shrew is she, And yet she hath a heap of vices mo. She is always getting into trouble with the neighbors; and when he will not fight in her quarrel, she cries, ... False coward, wreak thy wif; By corpus domini, I will have thy knife, And thou shalt have my distaff and go spin. The best names she has for him are milksop, coward, and ape; and so we say, with him, Come, let us pass away from this mattère. THE PLAN PROPOSED.--With these suggestions of the nature of the company assembled "for to don their pilgrimage," we come to the framework of the story. While sitting at the table, the host proposes