Such was the state of degradation the noble profession of the old singers had reached; the necessity either of obtaining a licence or of joining a gild, as prescribed by Edward IV, had been powerless to check the decay. With new manners and inventions their _raison d’être_ disappeared; the ancient reciters of poems, after having mingled with the disreputable troops of caterers to public amusement, saw these troops survive them, and, regular players apart, there henceforth only remained upon the roads those coarse buffoons, bearwards, and vulgar music makers whom thoughtful men held as reprobates. [Illustration 43. A PERFORMING BEAR. (_From MS. 10 E. IV._)] {223} [Illustration 44. A SHAM MESSENGER. (_From MS. 10 E. IV._)] CHAPTER II MESSENGERS, ITINERANT MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS All his life long, kind, loving, merry Chaucer, a good observer, a good listener and good talker, was fond of travels and travellers, of roamers and tale-tellers, of people who came from afar, bringing home with them many stories if little money, stories in which much invention no doubt was mingled with a little truth: but what is the good of raising a protest against harmless invention? Is not sometimes their mixture with “sooth” a pleasant one? Thus, he said: “Thus saugh I fals and sothe compouned Togeder fle for oo (one) tydynge.” Interested in all that was human he studied ordinary types and rare ones; he observed mine Host, and looked also for seekers of adventure, and was never tired of hearing their tales: {224} “Aventure, That is the moder of tydynges, As the see is of welles and of sprynges.” No greater pleasure for him than to see: “Winged wondres faste fleen, Twenty thousand in a route, As Eolus hem blew aboute.” He was in this a real _connoisseur_, fully appreciating the merit of a well-told fable and knowing how useful and pleasant some such may be found to beguile slow-winged time. Long before he started from the Tabard, “faste by the Belle,” for a journey which millions of Englishmen have since performed at his heels, allured by the music or merriment of his word, he had this same taste for “unkouthe syghtes and tydynges,” as well as for “thinges glad.” Finding himself once in great “distresse” of mind, with a heavy heart, “disesperat of all blys,” what did he dream of to “solace” himself, but of meeting and hearing the whole innumerable tribe of tale-tellers, wayfarers, and adventure seekers, by fancy assembled in an immense house, “made of twigges, salwe, rede and green eke?” He wanted us to know, and he wrote of the “House of Fame,” where after having met the bard “that bare of Thebes up the fame” (Statius), and “gret Omere,” and “Venus’ clerke Ovide,” “Englyssh Gaunfride” (of Monmouth, of Arthurian fame), and many more, he thought that there was no room for him, and feeling his distress as keen as ever, dreamed of something else, willing