Many of the grand French epics were thus abridged and put into skipping, barren English verse, the epics being out of fashion, their substitutes valueless. So, when Chaucer, surrounded by his fellow pilgrims, favoured them with a story of Sir Thopas, popular good sense, personated by the host, rebelled, and the performance was rudely interrupted. Yet from Sir Thopas to many of the romances which ran the streets or the roads the distance is small, and the laughable parody was hardly more than a close imitation. Robert Thornton, in the first half of the fifteenth century, copied from older texts a good number of these remodelled romances. In turning their pages one is struck by the excellence of Chaucer’s jesting, his caricature being almost a portrait. These poems are all cut after one and the same pattern, tripping and sprightly, with little thought and less sentiment; the cadenced stanzas march on, clear, easy, and empty; no constraint, no effort; one may open and close the book without a sigh, without regret, with no positive weariness nor really-felt pleasure. Were it not for the proper names, the reader might pass chancewise from one romance to another without noticing the change. Take no matter which, “Sir Isumbras” for example: {199} after a prayer for form’s sake, the rhymer vaunts the valour of the hero, then praises a quality of especial value, with which he was happily endowed, his fondness for minstrels and his generosity towards them: “He luffede glewmene well in haulle He gafe thame robis riche of palle (fine cloth) Bothe of golde and also fee; Of curtasye was he kynge, Of mete and drynke no nythynge, On lyfe was none so fre.” Isumbras, his wife, and his son, are without peers; he is the most valiant of knights, his wife the most lovely of women: “I wille yow telle of a knyghte That bothe was stalworthe and wyghte, And worthily undir wede; His name was hattene syr Ysambrace.” So is also Sir Eglamour: “Y shalle telle yow of a knyght That was bothe hardy and wyght, And stronge in eche a stowre.” So is also Sir Degrevant: “And y schalle karppe off a knyght That was both hardy and wyght, Sire Degrevaunt that hend hyght, That dowghty was of dede.”[252] {200} So is also Chaucer’s Sir Thopas: “. . . I wol telle verrayment Of myrthe and of solas, Al of a knyght was fair and gent In batail and in tornament, His name was Sir Thopas.” And though Sir Thopas almost comes within the scope of the present work, being an adventure seeker, “a knight auntrous,” ever on his way, never sleeping in a house— “And for he was a knight auntrous, He nolde slepen in non hous, But liggen in his hode; His bright helm was his wonger (pillow),” yet must we abide by the ruling of mine host and leave him alone: “No more of this for Goddes dignitee.”