Let us take one or two of the easiest and most attractive books that a historian might wish to consult, and see if we can find in them any facts, or pictures, which might be useful in writing a true history. Long ago, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, there lived an English poet whose name was Geoffrey Chaucer. He wrote a poem called _The Canterbury Tales_ which tells of a number of people who were going as pilgrims to a shrine in the great Cathedral at Canterbury. They met in the Tabard Inn in Southwark at London. Chaucer describes these people one by one so accurately that we can learn how people looked, and what they wore, these many hundred years ago. He tells, too, of the landlord or host who kept the Inn. His name was Harry Bayly. It seems from other records in the Public Record {170} Office in London that the landlord of the Tabard Inn at the time actually was a Harry Bayly. Chaucer, as well as being a poet, had a post in the Custom House. There is a record of Harry Bayly paying money into the Customs. It seems certain that Chaucer's descriptions of the Canterbury pilgrims are true and accurate pictures of people who lived in his time. Who were these people? "A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man,"--Later Chaucer says of him that: "He was a verray parfit gentil knyght." His son was there, a young squire, and among the other pilgrims were a yeoman, a nun, a prioress, a monk, a friar, a merchant, a clerk, a sergeant at law, a franklin, a haberdasher, a carpenter, a cook, a shipman or sailor, a doctor, a goodwife, a ploughman, a reeve, a pardoner, and several others. The squire "was as fressh as in the monthe of May." The prioress was very good-looking. Hire nose tretys, hir eyen greye as glas, Hir mouth ful smal and ther-to softe and reed, But sikely she hadde a fair forheed. These words are easily changed into our modern spelling. The last line, for instance is "But certainly she had a fair forehead." Chaucer describes exactly the way in which each one was dressed. Then each of the pilgrims tells a story, and in these stories we find more information of how people looked and how they lived in the fourteenth century. Chaucer's poetry, {171} although somewhat difficult to read on account of the old words, is fresh and beautiful still. Shakespeare's plays, especially his historical plays, throw a wonderful light on the battles, life and customs of England at the time of Agincourt, in the Wars of the Roses, and his own lifetime. Besides the beauty and greatness of his plays, Shakespeare added always to whatever he wrote his wonderful true knowledge of human nature. Turn to Act iii, Scene ii of _King Henry V_, and you will read what a boy, serving some of the soldiers, says in all the tumult and excitement of the battle. "Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety."