Frontispiece 161 Proem 161 Debate 161 Vision 163 Saints' Lives 165 Pious Tales 167 Allegory 168 Bestiary 169 Lapidary 170 Homily 172 Satire 172 Lay 174 INTRODUCTION To create anew the walls and towers and gardens of the mediæval world is a comparatively easy task, now that we have so many aids to visualizing that departed age, but it is not so easy to make live again the thoughts and sentiments and beliefs of a vanished generation. All our study of history is valueless unless it brings a clearer revelation of the pulsing, ardent life of humanity. We search old records and old literature that we may find the true image of a world whose hopes and fears and loves prove to us the slow evolution of a progressive civilization in which all human beings share. Out of the failures and the doubts of one age comes the quicker power of another, and true progress looks both backward and forward. To cherish old traditions is both a duty and an inspiration. The reader who turns his face toward the world of mediæval England and France, seeking to know the spirit which animated our ancestors of six centuries ago, must recognize in plowman, hermit, knight, friar, or minstrel the fundamental fact that their life was actual and real, not a mere tissue of mediæval costume and mechanical movements. In order to understand that epoch it is essential for one to study in detail the works which picture the life of the day. The world of chivalry, with its brilliant pageantry and its vows of courtesy, loyalty, and liberality, is revealed in the pages of Froissart and in the many metrical romances, where various aspects of knightly life are described. "King Horn," "Guy of Warwick," "Libeaus Desconus," "Sir Eglamour," "The Squire of Low Degree," and others tell the story of knighthood. Another world is represented in "Piers Plowman," where the oppression of the poor by the arrogant rich and the corruption of church and state are described in racy vernacular by one whose soul was on fire with devotion to truth and justice. Social problems are enunciated, and the misery wrought by human ignorance and selfishness is depicted in satire keen, shrewd, and piercing. Chaucer, the supreme poet of the fourteenth century in England, portrays a world of normal folk who represent all classes and conditions except the very high and the very low. While, in certain ways, Chaucer's work is easier to read and understand than that of any of his contemporaries, students often read it very superficially and fail to recognize the deeply rooted traits which show that Chaucer was the child of his epoch. We find in the English poet traces of the influence of Continental life and literature; we see him reading the classics of Rome, of Florence, and of Paris; but he was also always intimately familiar with the minor literature popular among his own countrymen.