Thise olde gentil Britons in hir dayes Of diverse adventures maden layes Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge, Which layes with hir instruments they songe, Or elles redden hem for hir plesaunce; And oon of hem have I in remembraunce, Which I shal seyn with good wil as I can. But, sires, bycause I am a burel man, At my biginning first I yow biseche Have me excused of my rude speche. I lerned never rethoryk certayn; Thing that I speke, it moot be bare and pleyn. I sleep never on the mount of Pernaso, Ne lerned Marcus Tullius Cithero. Colours ne knowe I none, withouten drede, But swiche colours as growen in the mede, Or elles swiche as men dye or peynte. Colours of rethoryk ben to me queynte. My spirit feleth noght of swich matere; But if yow list, my tale shul ye here. _Franklin’s Prologue_, F. 709-728. Let me tell an old British tale in my own plain way; for I am unversed in ornaments of style. This is all that the Franklin’s prologue means on its surface. The connotation beneath is inviting. Are “aventures,” “layes,” “rymeyed,” “instruments” intended precisely? How much grasp they suggest of early medieval poetic is perhaps beyond our determination.[34] But the term “colours of rethoryk” occurs also in the _Hous of Fame_. The interlude before the Clerk’s Tale has a sarcasm of the Host against these same “colours” in the same connection. The Squire’s disclaimer has the same significant terms as the Franklin’s, and the same point as the Clerk’s reply to the Host. The satire in the Tale of the Nun’s Priest on Geoffroi de Vinsauf confirms the suspicion that in all these passages Chaucer implies specific criticism of the _poetriæ_. For the language of the Franklin’s prologue, in spite of his disclaimer, is literary. Chaucer knew as well as Shakspere that he who announces “a plain, unvarnished tale” may command a better art than the rhetoric that he disclaims. It is worth while to explore, therefore, the mention of rhetoric in connection with story-telling, the conjunction of Cicero and Parnassus. As _Sir Thopas_ parodies not only the conventional motives of romance, but also particular faults in its conventional technic, so Chaucer’s references to “colours of rethoryk,” instead of being taken as general disparagement of grandiloquence, may well be sounded for their particular significance. In any age, indeed, the man of letters contemplating the rules of his art laid down by pedagogues is moved to sarcasm; but Chaucer’s sarcasms may suggest specifically wherein the pedagogues that he knew went wide of the narrative art that he came to comprehend as artist and as critic. His reference in the _Hous of Fame_ merely glances at “prolixitee.” The passages in the four Canterbury tales, ampler and more specific, together suggest that the application of “colours of rethoryk” to narrative is a perversion, that Cicero is out of place on Parnassus.