I seye that first with heigh style he endyteth,[37] Er he the body of his tale wryteth, A proheme, in the which discryveth he Pemond and of Saluces the contree, And speketh of Apennyn, the hilles hye That been the boundes of West Lumbardye, And of Mount Vesulus in special, Where as the Poo, out of a welle smal, Taketh his firste springing and his sours, That estward ay encreseth in his cours To Emelward, to Ferrare, and Venyse, The whiche a long thing were to devyse. And trewely, as to my Iugement, Me thinketh it a thing impertinent. _Clerk’s Prologue_, E. 41-54. What the Clerk is made to challenge here in the application of “heigh style” to a tale is the separable description. No device for dilation was more magnified in the _poetriæ_. More than apostrophe, contrast, and other “colours,” it was inculcated to give poetry what Chaucer’s eagle calls gret prolixitee Of termes of philosophye, Of figures of poetrye, Or colours of rethoryke. _Hous of Fame_, 856-859. Chaucer’s _bête noire_ of “prolixitee” among these pedagogues was Geoffroi de Vinsauf; and that brings us to the familiar sarcasms of the Nun’s Priest.[38] They pursue not merely an ass, but still more a perverted poetic. Chaucer pillories Geoffrey not merely because the _Nova poetria_ is an Ovidian nightmare, but because its constant object, alike in the rules and in the manufactured examples, is to inculcate the stalling of composition by “colours.”[39] The separable description challenged by the Clerk is challenged also by the Squire, and in terms that confirm the significance of the Franklin’s. A doghter hadde this worthy king also, That yongest was, and highte Canacee. But for to telle yow al hir beautee, It lyth nat in my tonge, n’in my conning. I dar nat undertake so heigh a thing. Myn English eek is insufficient. It moste been a rethor excellent That coude his colours longing for that art, If he sholde hir discryven every part. F. 32-40. The Squire’s later sarcasm is more open and more constructive. It may well sum up Chaucer’s criticism of the deviation of poetic by rhetoric. The knotte, why that every tale is told, If it be taried til that lust be cold Of hem that han it after herkned yore, The savour passeth ever lenger the more For fulsomnesse of his prolixitee. And by the same reson thinketh me I sholde to the knotte condescende, And maken of hir walking sone an ende. F. 401-408.