But the spot to which the lover of poetry still directs his steps is to the Tabard--Chaucer's old inn, still standing on the very spot, if not the identical building itself, from which the father of English poetry set out, when he accompanied his merry pilgrims to Canterbury. The portion of this old hostelry still remaining dates much further back than the period of Charles II., a proof that it escaped the terrible fire which raged in Southwark in the year 1676. The very style of the building needs not a second glance to proclaim its antiquity; it is beyond doubt the very inn which the old chronicler Stowe mentions by the name of the "Tabard," and which he himself had no doubt seen in 1598, and called the "most ancient of the many fair inns in Southwark for receipt of travellers." The old sign of the Tabard formerly hung swinging and creaking across the road, and there were then no houses in front to shut it in, as now; it lay openly and temptingly, as when Chaucer's host, the merry "Harry Baily," stepped out in the front in the sunny mornings of Spring and Summer, to see what the old Kent and Newington roads were producing him, and what sort of customers were riding up. Even now there is something venerable in the old weather-beaten and iron-bound posts which prop up its comparatively modern gateway; they tell of the grazing and grinding of thousands of old wheels, while the stones are worn away with the tramping of many a worn-out steed. Merry doings were there in that old inn-yard, on an April morning, five hundred years ago, for Harry Baily, the host was "The early cock That gather'd them together in a flock." And you might then have seen the Wife of Bath, leaning aside and listening as she sat in her saddle, for she could not hear very well, as she tells us Jankin, her fifth husband, had given her such a blow, "For that she rent out of his book a leaf, That of the stroke her ear was always deaf." Let those who have never read Chaucer, and who wish to become acquainted with the most minute and beautiful painting of character which poetry ever produced, only read the Prologue to his _Canterbury Tales_; it scarcely occupies more than twenty moderate pages of print. If, after reading these, they are not tempted to proceed further, it will be because "they have no poetry in their souls." In no work can we find such a faithful description of the dress, manners, customs, and language of our forefathers, as in the pages of Geoffrey Chaucer.