wrought with a love-knot, his bald head shining like glass, and his
face glistening as though it had been anointed; and the lean, logical,
sententious clerk of Oxenforde, upon his half-starved, scholar-like
horse;--and the bowsing sompnour, with fiery cherub face, all knobbed
with pimples, an eater of garlic and onions, and drinker of "strong
wine, red as blood," that carried a cake for a buckler, and babbled
Latin in his cups; of whose brimstone visage "children were sore
aferd;"--and the buxom wife of Bath, the widow of five husbands, upon
her ambling nag, with her hat broad as a buckler, her red stockings
and sharp spurs;--and the slender, choleric reeve of Norfolk,
bestriding his good gray stot; with close-shaven beard, his hair
cropped round his ears, long, lean, calfless legs, and a rusty blade
by his side;--and the jolly Limitour, with lisping tongue and
twinkling eye, well-beloved franklins and housewives, a great promoter
of marriages among young women, known at the taverns in every town,
and by every "hosteler and gay tapstere." In short, before I was
roused from my reverie by the less poetical but more substantial
apparition of a smoking beef-steak, I had seen the whole cavalcade
issue forth from the hostel-gate, with the brawny, double-jointed,
red-haired miller, playing the bagpipes before them, and the ancient
host of the Tabbard giving them his farewell God-send to Canterbury.
Pages:
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427