Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810). Edgar Huntley; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker. 1857.

The Canterbury Tales

The Clerk’s Prologue

‘SIR clerk of Oxenford,’ our hoste sayde,‘Ye ryde as coy and stille as dooth a mayde,Were newe spoused, sitting at the bord;This day ne herde I of your tonge a word.I trowe ye studie aboute som sophyme,But Salomon seith, “every thing hath tyme.”For goddes sake, as beth of bettre chere,It is no tyme for to studien here.Telle us som mery tale, by your fey;For what man that is entred in a pley,He nedes moot unto the pley assente.But precheth nat, as freres doon in Lente,To make us for our olde sinnes wepe,Ne that thy tale make us nat to slepe.Telle us som mery thing of aventures;—Your termes, your colours, and your figures,Kepe hem in stoor til so be ye endyteHeigh style, as whan that men to kinges wryte.Speketh so pleyn at this tyme, I yow preye,That we may understonde what ye seye.’This worthy clerk benignely answerde,‘Hoste,’ quod he, ‘I am under your yerde;Ye han of us as now the governaunce,And therfor wol I do yow obeisaunce,As fer as reson axeth, hardily.I wol yow telle a tale which that ILerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,As preved by his wordes and his werk.He is now deed and nayled in his cheste,I prey to god so yeve his soule reste!Fraunceys Petrark, the laureat poete,Highte this clerk, whos rethoryke sweeteEnlumined al Itaille of poetrye,As Linian dide of philosophyeOr lawe, or other art particuler;But deeth, that wol nat suffre us dwellen heerBut as it were a twinkling of an yë,Hem bothe hath slayn, and alle shul we dyë.But forth to tellen of this worthy man,That taughte me this tale, as I bigan,I seye that first with heigh style he endyteth,Er he the body of his tale wryteth,A proheme, in the which discryveth hePemond, 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 encresseth in his coursTo Emelward, to Ferrare, and Venyse:The which a long thing were to devyse.And trewely, as to my Iugement,Me thinketh it a thing impertinent,Save that he wol conveyen his matere:But this his tale, which that ye may here.’