Note 284 — Chapter I · HERBALISTS, CHARLATANS, MINSTRELS, JUGGLERS, AND TUMBLERS

“The Wyf of Bathes Tale” (sixty-eight lines on the equality of men and on nobility); again, in the “Parson’s Tale”: “Eek for to pryde him of his gentrye is ful greet folye . . . we ben alle of o fader and of o moder; and alle we been of o nature roten and corrupt, both riche and poure” (Skeat’s edition of the “Canterbury Tales,” vol. iv. p. 596). Not less striking, these lines of a French poem of the same century, quoted in the Discourse upon the state of letters in the fourteenth century, “Histoire Littéraire de la France,” vol. xxiv. p. 236: