This can be seen in a sort of picture in the Prologue of the _Canterbury
Tales_; which is already pregnant with the promise of the English novel.
The characters there are at once graphically and delicately
differentiated; the Doctor with his rich cloak, his careful meals, his
coldness to religion; the Franklin, whose white beard was so fresh that
it recalled the daisies, and in whose house it snowed meat and drink;
the Summoner, from whose fearful face, like a red cherub's, the children
fled, and who wore a garland like a hoop; the Miller with his short red
hair and bagpipes and brutal head, with which he could break down a
door; the Lover who was as sleepless as a nightingale; the Knight, the
Cook, the Clerk of Oxford. Pendennis or the Cook, M. Mirabolant, is
nowhere so vividly varied by a few merely verbal strokes. But the great
difference is deeper and more striking. It is simply that Pendennis
would never have gone riding with a cook at all. Chaucer's knight rode
with a cook quite naturally; because the thing they were all seeking
together was as much above knighthood as it was above cookery.
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