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The Clerk of Oxenford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Extract

The comment made by the exemplary Clerk of Oxenford upon those ribald tales of the Miller and the Reeve, is eloquent silence. Out of the fund of his ‘moral vertu’ he might, of course, have drawn a sharp rebuke or at least a grave remonstrance, ‘full of hy sentence’; but unless he were at that time studying ‘aboute som sophyme,‘ he contented himself with silent meditation upon our old sins, so light-heartedly exploited for the entertainment of those whose road led to the shrine of the martyred saint. He knew that often silence is golden and words but sounding brass. As clearly appears in that conversation with Harry Bailey which precedes the tale of Griselda, he himself possessed much of that gracious forbearance, which he very nobly celebrated:

      ‘Hoste,’ quod he, ‘I am under your yerde
      Ye han of us, as now, the governance.’

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1912

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