Skeat. Canterbury Tales (poetry), edited by A. W. Pollard (in
Chaucer's English, suitable only for grown-up readers).
NOTE.-- As there are so many books now published containing
stories from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, I feel it unnecessary to
give any here in outline.
Chapter XXV THE FIRST ENGLISH GUIDE-BOOK
AND now, lest you should say, "What, still more poetry!" I shall
give you next a chapter about a great story-teller who wrote in
prose. We use story-teller in two senses, and when we speak of
Sir John Mandeville we use it in both. He was a great story-
teller.
But before saying anything about his stories, I must first tell
you that after having been believed in as a real person for five
hundred years and more, Sir John has at last been found out. He
never lived at all, and the travels about which he tells us so
finely never took place.
"Sir John," too, used to be called the "Father of English Prose,"
but even that honor cannot be left to him, for his travels were
not written first in English, but in French, and were afterwards
translated into English.
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