"Chaucer's "Rime of Sir Thopas", written towards the close of the fourteenth century, is a jest upon long-winded story-tellers, who expatiate on insignificant detail; for in his day there were many metrical romances written by the ancestors of Mrs. Nickleby. Riding to Canterbury with the other pilgrims, Chaucer good-humouredly takes to himself the part of the companion who jogs along with even flow of words, luxuriating in all trivial detail until he brings Sir Thopas face to face with an adventure, for he meets a giant with three heads. But even then there is the adventure to be waited for. The story-teller finds that he must trot his knight back home to fetch his armour, and when he "is comen again to toune," it takes so many words to get him his supper, get his armour on, and trot him out again, that the inevitable end comes, with rude intrusion of some faint-hearted lording who has not courage to listen until the point of the story can be descried from afar. So the best of the old story-tellers, in a book full of examples of tales told as they should be, burlesqued misuse of his art, and the "Rime of Sir Thopas" became a warning buoy over the shallows."