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in 
and Art. 
Literature 
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as in the important article of bread, and the two occupations efpecially 
employed in making it were objeits of very great diflike and of fcornful 
fatire. The miller was proverbially a thief. Every reader of Chaucer 
will remember his chara6ter fo admirably drawn in that of the miller of 
Trumpington, who, though he was as proud and gay " as eny pecok," 
was neverthelefs eminently dilhoneff. 
A tliezf lze 'zuas_fbrfoti afcorn and male, 
And that a jleiglz (sly), and ubmg (practised) fir tofizle. 
Chaucer's Reeves Tale. 
This pra61ice included a large college then exifling in Cambridge, but 
now forgotten, the Soler Hall, which fuffered greatly by his depredations. 
And on a day it lmpped in a jhunde, 
Syk lay the mauncyple on a maledye, 
Men wmden 'wf]Iy Mat he _]Z'lI1uZde dye  
For Iwlziclz Mi: mellerfial bathe male and rorn 
A zlloujind part more tlznn byfbrn.  
For tier bybrn hefal but curtgflj; 
But mrw be is a tlzeef outragcaujly. 
For -which tlze -wardqyrz ckidde and madefqrz, 
But rlz2rqf_]Ette tile meller mt a tare,- 
He crakked bouji, andfwor it was natjb. 
i Two of the fcholars of this college refolved to go with the corn to Lhe 
mill, and by their watchfulnefs prevent his depredations. Thofe who are 
acquainted with the itory know how the fcholars fucceeded, or rather 
how they failed; how the miller itole half a bufhel of their flour and 
caufed his wife to make a cake of it; and how the victims had their 
revenge and recovered the cake. 
As already Rated, the baker had in thefe good old times no better 
character than the miller, if not worfe. There was an old faying, that if 
three perfons of three obnoxious profefiions were put together in a fack 
and fhaken up, the firft who came out would certainly be a rogue, and 
one of thefe was a baker. Moreover, the opinion concerning the baker 
was fo ftrong that, as in the phrafe taken from the old legends of the 
witches, who in their feilzivals fat thirteen at a table, this nurnber was 
popularly