559. _forneys._ 'Why, asks Mr. Earle, should Chaucer so readily fall on the
simile of a _furnace_? What, in the uses of the time, made it come so ready
to hand? The weald of Kent was then, like our "black country" now, a great
smelting district, its wood answering to our coal; and Chaucer was Knight
of the Shire, or M.P. for Kent.'--Temporary Preface to the Six-text edition
of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, p. 99.