Herfor, and therfor, and therfor I came And for to preysse this praty woman. There wer three wylly, three wyly ther wer, A fox, a fryyr and a woman. Ther wer three angry, three angry ther wer: A wasp a wesyll and a woman.[591]

So the litany continues, very different from the litany of the beauties of woman sung in the same period, perhaps by the same men. Friars, monks, and fops who adopt absurd fashions, and wear hose so tight that they cannot stoop for fear of bursting them,[592] are, with women, the subjects of these satirical songs:

Preste, ne monke, ne yit chanoun, Ne no man of religioun, Gyfen hem so to devocioun As done thes holy frers, For summe gyven ham chyvalry, Somme to riote and ribaudery; Bot ffrers gyven ham to grete study And to grete prayers.[593]

An account follows of doings, studies, and prayers, by no means edifying, and which recalls Chaucer rather than St. Francis.

III.

The tone becomes more elevated; and then we have forest songs in honour of the outlaw Robin Hood.[594] The satire ceases to be simply mocking; the singer's laughter no longer consoles him for abuses; he wants reforms; he chides and threatens. In his speech to the rebel peasants in 1381, the priest John Ball takes from a popular song the burden that comprises his whole theory:

Whan Adam dalf and Eve span, Who was thanne the gentilman?[595]

The anonymous poet makes the dumb peasant speak, describe his woes, and draw up a list of his complaints. By way of reply, anonymous clerks compose songs, half English and half Latin, a favourite mixture at that time, in which they express their horror of the rebels.[596] Others sound the praises of the English heroes of the Hundred Years' War.

Contrary to what might be supposed, the number of these last songs is not great, and their inspiration not exalted. The war, as has been seen, was a royal and not a national one; and it happened, moreover, that none of the famous poets of the time saw fit to celebrate Crecy and Poictiers. We have, therefore, nothing but rough sketches, akin to popular prints, barbarous in design, and coarse in colouring, but of strong intent. Clerks, in their Latin, pursue France and Philip de Valois, with opprobrious epithets:

Lynxea, viperea, vulpina, lupina, medea, Callida, syrena, crudelis, acerba, superba.

Such is France according to them, and as to her king, his fate is predicted in the following pun:

O Philippus Valeys, Xerxes, Darius, Bituitus, Te faciet maleys Edwardus, aper polimitus.[597]

To which the French replied:

Puis passeront Gauloys le bras marin, Le povre Anglet destruiront si par guerre, Qu'adonc diront tuit passant ce chemin: Ou temps jadis estoit ci Angleterre.[598]

But both countries have survived, for other quarrels, other troubles, and other glories.

The battles of Edward III. were also celebrated in a series of English poems, that have been preserved for us in a single manuscript, together with the name of their author, Laurence Minot,[599] concerning whom nothing is known. In his rude verse, where alliteration is sometimes combined with rhyme, both being very roughly handled, Minot follows Edward step by step, and extols his prowess with the best will, but in the worst poetry. Grand subjects do not need magnifying; and when magnified by unskilful artists they run the risk of recalling the Sir Thopas example: this risk Edward incurs at the hands of Laurence Minot. On the other hand absurd and useless expletives, "suth to saine," "i-wis," and especially "both day and night" continually help Minot to eke out his rhymes; and the reader is sorely tempted uncourteously to agree with him when he exclaims:

Help me God, my wit es thin![600]

Besides these war-songs, and at the same time, laments are heard, as in former days, sad and desponding accents. Defeats have succeeded to victories, and they contribute to raise doubts as to the validity of Edward's claims.[601] What if, after all, this ruinous war, the issue of which is uncertain, should turn out to be an unjust war as well? Verses are even composed on the subject of wrongs done to inoffensive people in France: "Sanguis communitatis Franciae quae nihil ei nocebat quaeritur apud Deum."[602]

In war literature the Scots did not fare better than the French at the hands of their neighbours. At this time, and for long after, they were still the foe, just as the Irish or French were. Following the example given by the latter, the Scots replied; several of their replies, being in English, belong to the literature of England. The most energetic is the semi-historical romance called "The Bruce"; it is the best of the patriotic poems deriving their inspiration from the wars of the fourteenth century.

"The Bruce," composed about 1375 by John Barbour,[603] is divided into twenty books; it is written in the dialect spoken in the south of Scotland from Aberdeen to the frontier, the dialect employed later by James I. and Sir David Lyndesay, who, like Barbour himself, called it "inglis." Barbour's verse is octo-syllabic, forming rhymed couplets; it is the same as Chaucer's in his "Hous of Fame."

Barbour's intention is to write a true history; he thus expects, he says, to give twofold pleasure: firstly because it is a history, secondly because it is a true one. But where passion has a hold it is rare that Truth reigns paramount, and Barbour's feeling for his country is nothing short of passionate love; so much so that, when a legend is to the credit of Scotland, his critical sense entirely disappears, and miracles become for him history. Thus with monotonous uniformity, throughout his poem a handful of Scotchmen rout the English multitudes; the highlanders perform prodigies, and the king still surpasses them in valour; everything succeeds with him as in a fairy tale. This love of the soil, of its rocks and its lochs, of its clans and their chieftains, brings to mind the most illustrious of the literary descendants of Barbour, Walter Scott, who more than once borrowed from "The Bruce" the subjects of his stories.[604]

Besides the love of their land, the two compatriots have in common a taste for picturesque anecdotes, and select them with a view of making their heroes popular; the sense of humour is not developed to an equal degree, but it is of the same quality in both; and the same kind of happy answers are enjoyed by the two. Barbour delights, and with good reason, in preserving the account of the fight in which the king, traitorously attacked by three men while alone in the mountains, "by a wode syde," smites them "rigorously," and kills them all, and, when congratulated on his return:

"Perfay," said he, "I slew bot ane forouten ma, God and my hound has slane the twa."[605]

Barbour likes to show the king, simple, patriarchal and valorous, stern to his foes, and gentle to the weak. He makes him halt his army in Ireland, because the screams of a woman have been heard; it is a poor laundress in the pangs of child-birth; the march is interrupted; a tent is spread, under which the poor creature is delivered in peace.[606]

To England's threats Barbour replies by challenges, and by his famous apostrophe to liberty:

A! fredome is a noble thing!...[607]

Some people, continues the good archdeacon, who cannot long keep to the lyric style, have compared marriage to bondage, but they are unexperienced men who know nothing about it; of course marriage is the worst state in which it is possible to live, the thing is beyond discussion; but in bondage one cannot live, one dies.

IV.

A little above the copse another head rises; that of Chaucer's great friend, John Gower. Unlike Chaucer in this, Gower hated and despised common people; when he allows them room in his works, the place assigned to them is an unenviable one. He is aristocratic and conservative by nature, so that he belongs to old England as much as to the new nation, and is the last in date of the recognisable representatives of Angevin Britain. Like the latter, Gower hesitates between several idioms; he is not sure that English is the right one; he is tri-lingual, just as England had been; he writes long poems in Latin and English, and when he addresses himself to "the universality of all men" he uses French. He writes French "of Stratford," it is true; he knows it and confesses it; but nothing shows better how truly he belongs to the England of times gone, the half-French England of former days: he excuses himself and persists. "And if I stumble in my French, forgive me my mistakes; English I am; and beg on this plea to be excused."[608]

Unlike Chaucer, Gower was rich and of good family. His life was a long one; born about 1325, he died in 1408. He was related to Sir Robert Gower; he owned manors in the county of Kent and elsewhere; he was known to the king, and to the royal family, but undertook no public functions. To him as we have seen, and to Strode, Chaucer dedicated his "Troilus":

O moral Gower, this book I directe To thee and to the philosophical Strode, To vouchen sauf, ther nede is, to corecte Of your benignitees and zeles gode.[609]

Gower, in his turn, represents Venus addressing him as follows:

... Grete well Chaucer whan ye mete As my disciple and my poete, For in the floures of his youth, In sundry wise as he well couth, Of dittees and of songes glade, The which he for my sake made, The lond fulfilled is over all.[610]

Gower was exceedingly pious. When old age came he retired with his wife to the priory of St. Mary Overy's (now St. Saviour), in that same suburb of Southwark where Chaucer preferred to frequent the "Tabard," and spent his last years there in devout observances. He became blind in 1400, and died eight years after. He bequeathed to his wife three cups, two salt-cellars, twelve silver spoons, all his beds and chests, and the income of two manors; he left a number of pious legacies in order to have lamps kept burning, and masses said for his soul. He gave the convent two chasubles of silk, a large missal, a chalice, a martyrology he had caused to be copied for this purpose, and begged that in exchange he might be buried in the chapel of St. John the Baptist at St. Mary Overy's; which was done. His tomb, restored and repainted, still exists. He is represented lying with his hands raised as if for prayer, his thick locks are bound by a fillet adorned with roses. The head of the plump, round-cheeked poet rests on his three principal works; he wears about his neck a collar of interwoven SS, together with the swan, emblem of Henry IV. of England.[611]

The worthy man wrote immoderately, and in especial three great poems: the "Speculum Meditantis," in French; the "Vox Clamantis," in Latin; the "Confessio Amantis," in English. The first is lost; only an analysis of it remains, and it shows that Gower treated there of the vices and virtues of his day.[612] The loss is not very great: Gower has told pretty clearly elsewhere what he thought of the vices of his time, and, even had he not, it would have been easy to guess, for he was too right-minded a man not to have thought of them all the evil possible.

Some French works of Gower have, however, come down to us; they are ballads and madrigals, for imaginary Iris,[613] Court poems, imitations of Petrarch,[614] the light verses of a well-taught man. He promises eternal service to his "douce dame"; his "douce dame" being no one in particular. He writes for others, and they are welcome to draw from his works: "The love-songs thus far are composed specially for those who expect love favours through marriage.... The ballads from here to the end of the book are common to all, according to the properties and conditions of lovers who are diversely wrought upon by fickle love."[615] Here and there some fine similes are found in which figure the chameleon, for instance, who was supposed to live on air alone, or the hawk: "Chameleon a proud creature is, that lives upon air without more; thus may I say in similar fashion only through the love hopes which I entertain is my soul's life preserved."[616]

He excused himself, as we have seen, for the mistakes in his French works, but neglected to do the same for his Latin poems: in which he was wrong. The principal one, the "Vox Clamantis,"[617] was suggested to him by the great rising of 1381, which had imperilled the Crown and the whole social order. Gower, being a landowner in Kent, was in the best situation fully to appreciate the danger.

In order to treat this terrible subject, Gower, who is not inventive, adopts the form of a dream, just as if it were a new "Romaunt of the Rose." It is springtime, and he falls asleep. Let us not mind it overmuch, we shall soon do likewise; but our slumber will be a broken one; in the midst of the droning of his sermon, Gower suddenly screams, roars, flies into a passion—"Vox Clamantis!" His hearers open an eye, wonder where they are, recognise Gower, and go off to sleep again.

Gower heaps up enormous and vague invectives; he fancies his style resembles that of the apostle in Patmos. Animals and monsters fight and scream; the common people have been turned into beasts, oxen, hogs, dogs, foxes, flies, frogs; all are hideous or dangerous. Cursing as he goes along, Gower drives before him, with hissing distichs, the strange herd of his monsters, who "dart sulphureous flames from the cavern of their mouth."[618]

These disasters are caused by the vices of the time, and Gower lengthily, patiently, complacently, draws up an interminable catalogue of them. A University education has taught him the importance of correct divisions; he divides and subdivides according to the approved scholastic methods. Firstly, there are the vices of churchmen; these vices are of different kinds, as are ecclesiastics themselves; he re-divides and re-subdivides. Some parsons "give Venus the tithes that belong to God"; others are the terror of hares: "lepus visa pericla fugit," and hearken to no chime but the "vociferations" of the hounds[619]; others trade. Knights are too fond of women "with golden locks"; peasants are slothful; merchants rapacious and dishonest; they make "false gems out of glass."[620] The king himself does not escape a lecture: let him be upright, pious, merciful, and choose his ministers with care; let him beware of women: "Thou art king, let one sole queen suffice thee."[621]

In one particular, however, this sermon is a remarkable one. What predominates in these long tirades of poor verses is an intense feeling of horror and dismay; the quiet Gower, and the whole community to which he belonged, have suddenly been brought face to face with something unusual and terrifying even for that period. The earth shook, and a gulf opened; hundreds of victims, an archbishop of Canterbury among them, disappeared, and the abyss still yawns; the consternation is general, and no one knows what remedy to expect. Happily the two edges of the chasm have at last united; it has closed again, hiding in its depths a heaving sea of lava, the rumblings of which are still heard, and give warning that it may burst forth at some future day. Gower, in the meantime, scans his distichs.

Chaucer wrote in English, naturally, his sole reason being that it was the language of the country. Gower, when he uses this idiom,[622] offers explanations:

And for that fewe men endite In oure Englishe, I thenke make, A boke for Englondes sake.[623]

He has no idea to what extent this apology, so common a hundred years before, is now out of place after the "Troilus" of Chaucer. His English book is a lengthy compilation, written at the request of the young King Richard,[624] wherein Gower seeks both to amuse and to instruct, giving as he does,

Somwhat of lust, somwhat of lore.

In his turn, and after Boccaccio, he invents a plot that will allow him to insert a whole series of tales and stories into one single work; compositions of this sort being the fashion. Gower's collection contains a hundred and twelve short stories, two or three of which are very well told; one, the adventure of Florent, being, perhaps, related even better than in Chaucer.[625] The rest resembles the Gower of the "Vox Clamantis."

What will be the subject of this philosopher's talk? He will tell us of a thing:

... wherupon the world mote stonde, And hath done sithen it began, And shall while there is any man, And that is love.[626]

In order to treat of this subject, and of many others, Boccaccio had conceived the idea of his gathering in the villa near Florence, and Chaucer that of his pilgrimage. Moral Gower remains true to his character, and imagines a confession. The lover seeks a priest of Venus, a worthy and very learned old man, called Genius, who had already figured as confessor in the "Roman de la Rose"[627]: "Benedicite," says the priest; "Dominus," answers the lover; and a miniature shows the lover in a pink gown, kneeling in a meadow at the feet of Genius, a tonsured monk in frock and cowl.[628]

We find ourselves again among vices and virtues, classifications, divisions, and subdivisions. Genius condemns the vices (those of his goddess included, for he is a free speaking priest). He hates, above all things, Lollardry, "this new tapinage," and he commends the virtues; the stories come in by way of example: mind what your eyes do, witness Actaeon; and your ears, witness the Sirens. He passes on to the seven deadly sins which were apparently studied in the seminary where this priest of Venus learnt theology. After the deadly sins the mists and marvels of the "Secretum Secretorum" fill the scene. At last the lover begs for mercy; he writes Venus a letter: "with the teres of min eye in stede of inke." Venus, who is a goddess, deciphers it, hastens to the spot, and scornfully laughs at this shivering lover, whom age and wrinkles have left a lover. Gower then decides to withdraw, and make, as he says, "beau retraite." In a last vision, the poor "olde grisel" gazes upon the series of famous loving couples, who give themselves up to the delight of dancing, in a paradise, where one could scarcely have expected to find them together: Tristan and Iseult, Paris and Helen, Troilus and Cressida, Samson and Dalila, David and Bathsheba, and Solomon the wise who has for himself alone a hundred or so of "Jewes eke and Sarazines."

In spite of the immense difference in their merit, the names of Chaucer and Gower were constantly coupled; James of Scotland, Skelton, Dunbar, always mention them together; the "Confessio" was printed by Caxton; under Elizabeth we find Gower on the stage; he figures in "Pericles," and recites the prologue of this play, the plot of which is borrowed from his poem.

FOOTNOTES:

[568] See above, p. 162.

[569] Against those practices Langland strongly protests in his "Visions," text C. x. 133; xvi. 200. See following Chapter.

[570] Rymer, "Foedera," April 24, 1469. The classic instrument of the minstrel was the vielle or viol, a sort of violin, which only true artists knew how to use well (one is reproduced in "English Wayfaring Life," p. 202). Therefore many minstrels early replaced this difficult instrument by the common tabor, which sufficed to mark the cadence of their chants. Many other musical instruments were known in the Middle Ages; a list of them has been drawn up by H. Lavoix: "La Musique au temps de St. Louis," in G. Raynaud's "Recueil des motets francais des XIIe et XIIIe Siecles," vol. ii. p. 321.

[571] "Anatomy of Abuses," ed. Furnivall, London, 1877-79, 8vo, pp. 171, 172.

[572] Chaucer himself expected his poem to be said or sung; he says to his book:

And red wher-so thou be, or elles songe; That thou be understonde, I God beseche!

(Book v. st. 257.)

[573]

I wille yow telle of a knyghte That bothe was stalworthe and wyghte.

(Isumbras.)

Y schalle telle yow of a knyght That was bothe hardy and wyght.

(Eglamour.)

And y schalle karppe off a knyght That was both hardy and wyght.

(Degrevant.)

"The Thornton Romances," ed. Halliwell (Camden Society, 1844, pp. 88, 121, 177), from a MS. preserved in the cathedral of Lincoln, that contains romances, recipes, prayers, &c., copied in the first half of the fifteenth century, on more ancient texts. See notes on many similar romances in Ward's "Catalogue of MS. Romances," 1883, vol. i. pp. 760 ff.

[574] See in "English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare," pp. 57 and 65, facsimiles of woodcuts which served about 1510 and 1560 to represent, the first, Romulus, Robert the Devil, &c., the second, Guy of Warwick, Graund Amoure, and the "Squyr of Lowe Degre."

[575] Both published by the Early English Text Society: "Morte Arthure," ed. Brock, 1871; "William of Palerne," ed. Skeat, 1867. Both are in alliterative verse; the first composed about the end, and the second about the middle, of the fourteenth century.

[576] The unique MS. of this poem is in the British Museum: Cotton, Nero A 10. It is of small size, and in a good handwriting of the fourteenth century, but the ink is faded. It contains some curious, though not fine, miniatures, representing the Green Knight leaving the Court, his head in his hand; Gawayne and his hostess; the scene at the Green Chapel; the return to King Arthur. The text has been published, e.g., by R. Morris: "Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, an alliterative romance poem," London, Early English Text Society, 1864, 8vo. The date assigned to the poem by Morris (1320-30) seems to be too early; the work belongs more probably to the second half of the century. The immediate original of the tale is not known; it was, however, certainly a French poem. See on this subject Ward, "Catalogue of Romances," 1883, p. 387, and G. Paris, "Histoire Litteraire de la France," vol. xxx.

[577]

Much glam and gle glent up ther-inne, Aboute the fyre upon flat (floor) and on fele (many) wyse, At the soper and after, mony athel songez, As coundutes of Kryst-masse and caroles newe....

[578]

With merthe and mynstralsye, wyth metez at hor wylle, Thay maden as mery as any men moghten With laghyng of ladies, with lotes of bordes (play upon words).

(l. 1952.)

[579] l. 1746.

[580] "Pearl, an English Poem of the Fourteenth Century, edited with modern rendering by Israel Gollancz," London, 1891, 8vo. The poem is written in stanzas (a b a b a b a b b c b c); the author employs both rhyme and alliteration. "Pearl" belongs apparently, like "Sir Gawayne," and some other poems on religious subjects, contained in the same MS., to the second half of the fourteenth century; there are, however, doubts and discussions concerning the date. Some coarsely-painted miniatures, by no means corresponding to the gracefulness of the poem, represent the chief incidents of "Pearl;" they are by the same hand as those of "Sir Gawayne." See the reproduction of one of them in "Piers Plowman, a contribution to the History of English Mysticism," London, 1894, 8vo, p. 12.

[581]

I entred in that erber grene, In Augoste in a hygh seysoun, Quen corne is corven with crokez kene; On huyle ther perle it trendeled doun; Schadowed this wortes (plants) full schyre and schene, Gilofre, gyngure and gromylyoun, And pyonys powdered ay betwene. Yif hit wacz semly on to sene, A fayrie tiayr yet fro hit flot. (St. 4.)

[582]

As stremande sternes quen strothe men slepe, Staren in welkyn in wynter nyght. (St. 10.)

[583]

For that thou lestes wacs bot a rose, That flowred and fayled as kynde hit gefe. (St. 23.)

[584] The principal collections containing lyrical works and popular ballads of that period are: "Ancient Songs and Ballads from the reign of Henry II. to the Revolution," collected by John Ritson, revised by W. C. Hazlitt, London, 1877, 12mo; "Specimens of Lyric Poetry, composed in England in the reign of Edward I.," ed. Th. Wright, Percy Society, 1842, 8vo; "Reliquiae Antiquae, scraps from ancient MSS. illustrating chiefly Early English Literature," ed. T. Wright and J. O. Halliwell, London, 1841-43, 2 vols. 8vo; "Political Songs of England, from the reign of John to that of Edward II.," ed. Th. Wright, Camden Society, 1839, 4to; "Songs and Carols now first printed from a MS. of the XVth Century," ed. Th. Wright, Percy Society, 1847, 8vo; "Political Poems and Songs, from Edward III. to Richard III.," ed. Th. Wright, Rolls, 1859-61, 2 vols. 8vo; "Political, Religious and Love Poems," ed. Furnivall, London, Early English Text Society, 1866, 8vo; "Bishop Percy's Folio MS." ed. J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall, Ballad Society, 1867, 8vo; "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads," ed. F. J. Child, Boston, 1882 ff. Useful indications will be found in H. L. D. Ward's "Catalogue of MS. Romances in the British Museum," vol. i., 1883.

[585]

Tiel come tu es je autie fu, Tu seras til come je su. De la mort ne peusay-je mie Tant come j'avoy la vie. En terre avoy grand richesse Dont je y fis grand noblesse, Terre, mesons et grand tresor, Draps, chivalx, argent et or, Mes ore su-je povres et cheitifs, Perfond en la terre gys, Ma grand beaute est tout alee ... Et si ore me veissez, Je ne quide pas qe vous deeisez Qe j'eusse onqes hom este.

(Stanley, "Historical Memorials of Canterbury.")

[586] Compiled in France in 1395. Lecoy de la Marche, "la Chaire francaise au moyen age," 2nd ed., Paris, 1886, 8vo, p. 334.

[587] MS. R. iii. 20, in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, fol. 33. In the same MS.: "A roundell made ... by my lorde therlle of Suffolk":

Quel desplaysier, quel courous quel destresse, Quel griefs, quelx mauls viennent souvent d'amours, &c. (fol. 36).

The author is the famous Earl, afterwards Duke of Suffolk, who was beaten by Joan of Arc, who married Alice, daughter of Thomas Chaucer, and was beheaded in 1450. For ballads of the same kind, by Gower, see below, p. 367. The same taste reigned in France; without mentioning Charles d'Orleans, Pierre de Beauveau writes: "Le joyeulx temps passe souloit estre occasion que je faisoie de plaisant diz et gracieuses chanconnetes et balades." "Nouvelles Francoises du XIVe Siecle," ed. Moland and d'Hericault, 1858, p. 303.

[588] "Visions concerning Piers Plowman," A. Prol. l. 103, written about 1362-3. See following Chapter.

[589] "Parson's Tale."—"Complete Works," vol. iv. p. 581.

[590] "Munimenta Gildhallae Londiniensis."—"Liber albus, Liber custumarum; Liber Horn," Rolls, 1859, ed. Riley. The regulations (in French) relating to the Pui are drawn from the "Liber Custumarum," compiled in 1320 (14 Ed. II.), pp. 216 ff. "The poetical competitions called puis," established in the north of France, "seem to have given rise to German and Dutch imitations, such as the Master Singers and the Chambers of Rhetoric." G. Paris, "Litterature francaise au moyen age," paragraph 127. To these we can add the English imitation which now occupies us.

[591] "Songs and Carols now first printed," ed. Th. Wright, Percy Society, 1847, 8vo, p. 4.

[592]

For hortyng of here hosyn Non inclinare laborant.

In the same piece, large collars, wide sleeves, big spurs are satirised. Th. Wright, "Political Poems and Songs from Ed. III. to Ric. III.," Rolls, 1859, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. i. p. 275.

[593] "Political Poems," ibid., vol. i. p. 263.

[594] The greater part of those that have come down to us are of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but Robin was very popular, and his praises were sung as early as the fourteenth century. The lazy parson in Langland's Visions confesses that he is incapable of chanting the services:

But I can rymes of Robin Hood and Randolf erle of Chestre.

Ed. Skeat, text B. v. 402. See above, p. 224.

[595] Walsingham, "Historia Anglicana," Rolls, vol. ii. p. 32. See an English miniature representing Adam and Eve, so occupied, reproduced in "English Wayfaring Life," p. 283.

[596]

Nede they fre be most, Vel nollent pacificari, &c.

"Political Poems," vol. i. p. 225. Satire of the heretical Lollards: "Lollardi sunt zizania," &c. Ibid., p. 232; of friars become peddlers, p. 264.

[597] "Political Poems." ibid., vol. i. pp. 26 ff.

[598] Ballad by Eustache des Champs, "Oeuvres Completes," ii. p. 34.

[599] "The Poems of Laurence Minot," ed. J. Hall, Oxford, 1887, 8vo, eleven short poems on the battles of Edward III. Adam Davy may also be classed among the patriotic poets: "Davy's five dreams about Edward II.," ed. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, 1878, 8vo. They are dreams interspersed with prophecies; the style is poor and aims at being apocalyptic. Edward II. shall be emperor of Christendom, &c. Various pious works, a life of St. Alexius, a poem on the signs betokening Doomsday, &c., have been attributed to Davy without sufficient reason. See on this subject, Furnivall, ibid., who gives the text of these poems.

[600] Ibid., p. 21.

[601] Vices and faults of Edward: "Political Poems," vol. i. p. 159, 172, &c.

[602] "Political Poems," vol. i. p. 172.

[603] "The Bruce, or the book of the most excellent and noble Prince Robert de Broyss, King of Scots," A.D. 1375, ed. Skeat, E.E.T.S., 1879-89. Barbour, having received safe conducts from Edward III., went to Oxford, and studied there in 1357 and in 1364, and went also to France, 1365, 1368. Besides his "Bruce" he wrote a "Brut," and a genealogy of the Stuarts, "The Stewartis Oryginale," beginning with Ninus founder of Nineveh; these two last poems are lost. Barbour was archdeacon of Aberdeen; he died in 1395 in Scotland, where a royal pension had been bestowed upon him.

[604] "The incidents on which the ensuing novel mainly turns are derived from the ancient metrical chronicle of the Bruce by Archdeacon Barbour, and from," &c. "Castle Dangerous," Introduction.—"The authorities used are chiefly those ... of Archdeacon Barbour...." "Lord of the Isles," Advertisement to the first edition.

[605] Book vii. line 483.

[606] Book xvi. line 270.

[607] Book i. line 235.

[608]

Et si jeo n'ai de Francois la faconde, Pardonetz moi qe jeo de ce forsvoie; Jeo suis Englois.

"Balades and other Poems by John Gower," London, Roxburghe Club, 1818 4to, in fine.

[609] Book v. st. 266.

[610] "Confessio Amantis," ed. Pauli, London, 1857, 3 vols, 8vo. vol. iii. p. 374.

[611] Henry, then earl of Derby, had given him a collar in 1393; the swan was the emblem of Thomas, duke of Gloucester, Henry's uncle, assassinated in 1397; Henry adopted it from that date. A view of Gower's tomb is in my "Piers Plowman," 1894, p. 46.

[612] "Primus liber, gallico sermone editus in decem dividitur partes et tractans de viciis et virtutibus necnon de variis hujus seculi gradibus viam, qua peccator transgressus, ad sui Creatoris agnicionem redire debet, recto tramite docere conatur. Titulusque libelli istius Speculum Meditantis nuncupatus est." This analysis is to be found in several MSS.; also in the edition of the "Confessio," printed by Caxton; Pauli gives it too: "Confessio," i. p. xxiii. The "Speculum Meditantis" was sure to resemble much those works of moralisation (hence Chaucer's "moral Gower"), numerous in French mediaeval literature, which were called "bibles." See for example "La Bible Guiot de Provins":

Dou siecle puant et orrible M'estuet commencier une bible.

"On this stinking and horrid world, I want to begin a bible;" and Guiot reviews all classes of society, all trades and professions, and blames everything and everybody; Gower did the same; everything for them is "puant." Rome is not spared: "Rome nos suce et nos englot," says Guiot. See text of Guiot's "Bible" in Barbazan and Meon, "Fabliaux," 1808, vol. ii. p. 307.

[613] "Balades and other Poems," Roxburghe Club, 1818, 4to.

[614]

Jeo ris en plour et en sante languis, Ars en gelee et en chalour fremis.

Ballad ix. No passage in Petrarch has been oftener imitated. Villon wrote:

Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine ... Je ris en pleurs et attens sans espoir, &c.

[615] "Les balades d'amour jesqes enci sont fait especialement pour ceaux q'attendont lours amours par droite mariage. Les balades d'ici jesqes au fin du livere sont universeles a tout le monde selonc les propertes et les condicions des amants qui sont diversement travailez en la fortune d'amour."

[616]

Camelion c'est une beste fiere Qui vit tansoulement de l'air sanz plus; Ensi pour dire en mesme la maniere, De soule espoir qe j'ai d'amour concuz Sont mes pensers en vie sustenuz.

Ballad xvi; what a chameleon is, was thus explained in a Vocabulary of the fifteenth century: "Hic gamelion, animal varii coloris et sola aere vivit—a buttyrfle" (Th. Wright, "Vocabularies," 1857, 4to, p, 220).

[617] "Poema quod dicitur Vox Clamantis," ed. Coxe, Roxburghe Club, 1850, 4to. He also wrote in Latin verse "Chronica Tripartita" (wherein he relates, and judges with great severity, the reign of Richard II., from 1387 to the accession of Henry IV.), and several other poems on the vices of the time, the whole printed by Th. Wright, in his "Political Poems," vol. i. Rolls. The "Chronica" are also printed with the "Vox Clamantis."

[618] P. 31. He jeers at the vulgarity of their names:

Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Cobbe minatur ... Hogge suam pompam vibrat, dum se putat omni Majorem Rege nobilitate fore. Balle propheta docet, quem spiritus ante malignus Edocuit ...

(p. 50.)

The famous John Ball is here referred to, the apostle of the revolt, who died quartered. See below, p. 413.

[619]

Est sibi crassus equus, restatque scientia macra ... Ad latus et cornu sufflans gerit, unde redundant Mons, nemus, unde lepus visa pericla fugit....

Clamor in ore canum, dum vociferantur in unum, Est sibi campana psallitur unde Deo. Stat sibi missa brevis devotio longaque campis, Quo sibi cantores deputat esse canes.

(p. 176.)

[620]

Conficit ex vitris gemma oculo pretiosas.

(p. 275.)

[621]

Rex es, regina satis est, tibi sufficit una.

(p. 316.)

[622] "Confessio Amantis." There exists of it no satisfactory edition, and it is to be hoped the Early English Text Society, that has already rendered so many services, will soon render this greatly needed one, Pauli's edition, London, 1857, 3 vols. 8vo, is very faulty; H. Morley's edition (Carisbrooke Library, London, 1889, 8vo) is expurgated. Gower wrote in English some minor poems, in especial "The Praise of Peace" (in the "Political Poems," of Wright, Rolls). The "Confessio" is written in octo-syllabic couplets, with four accents. This poem should be compared with French compilations of the same sort, and especially with the "Castoiement d'un pere a son fils," thirteenth century, a series of tales in verse, told by the father to castigate and edify the son, text in Barbazan and Meon, "Fabliaux," Paris, 1808, 4 vols. 8vo, vol. ii.

[623] "Confessio," Pauli's ed., p. 2.

[624] Gower wrote two successive versions of his poem: the first about 1384, the second about 1393. In this last one, having openly taken the side of the future Henry IV. (which was very bold of him), he suppressed all allusions to Richard. In the first version, instead of,

A boke for Englondes sake,

he had written:

A boke for King Richardes sake.

[625] Vol. i. pp. 89 ff. In Chaucer, the story is told by the Wife of Bath.

[626] Beginning of Book i.

[627] Already had been seen in the "Roman":

Comment Nature la deesse A son pretre se confesse ... "Genius, dit-elle, beau pretre, D'une folie que j'ai faite, A vous m'en vuel faire confesse;"

and under pretence of confessing herself, she explains the various systems of the universe at great length.

[628] In Mrs. Egerton, 1991, fol. 7, in the British Museum, reproduced in my "Piers Plowman," p. 11.



CHAPTER IV.

WILLIAM LANGLAND AND HIS VISIONS.

Gower's books were made out of books. Chaucer's friend carries us in imagination to the paradise of Eros, or to a Patmos of his own invention, from whence he foretells the end of the world; but whatever he does or says we are always perfectly aware of where we are: we are in his library.

It is quite different with another poet of this period, a mysterious and intangible personage, whose very name is doubtful, whose writings had great influence, and that no one appears to have seen, concerning whom we possess no contemporaneous information. Like Gower, strong ties bind him to the past; but Gower is linked to Angevin England, and William Langland, if such be really his name, to the remote England of the Saxons and Scandinavians. His books are not made out of books; they are made of real life, of things seen, of dreams dreamt, of feelings actually experienced. He is the exact opposite of Gower, he completes Chaucer himself. When the "Canterbury Tales" are read, it seems as though all England were described in them; when the Visions of Langland are opened, it is seen that Chaucer had not said everything. Langland is without comparison the greatest poet after Chaucer in the mediaeval literature of England.[629]

I.

His Visions have been preserved for us in a considerable number of manuscripts. They differ greatly among each other; Langland appears to have absorbed himself in his work, continually remodelling and adding to it. No poem has been more truly lived than this one; it was the author's shelter, his real house, his real church; he always came back there to pray, to tell his sorrows—to live in it. Hence strange incoherencies, and at the same time many unexpected lights. The spirit by which Langland is animated is the spirit of the Middle Ages, powerful, desultory, limitless. A classic author makes a plan, establishes noble proportions, conceives a definite work, and completes it; the poet of the Middle Ages, if he makes a plan, rarely keeps to it; he alters it as he goes along, adding a porch, a wing, a chapel to his edifice: a cathedral in mediaeval times was never finished. Some authors, it is true, were already touched by classic influence, and had an idea of measure; such was the case with Chaucer, but not with Langland; anything and everything finds place in his work. By collecting the more characteristic notes scattered in his poem, sketch-books full of striking examples might be formed, illustrative of English life in the fourteenth century, to compare with Chaucer's, of the political and religious history of the nation, and also of the biography of the author.

Allusions to events of the day which abound in the poem enable us to date it. Three principal versions exist,[630] without counting several intermediate remodellings; the first contains twelve cantos or passus, the second twenty, the third twenty-three; their probable dates are 1362-3, 1376-7, and 1398-9.[631]

The numerous allusions to himself made by the author, principally in the last text of his poem, when, according to the wont of old men, he chose to tell the tale of his past life, allow us to form an idea of what his material as well as moral biography must have been. He was probably born in 1331 or 1332, at Cleobury Mortimer, as it seems, in the county of Shrewsbury, not far from the border of Wales. He was (I think) of low extraction, and appears to have escaped bondage owing to the help of patrons who were pleased by his ready intelligence. From childhood he was used to peasants and poor folk; he describes their habits as one familiarised with them, and their cottages as one who knows them well. His life oscillated chiefly between two localities, Malvern and London. Even when he resides in the latter place, his thoughts turn to Malvern, to its hills and verdure; he imagines himself there; for tender ties, those ties that bind men to mother earth, and which are only formed in childhood, endear the place to him. A convent and a school formerly existed at Malvern, and there in all likelihood Langland first studied.

The church where he came to pray still exists, built of red sandstone, a structure of different epochs, where the Norman style and perpendicular Gothic unite. Behind the village rise steep hills, covered with gorse, ferns, heather, and moss. Their highest point quite at the end of the chain, towards Wales, is crowned by Roman earthworks. From thence can be descried the vast plain where flows the Severn, crossed by streams bordered by rows of trees taking blue tints in the distance, spotted with lights and shadows, as the clouds pass in the ever-varying sky. Meadows alternate with fields of waving grain; the square tower of Worcester rises to the left, and away to the east those mountains are seen that witnessed the feats of Arthur. This wide expanse was later to give the poet his idea of the world's plain, "a fair feld ful of folke," where he will assemble all humanity, as in a Valley of Jehoshaphat. He enjoys wandering in this "wilde wildernesse," attracted by "the layes the levely foules made."

From childhood imagination predominates in him; his intellectual curiosity and facility are very great. He is a vagabond by nature, both mentally and physically; he roams over the domains of science as he did over his beloved hills, at random, plunging into theology, logic, law, astronomy, "an harde thynge"; or losing himself in reveries, reading romances of chivalry, following Ymagynatyf, who never rests: "Idel was I nevere." He studies the properties of animals, stones, and plants, a little from nature and a little from books; now he talks as Euphues will do later, and his natural mythology will cause a smile; and now he speaks as one country-bred, who has seen with his own eyes, like Burns, a bird build her nest, and has patiently watched her do it. Sometimes the animal is a living one, that leaps from bough to bough in the sunlight; at others, it is a strange beast, fit only to dwell among the stone foliage of a cathedral cornice.

He knows French and Latin; he has some tincture of the classics; he would like to know everything:

Alle the sciences under sonne and alle the sotyle craftes, I wolde I knewe and couth kyndely in myne herte![632]

But, in that as in other things, his will is not on a par with his aspirations: this inadequacy was the cause of numberless disappointments. Thou art, Clergye says most appropriately, one of those who want to know but hate to study:

The wer lef to lerne but loth for to stodie.[633]

Even in early youth his mind seems to lack balance; being as yet a boy, he is already a soul in trouble.

His dreams at this time were not all dark ones; radiant apparitions came to him. Thou art young and lusty, said one, and hast years many before thee to live and to love; look in this mirror, and see the wonders and joys of love. I shall follow thee, said another, till thou becomest a lord, and hast domains.[634] But one by one the lights faded around him; his patrons died, and this was the end of his ambitions; for he was not one of those men able by sheer strength of will to make up for outside help when that fails them. His will was diseased; an endless grief began for him. Being dependent on his "Clergye" for a livelihood, he went to London, and tried to earn his daily bread by means of it, of "that labour" which he had "lerned best."[635]

Religious life in the Middle Ages had not those well-defined and visible landmarks to which we are accustomed. Nowadays one either is or is not of the Church; formerly, no such obvious divisions existed. Religious life spread through society, like an immense river without dykes, swollen by innumerable affluents, whose subterranean penetrations impregnated even the soil through which they did not actually flow. From this arose numerous situations difficult to define, bordering at once on the world and on the Church, a state of things with which there is no analogy now, except in Rome itself, where the religious life of the Middle Ages still partly continues.

Numerous semi-religious and slightly remunerative functions were accessible to clerks, who were not, however, obliged to renounce the world on that account. The great thing in the hour of death being to ensure the salvation of the soul, men of fortune continued, and sometimes began, their good works at that hour. They endeavoured to win Paradise by proxy; they left directions in their will that, by means of lawful hire, soldiers should be sent to battle with the infidel; and they also founded what were called "chantries." A sum of money was left by them in order that masses, or the service for the dead, or both, should be chanted for the repose of their souls.

The number of these chantries was countless; every arch in the aisles of the cathedrals contained some, where the service for the dead was sung; sometimes separate edifices were built with this view. A priest celebrated masses when the founder had asked for them; and clerks performed the office of choristers, having, for the most part, simply received the tonsure, and not being necessarily in holy orders. It was, for them all, a career, almost a trade; giving rise to discussions concerning salaries, and even to actual strikes. These services derived the name under which they commonly went from one of the words of the liturgy sung; they were called Placebos and Diriges. The word "dirge" has passed into the English language, and is derived from the latter.

To psalmody for money, to chant the same words from day to day and from year to year, transforming into a mere mechanical toil the divine gift and duty of prayer, could not answer the ideal of life conceived by a proud and generous soul filled with vast thoughts. Langland, however, was obliged to curb his mind to this work; Placebo and Dirige became his tools:

The lomes that ich laboure with and lyflode deserve.[636]

Like many others whose will is diseased, he condemned the abuse and profited by it. The fairies at his birth had promised riches, and he was poor; they had whispered of love, and an unsatisfactory marriage had closed the door on love, and debarred him from preferment to the highest ecclesiastical ranks. Langland lives miserably with his wife Catherine and his daughter Nicolette, in a house in Cornhill, not far from St. Paul's, the cathedral of many chantries,[637] and not far from that tower of Aldgate, to which about this time that other poet, Chaucer, directed his steps, he, too, solitary and lost in dreams.

Langland has depicted himself at this period of his existence a great, gaunt figure, dressed in sombre garments with large folds, sad in a grief without end, bewailing the protectors of his childhood and his lost illusions, seeing nothing but clouds on the horizon of his life. He begins no new friendships; he forms ties with no one; he follows the crowded streets of the city, elbowing lords, lawyers, and ladies of fashion; he greets no one. Men wearing furs and silver pendants, rich garments and collars of gold, brush past him, and he knows them not. Gold collars ought to be saluted, but he does not do it; he does not say to them: "God loke yow Lordes!" But then his air is so absent, so strange, that instead of quarrelling with him people shrug their shoulders, and say: He is "a fole"; he is mad.[638] Mad! the word recurs again and again under his pen, the idea presents itself incessantly to his mind, under every shape, as though he were possessed by it: "fole," "frantyk," "ydiote!" He sees around him nothing but dismal spectres: Age, Penury, Disease.

To these material woes are added mental ones. In the darkness of this world shines at least a distant ray, far off beyond the grave. But, at times, even this light wavers; clouds obscure and apparently extinguish it. Doubts assail the soul of the dreamer; theology ought to elucidate, but, on the contrary, only darkens them:

The more I muse there-inne the mistier it seemeth, And the depper I devyne the darker me it thinketh.[639]

How is it possible to reconcile the teachings of theology with our idea of justice? And certain thoughts constantly recur to the poet, and shake the edifice of his faith; he drives them away, they reappear; he is bewitched by them and cannot exorcise these demons. Who had a more elevated mind than Aristotle, and who was wiser than Solomon? Still they are held by Holy-Church "bothe ydampned!" and on Good Friday, what do we see? A felon is saved who had lived all his life in lies and thefts; he was saved at once "with-outen penaunce of purgatorie." Adam, Isaiah, and all the prophets remained "many longe yeres" with Lucifer, and—

A robbere was yraunceouned rather than thei alle![640]

He wishes he had thought less, learnt less, "conned" fewer books, and preserved for himself the quiet, "sad bileve" of "plowmen and pastoures"; happy men who can

Percen with a pater noster the paleys of hevene![641]

In the midst of these trials and sorrows, Langland had one refuge: his book. His poem made up for those things which life had denied him. Why make verses, why write, said Ymagynatyf to him; are there not "bokes ynowe?"[3] But without his book, Langland could not have lived, like those fathers whose existence is bound up in that of their child, and who die if he dies. When he had finished it, and though his intention was never to touch it again, for in it he announced his own death, he still began it over again, once, twice; he worked at it all his life.

What was the end of that life? No one knows. Some indications tend to show that in his later years he left London, where he had led his troubled life to return to the Western country.[642] There we should like to think of him, soothed, healed, resigned, and watching that sun decline in the west which he had seen rise, many years before, "in a somere seyson."

II.

In this summer season, in the freshness of the morning, to the musical sound of waters, "it sowned so murrie," the poet, lingering on the summit of Malvern hills, falls asleep, and the first of his visions begins. He contemplates

Al the welthe of this worlde and the woo bothe;

and, in an immense plain, a "feld ful of folke," he notices the bustle and movements of mankind,

Of alle maner of men the mene and the riche.

Mankind is represented by typical specimens of all sorts: knights, monks, parsons, workmen singing French songs, cooks crying: Hot pies! "Hote pyes, hote!" pardoners, pilgrims, preachers, beggars, janglers who will not work, japers and "mynstralles" that sell "glee." They are, or nearly so, the same beings Chaucer assembled at the "Tabard" inn, on the eve of his pilgrimage to Canterbury. This crowd has likewise a pilgrimage to make, not, however, on the sunny high-road that leads from Southwark to the shrine of St. Thomas. No, they journey through abstract countries, and have to accomplish, some three hundred years before Bunyan's Christian, their pilgrim's progress in search of Truth and of Supreme Good.

A lady appears, who explains the landscape and the vision; she is Holy-Church. Yonder tower is the tower of Truth. This castle is the "Castel of Care" that contains "Wronge." Holy-Church points out how mankind ought to live, and teaches kings and knights their duties with regard to Truth.

Here comes Lady Meed, a lady of importance, whose friendship means perdition, yet without whom nothing can be done, and who plays an immense part in the world. The monosyllable which designates her has a vague and extended signification; it means both reward and bribery. Disinterestedness, the virtue of noble minds, being rare in this world, scarcely anything is undertaken without hope of recompense, and what man, toiling solely with a view to recompense, is quite safe from bribery? So Lady Meed is there, beautiful, alluring, perplexing; to get on without her is impossible, and yet it is hard to know what to do with her. She is about to marry "Fals"; the friends and witnesses have arrived, the marriage deed is drawn up; the pair are to have the "Erldome of Envye," and other territories that recall the worst regions of the celebrated map of the Tendre. Opposition is made to the marriage, and the whole wedding party starts for Westminster, where the cause is to be determined; friends, relations, bystanders; on foot, on horseback, and in carriages; a singular procession!

The king, notified of the coming of this cortege, publicly declares he will deal justice to the knaves, and the procession melts away; most of the friends disappear at a racing pace through the lanes of London. The poet hastens to lodge the greatest scoundrels with the people he hates, and has them received with open arms. "Gyle" is welcomed by the merchants, who dress him as an apprentice, and make him wait on their customers. "Lyer" has at first hard work to find shelter; he hides in the obscure holes of the alleys, "lorkynge thorw lanes"; no door opens, his felonies are too notorious. At last, the pardoners "hadden pite and pullede hym to house"; they washed him and clothed him and sent him to church on Sundays with bulls and seals appended, to sell "pardons for pans" (pence). Then leeches send him letters to say that if he would assist them "waters to loke," he should be well received; spicers have an interview with him; minstrels and messengers keep him "half a yere and eleve dayes"; friars dress him as a friar, and, with them, he forms the friendliest ties of all.[643]

Lady Meed appears before the king's tribunal; she is beautiful, she looks gentle, she produces a great effect; she is Phryne before her judges with the addition of a garment. The judges melt, they cheer her, and so do the clerks, the friars, and all those that approach her. She is so pretty! and so kind! Anything you will, she wills it too; no one feels bashful in her presence; she is indeed so kind! A friar offers her the boon of an absolution, which he will grant her "himself"; but she must do good to the brotherhood: We have a window begun that will cost us dear; if you would pay for the stained glass of the gable, your name should be engraved thereon, and to heaven would go your soul. Meed is willing. The king appears and examines her; he decides to marry her, not to Fals, but to the knight Conscience. Meed is willing; she is always willing.

The knight comes, refuses, and lays bare the ill-practices of Meed, who corrupts all the orders of the kingdom, and has caused the death of "yowre fadre" (your father, King Edward II.). She would not be an amiable spouse; she is as "comune as the cart-wey." She connives with the Pope in the presentation to benefices; she obtains bishoprics for fools, "theighe they be lewed."

Meed weeps, which is already a good answer; then, having recovered the use of speech, she defends herself cleverly. The world would fall into a torpor without Meed; knights would no longer care for kings; priests would no longer say masses; minstrels would sing no more songs; merchants would not trade; and even beggars would no longer beg.

The knight tartly replies: There are two kinds of Meed; we knew it; there is reward, and there is bribery, but they are always confounded. Ah! if Reason reigned in this world instead of Meed, the golden age would return; no more wars; no more of these varieties of tribunals, where Justice herself gets confused. At this Meed becomes "wroth as the wynde."[644]

Enough, says the king; I can stand you no longer; you must both serve me:

"Kisse hir," quod the kynge "Conscience, I hote (bid)." "Nay bi Criste!"[645]

the knight answers, and the quarrel continues. They send for Reason to decide it. Reason has his horses saddled; they have interminable names, such as "Suffre-til-I-see-my-time." Long before the day of the Puritans, our visionary employs names equivalent to sentences; we meet, in his poem, with a little girl, called Behave-well-or-thy-mother-will-give-thee-a-whipping,[646] scarcely a practical name for everyday life; another personage, Evan the Welshman, rejoices in a name six lines long.

Reason arrives at Court; the dispute between Meed and Conscience is dropped and forgotten, for another one has arisen. "Thanne come Pees into Parlement;" Peace presents a petition against Wrong, and enumerates his evil actions. He has led astray Rose and Margaret; he keeps a troup of retainers who assist him in his misdeeds; he attacks farms, and carries off the crops; he is so powerful that none dare stir or complain. These are not vain fancies; the Rolls of Parliament, the actual Parliament that was sitting at Westminster, contain numbers of similar petitions, where the real name of Wrong is given, and where the king endeavours to reply, as he does in the poem, according to the counsels of Reason.

Reason makes a speech to the entire nation, assembled in that plain which is discovered from the heights of Malvern, and where we found ourselves at the beginning of the Visions.

Then a change of scene. These scene-shiftings are frequent, unexpected, and rapid as in an opera. "Then, ..." says the poet, without further explanation: then the scene shifts; the plain has disappeared; a new personage, Repentance, now listens to the Confession of the Deadly Sins. This is one of the most striking passages of the poem; in spite of their abstract names, these sins are tangible realities; the author describes their shape and their costumes; some are bony, others are tun-bellied; singular abstractions with warts on their noses! We were just now in Parliament, with the victims of the powerful and the wicked; we now hear the general confession of England in the time of the Plantagenets.[647]

That the conversion may be a lasting one, Truth must be sought after. Piers Plowman appears, a mystic personage, a variable emblem, that here simply represents the man of "good will," and elsewhere stands for Christ himself. He teaches the way; gates must be entered, castles encountered, and the Ten Commandments will be passed through. Above all, he teaches every one his present duties, his active and definite obligations; he protests against useless and unoccupied lives, against those who have since been termed "dilettante," for whom life is a sight, and who limit their function to being sight-seers, to amusing themselves and judging others. All those who live upon earth have actual practical duties, even you, lovely ladies:

And ye lovely ladyes with youre longe fyngres.

All must defend, or till, or sow the field of life. The ploughing commences, but it is soon apparent that some pretend to labour and labour not; they are lazy or talkative, and sing songs. Piers succeeds in mastering them by the help of Hunger. Thanks to Hunger and Truth, distant possibilities are seen of a reform, of a future Golden Age, an island of England that shall be similar to the island of Utopia, imagined later by another Englishman.

The vision rises and fades away; another vision and another pilgrimage commence, and occupy all the remainder of the poem, that is, from the eleventh to the twenty-third passus (C. text). The poet endeavours to join in their dwellings Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest; in other terms: Good-life, Better-life, and Best-life. All this part of the book is filled with sermons, most of them energetic, eloquent, spirited, full of masterly touches, leaving an ineffaceable impression on the memory and the heart: sermon of Study on the Bible and on Arts and Letters; sermons of Clergye and of Ymagynatyf; dialogue between Hawkyn (active life) and Patience; sermons of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Several visions are intermingled with these sermons: visions of the arrival of Christ in Jerusalem, and of the Passion; visions of hell attacked by Jesus, and defended by Satan and Lucifer with guns, "brasene gonnes," a then recent invention, which appeared particularly diabolical. Milton's Satan, in spite of having had three hundred years in which to improve his tactics, will find nothing better; his batteries are ranged in good order; a seraph stands behind each cannon with lighted match; at the first discharge, angels and archangels fall to the ground:

By thousands, Angel on Archangel rolled.

They are not killed, but painfully suffer from a knowledge that they look ridiculous: "an indecent overthrow," they call it. The fiends, exhilarated by this sight, roar noisily, and it is hard indeed for us to take a tragical view of the massacre.[648]

In the Visions, Christ, conqueror of hell, liberates the souls that await his coming, and the poet awakes to the sounds of bells on Easter morning.

The poem ends amid doleful apparitions; now comes Antichrist, then Old Age, and Death. Years have fled, death draws near; only a short time remains to live; how employ it to the best advantage? (Dobet). Advise me, Nature! cries the poet. "Love!" replies Nature:

"Lerne to love," quod Kynde "and leve of alle othre."

III.

Chaucer, with his genius and his manifold qualities, his gaiety and his gracefulness, his faculty of observation and that apprehensiveness of mind which enables him to sympathise with the most diverse specimens of humanity, has drawn an immortal picture of mediaeval England. In certain respects, however, the description is incomplete, and one must borrow from Langland some finishing touches.

We owe to Chaucer's horror of vain abstractions the individuality of each one of his personages; all classes of society are represented in his works; but the types which impersonate them are so clearly characterised, their singleness is so marked, that on seeing them we think of them alone and of no one else. We are so absorbed in the contemplation of this or that man that we think no more of the class, the ensemble, the nation.

The active and actual passions of the multitude, the subterranean lavas which simmer beneath a brittle crust of good order and regular administration, all the latent possibilities of volcanoes which this inward fire betokens, are, on the contrary, always present to the mind of the visionary; rumblings are heard, and they herald the earthquake. The vehement and passionate England that produced the great rising of 1381, and the heresy of Wyclif, that later on will give birth to the Cavaliers and Puritans, is contained in essence in Langland's work; we divine, we foresee her. Chaucer's book is, undoubtedly, not in contradiction to that England, but it screens and allows her to be forgotten. In their anger Chaucer's people exchange blows on the highway; Langland's crowds in their anger sack the palace of the Savoy, and take the Tower of London.

Langland thus shows us what we find in none of his contemporaries: crowds, groups, classes, living and individualised; the merchant class, the religious world, the Commons of England. He is, above all, the only author who gives a sufficient and contemporaneous idea of that grand phenomenon, the power of Parliament. Chaucer who was himself a member of that assembly, sends his franklin there; he mentions the fact, and nothing more; the part played by the franklin in that group, amid that concourse of human beings, is not described. On the other hand, an admirable picture represents him keeping open house, and ordering capons, partridges, and "poynant sauce" in abundance. At home, his personality stands out in relief; but yonder, at Westminster, the franklin was doubtless lost in the crowd; and crowds had little interest for Chaucer.

In two documents only does that power appear great and impressive as it really was, and those documents are: the Rolls wherein are recorded the acts of Parliament, and the poem of William Langland. No one before him, none of his contemporaries, had seen so clearly how the matter stood. The whole organisation of the English State is summed up in a line of admirable conciseness and energy, in which the poet shows the king surrounded by his people:

Knyghthod hym ladde, Might of the comunes made hym to regne.[649]

The power of the Commons is always present to the mind of Langland; he observes the impossibility of doing without them. When the king is inclined to stretch his prerogative beyond measure, when he gives in his speeches a foretaste of the theory of divine right, when he speaks as did Richard II. a few years after, and the Stuarts three centuries later, when he boasts of being the ruler of all, of being "hed of lawe," while the Clergy and Commons are but members of the same, Langland stops him, and through the mouth of Conscience, adds a menacing clause:

"In condicioun," quod Conscience, "that thow konne defende And rule thi rewme in resoun right wel, and in treuth."[650]

The deposition of Richard, accused of having stated, nearly in the same terms, "that he dictated from his lips the laws of his kingdom,"[651] and the fall of the Stuarts, are contained, so to say, in these almost prophetic words.

On nearly all the questions which agitate men's minds in the fourteenth century, Langland agrees with the Commons, and, as we follow from year to year the Rolls of Parliament, petitions or decisions are found inspired by the same views as those Langland entertained; his work at times reads like a poetical commentary of the Rolls. Langland, as the Commons, is in favour of the old division of classes, of the continuance of bondage, and of the regulation of wages by the State; he feels nothing but hatred for Lombard and Jew bankers, for royal purveyors, and forestallers. In the same way as the Commons, he is in favour of peace with France; his attention is concentrated on matters purely English; distant wars fill him with anxiety. He would willingly have kept to the peace of Bretigny, he hopes the Crusades may not recommence. He is above all insular. Like the Commons he recognises the religious authority of the Pope, but protests against the Pope's encroachments, and against the interference of the sovereign-pontiff in temporal matters. The extension of the papal power in England appears to him excessive; he protests against appeals to the Court of Rome; he is of opinion that the wealth of the Church is hurtful to her; he shares the sentiments of the Commons of the Good Parliament towards what they do not hesitate to term the sinful town of Avignon: "la peccherouse cite d'Avenon."[652] He is indignant with the bishops, masters, and doctors that allow themselves to become domesticated, and:

... serven as servantz lordes and ladyes, And in stede of stuwardes sytten and demen.[653]

Going down in this manner, step by step, Langland reaches the strange, grimacing, unpardonable herd of liars, knaves, and cheats who traffic in holy things, absolve for money, sell heaven, deceive the simple, and appear as if they "hadden leve to lye al here lyf after."[654] In this nethermost circle of his hell, where he scourges them with incessant raillery, the poet confines pell-mell all these glutted unbelievers. Like hardy parasitical plants, they have disjoined the tiles and stones of the sacred edifice, so that the wind steals in, and the rain penetrates: shameless pardoners they are, friars, pilgrims, hermits, with nothing of the saint about them save the garb, whose example, unless a stop is put to it, will teach the world to despise clerical dress, those who wear it, and the religion, even, that tolerates and supports them.

At this depth, and in the dim recesses where he casts the rays of his lantern, Langland spares none; his ferocious laugh is reverberated by the walls, and the scared night-birds take to flight. His mirth is not the mirth of Chaucer, itself less light than the mirth of France; not the joyous peal of laughter which rang out on the Canterbury road, welcoming the discourses of the exhibitor of relics, and the far from disinterested sermons of the friar to sick Thomas. It is a woful and terrible laugh, harbinger of the final catastrophe and doom. What they have heard in the plain of Malvern, the accursed ones will hear again in the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

They have now no choice, but must come out of their holes; and they come forward into the light of day, hideous and grotesque, saturated with the moisture of their dismal vaults; the sun blinds them, the fresh air makes them giddy; they present a sorry figure. Unlike the pilgrims of Canterbury, they derive no benefit from the feelings of indulgence that softens our hearts on a gay April morn; they will learn to know the difference between the laugh that pardons and the laugh that kills. Langland takes them up, lets them fall, and takes them up again; he never wearies of this cruel sport; he presents them to us now separately, and now collectively: packs of pilgrims, "eremytes on an hep," pilgrims that run to St. James's in Spain, to Rome, to Rocamadour in Guyenne, who have paid visits to every saint. But have they ever sought for St. Truth? No, never! Will they ever know the real place where they might find St. James? Will they suspect that St. James should

be souht ther poure syke lyggen (he) In prisons and in poore cotes?[655]

They seek St. James in Spain, and St. James is at their gates; they elbow him each day, and they recognise him not.

What sight can comfort us for these sad things? That of the poor and disinterested man, of the honest and courageous labourer. Langland here shows himself truly original: the guide he has chosen differs as much from the Virgil of Dante as from the Lover that Guillaume de Lorris follows through the paths of the Garden of the Rose. The English visionary is led by Piers Plowman; Piers is the mainspring of the State; he realises that ideal of disinterestedness, conscience, reason, which fills the soul of our poet; he is the real hero of the work. Bent over the soil, patient as the oxen that he goads, he performs each day his sacred task; the years pass over his whitening head, and, from the dawn of life to its twilight, he follows ceaselessly the same endless furrow, pursuing behind the plough his eternal pilgrimage.

Around him the idle sleep, the careless sing; they pretend to cheer others by their humming; they trill: "Hoy! troly lolly!" Piers shall feed every one, except these useless ones; he shall not feed "Jakke the jogeloure and Jonet ... and Danyel the dys-playere and Denote the baude, and frere the faytoure, ..." for, all whose name is entered "in the legende of lif" must take life seriously.[656] There is no place in this world for people who are not in earnest; every class that is content to perform its duties imperfectly and without sincerity, that fulfils them without eagerness, without passion, without pleasure, without striving to attain the best possible result and do better than the preceding generation, will perish. So much the more surely shall perish the class that ceases to justify its privileges by its services: this is the great law propounded in our own day by Taine. Langland lets loose upon the indolent, the careless, the busybodies who talk much and work little, a foe more terrible and more real then than now: Hunger. Piers undertakes the care of all sincere people, and Hunger looks after the rest. All this part of the poem is nothing but an eloquent declaration of man's duties, and is one of the finest pages of this "Divine Comedy" of the poor.

IV.

Langland speaks as he thinks, impetuously; a sort of dual personality exists in him; he is the victim and not the master of his thought. And his thought is so completely a separate entity, with wishes opposed to his desires, that it appears to him in the solitudes of Malvern; and the melody of lines heard not long ago occurs to the memory:

Je marchais un jour a pas lents Dans un bois, sur une bruyere; Au pied d'un arbre vint s'asseoir Un jeune homme vetu de noir Qui me ressemblait comme un frere ...[657]

Filled with a similar feeling, the wandering dreamer had met, five hundred years before, in a "wilde wildernesse and bi a wode-syde," a "moche man" who looked like himself; who knew him and called him by name:

And thus I went wide-where walkyng myne one (alone), By a wilde wildernesse and bi a wode-syde ... And under a lynde uppon a launde lened I a stounde ... A moche man, as me thoughte and lyke to my-selve Come and called me by my kynde name, "What artow," quod I tho (then) "that thow my name knowest?" "That thow wost wel," quod he "and no wyghte bettere." "Wote I what thow art?" "Thought," seyde he thanne, "I have suwed (followed) the this sevene yere sey thow me no rather (sooner)?"[658]

"Thought" reigns supreme, and does with Langland what he chooses. Langland is unconscious of what he is led to; his visions are for him real ones; he tells them as they rise before him; he is scarcely aware that he invents; he stares at the sight, and wonders as much as we do; he can change nothing; his personages are beyond his reach. There is therefore nothing prepared, artistically arranged, or skilfully contrived, in his poem; the deliberate hand of a man of the craft is nowhere to be seen. He obtains artistic effects, but without seeking for them; he never selects or co-ordinates; he is suddenly led, and leads us, from one subject to another, without any better transition than an "and thanne" or a "with that." And "thanne" we are carried a hundred miles away, among entirely different beings, and frequently we hear no more of the first ones. Or sometimes, even, the first reappear, but they are no longer the same; Piers Plowman personifies now the honest man of the people, now the Pope, now Christ. Dowel, Dobet and Dobest have two or three different meanings. The art of transitions is as much dispensed with in his poem as at the opera: a whistle of the scene-shifter—an "and thanne" of the poet—the palace of heaven fades away, and we find ourselves in a smoky tavern in Cornhill.

Clouds pass over the sky, and sometimes sweep by the earth; their thickness varies, they take every shape: now they are soft, indolent mists, lingering in mountain hollows, that will rise towards noon, laden with the scent of flowering lindens; now they are storm-clouds, threatening destruction and rolling with thunder. Night comes on, and suddenly the blackness is rent by so glaring a light that the plain assumes for an instant the hues of mid-day; then the darkness falls again, deeper than before.

The poet moves among realities and abstractions, and sometimes the first dissolve in fogs, while the second condense into human beings, tangible and solid. On the Malvern hills, the mists are so fine, it is impossible to say: here they begin and here they end; it is the same in the Visions.

In the world of ethics, as among the realities of actual life, Langland excels in summing up in one sudden memorable flash the whole doctrine contained in the nebulous sermons of his abstract preachers; he then attains to the highest degree of excellence, without striving after it. In another writer, the thing would have been premeditated, and the result of his skill and cunning; here the effect is as unexpected for the author as for the reader. He so little pretends to such felicities of speech that he never allows the grand impressions thus produced to last any time; he utilises them, he is careful to make the best of the occasion. It seems as if he had conjured the lightning from the clouds unawares, and he thinks it his duty to turn it to use. The flash had unveiled the uppermost summits of the realm of thought, and there will remain in our hands a flickering rushlight that can at most help us upstairs.

The passionate sincerity which is the predominant trait of Langland's character greatly contributed to the lasting influence of his poem. Each line sets forth his unconquerable aversion for all that is mere appearance and show, self-interested imposture; for all that is antagonistic to conscience, abnegation, sincerity. Such is the great and fundamental indignation that is in him; all the others are derived from this. For, while his mind was impressed with the idea of the seriousness of life, he happened to live when the mediaeval period was drawing to its close; and, as usually happens towards the end of epochs, people no longer took in earnest any of the faiths and feelings which had supplied foregoing generations with their strength and motive power. He saw with his own eyes knights preparing for war as if it were a hunt; learned men consider the mysteries of religion as fit subjects to exercise one's minds in after-dinner discussions; the chief guardians of the flock busy themselves with their "owelles" only to shear, not to feed them. Meed was everywhere triumphant; her misdeeds had been vainly denounced; her reign had come; under the features of Alice Perrers she was now the paramour of the king!

At all such men and at all such things, Langland thunders anathema. Lack of sincerity, all the shapes and sorts of "faux semblants," or "merveilleux semblants," as Rutebeuf said, fill him with inextinguishable hatred. In shams and "faux semblants" he sees the true source of good and evil, the touchstone of right and wrong, the main difference between the worthy and the unworthy. He constantly recurs to the subject by means of his preachings, epigrams, portraits, caricatures; he broadens, he magnifies and multiplies his figures and his precepts, so as to deepen our impression of the danger and number of the adherents of "Fals-Semblant." By such means, he hopes we shall at last hate those whom he hates. Endlessly, therefore, in season and out of season, among the mists, across the streets, under the porches of the church, to the drowsy chant of his orations, to the whistle of his satires, ever and ever again, he conjures up before our eyes the hideous grinning face of "Fals-Semblant," the insincere. Fals-Semblant is never named by name; he assumes all names and shapes; he is the king who reigns contrary to conscience, the knight perverted by Lady Meed, the heartless man of law, the merchant without honesty, the friar, the pardoner, the hermit, who under the garment of saints conceal hearts that will rank them with the accursed ones. Fals-Semblant is the pope who sells benefices, the histrion, the tumbler, the juggler, the adept of the vagrant race, who goes about telling tales and helping his listeners to forget the seriousness of life. From the unworthy pope down to the lying juggler, all these men are the same man. Deceit stands before us; God's vengeance be upon him! Whenever and wherever Langland detects Fals-Semblant, he loses control over himself; anger blinds him; it seems as if he were confronted by Antichrist.

No need to say whether he is then master of his words, and able to measure them. With him, in such cases, no nuances or extenuations are admissible; you are with or against Fals-Semblant; there is no middle way; a compromise is a treason; and is there anything worse than a traitor? And thus he is led to sum up his judgment in such lines as this:

He is worse than Judas that giveth a japer silver.[659]

If we allege that there may be some shade of exaggeration in such a sentence, he will shrug his shoulders. The doubt is not possible, he thinks, and his plain proposition is self-evident.

No compromise! Travel through life without bending; go forward in a straight line between the high walls of duty. Perform your own obligations; do not perform the obligations of others. To do your duty over-zealously, to take upon you the duty of others, would trouble the State; you approach, in so doing, the borderland of Imposture. The knight will fight for his country, and must not lose his time in fasting and in scourging himself. A fasting knight is a bad knight.

Many joys are allowed. They are included, as a bed of flowers, between the high walls of duty; love-flowers even grow there, to be plucked, under the blue sky. But take care not to be tempted by that wonderful female Proteus, Lady Meed, the great corruptress. She disappears and reappears, and she, too, assumes all shapes; she is everywhere at the same time: it seems as if the serpent of Eden had become the immense reptile that encircles the earth.

This hatred is immense, but stands alone in the heart of the poet. Beside it there is place for treasures of pity and mercy; the idea of so many Saracens and Jews doomed wholesale to everlasting pain repels him; he can scarcely accept it; he hopes they will be all converted, and "turne in-to the trewe feithe"; for "Cryste cleped us alle.... Sarasenes and scismatikes ... and Jewes."[660] There is something pathetic, and tragic also, in his having to acknowledge that there is no cure for many evils, and that, for the present, resignation only can soothe the suffering. With a throbbing heart he shows the unhappy and the lowly, who must die before having seen the better days that were promised, the only talisman that may help them: a scroll with the words, "Thy will be done!"[661]

The truth is that there was a tender heart under the rough and rugged exterior of the impassioned, indignant, suffering poet; and thus he was able to sum up his life's ideal in this beautiful motto: Disce, Doce, Dilige; in these words will be found the true interpretation of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest: "Learn, Teach, Love."[662]

The poet's language is, if one may use the expression, like himself, above all, sincere. Chaucer wished that words were "cosyn to the dede;" Langland holds the same opinion. While, in the mystic parts of his Visions, he uses a superabundance of fluid and abstract terms, that look like morning mists and float along with his thoughts, his style becomes suddenly sharp, nervous, and sinewy when he comes back to earth and moves into the world of realities. Let some sudden emotion fill his soul, and he will rise again, not in the mist this time, but in the rays of the sun; he will soar aloft, and we will wonder at the grandeur of his eloquence. Whatever be his subject, he will coin a word, or distort a meaning, or cram into an idiom more meaning than grammar, custom, or dictionary allow, rather than leave a gap between word and thought; both must be fused together, and made one. If the merchants were honest, they would not "timber" so high—raise such magnificent houses.[663] In other parts he uses realistic terms, noisy, ill-favoured expressions, which it is impossible to quote.

His vocabulary of words is the normal vocabulary of the period, the same nearly as Chaucer's. The poet of the "Canterbury Tales" has been often reproached with having used his all-powerful influence to obtain rights of citizenship in England for French words; but the accusation does not stand good, for Langland did not write for courtly men, and the admixture of French words is no less considerable in his work.

The Visionary's poem offers a combination of several dialects; one, however, prevails; it is the Midland dialect. Chaucer used the East-Midland, which is nearly the same, and was destined to survive and become the English language.

Langland did not accept any of the metres used by Chaucer; he preferred to remain in closer contact with the Germanic past of his kin. Rhyme, the main ornament of French verse, had been adopted by Chaucer, but was rejected by Langland, who gave to his lines the ornament best liked by Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and Scandinavians, namely, alliteration.[664]

While their author continued to live obscure and unknown, the Visions, as soon as written, were circulated, and acquired considerable popularity throughout England. In spite of the time that has elapsed, and numberless destructions, there still remain forty-five manuscripts of the poem, more or less complete. "Piers Plowman" soon became a sign and a symbol, a sort of password, a personification of the labouring classes, of the honest and courageous workman. John Ball invoked his authority in his letter to the rebel peasants of the county of Essex in 1381.[665] The name of Piers figured as an attraction on the title of numerous treatises: there existed, as early as the fourteenth century, "Credes" of Piers Plowman, "Complayntes" of the Plowman, &c. Piers' credit was made use of at the time of the Reformation, and in his name were demanded the suppression of abuses and the transformation of the old order of things; he even appeared on the stage; Langland would have been sometimes greatly surprised to see what tasks were assigned to his hero.

Chaucer and Langland, the two great poets of the period, represent excellently English genius, and the two races that have formed the nation. One more nearly resembles the clear-minded, energetic, firm, practical race of the latinised Celts, with their fondness for straight lines; the other resembles the race which had the deepest and especially the earliest knowledge of tender, passionate, and mystic aspirations, and which lent itself most willingly to the lulls and pangs of hope and despair, the race of the Anglo-Saxons. And while Chaucer sleeps, as he should, under the vault of Westminster, some unknown tuft of Malvern moss perhaps covers, as it also should, the ashes of the dreamer who took Piers Plowman for his hero.

FOOTNOTES:

[629] Further details on Langland and his Visions, and in particular the elucidation (as far as I have been able to furnish it) of several doubtful points, may be found in "Piers Plowman, a contribution to the History of English Mysticism," London, 1894. Some passages of the present Chapter are taken from this work.

[630] Mr. Skeat has given two excellent editions of these three texts (called texts A. B. and C.): I "The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, together with Vita de Dowel, Dobet et Dobest, secundum Wit et Resoun," London, Early English Text Society, 1867-84, 4 vols. 8vo; 2 "The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, in three parallel texts, together with Richard the Redeless," Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1886, 2 vols. 8vo.

[631] The reasons in favour of these dates are given in "Piers Plowman, a contribution to the history of English Mysticism," chap, ii., and in a paper I published in the Revue Critique, Oct. 25th, and Nov. 1, 1879. Mr. Skeat assigns the date of 1393 to the third text, adding, however, "I should not object to the opinion that the true date is later still." I have adduced proofs ("Piers Plowman," pp. 55 ff.) of this final revision having taken place in 1398 or shortly after.

[632] B. xv. 48.

[633] A. xii. 6.

[634]

Concupiscencia carnis colled me aboute the nekke, And seyde, "Thou art yonge and yepe and hast yeres yn Forto lyve longe and ladyes to lovye. And in this myroure thow myghte se myrthes ful manye That leden the wil to lykynge al thi lyf-tyme." The secounde seide the same "I shal suwe thi wille; Til thow be a lorde and have londe." (B. xi. 16.)

[635] C. vi. 42.

[636] C. vi. 45.

[637] On which see W. S. Simpson, "St. Paul's Cathedral and old City life," London, 1894, 8vo, p. 95: "The chantry priests of St. Paul's." A list of those chantries in a handwriting of the fourteenth century has been preserved; there are seventy-three of them. Ibid., p. 99.

[638] C. beginning of passus vi.; B. beginning of passus xv.: "My witte wex and wanyed til I a fole were."

[639] B. x. 181.

[640] B. x. 420.

[641]

... None sonner saved ne sadder of bileve, Than plowmen and pastoures and pore comune laboreres. Souteres and shepherdes suche lewed jottes Percen with a pater-noster the paleys of hevene, And passen purgatorie penaunceles at her hennes-partynge, In-to the blisse of paradys for her pure byleve, That inparfitly here knewe and eke lyved. (B. x. 458.)

And thow medlest with makynges and myghtest go sey thi sauter, And bidde for hem that giveth the bred for there ar bokes ynowe To telle men what Dowel is.... (B. xii. 16.)

[642] He seems to have written at this time the fragment called by Mr. Skeat: "Richard the Redeless," and attributed by the same with great probability to our author.

[643] C. iii. 211 ff.

[644] B. iii. 328.

[645] B. iv. 3.

[646] Daughter of Piers Plowman:

Hus douhter hihte Do-ryght-so- other-thy-damme-shal-the-bete.

(C. ix. 81.)

[647] See in particular Gloton's confession, with a wonderfully realistic description of an English tavern, C. vii. 350.

[648] "Paradise Lost," canto vi. 601; invention of guns, 470.

[649] B. Prol. 112.

[650] B. xix. 474.

[651] "Rotuli Parliamentorum," vol. iii. p. 419. See above, p. 253.

[652] Good Parliament of 1376.

[653] B. Prol. 95.

[654] B. Prol. 49.

[655] B. Prol. 46; xii. 37; v. 57; C. v. 122.

[656] B. vi. 71; C. ix. 122.

[657] Musset, "Nuit de Decembre."

[658] B. viii. 62.

[659] B. ix. 90.

[660] B. xi. 114.

[661]

But I loked what lyflode it was: that Pacience so preysed, And thanne was it a pece of the Pater noster "Fiat voluntas tua."

B. xiv. 47.

[662] B. xiii. 137.

[663]

Thei timbrede not so hye.

(A. iii. 76.)

[664] Langland's lines usually contain four accentuated syllables, two in each half line; the two accentuated syllables of the first half line, and the first accentuated syllable of the second half line are alliterated, and commence by the same "rhyme-letter:"

I shope me in shroudes as I a shepe were.

(B. Prol. 2.) It is not necessary for alliteration to exist that the letters be exactly the same; if they are consonants, nothing more is wanted than a certain similitude in their sounds; if they are vowels even less suffices; it is enough that all be vowels.

[665] Walsingham, "Historia Anglicana," vol. ii. p. 33. Rolls.



CHAPTER V.

PROSE.

For a long time, and up to our day, the title and dignity of "Father of English prose" has been borne by Sir John Mandeville, of St. Albans, knight, who, "in the name of God glorious," left his country in the year of grace 1322, on Michaelmas Day, and returned to Europe after an absence of thirty-four years, twice as long as Robinson Crusoe remained in his desert island.

This title belongs to him no longer. The good knight of St. Albans, who had seen and told so much, has dwindled before our eyes, has lost his substance and his outline, and has vanished like smoke in the air. His coat of mail, his deeds, his journeys, his name: all are smoke. He first lost his character as a truthful writer; then out of the three versions of his book, French, English, and Latin, two were withdrawn from him, leaving him only the first. Existence now has been taken from him, and he is left with nothing at all. Sir John Mandeville, knight, of St. Albans, who crossed the sea in 1322, is a myth, and never existed; he has joined, in the kingdom of the shades and the land of nowhere, his contemporary the famous "Friend of God of the Oberland," who some time ago also ceased to have existed.

One thing however remains, and cannot be blotted out: namely, the book of travels bearing the name of Mandeville the translation of which is one of the best and oldest specimens of simple and flowing English prose.

I.

The same phenomenon already pointed out in connection with the Anglo-Saxons occurs again with regard to the new English people. For a long time (and not to speak of practical useful works), poetry alone seems worthy of being remembered; most of the early monuments of the new language for the sake of which the expense of parchment is incurred are poems; verse is used, even in works for which prose would appear much better fitted, such as history. Robert of Gloucester writes his chronicles in English verse, just as Wace and Benoit de Sainte-More had written theirs in French verse. After some while only it is noticed that there is an art of prose, very delicate, very difficult, very worthy of care, and that it is a mistake to look upon it in the light of a vulgar instrument, on which every one can play without having learnt how, and to confine oneself to doing like Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain "de la prose sans le savoir."

At the epoch at which we have arrived, and owing to the renovation and new beginnings occasioned by the Conquest, English prose found itself far behind French. In the fourteenth century, if French poets are poor, prose-writers are excellent; as early as the twelfth and thirteenth there were, besides Joinville, many charming tale writers who had told in prose delightful things, the loves of Aucassin and Nicolette, for example; now, without speaking of the novelists of the day, there is Froissart, and to name him is to say enough; for every one has read at least a few pages of him, and a single page of Froissart, taken haphazard in his works, will cause him to be loved. The language glides on, clear, limpid, murmuring like spring water; and yet, in spite of its natural flow, art already appears. Froissart selects and chooses; the title of "historian," which he gives himself, is no mean one in his eyes, and he strives to be worthy of it. The spring bubbles up in the depths of the wood, and without muddying the water the artist knows how to vary its course at times, to turn it off into ready prepared channels, and make it gush forth in fountains.

In England nothing so far resembles this scarcely perceptible and yet skilful art, a mixture of instinct and method, and many years will pass before prose becomes, like verse, an art. In the fourteenth century English prose is used in most cases for want of something better, from necessity, in order to be more surely understood, and owing to this its monuments are chiefly translations, scientific or religious treatises, and sermons. An English Froissart would at that time have written in Latin; several of the chronicles composed in monasteries, at St. Albans and elsewhere, are written in a brisk and lively style, animated now by enthusiasm and now by indignation; men and events are freely judged; characteristic details find their place; the personages live, and move, and utter words the sound of which seems to reach us. Walsingham's account of the revolt of the peasants in 1381, for example, well deserves to be read, with the description of the taking of London that followed, the sack of the Tower and the Savoy Palace, the assassination of the archbishop,[666] the heroic act of the peasant Grindecobbe who, being set free on condition that he should induce the rebels to submit, meets them and says: "Act to-day as you would have done had I been beheaded yesterday at Hertford,"[667] and goes back to his prison to suffer death. Every detail is found there, even the simple picturesque detail; the rebels arm themselves as they can, with staves, rusty swords, old bows blackened by smoke, arrows "on which only a single feather remained." The account of the death of Edward III. in the same annals is gloomy and tragic and full of grandeur. In the "Chronicon Angliae,"[668] the anonymous author's burning hatred for John of Gaunt inspires him with some fiery pages: all of which would count among the best of old English literature, had these historians used the national idiom. The prejudice against prose continued; to be admitted to the honours of parchment it had first to be ennobled; and Latin served for that.