Contrition is implored for aid, but slumbers; and Conscience, hard pressed by Pride and Sloth, rouses himself with a final effort, and seizing his staff resumes his doubtful quest, praying for luck and health 'till he have Piers the Plowman'— till he find the Christ; no clear outlook, no sure hope; like the Wandering Jew, bowed beneath the burden of the curse, weary with unrelieved toil, worn with ceaseless trudging.

This serious poem, which makes Scripture and deed the test of creed-all outward observances but hollow shows-prepares the soil for the reception of that seed which Wycliffe and his associates are sowing. The imitations-the Plowman's Creed, by a nameless author, and the Plowman's Tale, attributed to Chaucer - bear witness to its popularity and fame. Its wide circulation among the commonalty of the realm is chiefly due to its moral and social bearings. Like the Declaration of Independence, it expresses the popular sentiment on the subjects it discusses,— the vices of Church, State, and Society. A spiritual picture which brings into distinct consciousness what many feel and but dimly apprehend, the solitary advocate of the children of want and oppression.

A part of its interest, at least for posterity, is derived from its antiquated Saxon and its rustic pith. Without artifice of connection or involution of plot, it is an impulsive voice from the wilderness, in the language of the people; and, as such, returns to or continues the old alliterative metre and unrhymed verse—the recurrence at certain regular intervals of like beginnings, without, as Milton contemptuously calls it, the jingling sound of like endings. Thus:

In a sómer séson-whan soft was the sónnë,
I shópë me in shroudës - as I a shépë wérë,
In hábite as an héremite-unhóly of wórkës,
Went wýde in this world-wóndres to herë.'

The fashionable machinery of talking abstractions gives evidence of French influence. The satirist, like Bunyan, veils his head in allegory. Perhaps the ideal company who flit along the dreamy scenes of his wild invention, have some distant relationship to the shadowy pilgrimage of that 'Immortal Dreamer' to the 'Celestial City.'

The second main stream of the poetical literature of the period is story-telling. Robert Manning garnishes with rhymes a history

of England beginning with the immemorial Brutus, and calls it a poem. Of a style easier than that of Robert of Gloucester and of diction more advanced, it discourses without developing, and sees moving spectacles without emotion:

So forth and so forth. Loquacious, clear, and insipid, we imagine, as its French original.

But reverie and fantasy are needed to satisfy the pleasant indolence of the chivalric world and the courts that shine upon the heights. The tales that sufficed to allure the attention of a ruder ancestry, now demand more volume, more variety, more color; and all that history and imagination have gathered in the East, in France, in Wales, in Provence, in Italy, wrought and rewrought by the minstrelsy of three centuries, heroics of the North that magnify the valor and daring of the cavalier, lyrics of the South that dwell on the devotion of the knight to his ladylove, serve as the stuff for the looms of the mighty weavers of Before the frivolous unreality of the new chivalry, songs of martial achievement predominated; but the intellectual palate of the gentry now prefers the later poetry of sensuous enjoyment, the trouvère, with its amours and mysticism; or the troubadour, with its romantic follies. The passion of war has degenerated into a pageant, and Romance, from the light fabliaux to the entangling fiction of many thousand lines, tells of little but the ecstasies of love. Love is the essential theme,love in its first emotions, love happy, jealous; the lover walking,

verse.

sitting, sleeping, sick, despairing, dead. In France they have Floral Games where the assembled poets are housed in artificial arbors dressed with flowers, and a violet of gold is awarded the best poem. The love-courts discuss - and decide affirmatively— whether each one who loves grows pale at the sight of her whom he loves; whether each action of the lover ends in the thought of her whom he loves; whether love can refuse anything to love. A company of enthusiasts, love-penitents, to prove the strength of their passion, dress in summer in furs and heavy garments, and in winter in light gauze. When Froissart presents to Richard his book bound in crimson velvet, guarded by clasps of silver, and studded with golden roses,—

Than the kyng demanded me whereof it treated, and I shewed hym how it treated maters of louc; wherof the kynge was gladde.'

While rowing on the Thames, Gower (1325-1408) meets the royal barge, and is called to the king's side. 'Book some new thing,' says Richard, 'in the way you are used, into which book I myself may often look'; and the request is the origin of Confessio Amantis-the Confession of a Lover. It is a dialogue between an unhappy lover and his confessor, the object of which is to explain and classify the impediments of love. Through thirty thousand weary lines, the lover, like a good Catholic, states his distress, and is edified, if not comforted, by expositions of hermetic science and Aristotelian philosophy, discourses on politics, litanies of ancient and modern legends, gleaned from the compilers for the morality they furnish. Thus a serpent, Aspidis, bears in his head the precious stone called the carbuncle, which enchanters strive to win from him by lulling him asleep with magic songs. The wise reptile, as soon as the charmer approaches, presses one ear flat upon the ground, and covers the other with his tail. Ergo, let us obstinately resist all temptations that assail us through the avenues of the bodily organs. Even as the 'much-wandering' Ulysses stopped his ears with wax and lashed himself to the ship's mast, to escape the enticing song of the Sirens. The confession terminates with some parting injunctions of the priest, the bitter judgment of Venus that he should remember his old age and leave off such fooleries, his cure from the wound of Cupid's dart, and his absolution. He is dismissed with advice from the goddess to go 'where moral virtue dwelleth.'

To the last, Gower is learned, dignified, didactic. He would be nothing, if he were not moral. His principal merit lies in the sententious passages which are here and there interspersed, and the narratives culled with dull prolixity from legendary lore, some of which as the Trumpet of Death-deserve notice for their striking tone of reflection, and others for the charm of their details. Thus, it was a law in Hungary, that when a man was condemned to die, the sentence should be announced to him by the blast of a brazen trumpet before his house. At a magnificent court-festival, the monarch was plunged in deep melancholy, and his brother anxiously inquired the reason. No reply was made, but at break of morn the fatal trumpet sounded at the brother's gate. The doomed man came to the palace weeping and despairing. Then the king said solemnly, that if such grief were caused by the death of the body, how much profounder must be the sorrow awakened by the thought which afflicted him as he sat among his guests, the thought of that eternal death of the spirit which Heaven has ordained as the wages of sin.

The tale of Florent is in Gower's happiest manner, and reveals, in the desert of platitudes, some of the brilliancy and grace of older models. A knight riding through a narrow pass in search of adventures, is attacked, taken, and led to a castle. There, at the peril of his life, he is required to state

'What alle women most desire."

That he may have time for reflection and consideration, he is granted a leave of absence, on condition that at the expiration of his term he shall return with his answer. He tells all what has befallen him, and asks the opinion of the wisest, but

'Such a thing they cannot find
By constellation ne kind,-

Our
His

that is, neither by the stars nor by the laws of nature. hero-still pondering what to say-sets out on his return. troubled meditations are at length interrupted by the discovery of an old woman sitting under a large tree,

That for to speak of flesh and bone

So foul yet saw he never none."

He fain would pass quickly on, but she calls him by name, and warns him that he is riding to his death, adding, however, that she can save him. He begs her advice, and she asks, 'What

wilt thou give me?' 'Anything you may ask.' 'I want nothing. more, therefore pledge me'—

In vain he offers

band. He wisely

"That you will be my housebande."

66

Nay," said Florent, "that may not be." "Ride thenne forth thy way," quod she.'

lands, parks, houses,—she must have a husconcludes that it is—

'Better to take her to his wife,

Or elles for to lose his life."

He also reflects that she probably will not live very long, and resolves to put her meanwhile

'Where that no man her shoulde know

Till she with death were overthrow.'

Having signified his assent, she tells him, that when he reaches his destination, he is to reply

That alle women lievest would
Be sovereign of mannes love;'

for as sovereign, she will have all her will, which is the beatitude of her desire. With this answer, she says he shall save himself, and he rides sadly on, for he is under oath to return for his bride. At the castle, in the presence of the summoned inmates, he names several things of his own invention, but none will do; and finally he gives the answer the old woman directed, which is declared to be the true one. Retracing his steps, a free but wretched man, he finds the old woman in the identical spot,—

"The loathliest wight

That ever man cast on his eye,
Her nose bas, her browes high,
Her eyen small, and depe-set,
Her chekes ben with teres wet,
And rivelin as an empty skin,
Hangende down unto her chin,
Her lippes shrunken ben for age;
There was no grace in her visage.'

[low, flat

[shrivelled [hanging

She insists, however, upon the agreement, and, sick at heart, almost preferring death,

'In ragges as she was to-tore

He set her on his horse before.'

riding through all the lanes and by-ways that no one may see him. At home he explains that he is obliged

This beste wedde to his wife,

For elles he had lost his life.'

Maids of honor are sent in, who renew her attire, all except her