TO A.D. 1377) GOWER-WICLIF-LANGLAND 131 Richard II. The lost French poem would, in that case. be the book which earned for the poet from his friend Chaucer the name of "Moral Gower." 26. John Wiclif, born in Yorkshire about 1324, was in 1361 master or warden of Balliol College, Oxford, and was in that year presented by his college to the rectory of Fylingham, in Lincolnshire. Soon afterwards he resigned his mastership, and went to reside on his living. He was presently made Doctor of Divinity. He had a quick mind in a spare, frail body, and at the time when William Langland, of whom we shall have next to speak, was writing in like spirit his "Vision of Piers Plowman," Wiclif was showing his pure desire to restore a spiritual Church. John of Gaunt was then ready, as head of the feudal party at court, to humble the pride of the prelates who claimed temporal power. He welcomed, therefore, the most innocent and self-denying Wiclif as a fellow-combatant; and when, in 1376, at the close of the reign of Edward III., Wiclif was cited as a heretic to appear at St. Paul's before the appointed ecclesiastical judges, he went thither with John of Gaunt and Percy, the Earl Marshal of England, as supporters. This led to a brawl. The populace judged Wiclif by his companions, and saw in him one of the people's enemies. Yet he was already quietly engaged with others upon that Translation of the Bible which was not completed until after the death of Edward III. As nothing came of the proceedings at St. Paul's, the monks, who also looked on Wiclif as their enemy, obtained the pope's injunction to the prelates and the university to renew process against him; but before the pope's bulls could reach England Edward III. was dead, and the next following changes were in Wiclif's favour. 27. Of like mind with Wiclif was William Langland, who, in Edward III.'s reign, was essentially the poet of the people. William Langland, the author of the Vision of Piers Plowman, is said, in a handwriting of the fifteenth century upon one of the MSS. of that poem, to have been born in Oxfordshire, at Shipton-under-Wychwood, the son of a freeman named Stacy de Rokayle, who lived there as a tenant under Lord le Spenser. On another MS. the author of the poem is named William W., possibly William of Wychwood (?) John Bale, writing in the middle of the sixteenth century, made the poet's Christian name Robert, wherein certainly he erred; and said that he was born at Cleobury Mortimer. in Shropshire, wherein, perhaps, he erred also. The opening of his poem leads us to infer that William Langland was bred to the Church. and was attached at one time to the monastery of Great Malvern. But he married, and seems only to have performed minor offices of the Church. The fortythree remaining MSS. of his great poem represent it, with many variations, in three well-defined stages of completeness, indicating that throughout his life the author was extending and enriching it. In the portion first written there are references to the Treaty of Bretigny, in 1360, to the great pestilence of 1361, and to a great storm which occurred in the evening of Saturday, January 15th, 1362. The work must, therefore, have been begun about that time. In the later continuation of the poem there is reference to a day in April, in 1370, and to the accession of Richard II., in 1377. As in this part of the poem Langland calls his age fortyfive, he was not born earlier than 1332. He came to London, for in the latest continuation of the poem he speaks of himself as living poorly in Cornhill by the performance of small clerical duties. If Langland was the author of a poem on the Deposition of Richard II., which has been not unreasonably ascribed to him, he was alive in 1399. 28. The Vision of Piers Plowman speaks the mind of the main body of the English people of its time. It is a vision of Christ seen through the clouds of humanity--a spiritual picture of the labour to maintain right and uphold the life spent upon duty done for love of God. The poem is in the mystical number of nine dreams, and, in its completest form, twenty-three "passus." A passus is a division of a poem so named from the Latin pandere (to spread out, unfold); hence, to unfold in speaking, as when in the "Eneid" it is said of Anchises, " Ordine singula pandit." Without rhyme, unless by accident, and with alliteration in First English manner, a national poet of vivid imagination has here fastened on the courtly taste for long allegorical dreams, and speaks by it to the humblest in a well-sustained allegory, often of great subtlety, always embodying the purest aspirations. Everywhere, too, it gives flesh and blood to its abstractions by the most vigorous directness of familiar detail, so that every truth might, if possible, go home, even by the cold hearthstone of the hungriest and most desolate of the poor, to whom its words of a wise sympathy were recited. Langland dreamt of a fair field full of folk-the World and its people-among whom the maid Meed (worldly reward) was about to be wedded to Falsehood. Theology forbad the marriage, and the question of it was tried TO A.D. 1377] THE VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN 133 before the king in London. The allegory is the first of the sequence of dreams forming the whole vision, rich in lively picturing of the conditions of men in the world, and plain of speech as to the duties of kings. The poet slept again, and saw in his second dream again the fair field full of folk, to whom now Reason was preaching that the pestilence and the south-west wind on Saturday at even came to warn them of their sin and pride. After a time Repentance prayed, and then Hope blew a horn, at which the saints in heaven sang, and a thousand men cried up to Christ and His pure mother that they might know the way to Truth. They inquired of a pilgrim fresh from Sinai, who said that he had never heard such a saint asked after. Then suddenly a Plowman put forth his head and said that he knew Truth as naturally as a clerk his books. Piers Plowman is thus first introduced in the poem as type of the poor and simple to whom the things of God are revealed, and gradually, within fifty lines, passes into the Christ who came as one of low estate to guide the erring world. Truth granted a bull of pardon to those who had worked faithfully with Piers the Plowman at the half-acre he had to plough and sow by the highway. The terms of this bull lead to the allegorical search for Do-well, since they are based on the text of Matthew xxv. 46-" They who have done well shall go into life eternal." A priest impugned the worth of such a pardon, and raised a dispute that awoke the dreamer by its noise. What meant the dream? The pope granted passes into heaven; but to trust to these Is noght so siker for the soul, He would search, therefore, for Do-well; and in his next dream, the third, was told by a man like himself, whose name was Thought, what were Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best. Do-well, man's natural goodness, follows him who is true of tongue and earns his bread by honest labour, takes only that which is his own, and is not drunken or disdainful. Do-better adds to these qualities of natural right and justice the higher Christian graces; he is meek as a lamb, helpful to others, has broken the bags of Avarice, and has given the Bible to the people. Do-best is above both, and bears a bishop's cross. Him Do-well and Dobetter have crowned as their king. Thought sent the dreamer to Wit (knowledge), who told him that Do-well lives in the Castle (of Man's Body) made by Kynde (Nature) who dwells there with his bride Anima (the Soul). Anima has Do-well to defend her borders; Do-better, daughter of Do-well, for her handmaid; and Do-best for her spiritual guide. Dame Study, the wife of Wit, was displeased at the telling of these mysteries to the unlearned; but she was appeased, and passed the dreamer on to Clergy, who told him of the evils and abuses in the Church, and prophesied that there should come a King who would put monks to penance for the breaking of their rule. "And then shall the abbot of Abingdon and all his issue for ever have a knock of a king and incurable the wound." William Langland was, we shall find, not alone in the forecast of the inevitable issue of the growing worldliness among those who should have been the guardians of religion. From his third dream the poet was awakened by a sense of shame while he was disputing with Reason. One came to him, Imagination, when he was awake, and told him that if he had been patient he would have heard from Reason what he had been told by Clergy. In his next dream, the fourth, Conscience comforted him, and took him to dine with Clergy, where the meats were psalms and texts, and there was talk again of Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best, Clergy referring to one Piers Plowman, who had made light of all knowledge but love, and saying that Do-well and Do-better were finders of Do-best, who saves men's souls. Patience said he had been told that Disce (learn) was Do-well, Doce (teach) was Do-better, and Dilige (love) was Dc-best. The dreamer went on, with Conscience and Patience, to discover more. Then he met on the way Haukyn the Active Man, too busy to clean his coat: he sleeps in it. But Conscience told him how it might be cleaned, and Patience told him of a meat that never failed, though no man ploughed or sowed for it. The dreamer looked and saw that it was a piece of the Paternoster, called Thy-Will-be-Done. "Take it, Haukyn," said Patience, "and eat this when thou hungerest, or when thou art chill or wet; fetters shall never chafe, nor great lords anger, nor prison harm thee." The sound of Haukyn's weeping broke the dream. In the next dream, the fifth, Anima (the Soul) spoke with the poet, and after lamenting the avarice and luxury of churchmen, bade him go straight to Christ, figured in Piers the Plowman, TO A.D. 1377] SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE 135 the allegory passes to the tree bearing the fruit of Charity, which grows in a garden held by Freewill, under Piers the Plowman. The next dream, the sixth, introduces Faith and Hope, with Charity in the person of the Good Samaritan. In the seventh dream the poet saw one like both to the Samaritan and to Piers Plowman riding barefoot on an ass's back, and was told by Faith that it was Jesus gone to joust with the foul fiend in the garb of Piers the Plowman. The rest of his dream was the story of Piers the Plowman as the Saviour. In the eighth dream this identification was continued. Christ was identified also with Do-well in His natural childhood; with Do-better when He healed and helped all that asked Grace of Him; with Do-best from the time when His wounds were touched by the doubting Thomas. And Grace, it was said, gave to Piers the Plowman on earth a team of four oxen, which were the Four Evangelists, and four stots, Austin, Ambrose, Gregory, and Jerome, who, with two harrows, an old and a new (Testament), followed Piers's plough. And Grace gave the seed that should be sown the spirits of prudence, and of temperance, and of fortitude, and of justice. Thus ended the spiritual search; but over the heavenly vision of Piers Plowman there again rolled the dark mists of earth. Piers was attacked by Pride. Conscience counselled his followers to defend themselves in the Castle of Unity (the Church). The pope, whom “God amend," plundered the Church. The king claimed all he could take. In the next and last dream, the ninth, Antichrist came in a man's form to waste the crop of Truth. Within the Castle of Unity Flattery got entrance as a physician. Thus Conscience was ousted, saying "Now kynde (i.e., nature) me avenge, And send me hap and heele, Till I have Piers the Plowman." So, with the object of his search yet unattained, through the turmoil and disaster of those days of Richard II., in which the poem was completed, the poet sent his last thought heavenward, and built his last hope for the world upon a search for Christ. 29. In completing the account of this important poem we have passed out of the reign of Edward III. into that of his grandson; but we are not free to discuss the reign of Richard II. while the famous traveller, Sir John Mandeville, remains unnoticed. He represented in the reign of Edward III. the English spirit of adventure. By five-and-twenty years and more an |