popular feeling in his favor prevented his being arrested on an order from the Pope.

Wiclif's Bible. Wiclif's offences in the eyes of the church were his objection to various dogmas, and his unsparing criticism of a self-indulgent priesthood. His contribution to literature was a direct result of the first of these: he brought about the translation into English of the entire Bible, that the people might read and interpret for themselves, and that each individual might work out a rule of life for himself. Addressed chiefly to the uneducated, Wiclif's Bible is characterized by the simplicity and directness of style, and by the preference for homely, everyday language that characterized its great successor, the King James, or Authorized" Version. The reformer had many able assistants, and it is not certain just how much of the translation was done by Wiclif himself, and how much under his direction. Nearly the whole of the New Testament, however, is believed to be his.

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Langland. We have named William Langland as the second great name connected with religious writing of this period. This name is given to the author of a work called the Vision of Piers the Plowman, written about 1362, and subsequently revised and extended. For a number of years. a controversy has raged over the authorship of the Vision, some scholars believing that as many as five authors had a hand in writing it. From the point of view of the average student this question is of little or no consequence. Piers the Plowman makes an appeal to all interested in the life of the Middle Ages, in the history of religious thought, or in allegorical and vision literature.

1 See Manly, in Cambridge History, vol. II, chap. I.

66 Piers Plowman." In the "Prologue " the author represents himself as falling asleep, one May morning, on a hill, and having a marvelous dream. In this dream he saw 66 a fair field of folk," folk of all social classes, all occupations, all shades of character. There were farm-laborers, merchants, representatives of various religious orders, jesters and jugglers ("Judas children "), lawyers and beggars, butchers and barons. "All this I saw sleeping, and seven times more." The people, almost without exception, are engaged in occupations which are either positively harmful or else useless. Besides the persons named from their employments there are numerous personified abstractions Truth, Falsehood, Guile, Duplicity, Meed, Theology, Conscience; and in the very complicated allegory of the poem the abuses of the day are attacked and the people are exhorted to better living.

On the formal side Piers Plowman is important because it was written in the alliterative, unrhymed metre of AngloSaxon verse. No English poem was written subsequently in this form modern English poetry has followed Chaucer, who adopted and modified the French form, characterized by end-rhyme and a regularly recurring accent or stress.

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Mandeville's "Travels." Another work of the fourteenth century of interest to modern as well as mediaval readers is a curious one known as the Travels of Sir John Mandeville. This book 'had been a household work in eleven languages and for five centuries before it was ascertained that Sir John never lived, that his travels never took place, and that his personal experiences, long the test of others' veracity, were compiled out of every possible authority, going back to Pliny, if not further.” 1

1 Cambridge History, II, 90.

It pretends to give the experiences of the author, an English knight, on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, starting from St. Albans in Hertfordshire in 1322. It pretends to be a guide for other pilgrims, and hence has somewhat of a religious flavor; but its best claim to distinction now is as the first English prose work of which the aim is entertainment. Its effect comes chiefly from a trick used afterward with great success by Defoe and Swift, the use of exact figures and of numerous circumstantial details in connection with the wonders described.

In a certain lake, for example, grow reeds thirty fathoms long; and others apparently longer, at the roots of which are found precious stones of great virtues. A further evidence of his truthfulness is the occasional admission that he speaks from hearsay; as when we read: "In the Isle of Lango is yet the daughter of Hippocras, in form and like

MANDEVILLE.

ness of a great dragon, that is a hundred fathoms in length, as men say; for I have not seen her." Or: "Of Paradise I cannot speak properly, for I was not there."

That the work was immensely popular is shown by the existence to-day of some 300 manuscripts of it. Its setting forth what was accepted as fact by the best thinkers of Mandeville's time makes it worthy of attention to-day. Notable examples of this are his account of the cotton plant and his belief in the roundness of the earth. (It must be

remembered that he wrote a century before Columbus sailed westward for India.) The Travels is, moreover, written in an almost uniformly easy, smooth style: open the volume quite at random, and one will assuredly find interesting matter.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 1340-1400

There remains to be treated in this period one writer whose fame rests on a far solider basis than any yet men

CHAUCER.

1

tioned. No concession need be made on historical or other grounds to place Chaucer high, not only among medieval poets, not only among English poets, but among poets of all times and lands. Even Matthew Arnold, who denies Chaucer a position among the great classics," admits that his poetry shows a "large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of human life"; that he is "a genuine source of joy and strength"; and that he has "the power to

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survey the world from a central, a truly human point of view." If these admissions are justified, the denial of "classic" standing to the poet must be due to a very restricted use of the term.

We have, along with much uncertainty, more information regarding Chaucer's life than regarding any writer previously considered. For these additional facts we are indebted not at all to great appreciation in his day of his literary efforts,

1 "The Study of Poetry," in Essays in Criticism, Second Series.

but to his activity in public affairs. At various times he held a municipal appointment in London, sat in Parliament, served in the army, and performed diplomatic errands on the Continent.

Early Life.

Geoffrey Chaucer was a Londoner, the son of a wine merchant, who at one time, possibly but by no means surely at the time of the poet's birth, lived in Thames Street. The location gains interest from the fact that near at hand is the bridge across which pilgrims to Canterbury passed. The occupation of the poet's father was no hindrance to social aspirations; and at the age of seventeen Geoffrey was attached to a royal household that of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III. Although there is no evidence regarding the character or extent of his education, his writings show that he was well informed along all lines of interest in his day. His enjoyment of the King's favor is shown by the fact that, on his being captured while serving in the army in France a few years later, Edward himself contributed to the fund for Chaucer's ransom.

Continued in the Favor of the Great. Chaucer also profited by the favor of Edward's fourth son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. One of his earliest poems, The Death of Blanche the Duchess, was written in memory of John's first wife. It is thought by some that Philippa, the poet's wife, was a kinswoman of Gaunt. Finally, it is known that Gaunt's son, Henry IV, on his accession to the throne in 1399, restored to Chaucer the pension stopped in the last years of Richard's reign when Gaunt was out of the country. This continued association with great folk was of immense help as a preparation for his work. Even the Canterbury Tales, though none of the pilgrims are from the higher walks of life, are written, not for the uneducated, but for the cul