reign of Edward II. Richard Rolle also wrote, in the Northumbrian dialect, a poem called The Pricke of Conscience, in seven books, and nearly 10,000 lines. It has been published by Mr. Morris, 1863. The first poet of any merit, known to us by name, is LAWRENCE MINOT (about A. D. 1352). His poems were discovered by Tyrwhitt, in 1775, and printed by Ritson in 1796 (reprinted in 1825), with an Introduction on the reign and wars of Edward III. They celebrate ten victories of that king in his wars with France and Scotland, except that the first gives an account of the battle of Bannockburn (A. D. 1314), as an introduction to that of Halidon Hill (A. D. 1333) and others by which it was avenged. The last, the taking of Guisnes (A. D. 1352), gives an approximate date for the author, who may, however, of course have written the other poems nearer the events. Equal in spirit to the best of our heroic ballads, they have more sustained power and more finished composition. Their language is a border dialect, near akin to the Scotch. It is quite intelligible, when a few obsolete words and constructions are mastered. Among their varied measures, we meet with the animated double triplet, familiar in the poems of Scott. In Minot's poems rhyme is regularly employed; while the frequent alliterations not only remind us of the principle of Anglo-Saxon composition, but prove how much the popular ear still required that artifice.

There is another famous poem of the same age, constructed by a mixture of alliteration and rhythmical accent, without rhyme; the alliteration being stricter than that of the Anglo-Saxons themselves. This is the Vision of Piers Ploughman, or rather the Vision of William concerning Piers (or Peter) Ploughman, an allegory of the difficulties in the course of human life, kindred in conception to Bunyan's great work, and in its day scarcely less popular. Its prevalent spirit is that of satire, aimed against abuses and vices in general, but in particular against the corruptions of the church, from a moral (though not doctrinal) point of view closely resembling that of the later Puritans, with whom it was a great favorite. It consists of nearly 8000 double verses (or couplets), arranged in twenty "passus," or sections, so little connected with each other as to appear almost separate poems. Each couplet has two principal accents, with a considerable license as to the number of syllables. The alliteration falls on three accented syllables in each couplet, namely, on both those of the first line and on the first in the second line (and sometimes on the second). As these peculiarities can only be understood by an example, we give the opening of the poem, which also shows where the scene of the vision is laid, among the Malvern Hills (the passage is quoted with the modernized spelling and explanations of Professor Craik):

"In a summer season,
When soft was the sun,
I shoop me into shrouds*
As I a sheept were;
In habit as a hermit
Unholy of werkes,+
Went Wide in this World
Wonders to hear;

Ac on a May morwening,
On Malvern hills,
Me befel a ferly,t

Of fairy me thought."

This opening marks the probable residence of the poct. The third couplet, with other internal evidence, points to his having been a priest. The date seems to be tolerably well fixed by his allusions to the treaty of Brétigny, in 1360, and to the great tempest of January 15, 1362, of which he speaks as of a recent event. Tradition ascribes the work to a certain ROBERT LANGLANDE; but in the Latin title the author is called William. Nothing whatever is known of his personal history. His acquaintance with ecclesiastical literature agrees with the supposition that he was a churchman; and he was evidently familiar with the Latin poems ascribed to Walter de Mapes. The great interest of his work is its unquestionable reflection of the popular sentiment of the age. Langlande is as intensely national as Chaucer; but, while the latter freely avails himself of the forms introduced by the Anglo-Norman literature, the former makes a last attempt to revive those of the Anglo-Saxon. This effort, combined with his rich humor and unsparing satire, gained him unbounded popularity with the common people. The Vision of Piers Ploughman was first printed in 1550; the last reprint in black letter is that of Dr. Whitaker, 1813; a far better edition was published by Mr. Wright, with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary, in 2 vols. 12mo. Lond. 1842; but the numerous MSS. of the work would still repay a careful collation. Langlande had numerous imitators. The Creed of Piers Ploughman, a work of the same school, and often ascribed to the same author, is supposed to have been written about twenty or thirty years later than the Vision. It is more serious in its tone, and more in harmony with the religious views of Wicliffe. The Complaint of Piers Ploughman is found in a volume of political and satirical songs, which also contains a poem on the misgovernment of RichII., hinting at his deposition. These political poems concur with Gower's Vox Clamantis to give us a vivid impression of the evils which provoked the Lancastrian revolution.

English Prose Literature begins with SIR JOHN DE MANDEVILLE, who was born at St. Alban's about A. D. 1300, and left England for the East in 1822. His travels and his service under Oriental sovereigns gave him an extensive knowledge of Palestine, Egypt, Persia, and parts of India, Tartary, and China. He resided three years at Pekin. On his return he wrote an account of what he professed to have seen, and dedicated the book to Edward III. in A. D. 1356. He died at Liege, A. D. 1371. Mandeville's work is neither wholly, nor even chiefly, original. He borrows freely from the chroniclers and other old writers, preferring what is most wonderful; and his own observations have so much of the marvellous as to discredit his testimony. The work is now chiefly interesting as the earliest example, on a large scale, of English prose. Mandeville himself tells us that he wrote it first in Latin, then translated it into French, and afterwards into English, "that every man of my nation may understand it." Such is not the process

of creating a work of literary art; and accordingly | generally name him first; he survived him by eight the English of Mandeville is straightforward and years, Chaucer having died in A. D. 1400, and unadorned, and probably a fair example of the Gower in A. D. 1408. But the precedence must be spoken language of the day. As compared with awarded to Chaucer, not only for the vast superiorRobert of Gloucester, it shows a great increase of ity of his genius, but as the earlier writer in English. French words. No work of the age was more popu- It may be questioned whether Gower would have lar. It exists in a large number of MSS. The written in English at all, except in conformity to earliest printed edition, in English, is that of the taste created by Chaucer. Their early friendWynkyn de Worde, Westminster, 1499, 8vo.; but ship is evinced by Chaucer's dedication of Troilus an Italian translation, by Pietro de Cornero, had and Creseyde to Gower, by a title which became a been previously printed at Milan, 1480, 4to. The fixed epithet of the latter poet:standard English edition is that printed at London, 1725, 8vo., and reprinted, with an Introduction, Notes, and Glossary, by Mr. Halliwell, London, 1839, 8vo. The translation of the Latin Polychronicon of Ralph Higden (see p. 30), by JOHN DE TREVISA, Vicar of Berkeley, completed in the year 1385, is chiefly interesting as having been printed by Caxton, 1482, with an additional book bringing down the narrative from 1357 to 1460. It was also printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1485. It is a curious proof of the change which a single century and after speaking of "the dittees and songes glad," made in the language, that Caxton thought it neces

"O MORAL GOWER! this booke I direct
To thee, and to the philosophicall Strode,
To vouchsafe there need is to correct

Of your benignities and zeales good."
And the continuance of their friendship (in spite of
conjectures founded on insufficient evidence) is
attested by the compliment paid to Chaucer in
Gower's Confessio Amantis (finished in 1393), where
Venus greets Chaucer

"As my disciple and my poete,"

sary "somewhat to change the rude and old Eng-composed "in the floures of his youth" for her lish, that is to wit, certain words which in these sake, and of which days be neither used ne understood." Several other translations, made by Trevisa from the Latin, exist only in MS.

The great Scottish Poet of this age, JOHN BARBOUR, Archdeacon of Aberdeen (b. about A. D. 1316, d. A. D. 1396), was rather a contemporary than a precursor of Chaucer, like whom he deserves to rank as the father of a national literature. His Bruce, in 13,000 rhymed octosyllabic lines, is a chronicle of the adventures of King Robert I., of very high merit. The lowland Scottish dialect was formed under exactly the same influences as the English, from which it differed rather less than in the present day. To confound it with the language of the aboriginal Celts is an error akin to painting Wallace in tartans and a kilt. Barbour also paid several visits to England, and studied at Oxford in his mature age. Before this time there are hardly any names in Scottish literature, except the schoolman MICHAEL SCOT, who resided abroad, and was scarcely known at home except by his fabulous reputation as a wizard; THOMAS LERMONT, the Rhymer, of Ercildoune, erroneously called the author of the romance of Sir Tristram; and the Latin chronicler, JOHN OF FORDUN, a canon of Aberdeen, whose Scoti-chronicon contains the legendary and historical annals of his country to the death of David I. The later and less celebrated contemporary of Barbour, ANDREW WYNTOUN (b. about A. D. 1350, d. after 1420), Prior of Lochleven, wrote a metrical chronicle in nine books, of Scottish and general history. BLIND HARRY, the Minstrel, belongs to the following century.

B.-JOHN GOWER.

The transition made in our language and literature about the middle of the fourteenth century cannot be better illustrated than by the writings of John Gower, the contemporary and friend of Chaucer, and the author of three great poetical works, the first in French, the second in Latin, and the third in English. Gower is assumed to have been somewhat older than Chaucer, as the old writers

"The land fulfilled is ouer all,"

exhorts him to employ his old age in writing his "Testament of Love."

Two of the Canterbury Tales, those of the Man of Law and the Wife of Bath, are borrowed from Gower, unless both poets derived them from a

common source.

Caxton made Gower a native of Gowerland in South Wales, and Leland claimed him as a member of the family of Gower of Stittenham, in Yorkshire, from which are sprung the noble houses of Sutherland and Ellesmere. But Sir Harris Nicolas and others have proved, from existing deeds, and from the comparison of seals with the arms on Gower's tomb, that the poet was an esquire of Kent, and probably of the same family as Sir Robert Gower of Multon (Moulton) and Kentwell, in Suffolk, who died in or before A. D. 1349, and whose daughter and coheiress Joan conveyed the manor of Kentwell to John Gower (the poet) on June 28, 1368. From this and similar evidence it appears that Gower was sprung from a family of knightly rank, and that he possessed estates in Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, and probably in Essex; though he lived much in London, and apparently in close connection with the court. There is no ground for the common statement that he followed the legal profession. About the year 1400, he speaks of himself as both old and blind. His will still exists, made on the 15th of August, 1408, and proved by his widow, Agnes, on the 24th of October following, so that he must have died between those two dates. There can be little doubt that his wife was the same as the Agnes Groundalf whose marriage to John Gower, at St. Mary Magdalen's, Southwark, on the 28th of January, 1397, is recorded in the register of William of Wykeham, preserved at Winchester. If so, the poet married in his old age. His will leaves it doubtful whether he had issue. He lies buried, according to his own directions, in St. Mary Overy's (now St. Saviour's), Southwark, of which church he is said to have been a benefactor, beneath a splendid canopied tomb, bearing his arms and

effigy, the head resting on his three volumes; the wall within the three arches being painted with figures of Charity, Mercy, and Pity. The story of his having been a fellow-student with Chaucer, either at Oxford or Cambridge, is as unfounded as most of Leland's other statements about him, but his works furnish proof of his having received the best education his age could bestow, and of his command of the languages then in use.

Gower's three great works were the Speculum Meditantis, in French; the Vox Clamantis, in Latin; and the Confessio Amantis, in English.

(1.) The Speculum Meditantis is now entirely lost; the short French poem which Warton describes under the title being an entirely different work. It was a collection of precepts on chastity, enforced by examples. But there are still extant Fifty French Ballads by Gower, in a MS. belonging to the Duke of Sutherland, and edited by the late duke for the Roxburghe Club, in 1818. "They are," says Pauli (Introd. Essay, p. xxvi.), “tender in sentiment, and not unrefined with regard to language and form, especially if we consider that they are the work of a foreigner. They treat of Love in the manner introduced by the Provençal poets, which was afterwards generally adopted by those in the north of France. A few specimens cannot fail to give a favorable idea of Gower's skill and expression." These were about the last works of any importance written in the Anglo-Norman French, which was now so fully regarded as a foreign language, that Gower apologizes for his French, saying, "I am English," while he gives as a reason for using the language, that he was addressing his ballads

"Al Universite de tout le monde." Some verses addressed to Henry IV., after his accession, prove that Gower continued to write in

French to the end of his life.

(2.) Of Gower's great Latin poem, the Vox Clamantis, Dr. Pauli gives the following account:"Soon after the rebellion of the commons in 1381 [under Richard II.], an event which made a great impression on his mind, he wrote that singular work in Latin distichs, called Vox Clamantis, of which we possess an excellent edition by the Rev. H. O. Coxe, printed for the Roxburghe Club, in 1850. The name, with an allusion to St. John the Baptist, seems to have been adopted from the general clamor and cry then abroad in the country. The greater bulk of the work, the date of which its editor is inclined to fix between 1882 and 1384, is rather a moral than an historical essay; but the

first book describes the insurrection of Wat Tyler

in an allegorical disguise; the poet having a dream, on the 11th of June, 1381, in which men assume the shape of animals. The second book contains a long sermon on fatalism, in which the poet shows himself no friend to Wicliffe's tenets, but a zealous

advocate for the reformation of the clergy. The third book points out how all orders of society must suffer for their own vices and demerits; in illustration of which he cites the example of the secular elergy. The fourth book is dedicated to the cloistered clergy and the friars; the fifth to the military; the sixth contains a violent attack on the lawyers; and the seventh subjoins the moral of the whole, represented in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, as inter

preted by Daniel." (Introd. Essay, p. xxix.) There are also some smaller Latin poems, in leonine hexameters; among them one addressed to Henry IV., in which the poet laments his blindness.

(3.) Gower's latest poem, the Confessio Amantis, was written in English, with a running marginal commentary in Latin, something like that to the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge. Its composition seems to be due to the success of Chaucer. We again quote from Dr. Pauli: "The exact date of the poem has not been ascertained, but there is internal evidence, in certain copies, that it existed in the year 1392-3. As this point involves a question of grave importance with respect to the author's behavior and position in the political events of the day, it will be necessary to enter more fully into the subject. He unquestionably issued two editions of the work, which, however, as will be distinctly seen in the present edition, vary from each other only at the commencement and at the end; the one being dedicated to King Richard II., the other to his cousin, Henry of Lancaster, Earl of Derby. In the king's copy the poet describes at length how he came rowing down the Thames at London one day, and how he met King Richard, who, having invited him to step into the royal barge, commanded him to write a book upon some new matter. In that addressed to Henry he says, that the book was finished, the yere sixteenth of King Richard (A. D. 1392-3), an important fact, which has been hitherto overlooked by all writers on the subject, including even Sir H. Nicolas (Life of Chaucer, p. 39), who states that Gower did not dedicate his work to Henry until he had ascended the throne." Having shown that the dedication was made when Henry was not yet King, or even Duke of Lancaster, but Earl of Derby, a title which he bore in 1392-3, -Pauli proceeds: "The one version abounds in expressions of the deepest loyalty towards his sovereign, for whose sake he intends to write some newe thing in English; the other mentions the year of the reign of King Richard II., is full of attachment to Henry of Lancaster,

'with whom my herte is of accorde,' and purports to appear in English for England's sake." The inference from all this is, that Gower, seeing the fatal tendency of Richard's course, early

attached himself to Henry of Lancaster, from whom there is still extant a record of his receiving a collar in 1394 (probably in acknowledgment of the dedication of his poem), and whom he more than once addresses with affection and respect in his minor

pieces. Hence the commencement of the Confessio

Amantis would fall before 1386, when Richard came of age, and began his arbitrary government. Chaucer at the end of the poem, in the edition inHence, also, the omission of the compliment to scribed to Henry, may be explained by motives of

policy, without inferring any personal alienation.

The Prologue is in the same strain of dissatisfaction with the existing order of things, which pervades the Vox Clamantis; and the poet comforts himself with the same resource, the divine government of the world, as revealed in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar. Yet how little he shares the opinions of Wicliffe is proved by his reference to

"This new secte of lollardie."

speare, vol. iv. p. 261.) The Saxon element is as
conspicuous in his language as in Chaucer's; but he
uses a larger number of French words, as might
have been expected from his early habits of compo-
sition. The frequent want of skill in the construc-
tion of his sentences shows that it was no easy task
for him to write so long a work in English. There
are some forms peculiar to him, as I sigh for I saw,
and nought for not. He seldom uses alliteration.
We have a long chain of testimony to Gower's
popularity, from his own age to that of Shakspeare,
who speaks of him thus:-

"To sing a song that old was sung,
From ashes ancient Gower is come,
Assuming man's infirmities,

To glad our ear and please our eyes."
(Pericles.)

Pauli gives the following outline of the work: | to the reader." (W. W. Lloyd in Singer's Shak"The poem opens by introducing the author himself, in the character of an unhappy lover in despair, smitten by Cupid's arrow. Venus appears to him, and after having heard his prayer, appoints her priest called Genius, like the mystagogue in the Picture of Cebes, to hear the lover's confession. This is the frame of the whole work, which is a singular mixture of classical notions, principally borrowed from Ovid's Ars Amandi, and of the purely medieval idea, that as a good Catholic the unfortunate lover must state his distress to a father confessor. This is done, in the course of the confession, with great regularity and even pedantry; all the passions of the human heart, which generally stand in the way of love, being systematically arranged in the various books and subdivisions of the work. After Genius has fully explained the evil affection, passion, or vice under consideration, the lover confesses on that particular point, and frequently urges his boundless love for an unknown beauty, who treats him cruelly, in a tone of affectation which would appear highly ridiculous in a man of more than sixty years of age, were it not a common characteristic of the poetry of the period. After this profession, the confessor opposes him, and exemplifies the fatal effects of each passion by a variety of apposite stories, gathered from many sources. At length, after a frequent and tedious recurrence of the same process, the confession is terminated by some final injunctions of the priest -the lover's petition in a strophic poem addressed to Venus-the bitter judgment of the goddess, that he should remember his old age, and leave off such fooleries;

"For loves lust and lockes hore

In chambre accorden neuer more "

his cure from the wound caused by the dart of love, and his absolution, received as if by a pious Roman Catholic.

"The materials for this extensive work [more than 30,000 lines], and the stories inserted as examples for and against the lover's passion, are drawn from various sources. Some have been taken from the Bible; a great number from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which must have been a particular favorite with the author; others from the medieval histories of the siege of Troy, of the feats of Alexander the Great-from the oldest collection of novels, known under the name of the Gesta Romanorum, chiefly in its form as used in England -from the Pantheon and Speculum Regum of Godfrey of Viterbo, from the romance of Sir Lancelot and the Chronicles of Cassiodorus and Isidorus." (Introd. Essay, pp. xxxiii. xxxiv.) There is also a vast amount of alchemical learning from the Almagest, and an exposition of the pseudo-Aristotelian philosophy of the middle ages. The author's fancy lies almost buried under the mass of his learning, and his laborious composition shows none of Chaucer's humor, or passion, or love of nature. In the language of the new school of poetry, to which Chaucer's genius had given birth, Gower embodies most of the faults of the romance writers. Still he has his merits. "The vivacity and variety of his short verses evince a correct ear and a happy power, by the assistance of which he enhances the interest in a tale, and frequently terminates it with satisfaction

The Confessio Amantis was first printed by Caxton, Lond. 1483, fol. (the British Museum has two copies of this rare work), and by F. Berthelette, Lond. 1532, fol., reprinted 1554, fol. (both in black letter). None of the modern editions deserve mention in comparison of that by Dr. Reinhold Pauli, Lond. 1857, 3 vols., 8vo., whose Introductory Essay contains all that is known of the poet and his works.

C.-WICLIFFE AND HIS SCHOOL.

The revolution effected by Chaucer in poetry was accompanied and aided by an entirely new development of religious literature, which. besides its higher fruits, rendered a similar service to our prose literature. The new liberty of thought, which found expression in popular literature, showed itself also in a sifting of ecclesiastical pretensions, which led to a direct appeal to Scripture; and the reforming teachers satisfied this demand by translating the Bible into the mother tongue. In the other Protestant countries of Europe, the revival of national literature has been connected with a similar work; and, if the German Bible of Luther, and the Danish version of 1550, exerted a more powerful influence over the respective languages than the Wicliffite translations, one chief reason is, that they appeared after the invention of printing, by which art they were immediately and indefinitely multiplied. In England this great work is ascribed to JOHN DE WICLIF, WICLIFFE, or WYCLIFFE (b. about A. D. 1324, d. A. D. 1384). He was born at Wicliffe, near Richmond, in Yorkshire; studied at Oxford; became the priest of Fylingham, in Lincoln; and successively Master and Warden of Balliol College and Canterbury Hall, Oxford. He began early to attack the corruptions of the Church; and after his deposition from the latter post by Archbishop Langham, and the Pope's rejection of his appeal, he gave all his energies to the work of reform, both by his writings and by theological lectures at Oxford. For a long time he was not only unmolested, but was regarded as a champion of the Anglican Church. In 1374 he was a member of a commission sent to Avignon, which obtained concessions from the Pope on the question of induction into benefices. He was rewarded by the crown with a prebend at Worcester, and the vicarage of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, which he held till his death, being secured from the storm of persecution, which soon arose, by the protection of the king's