in familiar oral intercourse, and so far cultivated that it can be, though it rarely is, written, while, at the same time, the lingua comune d'Italia, or, as it is often called, the Tuscan dialect, is known to all, as the language of books, of journals, and of correspondence, and is also employed as the medium of religious and scholastic instruction. But this literary tongue, at least in those parts of Italy where dialects widely different from it are habitually spoken, always remains to the Italians themselves essentially a foreign language. This fact Biondelli states in stronger terms than a prudent stranger would venture to do upon the testimony of his own observation. Tanto è vero che, per parlare e scrivere italianamente, dobbiamo imparare questa nostra lingua con lunghi e laboriosi studj, poco meno che se apprendessimo la latina o la francese; e a malgrado dell' affinità sua coi nostri dialetti e del continuo leggere, scrivere e parlare l'italiano, ben pochi giungono a trattarlo come conviensi, e grandi e frequenti sono le difficultà che incontriamo ogniqualvolta vogliamo esporre con chiarezza e proprietà le nostre idee, poichè veramente dobbiamo tradurre il nostro dialetto in altra lingua, vale a dire, rappresentare sotto diversa forma i nostri pensieri.'—Biondelli, Saggio sui Dialetti Gallo-Italici, x.

There is a similar discrepancy between the written and spoken language in many parts of Germany, though the diffusion of literary culture in that country has made the dialect of books more universally familiar than in most European nations. The traveller Seetzen, whose journals have lately been published, sometimes makes entries in them in the Platt-Deutsch of his native province, and states expressly that he uses that dialect in order that those passages may not be understood by strangers into whose hands his papers might chance to fall.

LECTURE VIII.

WYCLIFFE AND HIS SCHOOL.

WE come now to a period when far other necessities than those of imaginative literature, of mechanical or decorative art, or of any interest of material life, demanded the formation of a new special nomenclature-a nomenclature and a phraseology, which, though first employed in a limited range of themes and discussions, yet, from the intimate relation of those themes to all the higher aspirations of humanity, gradually acquired more extended significance and more varied applications, and finally became, in great part, incorporated into the general speech as a new enlivening and informing element.

I refer to the theological vocabulary of Wycliffe and his disciples, which, in a considerable proportion, indeed, was composed of words already familiar to the clergy and the better instructed laity, but which those reformers popularized, and at the same time enlarged and modified, by new terms coined or borrowed for use in their translations of the Scriptures, and by imposing on already known words new, or at least special acceptations.

The Anglo-Saxons possessed a vernacular translation of the Gospels, and of some other parts of the Bible; and several more or less complete versions of the Scriptures existed in French as early as the twelfth century. But there is no reason to believe that any considerable portion of the Bible, except the Psalter, had ever been rendered into English, until the translation of the whole volume was undertaken, at the suggestion of Wycliffe, and in part by his own efforts, a little before the

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beginning of the last quarter of the fourteenth century. English preachers, it is true, had always freely introduced into their sermons quotations from the vulgate, translated for the occasion by themselves, and thus the people had already become somewhat familiarized with the contents of the Old and New Testament; but these sermons were rarely copied for circulation, or probably even written down at all, and therefore no opportunity existed for the study or consultation of the Bible as an English book.*

The English nation, for reasons stated in a former lecture, had always been practically more independent of the papacy than the Continental states. The schism in the church, with the long struggle between the claimants to the chair of Petereach of whom denounced his rival as an anti-pope, and excommunicated his followers as heretics-naturally much weakened the authority of both the contending parties. Men were not only at liberty, but found themselves compelled, to inquire which was the true head of the church, and they could not investigate the title of the respective claimants to ecclesiastical supremacy, without being very naturally led to doubt whether either

• The translations of the texts cited by Wycliffe himself, in the controversial works most confidently ascribed to him, by no means agree literally with the version of the New Testament, and of a part of the Old, which he is believed to have executed. See Introduction to Madden and Forshall's edition of the Wycliffite Translations. Comparisons of this sort have often been appealed to as a test of the authenticity of writings attributed to his pen. But they seem to me to be entitled to very little weight. Wycliffe wrote much before he made his translation, and his later works must often have been written when he could not have had that translation with him. The 'pore caityf,' as he humbly calls himself, certainly did not regard his own version with the reverence with which we view it; and a good biblical scholar like him, finding a Latin scriptural text in an author he was refuting, or having occasion to use one which occurred to him, would, in the fervour of composition, write down the translation which, at the moment, presented itself, and which the argument in hand suggested as the truest expression of the meaning.

Few authors are vain enough to be disposed to quote or repeat their own words, or even the words of another which they have made their own by translation, and I think a writer of the present day would sooner re-translate a passage from an ancient author he wished to quote, than unshelf a volume, and copy a citation which he had translated on a former occasion. A discrepancy, therefore, between a text quoted by Wycliffe and his own formal translation of it elsewhere, affords no presumption against the authenticity of a manuscript attributed to him.

of them was better than a usurper. The decision of the immediate question between the rival pontiffs turned, in the end, more on political than on canonical grounds; but while it was under discussion, the whole doctrine of papal supremacy underwent a sifting, that revealed to thousands the sandy nature of the foundation on which it rested. A result more important than the particular conclusions arrived at, as between the claims of Urban and Clement, was, that the controversy taught and habituated thinking ecclesiastics, and, by their example, the laity, to exercise their reason upon topics which had before been generally considered as points which it was blasphemous even to debate.

The habit of unquestioning submission to the decrees of a church which arrogated to itself infallibility of opinion, and binding authority of judgment, upon religious questions whose * Capgrave gives us a specimen of the arguments rationes regum, or rather, ad reges-employed by Pope and Anti-Pope with the sovereigns of their respective parties.

'Also he notified onto the Kyng [Richard II.], that the Antipope and the Kyng of Frauns be thus accordid, that the seid Kyng of Frauns, with help of the duke of Burgony, and othir, schul set the Antipope in the sete at Rome; and the same Antipope schal make the Kyng of Frauns emperoure, and othir dukes he schal endewe in the lordchippis of Itaile. Also, he enformed the King what perel schuld falle if the Antipope and the Kyng were thus acorded, and the Kyng of Frauns emperoure, he schuld be that wey chalenge the dominion of Ynglond. Therefor the Pope counceleth the King, that he schal make no pes with the Kyng of Frauns but on this condicion, that the King of Frauns schal favoure the opinion of the trewe Pope, and suffir non of his puple to fite ageyn him.'Capgrave, A.D. 1390, pp. 255, 256.

It should be added that, on the same occasion, the Pope asked in vain for the repeal of the famous statutes, Quare impedit and Premuniri facias, so important to the liberties of England.

'The Pope merveyled mech of certeyn statutes which were mad in this lond ageyn the liberte of the cherch; and for the Pope supposed that it was not the Kyngis wil, therefor he sent his messagere to stere the Kyng that swech statutes schuld be abrogat whech be ageyn the liberte of Holy Cherch, specially these two, "Quare impedit" and "Premunire facias."

The moment was ill chosen for asking a concession, which, under almost any circumstances, would have been too much for the sturdy independence of England; and though the request was enforced by the hint above mentioned, the chronicler informs us that, as for promociones of hem that dwelled at Rome, it wold not be graunted; but, for favoure of the Pope, thei graunted him his provysiones til the nexte Parlement.'-Capgrave, ubi supra.

comprehension demands the exercise of man's highest faculties, had naturally begotten a spirit of deference to the dicta of great names in secular learning also. This deference characterized the mass of the original literature of the Continent through the Middle Ages; and in discussions upon questions of natural knowledge, of history, of criticism, the opinions of eminent writers were commonly cited, not as arguments, or even as the testimony of competent witnesses to facts of observation, but as binding conclusions, scarcely less irrefragable or less sacred than the inspired infallibility of a pontiff. Habitual submission to the jurisdiction of secular names, as, for example, to the opinions of Aristotle in physics and metaphysics, was politicly encouraged and inculcated by the church, not merely because particular metaphysico-theological dogmas of Rome found support in the Aristotelian philosophy, but because such submission was a practical recognition of the principle of authority in all moral and intellectual things. Just so, in the public policy of our times, the governing classes, in some states liberal in their own domestic administration, sustain the usurped dominion of certain dynasties over foreign territory, not because they believe the right or approve the oppressions of those dynasties, but because their rule is an embodiment of the aristocratic principle in government, and is therefore the representative and ally of aristocracy everywhere.

The shock given to the dominion of the papal see, by the schism and the discussions occasioned by that event, did much to weaken the authority of human names in letters and in philosophy; and it happened at a very favourable juncture for English literature, which thus, at its very birth, acquired an independence, and consequently an originality, that a halfcentury earlier or later it would not have attained.

The literature which belongs to the civilization of modern Europe is essentially Protestant, because it almost uniformly originated, if not in a formal revolt against the power of physical coercion exerted by the church, at least in a protest against the morally binding obligation of her decrees, and its earliest