siastical literature agrees with the supposition that he was a Churchman; and he was evidently familiar with the Latin_poems ascribed to Walter Map. The great interest of his work is its unquestionable reflection of the popular sentiment of his age. Langland is as intensely national as Chaucer; but, while his great successor in the art of poetry freely availed himself of the forms introduced in Anglo-Norman literature, Langland makes a last attempt to revive the Anglo-Saxon forms. This effort, combined with his rich humour and unsparing satire, gained him unbounded popularity with the common people. The author recast his poem twice, so that we have three versions of it. The first and shortest, or A text, is of the date of 1362; the second, or B text, the best of the three, and more than double the length of A, may be dated 1377; the third, or C text, about 1380. The author's other work, Richard the Redeless, directed against Richard II, is left unfinished. Professor Skeat has edited for the Clarendon Press a parallel edition of the three texts, to which Richard the Redeless is appended.

Langland had numerous imitators. The Creed of Piers Plowman, 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 attitude of Wycliffe. The Complaint of Piers Plowman is to be found in a volume of political and satirical songs in the Rolls Series. These political poems concur with Gower's Vox Clamantis in giving us a vivid impression of the evils which provoked the great Lancastrian revolution.

English Prose Literature was formerly said to begin with SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE, who is said to have been born at St. Albans about 1300, and to have left England for the East in 1322. Mr. E. B. Nicholson, however, in the article written by himself and Sir H. Yule for the Encyclopædia Britannica, states that a comparison of all the

best MSS. decides that the English version of Mandeville's travels was unquestionably the work of a translator. He gives reasons for doubting whether Mandeville was a real person at all, and for believing that the book was originally written in French, under a feigned name, by the physician Jean de Bourgogne, who, in an early edition, is said to have met Mandeville, first at Cairo, and again at Liége. The book professes to be a record of Mandeville's travels in Palestine, Egypt, Persia, Tartary, India, and China. But Sir H. Yule shows that, excepting perhaps the part about Egypt and the Levant generally, the travels were a mere adaptation of previous works, and that the author had never visited the distant countries which he describes. The work, in its English dress, is now chiefly interesting as probably the earliest example, on a large scale, of English prose.

The English of Mandeville's translator is straightforward and unadorned, and probably a fair example of the spoken English of the day. As compared with Robert of Gloucester, it shows a great increase of French words. No work of the age was more popular. It exists in a large number of MSS. The earliest printed edition in English is that of Wynkyn de Worde (Westminster, 1499; 8vo); but an Italian translation by Pietro di Cornero had been previously (1480) printed in quarto form at Milan. There was an even earlier German edition, and there is record of a Dutch version as early as 1470. The 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 Ranulf Higden (see p. 30) by JOHN DE TREVISA (1326– 1412), vicar of Berkeley, was completed in 1385, and is chiefly interesting as having been printed in 1482 by Caxton. It also has been printed in the Rolls Series. It is a curious proof of the change which a single century made in the language, that Caxton thought it necessary "somewhat to change the rude and

old English, that is, to wit, certain words which in these days be neither used or 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 (circ. 1316-1395), was a contemporary rather than a precursor of Chaucer, with whom he deserves to be classed as the father of a national literature. His Bruce (1375), in 13,000 rhymed octosyllabic lines, is a chronicle of the adventures of King Robert I, and is 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

He

present day. Barbour also paid several visits to England, and studied at Oxford in his mature age. wrote a Troy Book, of which we have parts in MS., and a long collection of Lives of Saints, in a Cambridge MS. which has been printed

at Heilbronn. Before this time there are hardly any names in Scottish literature, except that of the Schoolman, MICHAEL SCOT (1175?1234?), who studied abroad, and was scarcely known at home, except by his reputation as a wizard, which was probably due to his Latin translation of Aristotle's work on the Soul, compiled from an Arabian source. THOMAS RYMOUR or LEARMONT (1220?-1297?), of Erceldoune, known as True Thomas, or Thomas the Rhymer, had a great reputation for his prophecies, and was erroneously supposed to have been the author of the romance of Tristan. Another Scottish author was the Latin chronicler, JOHN OF FORDUN (d. 1384?), a chantrypriest of Aberdeen, whose Scotichronicon contains the legendary and historical annals of his country to the death of David I (1153). The younger and less celebrated contemporary of Barbour, ANDREW WYNTOUN (circ. 1350-after 1420), canon of St. Andrews, and prior of St. Serf in 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 which occurred in our language and literature about the middle of the fourteenth century cannot be illustrated better 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, somewhat older than Chaucer, as Gower is assumed to have been the old writers generally name him first: he survived Chaucer by eight But the preyears, dying in 1408. cedence must be awarded to Chaucer, not only for the vast superiority of his genius, but as the first writer whether Gower would have written in English. It may be questioned in English at all, unless in conformity with the taste created by Chaucer. Their early friendship is proved by Chaucer's dedication of Troilus and Criseyde to Gower, by

a title which became the second poet's fixed epithet :

"O moral Gower! this book I directe

To thee, and to the philosophical
Strode,

To vouchen sauf, ther nede is, to corecte,

Of your benignitees and zeles gode."

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 1393), where Venus greets Chaucer

"As my disciple and my poete,"

and, after speaking of "the dittees and songes glad" composed "in the floures of his youthe" for her sakesongs of which

"The land fulfilled is over 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, were no doubt derived by both Gower and his great contemporary from a common source.

Caxton made Gower a native of

the peninsula of Gower 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 Moulton and Kentwell in Suffolk, who died in or before 1349. Sir Robert's daughter and co-heiress 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, although 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; but it appears (very doubtfully) that he took Holy Orders and held the living of Great Braxted in Essex. In 1397 he married one Agnes Groundolf; this was late in life, for in 1400 he speaks of himself as both old and blind. His will still exists, made on August 15, 1408, and proved by his widow on the 24th of October following. The evidence of his marriage comes from the register of William of Wyke. ham, preserved at Winchester; it took place at St. Mary Magdalen's, Southwark, on January 28, 1397. The identity of the parties is rendered almost certain by the identity of names. His will leaves it doubtful whether he had issue. He lies buried, according to his own directions, in St. Mary Overies, now the Collegiate Church of St. Saviour, Southwark, of which he was a great benefactor. His splendid canopied tomb bears his arms and effigy; his head rests on his three volumes, and the wall within the three arches is 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 which 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, and the short French poem which Warton describes under that name is an entirely different work. It seems to have been a collection of precepts on chastity, reinforced by examples. But there are still extant Fifty French Ballads by Gower, in a MS. now belonging to the Earl of Ellesmere, and edited for the Roxburghe Club (1818) by the Marquess of Stafford. They are," says Pauli in the Introductory Essay to his edition of Gower, "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." They 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 apologises for his French, saying,

I am English," while he gives as his reason for using the language, that he was addressing his ballads

"Al Université 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, Gower 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 Rox

burghe Club in 1850. The name, with an allusion to St. John the Baptist, seems to have been adopted from the general clamour and cry then abroad in the country. The greater bulk of the work, the date of which its editor is inclined to fix between 1382 and 1384, is a moral rather than a historical essay; but the first book describes the insurrection of Wat Tyler in an allegorical disguise the poet pretending to have a dream on June 11, 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 Wycliffe's tenets, but a zealous advocate of clerical reformation. The third book points out how all orders of society must suffer for their own vices and demerits. 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, as represented in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, interpreted by Daniel. There are also some smaller Latin poems in leonine hexameters; among them one addressed to Henry IV, in which the poet laments his own blindness."

(3) Gower's latest poem, the Confessio Amantis, was written in English, with a running marginal commentary in Latin, not unlike the commentary which accompanies Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 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 behaviour 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... 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 upon some new matter. In that addressed to Henry, he says that the book was finished the yere sixteenth of King Richard (1392-93). 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 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 -the record is still extant - he received a collar in 1394, probably in acknowledgment of the dedication of his poem. He also, in his minor pieces, addresses Henry more than once with affection and respect. Hence the beginning of the Confessio Amantis would fall before 1386, when Richard came of age and began his arbitrary government. Hence, also, the omission of the compliment to Chaucer at the end of the poem, in the edition inscribed to Henry, may be explained by motives of policy, without inferring any personal alienation. Chaucer, however, did not take the omission kindly, and in the Man of Law's Tale and its prologue, inserted reflections on Gower's accuracy and morality.

The Prologue to the Confessio is in that 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 Nebuchadnezzar's vision. Yet how little he shares the opinions of Wycliffe is proved by his reference

to

"This new secte of lollardie."

Pauli gives the following outline of the work:-"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 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 . . . his cure from the wound caused by the dart of love, and his absolution....

"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 favourite 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 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." 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 humour, 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. Mr. W. W. Lloyd, in Singer's Shakespeare (vol. iv. p. 261), says: "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 to the reader." 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 composition. The frequent want of skill in the construction 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 sig for I saw, and nought for not. He seldom uses alliteration. We have a long chain of testimony to Gower's