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patient monks were few and costly. They had not always titles to denote their subjects, and are described by their outsides - often shining in extreme splendor. Froissart, the French historian, on a last visit to England in 1396, presented to Richard a book beautifully illuminated, engrossed with his own hand, bound in crimson velvet, and embellished with silver bosses, clasps, and golden roses. As much as forty pounds was paid for a copy of the Bible. Shelves were not required. At the beginning of the century, the Oxford library consisted of a few tracts kept in chests. A private collection-scant and phenomenal — consisted for the greater part of the romances of chivalry, so long the favorite literature of the noble, the dame, and the lounger of the baronial castle. Some monasteries had not more than twenty volumes. Latin versions of the Scriptures,-Greek or Hebrew never; a commentator, a father, a schoolman; the mediæval Christian poets who composed in Latin; a romance, an accidental classic, chronicles and legends,—such are the usual contents of a surviving catalogue-a sad contraction of human knowledge.

The glimmerings of the revival of the ancient classics, incipient in the twelfth century, fading in the thirteenth owing to the prevalence of scholasticism, are somewhat more distinct in the fourteenth. Petrarch and Boccaccio were the first to lead the way in disinterring them from the dungeon-darkness where they safely slept, undisturbed by the monks who were ignorant of their treasures or regarded them as the works of idolaters. The light of learning, having first made its entrance into France, now, in natural course of progress, found its way into England,-dimmed by distance from its Italian focus. The debt of England to Italy in the matter of our literature begins with Chaucer, but a hundred years will pass before the imagination of the North is inflamed by the sacred fires kindled at Florence and at Rome.

The common herd of students (through the medium of Latin translations) looked upon Aristotle as their infallible oracle and guide, though stripping him of all those excellences that really belonged to him, and incapable of entering into the true spirit of his writings. Oxford-and Cambridge as well- had received many noble foundations. She was the school of the island, the fount of the new heresies, the link of England to the learned of Europe. To her, during the English wars, was transferred the

intellectual supremacy of Paris. But of the vast multitude once composing its learned mob, there remained in 1367 less than a fifth. The master idea, running to excess, was languishing by expenditure of force.

Language. For the scholastic uses of the learned, and for ecclesiastical purposes, Latin was still a living though a dying tongue. For the last fifty years of the century, French was to all classes of Englishmen a foreign language, and, even as taught, was a mere dialect of the Parisian. Chaucer, in the Testament of Love (attributed) says:

Certes there ben some that speke thyr poysy mater in Frenche, of whyche speche the Frenchemen have as good a fantasye as we have in hearing of French mennes Englyshe.'

And adds:

Let, then, clerkes endyten in Latyn, for they have the propertye in science and the knowinge in that facultye, and lette Frenchmen in theyr Frenche also endyte theyr queynt termes, for it is kyndly to theyr mouthes; and let us shewe our fantasyes in suche wordes as we learneden of our dames tonge.'

The Prioress in the Tales, though she speaks French neatly, speaks it only —

'After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,

For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.'

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But the old Teutonic, assuming a new organization, recovered its ascendancy by the same circumstances which depressed its rival. Formal note of its triumph is found in a statute of 1362, which orders English to be used in courts of law, because 'the French tongue is much unknown.' Later it is observed of the grammar schools that children leaveth Frensche and construeth and lerneth in Englische.' Chaucer, writing for the instruction of his little son, uses the vernacular, because 'curious enditying and harde sentences are full hevy at once for such a childe to lerne,' and, like a true patriot, bids the boy think of it as the King's English.

The first revolution which English underwent, consisted, as formerly explained, in the conversion of it from an inflectional and synthetic into a non-inflected and analytic speech. Its state in this particular towards the close of the century may be not unfairly represented by the Lord's Prayer:

Our Fadir that art in hevenys;

Halewid be thi name.

Thi kyngdom come to,

Be thi wil done in erthe as in hevene.

Give to us this day oure breed oure othir substaunce.

And forgive to us our dettis as we forgiven to our dettouris:

And lede us not into temptacioun:

But delyvere us from yvel. Amen.'

The second, which it was now undergoing, and which its adoption by the court and nobility made possible, was its intermixture with foreign elements. Translations and travel greatly enriched it by importations from the South. The new power of thinking, and the new words to embody its conceptions, came together, twin-born. The English language thus enlarging its domain by conquest and assimilation, yet retaining its essentially Germanic character, displays the same powers of acquisition as have distinguished the race.

Against this alien admixture the critics protested. 'I seke,' says one, no strange Inglyss, bot lightest (easiest) and communest.' Thus early was our purity imperilled! As if new modes of expression were not the creatures of new modifications of thought. A national idiom is in perpetual movement, resembling, as it struggles into perfect existence, the lion of the bard of Paradise,

1 pawing to get free His hinder parts.'

What survives? Trevisa, translating a Latin treatise in 1387, tells us he avoids 'the old and ancient English.' In the next century, his printer will rewrite this translation, 'to change the rude and old English; that is, to wit, certain words which in these days be neither used nor understood'! Little did Caxton imagine that he himself would be to us what Trevisa was to him,- an archaism, covered with the rust of time. The cry of of the purist is the pang of parturition. Styles are like shades melting into each other, passing with the generations that cast them. It is with words as with empires. We each in our day see only the beginnings of things.

Poetry. Two notions rule the age: the one tending to a renovation of the heart; the other, to a prodigal satisfaction of the senses; the one disposing to righteousness, the other to excitement; the one planting the ideal amidst forms of force and joy; the other amidst sentiments of truth, law, duty; the one producing finical verses and diverting stories, the other the indig

nant protest against hypocrisy and the impassioned prayer for salvation. For the omnipotent idea of justice will overflow, and conscience, like other things, will have its poem.

In the Vision of Piers the Plowman, by William Langland (1362), the sombre genius of the Saxon reappears, with its tragic pictures and emotions. The author-Long Will,' they call him,—is a secular priest, who once earned a miserable livelihood by singing at the funerals of the rich. Silent, moody, and defiant, his world is the world of the poor. Far from sin and suffering his fancy flies to a May morning on the Malvern Hills, where he falls asleep and has a wonderful dream:

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The canvas of the dreamer is crowded and astir with life, from the king to the bondman. Here are the minstrels, who 'geten gold with their glee'; jesters and jugglers, 'Judas' children'; petitioners and beggars, who flatter for hir food' and fight 'at the ale'; pilgrims, who seek the

saintes at Rome,

They wenten forth in hir way

With many wise tales,

And hadden leave to lien

All hir life after;'

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the court-haunting bishop, pardoners, 'parting the silver' with the parish priest; friars,—

All the four orders,

Preaching the people

For profit of hem selve:"

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lawyers, whom the people hate, of whom the insurrectionists will shout, 'Not till all these are killed will the land enjoy its old freedom again,'-whom Burns will style 'hell-hounds preying in the kennels of justice,'

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A heavenly messenger-Holy Church-appears to the dreamer, and shows him in this mortal assemblage a jewelled lady:

Hire robe was ful riche,

Of reed scarlet engreyned,
With ribanes of reed gold
And of riche stones.

Hire array me ravysshed,
Swich richesse saugh I nevere;
I hadde wonder what she was,
And whos wif she were.'

This lady is Mede (Lucre), to whom high and low, lay and clergy, alike offer homage. She contracts a legal marriage with Falsehood, and the king would marry her to Conscience, but the latter replies:

Crist it me forbede!

Er I wedde swiche a wif,

Wo me betide!

For she is frele of hire feith,

Fikel of her speche,

And maketh men mysdo

Many score tymes."

Reason preaches repentance to offenders. Many are converted, among whom are Proud Heart, who vows to wear hair-cloth; Envy, lean, cowering, biting his lips, and wearing the sleeves of a friar's frock; and Covetousness, bony, beetle-browed, bleareyed. The repentant hearers set out on a pilgrimage to Truth. They meet a far-travelling pilgrim, who proves a blind guide, for of such a saint he has never heard. The wanderers put themselves under the direction of a carter, Piers the Plowman. His is a gospel of works, and he puts them to toil in his vineyard. But they become seditious, and are at last reduced by the aid of Hunger, who subdues Waste, leader of the revolt, and humbles his followers. 'Pardons,' or 'indulgences,' are satirized, and with the anxiety of Luther to know what is righteousness the poet goes in search of Do-well. He asks each one to explain where he may be found, and finds him by the description of Wit, in the Castle of the Flesh built by Kind (Nature), who resides there with his bride Anima (Soul). Do-better is her

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