from the Origins To the Renaissance (continued 7)

Going down in this manner, step by step, Langland reaches the strange, grimacing, unpardonable herd of liars, knaves, and cheats who traffic in holy things, absolve for money, sell heaven, deceive the simple, and appear as if they "hadden leve to lye al here lyf after."[654] In this nethermost circle of his hell, where he scourges them with incessant raillery, the poet confines pell-mell all these glutted unbelievers. Like hardy parasitical plants, they have disjoined the tiles and stones of the sacred edifice, so that the wind steals in, and the rain penetrates: shameless pardoners they are, friars, pilgrims, hermits, with nothing of the saint about them save the garb, whose example, unless a stop is put to it, will teach the world to despise clerical dress, those who wear it, and the religion, even, that tolerates and supports them.

At this depth, and in the dim recesses where he casts the rays of his lantern, Langland spares none; his ferocious laugh is reverberated by the walls, and the scared night-birds take to flight. His mirth is not the mirth of Chaucer, itself less light than the mirth of France; not the joyous peal of laughter which rang out on the Canterbury road, welcoming the discourses of the exhibitor of relics, and the far from disinterested sermons of the friar to sick Thomas. It is a woful and terrible laugh, harbinger of the final catastrophe and doom. What they have heard in the plain of Malvern, the accursed ones will hear again in the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

They have now no choice, but must come out of their holes; and they come forward into the light of day, hideous and grotesque, saturated with the moisture of their dismal vaults; the sun blinds them, the fresh air makes them giddy; they present a sorry figure. Unlike the pilgrims of Canterbury, they derive no benefit from the feelings of indulgence that softens our hearts on a gay April morn; they will learn to know the difference between the laugh that pardons and the laugh that kills. Langland takes them up, lets them fall, and takes them up again; he never wearies of this cruel sport; he presents them to us now separately, and now collectively: packs of pilgrims, "eremytes on an hep," pilgrims that run to St. James's in Spain, to Rome, to Rocamadour in Guyenne, who have paid visits to every saint. But have they ever sought for St. Truth? No, never! Will they ever know the real place where they might find St. James? Will they suspect that St. James should

They seek St. James in Spain, and St. James is at their gates; they elbow him each day, and they recognise him not.

What sight can comfort us for these sad things? That of the poor and disinterested man, of the honest and courageous labourer. Langland here shows himself truly original: the guide he has chosen differs as much from the Virgil of Dante as from the Lover that Guillaume de Lorris follows through the paths of the Garden of the Rose. The English visionary is led by Piers Plowman; Piers is the mainspring of the State; he realises that ideal of disinterestedness, conscience, reason, which fills the soul of our poet; he is the real hero of the work. Bent over the soil, patient as the oxen that he goads, he performs each day his sacred task; the years pass over his whitening head, and, from the dawn of life to its twilight, he follows ceaselessly the same endless furrow, pursuing behind the plough his eternal pilgrimage.

Around him the idle sleep, the careless sing; they pretend to cheer others by their humming; they trill: "Hoy! troly lolly!" Piers shall feed every one, except these useless ones; he shall not feed "Jakke the jogeloure and Jonet ... and Danyel the dys-playere and Denote the baude, and frere the faytoure, ..." for, all whose name is entered "in the legende of lif" must take life seriously.[656] There is no place in this world for people who are not in earnest; every class that is content to perform its duties imperfectly and without sincerity, that fulfils them without eagerness, without passion, without pleasure, without striving to attain the best possible result and do better than the preceding generation, will perish. So much the more surely shall perish the class that ceases to justify its privileges by its services: this is the great law propounded in our own day by Taine. Langland lets loose upon the indolent, the careless, the busybodies who talk much and work little, a foe more terrible and more real then than now: Hunger. Piers undertakes the care of all sincere people, and Hunger looks after the rest. All this part of the poem is nothing but an eloquent declaration of man's duties, and is one of the finest pages of this "Divine Comedy" of the poor.

IV.

Langland speaks as he thinks, impetuously; a sort of dual personality exists in him; he is the victim and not the master of his thought. And his thought is so completely a separate entity, with wishes opposed to his desires, that it appears to him in the solitudes of Malvern; and the melody of lines heard not long ago occurs to the memory:

Filled with a similar feeling, the wandering dreamer had met, five hundred years before, in a "wilde wildernesse and bi a wode-syde," a "moche man" who looked like himself; who knew him and called him by name:

"Thought" reigns supreme, and does with Langland what he chooses. Langland is unconscious of what he is led to; his visions are for him real ones; he tells them as they rise before him; he is scarcely aware that he invents; he stares at the sight, and wonders as much as we do; he can change nothing; his personages are beyond his reach. There is therefore nothing prepared, artistically arranged, or skilfully contrived, in his poem; the deliberate hand of a man of the craft is nowhere to be seen. He obtains artistic effects, but without seeking for them; he never selects or co-ordinates; he is suddenly led, and leads us, from one subject to another, without any better transition than an "and thanne" or a "with that." And "thanne" we are carried a hundred miles away, among entirely different beings, and frequently we hear no more of the first ones. Or sometimes, even, the first reappear, but they are no longer the same; Piers Plowman personifies now the honest man of the people, now the Pope, now Christ. Dowel, Dobet and Dobest have two or three different meanings. The art of transitions is as much dispensed with in his poem as at the opera: a whistle of the scene-shifter—an "and thanne" of the poet—the palace of heaven fades away, and we find ourselves in a smoky tavern in Cornhill.

Clouds pass over the sky, and sometimes sweep by the earth; their thickness varies, they take every shape: now they are soft, indolent mists, lingering in mountain hollows, that will rise towards noon, laden with the scent of flowering lindens; now they are storm-clouds, threatening destruction and rolling with thunder. Night comes on, and suddenly the blackness is rent by so glaring a light that the plain assumes for an instant the hues of mid-day; then the darkness falls again, deeper than before.

The poet moves among realities and abstractions, and sometimes the first dissolve in fogs, while the second condense into human beings, tangible and solid. On the Malvern hills, the mists are so fine, it is impossible to say: here they begin and here they end; it is the same in the Visions.

In the world of ethics, as among the realities of actual life, Langland excels in summing up in one sudden memorable flash the whole doctrine contained in the nebulous sermons of his abstract preachers; he then attains to the highest degree of excellence, without striving after it. In another writer, the thing would have been premeditated, and the result of his skill and cunning; here the effect is as unexpected for the author as for the reader. He so little pretends to such felicities of speech that he never allows the grand impressions thus produced to last any time; he utilises them, he is careful to make the best of the occasion. It seems as if he had conjured the lightning from the clouds unawares, and he thinks it his duty to turn it to use. The flash had unveiled the uppermost summits of the realm of thought, and there will remain in our hands a flickering rushlight that can at most help us upstairs.

The passionate sincerity which is the predominant trait of Langland's character greatly contributed to the lasting influence of his poem. Each line sets forth his unconquerable aversion for all that is mere appearance and show, self-interested imposture; for all that is antagonistic to conscience, abnegation, sincerity. Such is the great and fundamental indignation that is in him; all the others are derived from this. For, while his mind was impressed with the idea of the seriousness of life, he happened to live when the mediæval period was drawing to its close; and, as usually happens towards the end of epochs, people no longer took in earnest any of the faiths and feelings which had supplied foregoing generations with their strength and motive power. He saw with his own eyes knights preparing for war as if it were a hunt; learned men consider the mysteries of religion as fit subjects to exercise one's minds in after-dinner discussions; the chief guardians of the flock busy themselves with their "owelles" only to shear, not to feed them. Meed was everywhere triumphant; her misdeeds had been vainly denounced; her reign had come; under the features of Alice Perrers she was now the paramour of the king!

At all such men and at all such things, Langland thunders anathema. Lack of sincerity, all the shapes and sorts of "faux semblants," or "merveilleux semblants," as Rutebeuf said, fill him with inextinguishable hatred. In shams and "faux semblants" he sees the true source of good and evil, the touchstone of right and wrong, the main difference between the worthy and the unworthy. He constantly recurs to the subject by means of his preachings, epigrams, portraits, caricatures; he broadens, he magnifies and multiplies his figures and his precepts, so as to deepen our impression of the danger and number of the adherents of "Fals-Semblant." By such means, he hopes we shall at last hate those whom he hates. Endlessly, therefore, in season and out of season, among the mists, across the streets, under the porches of the church, to the drowsy chant of his orations, to the whistle of his satires, ever and ever again, he conjures up before our eyes the hideous grinning face of "Fals-Semblant," the insincere. Fals-Semblant is never named by name; he assumes all names and shapes; he is the king who reigns contrary to conscience, the knight perverted by Lady Meed, the heartless man of law, the merchant without honesty, the friar, the pardoner, the hermit, who under the garment of saints conceal hearts that will rank them with the accursed ones. Fals-Semblant is the pope who sells benefices, the histrion, the tumbler, the juggler, the adept of the vagrant race, who goes about telling tales and helping his listeners to forget the seriousness of life. From the unworthy pope down to the lying juggler, all these men are the same man. Deceit stands before us; God's vengeance be upon him! Whenever and wherever Langland detects Fals-Semblant, he loses control over himself; anger blinds him; it seems as if he were confronted by Antichrist.

No need to say whether he is then master of his words, and able to measure them. With him, in such cases, no nuances or extenuations are admissible; you are with or against Fals-Semblant; there is no middle way; a compromise is a treason; and is there anything worse than a traitor? And thus he is led to sum up his judgment in such lines as this:

If we allege that there may be some shade of exaggeration in such a sentence, he will shrug his shoulders. The doubt is not possible, he thinks, and his plain proposition is self-evident.

No compromise! Travel through life without bending; go forward in a straight line between the high walls of duty. Perform your own obligations; do not perform the obligations of others. To do your duty over-zealously, to take upon you the duty of others, would trouble the State; you approach, in so doing, the borderland of Imposture. The knight will fight for his country, and must not lose his time in fasting and in scourging himself. A fasting knight is a bad knight.

Many joys are allowed. They are included, as a bed of flowers, between the high walls of duty; love-flowers even grow there, to be plucked, under the blue sky. But take care not to be tempted by that wonderful female Proteus, Lady Meed, the great corruptress. She disappears and reappears, and she, too, assumes all shapes; she is everywhere at the same time: it seems as if the serpent of Eden had become the immense reptile that encircles the earth.

This hatred is immense, but stands alone in the heart of the poet. Beside it there is place for treasures of pity and mercy; the idea of so many Saracens and Jews doomed wholesale to everlasting pain repels him; he can scarcely accept it; he hopes they will be all converted, and "turne in-to the trewe feithe"; for "Cryste cleped us alle.... Sarasenes and scismatikes ... and Jewes."[660] There is something pathetic, and tragic also, in his having to acknowledge that there is no cure for many evils, and that, for the present, resignation only can soothe the suffering. With a throbbing heart he shows the unhappy and the lowly, who must die before having seen the better days that were promised, the only talisman that may help them: a scroll with the words, "Thy will be done!"[661]

The truth is that there was a tender heart under the rough and rugged exterior of the impassioned, indignant, suffering poet; and thus he was able to sum up his life's ideal in this beautiful motto: Disce, Doce, Dilige; in these words will be found the true interpretation of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest: "Learn, Teach, Love."[662]

The poet's language is, if one may use the expression, like himself, above all, sincere. Chaucer wished that words were "cosyn to the dede;" Langland holds the same opinion. While, in the mystic parts of his Visions, he uses a superabundance of fluid and abstract terms, that look like morning mists and float along with his thoughts, his style becomes suddenly sharp, nervous, and sinewy when he comes back to earth and moves into the world of realities. Let some sudden emotion fill his soul, and he will rise again, not in the mist this time, but in the rays of the sun; he will soar aloft, and we will wonder at the grandeur of his eloquence. Whatever be his subject, he will coin a word, or distort a meaning, or cram into an idiom more meaning than grammar, custom, or dictionary allow, rather than leave a gap between word and thought; both must be fused together, and made one. If the merchants were honest, they would not "timber" so high—raise such magnificent houses.[663] In other parts he uses realistic terms, noisy, ill-favoured expressions, which it is impossible to quote.

His vocabulary of words is the normal vocabulary of the period, the same nearly as Chaucer's. The poet of the "Canterbury Tales" has been often reproached with having used his all-powerful influence to obtain rights of citizenship in England for French words; but the accusation does not stand good, for Langland did not write for courtly men, and the admixture of French words is no less considerable in his work.

The Visionary's poem offers a combination of several dialects; one, however, prevails; it is the Midland dialect. Chaucer used the East-Midland, which is nearly the same, and was destined to survive and become the English language.

Langland did not accept any of the metres used by Chaucer; he preferred to remain in closer contact with the Germanic past of his kin. Rhyme, the main ornament of French verse, had been adopted by Chaucer, but was rejected by Langland, who gave to his lines the ornament best liked by Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and Scandinavians, namely, alliteration.[664]

While their author continued to live obscure and unknown, the Visions, as soon as written, were circulated, and acquired considerable popularity throughout England. In spite of the time that has elapsed, and numberless destructions, there still remain forty-five manuscripts of the poem, more or less complete. "Piers Plowman" soon became a sign and a symbol, a sort of password, a personification of the labouring classes, of the honest and courageous workman. John Ball invoked his authority in his letter to the rebel peasants of the county of Essex in 1381.[665] The name of Piers figured as an attraction on the title of numerous treatises: there existed, as early as the fourteenth century, "Credes" of Piers Plowman, "Complayntes" of the Plowman, &c. Piers' credit was made use of at the time of the Reformation, and in his name were demanded the suppression of abuses and the transformation of the old order of things; he even appeared on the stage; Langland would have been sometimes greatly surprised to see what tasks were assigned to his hero.

Chaucer and Langland, the two great poets of the period, represent excellently English genius, and the two races that have formed the nation. One more nearly resembles the clear-minded, energetic, firm, practical race of the latinised Celts, with their fondness for straight lines; the other resembles the race which had the deepest and especially the earliest knowledge of tender, passionate, and mystic aspirations, and which lent itself most willingly to the lulls and pangs of hope and despair, the race of the Anglo-Saxons. And while Chaucer sleeps, as he should, under the vault of Westminster, some unknown tuft of Malvern moss perhaps covers, as it also should, the ashes of the dreamer who took Piers Plowman for his hero.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER V.

PROSE.

For a long time, and up to our day, the title and dignity of "Father of English prose" has been borne by Sir John Mandeville, of St. Albans, knight, who, "in the name of God glorious," left his country in the year of grace 1322, on Michaelmas Day, and returned to Europe after an absence of thirty-four years, twice as long as Robinson Crusoe remained in his desert island.

This title belongs to him no longer. The good knight of St. Albans, who had seen and told so much, has dwindled before our eyes, has lost his substance and his outline, and has vanished like smoke in the air. His coat of mail, his deeds, his journeys, his name: all are smoke. He first lost his character as a truthful writer; then out of the three versions of his book, French, English, and Latin, two were withdrawn from him, leaving him only the first. Existence now has been taken from him, and he is left with nothing at all. Sir John Mandeville, knight, of St. Albans, who crossed the sea in 1322, is a myth, and never existed; he has joined, in the kingdom of the shades and the land of nowhere, his contemporary the famous "Friend of God of the Oberland," who some time ago also ceased to have existed.

One thing however remains, and cannot be blotted out: namely, the book of travels bearing the name of Mandeville the translation of which is one of the best and oldest specimens of simple and flowing English prose.

I.

The same phenomenon already pointed out in connection with the Anglo-Saxons occurs again with regard to the new English people. For a long time (and not to speak of practical useful works), poetry alone seems worthy of being remembered; most of the early monuments of the new language for the sake of which the expense of parchment is incurred are poems; verse is used, even in works for which prose would appear much better fitted, such as history. Robert of Gloucester writes his chronicles in English verse, just as Wace and Benoit de Sainte-More had written theirs in French verse. After some while only it is noticed that there is an art of prose, very delicate, very difficult, very worthy of care, and that it is a mistake to look upon it in the light of a vulgar instrument, on which every one can play without having learnt how, and to confine oneself to doing like Molière's Monsieur Jourdain "de la prose sans le savoir."

At the epoch at which we have arrived, and owing to the renovation and new beginnings occasioned by the Conquest, English prose found itself far behind French. In the fourteenth century, if French poets are poor, prose-writers are excellent; as early as the twelfth and thirteenth there were, besides Joinville, many charming tale writers who had told in prose delightful things, the loves of Aucassin and Nicolette, for example; now, without speaking of the novelists of the day, there is Froissart, and to name him is to say enough; for every one has read at least a few pages of him, and a single page of Froissart, taken haphazard in his works, will cause him to be loved. The language glides on, clear, limpid, murmuring like spring water; and yet, in spite of its natural flow, art already appears. Froissart selects and chooses; the title of "historian," which he gives himself, is no mean one in his eyes, and he strives to be worthy of it. The spring bubbles up in the depths of the wood, and without muddying the water the artist knows how to vary its course at times, to turn it off into ready prepared channels, and make it gush forth in fountains.

In England nothing so far resembles this scarcely perceptible and yet skilful art, a mixture of instinct and method, and many years will pass before prose becomes, like verse, an art. In the fourteenth century English prose is used in most cases for want of something better, from necessity, in order to be more surely understood, and owing to this its monuments are chiefly translations, scientific or religious treatises, and sermons. An English Froissart would at that time have written in Latin; several of the chronicles composed in monasteries, at St. Albans and elsewhere, are written in a brisk and lively style, animated now by enthusiasm and now by indignation; men and events are freely judged; characteristic details find their place; the personages live, and move, and utter words the sound of which seems to reach us. Walsingham's account of the revolt of the peasants in 1381, for example, well deserves to be read, with the description of the taking of London that followed, the sack of the Tower and the Savoy Palace, the assassination of the archbishop,[666] the heroic act of the peasant Grindecobbe who, being set free on condition that he should induce the rebels to submit, meets them and says: "Act to-day as you would have done had I been beheaded yesterday at Hertford,"[667] and goes back to his prison to suffer death. Every detail is found there, even the simple picturesque detail; the rebels arm themselves as they can, with staves, rusty swords, old bows blackened by smoke, arrows "on which only a single feather remained." The account of the death of Edward III. in the same annals is gloomy and tragic and full of grandeur. In the "Chronicon Angliæ,"[668] the anonymous author's burning hatred for John of Gaunt inspires him with some fiery pages: all of which would count among the best of old English literature, had these historians used the national idiom. The prejudice against prose continued; to be admitted to the honours of parchment it had first to be ennobled; and Latin served for that.

Translations begin to appear, however, which is already an improvement. Pious treatises had been early turned into English. John of Trevisa, born in Cornwall, vicar of Berkeley, translates at a running pace, with numerous errors, but in simple style, the famous Universal History, "Polychronicon," of Ralph Higden,[669] and the scientific encyclopædia, "De Proprietatibus Rerum,"[670] of Bartholomew the Englishman. The first of these works was finished in 1387, and had at the Renaissance the honour of being printed by Caxton; the second was finished in 1398.

The English translation of the Travels of Mandeville enjoyed still greater popularity. This translation is an anonymous one.[671] It has been found out to-day that the original text of the "Travels" was compiled in French by Jean de Bourgogne, physician, usually called John-with-the-Beard, "Joannes-ad-Barbam," who wrote various treatises, one in particular on the plague, in 1365, who died at Liège in 1372, and was buried in the church of the Guillemins, where his tomb was still to be seen at the time of the French Revolution.[672] John seems to have invented the character of Mandeville as Swift invented Gulliver, and Defoe Robinson Crusoe. Now that his imposture is discovered, the least we can do is to acknowledge his skill: for five centuries Europe has believed in Mandeville, and the merit is all the greater, seeing that John-with-the-Beard did not content himself with merely making his hero travel to a desert island; that would have been far too simple. No, he unites beforehand a Crusoe and a Gulliver in one; it is Crusoe at Brobdingnag; the knight comes to a land of giants; he does not see the giants, it is true, but he sees their sheep (the primitive sheep of Central Asia); elsewhere the inhabitants feed on serpents and hiss as serpents do; some men have dogs' faces; others raise above their head an enormous foot, which serves them for a parasol. Gulliver was not to behold anything more strange. Still the whole was accepted with enthusiasm by the readers of the Middle Ages; with kindness and goodwill by the critics of our time. The most obvious lies were excused and even justified, and the success of the book was such that there remain about three hundred manuscript copies of it, whereas of the authentic travels of Marco Polo there exist only seventy-five. "Mandeville" had more than twenty-five editions in the fifteenth century and Marco Polo only five.[673]

Nothing, indeed, is more cleverly persuasive than the manner in which Jean de Bourgogne introduces his hero. He is an honest man, somewhat naïve and credulous perhaps, but one who does not lack good reasons to justify if need be his credulity; he has read much, and does not hide the use he makes of others' journals; he reports what he has seen and what others have seen. For his aim is a practical one; he wants to write a guide book, and receives information from all comers. The information sometimes is very peculiar; but Pliny is the authority: who shall be believed in if Pliny is not trusted? After a description of wonders, the knight takes breathing time and says: Of course you won't believe me; nor should I have believed myself if such things had been told me, and if I had not seen them. He felt so sure of his own honesty that he challenged criticism; this disposition was even one of the causes why he had written in French: "And know you that I should have turned this booklet into Latin in order to be more brief: but for the reason that many understand better romance," that is French, "than Latin, I wrote in romance, so that everybody will be able to understand it, and that the lords, knights, and other noblemen, who know little Latin or none, and have been over the sea, perceive and understand whether I speak truth or not. And if I make mistakes in my narrative for want of memory or for any cause, they will be able to check and correct me: for things seen long ago, may be forgotten, and man's memory cannot embrace and keep everything."[674]

And so the sail is spread, and being thus amply supplied with oratorical precautions, our imaginary knight sets out on his grand voyage of discovery through the books of his closet. Having left St. Albans to visit Jerusalem, China, the country of the five thousand islands, he journeys and sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone,[675] Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose à tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many real ones, which served to make the rest believed in, and were gathered from well-informed authors; thus Mandeville's immense popularity served at least to vulgarise the knowledge of some curious and true facts. He describes, for example, the artificial hatching of eggs in Cairo; a tree that produces "wool" of which clothing is made, that is to say the cotton-plant; a country of Asia where it is a mark of nobility for the women to have tiny feet, on which account they are bandaged in their infancy, that they may only grow to half their natural size; the magnetic needle which points out the north to mariners; the country of the five thousand islands (Oceania); the roundness of the earth, which is such that the inhabitants of the Antipodes have their feet directly opposite to ours, and yet do not fall off into space any more than the earth itself falls there, though of much greater weight. People who start from their own country, and sail always in the same direction, finally reach a land where their native tongue is spoken: they have come back to their starting-point.

In the Middle Ages the English were already passionately fond of travels; Higden and others had, as has been seen, noted this trait of the national character. This account of adventures attributed to one of their compatriots could not fail therefore greatly to please them; they delighted in Mandeville's book; it was speedily translated,[676] soon became one of the classics of the English language, and served, at the time of its appearance, to vulgarise in England the use of that simple and easy-going prose of which it was a model in its day, the best that had been seen till then.[677]

Various scientific and religious treatises were also written in prose; those of Richard Rolle, hermit of Hampole, count amongst the oldest and most remarkable.[678] We owe several to Chaucer; they pass unnoticed in the splendour of his other works, and it is only fair they should. Chaucer wrote in prose his tale of the parson, and his tale of Melibeus, both taken from the French, his translation of Boethius, and his treatise on the Astrolabe. His prose is laboured and heavy, sometimes obscure; he, whose poetical similes are so brilliant and graceful, comes to write, when he handles prose, such phrases as this: "And, right by ensaumple as the sonne is hid whan the sterres ben clustred (that is to seyn, whan sterres ben covered with cloudes) by a swifte winde that highte Chorus, and that the firmament stant derked by wete ploungy cloudes, and that the sterres nat apperen up-on hevene, so that the night semeth sprad up-on erthe: yif thanne the wind that highte Borias, y-sent out of the caves of the contree of Trace, beteth this night (that is to seyn, chaseth it a-wey, and discovereth the closed day): than shyneth Phebus y-shaken with sodein light, and smyteth with his bemes in mervelinge eyen."[679] Chaucer, the poet, in the same period of his life, perhaps in the same year, had expressed, as we have seen, the same idea thus:

Accustomed to poetry, Chaucer sticks fast in prose, the least obstacle stops him; he needs the blue paths of the air. High-flying birds are bad walkers.

II.

Under a different form, however, prose progressed in England during the course of the fourteenth century. This form is the oratorical.

The England of Chaucer and Langland, that poetical England whose prose took so long to come to shape, was already, as we have seen, the parliamentary England that has continued up to this day. She defended her interests, bargained with the king, listened to the speeches, sometimes very modest ones, that the prince made her, and answered by remonstrances, sometimes very audacious. The affairs of the State being even then the affairs of all, every free man discussed them; public life had developed to an extent with which nothing in Europe could be compared; even bondmen on the day of revolt were capable of assigning themselves a well-determined goal, and working upon a plan. They destroy the Savoy as a means of marking their disapprobation of John of Gaunt and his policy; but do not plunder it, so as to prove they are fighting for an idea: "So that the whole nation should know they did nothing for the love of lucre, death was decreed against any one who should dare to appropriate anything found in the palace. The innumerable gold and silver objects there would be chopped up in small pieces with a hatchet, and the pieces thrown into the Thames or the sewers; the cloths of silk and gold would be torn. And it was done so."[681]

Many eloquent speeches were delivered at this time, vanished words, the memory of which is lost; the most impassioned, made on heaths or in forest glades, are only known to us by their results: these burning words called armed men out of the earth. These speeches were in English; no text of them has been handed down to us; of one, however, the most celebrated of all, we have a Latin summary; it is the famous English harangue made at Blackheath, by the rebel priest, John Ball, at the time of the taking of London.[682]

Under a quieter form, which might already be called the "parliamentary" form, but often with astonishing boldness and eloquence, public interests are discussed during this century, but nearly always in French at the palace of Westminster. There, documents abound; the Rolls of Parliament, an incomparable treasure, have come down to us, and nothing is easier than to attend, if so inclined, a session in the time of the Plantagenets. Specimens of questions and answers, of Government speeches and speeches of the Opposition, have been preserved. Moreover, some of the buildings where these scenes took place still exist to-day.[683]

First of all, and before the opening of the session, a "general proclamation" was read in the great hall of Westminster, that hall built by William Rufus, the woodwork of which was replaced by Richard II., and that has been lately cleared of its cumbrous additions.[684] This proclamation forbids each and all to come to the place where Parliament sits, "armed with hoquetons, armor, swords, and long knives or other sorts of weapons;" for such serious troubles have been the result of this wearing of arms that business has been impeded, and the members of Parliament have been "effreietz," frightened, by these long knives. Then, descending to lesser things, the proclamation goes on to forbid the street-boys of London to play at hide-and-seek in the palace, or to perform tricks on the passers-by, such as "to twitch off their hoods" for instance, which the proclamation in parliamentary style terms improper games, "jues nient covenables." But as private liberty should be respected as much as possible, this prohibition is meant only for the duration of the session.[685]

On the day of the opening the king repairs to the place of the sittings, where he not unfrequently finds an empty room, many of the members or of the "great" having been delayed on the way by bad weather, bad roads, or other impediments.[686] Another day is then fixed upon for the solemn opening of the business.

All being at last assembled, the king, the lords spiritual and temporal and the Commons, meet together in the "Painted Chamber." The Chancellor explains the cause of the summons, and the questions to be discussed. This is an opportunity for a speech, and we have the text of a good many of them. Sometimes it is a simple, clear, practical discourse, enumerating, without any studied phrases or pompous terms, the points that are to be treated; sometimes it is a flowery and pretentious oration, adorned with witticisms and quotations, and compliments addressed to the king, as is for instance the speech (in French) of the bishop of St. David's, Adam Houghton, Chancellor of England in 1377:

"Lords and Gentlemen, I have orders from my lord the Prince here present, whom God save," the youthful Richard, heir to the throne, "to expound the reason why this Parliament was summoned. And true it is that the wise suffer and desire to hear fools speak, as is affirmed by St. Paul in his Epistles, for he saith: Libenter suffertis insipientes cum sitis ipsi sapientes. And in as much as you are wise and I am a fool, I understand that you wish to hear me speak. And another cause there is, which will rejoice you if you are willing to hear me. For the Scripture saith that every messenger bringing glad tidings, must be always welcome; and I am a messenger that bringeth you good tidings, wherefore I must needs be welcome."

All these pretty things are to convey to them that the king, Edward III., then on the brink of the grave, is not quite so ill, which should be a cause of satisfaction for his subjects. Another cause of joy, for everything seems to be considered as such by the worthy bishop, is this illness itself; "for the Scripture saith: Quos diligo castigo, which proves that God him loves, and that he is blessed of God." The king is to be a "vessel of grace," vas electionis.[687] The Chancellor continues thus at length, heedless of the fact that the return of Alice Perrers to the old king belies his Biblical applications.

Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was to die such a dreadful death, from the eighth blow of the axe, after having lost the hand which he carried to the first wound, spoke in much the same style. He opened in these terms the first parliament of Richard II.:

"Rex tuus venit tibi.—Lords and Gentlemen, the words which I have spoken signify in French: Your king comes to thee.—And thereupon, the said archbishop gave several good reasons agreeing with his subject, and divided his said subject in three parts, as though it had been a sermon."

In truth it is a sermon; the Gospel is continually quoted, and serves for unexpected comparisons. The youthful Richard has come to Parliament, just as the Blessed Virgin went to see St. Elizabeth; the joy is the same: "Et exultavit infans in utero ejus."[688]

Fortunately, all did not lose themselves in such flowery mazes. William Thorpe, William of Shareshull, William of Wykeham, John Knyvet, &c., make business-like speeches, simple, short, and to the point: "My Lords, and you of the Commons," says Chancellor Knyvet, "you well know how after the peace agreed upon between our lord the King and his adversaries of France, and openly infringed by the latter, the king sent soldiers and nobles across the sea to defend us, which they do, but are hard pressed by the enemy. If they protect us, we must help them."

The reasoning is equally clear in Wykeham's speeches, and with the same skill he makes it appear as if the Commons had a share in all the king's actions: "Gentlemen, you well know how, in the last Parliament, the king, with your consent, again took the title of King of France...."[689]

These speeches being heard, and the "receivers" and "triers" of petitions having been appointed,[690] the two houses divided, and deliberated apart from each other; the Lords retired "to the White Chamber"; the Commons remained "in the Painted Chamber." At other times "the said Commons were told to withdraw by themselves to their old place in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey,"[691] that beautiful Chapter House still in existence, which had been built under Henry III.

Then the real debates began, interrupted by the most impassioned speeches. They were not reported, and only a faint echo has reached us. Traces of the sentiments which animated the Commons are found, however, in the petitions they drew up, which were like so many articles of the bargains contracted by them. For they did not allow themselves to be carried away by the eloquent and tender speeches of the Government orators; they were practical and cold-blooded; they agreed to make concessions provided concessions were made to them, and they added an annulling clause in case the king refused: "In case the conditions are not complied with, they shall not be obliged to grant the aid."[692] The discussions are long and minute in both houses; members do not meet for form's sake; decisions are not lightly taken: "Of which things," we read in the Rolls, "they treated at length."[693] In another case, the Commons, from whom a ready-made answer was expected, announce that "they wish to talk together," and they continue to talk from the 24th of January to the 19th of February.[694] Only too glad was the Government when the members did not declare "that they dare not assent without discussing the matter with the Commons of their shire,"[695] that is to say, without consulting their constituents. And this they do, though William de la Pole and others, sent "by our lord the king from thence (that is from France) as envoys," had modestly explained the urgency of the case, and "the cause of the long stay the king had made in these aforesaid parts, without riding against his enemies,"[696] this cause being lack of money.

When the Commons have at last come to a decision, they make it known in the presence of the Lords through the medium of their Speaker, or, as he was called in the French of the period, the one who had the words for them: "Qui avoit les paroles pur les Communes d'Engleterre en cest Parlement."[697] In these replies especially, and in the petitions presented at the same time, are found traces of the vehemence displayed in the Chapter House. The boldness of the answers and of the remonstrances is extraordinary, and from their tone can be conceived with what power and freedom civil eloquence, of which England has since produced so many admirable specimens, displayed itself, even at that distant epoch.

The most remarkable case is that of the Good Parliament of 1376, in which, after having deliberated apart, the Commons join the other house, and by the mouth of their Speaker, Peter de la Mare, bring in their bill of complaints against royalty: "And after that the aforesaid Commons came to Parliament, openly protesting that they were as willing and determined to help their noble liege lord ... as any others had ever been, in any time past.... But they said it seemed to them an undoubted fact, that if their liege lord had always had around him loyal counsellors and good officers ... our lord the king would have been very rich in treasure, and therefore would not have had such great need of burdening his Commons, either with subsidy, talliage, or otherwise...." A special list of grievances is drawn up against the principal prevaricators; their names are there, and their crimes; the king's mistress, Alice Perrers, is not forgotten. Then follow the petitions of the Commons, the number of which is enormous, a hundred and forty in all, in which abuses are pointed out one by one.[698]

Formerly, say the Commons, "bishoprics, as well as other benefices of Holy Church, used to be, after true elections, in accordance with saintly considerations and pure charity, assigned to people found to be worthy of clerical promotion, men of clean life and holy behaviour, whose intention it was to stay on their benefices, there to preach, visit, and shrive their parishioners.... And so long as these good customs were observed, the realm was full of all sorts of prosperity, of good people and loyal, good clerks and clergy, two things that always go together...." The encroachments of the See of Rome in England are, for all right-minded people, "great subject of sorrow and of tears." Cursed be the "sinful city of Avignon," where simony reigns, so that "a sorry fellow who knows nothing of what he ought and is worthless" will receive a benefice of the value of a thousand marcs, "when a doctor of decree and a master of divinity will be only too glad to secure some little benefice of the value of twenty marcs." The foreigners who are given benefices in England "will never see their parishioners ... and more harm is done to Holy Church by such bad Christians than by all the Jews and Saracens in the world.... Be it again remembered that God has committed his flock to the care of our Holy Father the Pope, that they might be fed and not shorn."[699] The Commons fear nothing; neither king nor Pope could make them keep silence. In their mind the idea begins to dawn that the kingdom is theirs, and the king too; they demand that Richard, heir to the throne, shall be brought to them; they wish to see him; and he is shown to them.[700]

In spite of the progress made by the English language, French continued to be used at Westminster. It remained as a token of power and an emblem of authority, just as modern castles are still built with towers, though not meant to be defended by cannon. It was a sign, and this sign has subsisted, since the formula by which the laws are ratified is still in French at the present time. English, nevertheless, began to make an appearance even at Westminster. From 1363,[701] the opening speeches are sometimes in English; in 1399, the English tongue was used in the chief acts and discourses relating to the deposition of Richard. On Monday, the 29th of September, the king signed his act of resignation; on the following day a solemn meeting of Parliament took place, in presence of all the people, in Westminster Hall; the ancient throne containing Jacob's stone, brought from Scotland by Edward I., and which can still be seen in the abbey, had been placed in the hall, and covered with cloth of gold, "cum pannis auri." Richard's act of resignation was read "first in Latin, then in English," and the people showed their approbation of the same by applause. Henry then came forward, claimed the kingdom, in English, and seated himself on the throne, in the midst of the acclamations of those present. The Archbishop of Canterbury delivered an oration, and the new king, speaking again, offered his thanks in English to "God, and yowe Spirituel and Temporel, and alle the Astates of the lond."[702] There is no more memorable sign of the changes that had taken place than the use made of the English language on an occasion like this, by a prince who had no title to the crown but popular favour.

III.

All these translators were necessarily wanting in originality (less, however, than they need have been), and all these orators spoke for the most part in French. In their hands, English prose could not be perfected to a very high degree. It progressed, however, owing to them, but owing much more to an important personage, who made common English his fighting weapon, John Wyclif, to whom the title of "Father of English prose" rightfully belongs, now that Mandeville has dissolved in smoke. Wyclif, Langland, and Chaucer are the three great figures of English literature in the Middle Ages.

Wyclif belonged to the rich and respected family of the Wyclifs, lords of the manor of Wyclif, in Yorkshire.[703] He was born about 1320, and devoted himself early to a scientific and religious calling. He studied at Oxford, where he soon attracted notice, being one of those men of character who occupy from the beginning of their lives, without seeking for it, but being, as it seems, born to it, a place apart, amid the limp multitude of men. The turn of his mind, the originality of his views, the firmness of his will, his learning, raised him above others; he was one of those concerning whom it is at once said they are "some one;" and several times in the course of his existence he saw the University, the king, the country even, turn to him when "some one" was needed.

He was hardly thirty-five when, the college of Balliol at Oxford having lost its master, he was elected to the post. In 1366 Parliament ruled that the Pope's claim to the tribute promised by King John should no longer be recognised, and Wyclif was asked to draw up a pamphlet justifying the decision.[704] In 1374 a diplomatic mission was entrusted to him, and he went to Bruges, with several other "ambassatores," to negotiate with the Pope's representatives.[705] He then had the title of doctor of divinity.

Various provincial livings were successively bestowed upon him: that of Fillingham in 1361; that of Ludgarshall in 1368; that of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, in 1374, which he kept till his death. He divided his time between his duties as rector, his studies, his lectures at Oxford, and his life in London, where he made several different stays, and preached some of his sermons.

These quiet occupations were interrupted from time to time owing to the storms raised by his writings. But so great was his fame, and so eminent his personality, that he escaped the terrible consequences that heresy then involved. He had at first alarmed religious authority by his political theories on the relations of Church and State, next on the reformation of the Church itself; finally he created excessive scandal by attacking dogmas and by discussing the sacraments. Summoned the first time to answer in respect of his doctrines, he appeared in St. Paul's, in 1377, attended by the strange patrons that a common animosity against the high dignitaries of the Church had gained for him; John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Lord Henry Percy accompanied him. The duke, little troubled by scruples, loudly declared, in the middle of the church, that he would drag the bishop out of the cathedral by the hair of his head. These words were followed by an indescribable tumult. Indignant at this insult, the people of the City drove the duke from the church, pursued him through the town, and laid siege to the house of John of Ypres, a rich merchant with whom he had gone to sup. Luckily for the prince, the house opened on the Thames. He rose in haste, knocking his legs against the table, and, without stopping to drink the cordial offered him, slipped into a boat and fled, as fast as oars could carry him, to his sister-in-law's, the Princess of Wales, at Kennington.[706] The summoning of Wyclif thus had no result.

But the Pope, in the same year, launched against the English theologian bulls pointing out eighteen erroneous propositions contained in his writings, and enjoining that the culprit should be put in prison if he refused to retract. The University of Oxford, being already a power at that time, proud of its privileges, jealous in maintaining solidarity between its members, imbued with those ideas of opposition to the Pope which were increasing in England, considered the decree as an excessive exercise of authority. It examined the propositions, and declared them to be orthodox, though capable of wrong interpretations, on which account Wyclif should go to London and explain himself.[707]

He is found, therefore, in London in the beginning of 1378; the bishops are assembled in the still existing chapel of Lambeth Palace. But by one of those singularities that allow us to realise how the limits of the various powers were far from being clearly defined, it happened that the bishops had received positive orders not to condemn Wyclif. The prohibition proceeded from a woman, the Princess of Wales, widow of the Black Prince. The prelates, however, were spared the trouble of choosing between the Pope and the lady; for the second time Wyclif was saved by a riot; a crowd favourable to his ideas invaded the palace, and no sentence could be given. Any other would have appeared the more guilty; he only lived the more respected. He was then at the height of his popularity; a new public statement that he had just issued in favour of the king against the Pope had confirmed his reputation as advocate and defender of the kingdom of England.[708]

He resumed, therefore, in peace his work of destruction, and began to attack dogmas. Besides his writings and his speeches, he used, in order to popularise his doctrines, his "simple priests," or "poor priests," who, without being formed into a religious order, imitated the wandering life of the friars, but not their mendicity, and strove to attain the ideal which the friars had fallen short of. They went about preaching from village to village, and the civil authority was alarmed by the political and religious theories expounded to the people by these wanderers, who journeyed "from county to county, and from town to town, in certain habits under dissimulation of great holiness, without license of our Holy Father the Pope, or of the ordinary of the diocese."[709] Wyclif justified these unlicensed preachings by the example of St. Paul, who, after his conversion, "preechide fast, and axide noo leve of Petir herto, for he hadde leve of Jesus Crist."[710]

From this time forth Wyclif began to circulate on the sacraments, and especially on the Eucharist, opinions that Oxford even was unable to tolerate; the University condemned them. Conformably to his own theory, which tended, as did that of the Commons, towards a royal supremacy, Wyclif appealed not to the Pope but to the king, and in the meantime refused to submit. This was carrying boldness very far. John of Gaunt separates from his protégé; Courtenay, bishop of London, calls together a Council which condemns Wyclif and his adherents (1382); the followers are pursued, and retract or exile themselves; but Wyclif continues to live in perfect quiet. Settled at Lutterworth, from whence he now rarely stirred, he wrote more than ever, with a more and more caustic and daring pen. The papal schism, which had begun in 1378, had cast discredit on the Holy See; Wyclif's work was made the easier by it. At last Urban VI., the Pope whom England recognised, summoned him to appear in his presence, but an attack of paralysis came on, and Wyclif died in his parish on the last day of the year 1384. "Organum diabolicum, hostis Ecclesiæ, confusio vulgi, hæreticorum idolum, hypocritarum speculum, schismatis incentor, odii seminator, mendacii fabricator"[711]: such is the funeral oration inscribed in his annals, at this date, by Thomas Walsingham, monk of St. Albans. By order of the Council of Constance, his ashes were afterwards thrown to the winds, and the family of the Wyclifs of Wyclif, firmly attached to the old faith, erased him from their genealogical tree. When the Reformation came, the family remained Catholic, and this adherence to the Roman religion seems to have been the cause of its decay: "The last of the Wyclifs was a poor gardener, who dined every Sunday at Thorpe Hall, as the guest of Sir Marmaduke Tunstall, on the strength of his reputed descent."[712]

IV.

Wyclif had begun early to write, using at first only Latin.[713] Innumerable treatises of his exist, many of which are still unpublished, written in a Latin so incorrect and so English in its turns that "often the readiest way of understanding an obscure passage is to translate it into English."[714] He obviously attracted the notice of his contemporaries, not by the elegance of his style, but by the power of his thought.

His thought deserved the attention it received. His mind was, above all, a critical one, opposed to formulas, to opinions without proofs, to traditions not justified by reason. Precedents did not overawe him, the mysterious authority of distant powers had no effect on his feelings. He liked to look things and people in the face, with a steady gaze, and the more important the thing was and the greater the authority claimed, the less he felt disposed to cast down his eyes.

Soon he wished to teach others to open theirs, and to see for themselves. By "others" he meant every one, and not only clerks or the great. He therefore adopted the language of every one, showing himself in that a true Englishman, a partisan of the system of free investigation, so dear since to the race. He applied this doctrine to all that was then an object of faith, and step by step, passing from the abstract to the concrete, he ended by calling for changes, very similar to those England adopted at the Reformation, and later on in the time of the Puritans.

His starting-point was as humble and abstract as his conclusions were, some of them, bold and practical. A superhuman ideal had been proposed by St. Francis to his disciples; they were to possess nothing, but beg their daily bread and help the poor. Such a rule was good for apostles and angels; it was practised by men. They were not long able to withstand the temptation of owning property, and enriching themselves; in the fourteenth century their influence was considerable, and their possessions immense. Thin subterfuges were resorted to in order to justify this change: they had only the usufruct of their wealth, the real proprietor being the Pope. From that time two grave questions arose and were vehemently discussed in Christendom: What should be thought of the poverty and mendicity of Christ and his apostles? What is property, and what is the origin of the power whence it proceeds?

In the first rank of the combatants figured, in the fourteenth century, an Englishman, Richard Fitzralph, archbishop of Armagh, "Armachanus," who studied the question of property, and contested the theory of the friars in various sermons and treatises, especially in his work: "De pauperie Salvatoris," composed probably between 1350 and 1356.[715]

Wyclif took his starting-point from the perfectly orthodox writings of Fitzralph, and borrowed from him nearly the whole of his great theory of "Dominium," or lordship, power exercised either over men, or over things, domination, property, possession. But he carried his conclusions much farther, following the light of logic, as was the custom of schools, without allowing himself to be hindered by the radicalism of the consequences and the material difficulties of the execution.

The theory of "Dominium," adopted and popularised by Wyclif, is an entirely feudal one. According to him, all lordship comes from God; the Almighty bestows it on man as a fief, in consideration of a service or condition the keeping of His commandments. Deadly sin breaks the contract, and deprives the tenant of his right to the fief; therefore no man in a state of deadly sin possesses any of the lordships called property, priesthood, royalty, magistracy. All which is summed up by Wyclif in his proposition: any "dominium" has grace for its foundation. By such a theory, the whole social order is shaken; neither Pope nor king is secure on his throne, nor priest in his living, nor lord in his estate.

The confusion is all the greater from the fact that a multitude of other subversive conclusions are appended to this fundamental theory: While sinners lose all lordship, the good possess all lordship; to man, in a state of "gratia gratificante," belongs the whole of what comes from God; "in re habet omnia bona Dei."[716] But how can that be? The easiest thing in the world, replies Wyclif, whom nothing disturbs: all goods should be held in common, "Ergo omnia debent esse communia"[717]; wives should be alone excepted.—The Bible is a kind of Koran in which everything is found; no other law should be obeyed save that one alone; civil and canonical laws are useless if they agree with the Bible, and criminal if they are opposed to it.[718]—Royalty is not the best form of government; an aristocratic system is better, similar to that of the Judges in Israel.[719]—Neither heirship nor popular election is sufficient for the transmission of the crown; grace is needed besides.[720]—The bequeathing to the Church of estates which will become mortmain lands is inadmissible: "No one can transmit more rights than he possesses, and no one is personally possessed of rights of civil lordship extending beyond the term of life."[721]—If the convent or the priest make a bad use of their wealth, the temporal power will be doing "a very meritorious thing" in depriving them of it.[722]

The whole order of things is unhinged, and we are nearing chaos. It is going so far that Wyclif cannot refrain from inserting some of those slight restrictions which the logicians of the Middle Ages were fond of slipping into their writings. In time of danger this was the secret door by which they made their escape, turning away from the stake. Wyclif is an advocate of communism; but he gives to understand that it is not for now; it is a distant ideal. After us the deluge! Not so, answer the peasants of 1381; the deluge at once: "Omnia debent esse communia!"

If all lordship vanishes through sin, who shall be judge of the sin of others? All real lordship vanishes from the sinner, answered Wyclif, but there remains to him, by the permission of God, a power de facto, that it is not given us to remove; evil triumphs, but with God's consent; the Christian must obey the wicked king and bishop: "Deus debet obedire diabolo."[723] But the dissatisfied only adopted the first part of the theory, and instead of submitting to Simon Sudbury, their archbishop, of whom they disapproved, they cut off his head.

These were certainly extreme and exceptional consequences, to which Wyclif only contributed in a slight measure. The lasting and permanent result of the doctrine was to strengthen the Commons of England in the aim they already had in view, namely, to diminish the authority exercised over them by the Pope, and to loosen the ties that bound the kingdom to Rome. Wyclif pointed out that, contrary to the theory of Boniface VIII. (bull "Unam Sanctam"), there does not exist in this world one single supreme and unequalled sovereignty; the Pope is not the sole depositary of divine power. Since all lordship proceeds from God, that of the king comes from Him, as well as that of the Pope; kings themselves are "vikeris of God"; beside the Pope, and not below him, there is the king.[724]

V.

The English will thus be sole rulers in their island. They must also be sole keepers of their consciences, and for that Wyclif is to teach them free investigation. All, then, must understand him; and he begins to write in English. His English works are numerous; sermons, treatises, translations; they fill volumes.[725]

Before all the Book of truth was to be placed in the hands of everybody, so that none need accept without check the interpretations of others. With the help of a few disciples, Wyclif began to translate the Bible into English. To translate the Scriptures was not forbidden. The Church only required that the versions should be submitted to her for approval. There already existed several, complete or partial, in various languages; a complete one in French, written in the thirteenth century,[726] and several partial ones in English. Wyclif's version includes the whole of the canonical books, and even the apocryphal ones; the Gospels appear to have been translated by himself, the Old Testament chiefly by his disciple, Nicholas of Hereford. The task was an immense one, the need pressing; the work suffered from the rapidity with which it was performed. A revision of the work of Nicholas was begun under Wyclif's direction, but only finished after his death.[727]

No attempt at elegance is found in this translation; the language is rugged, and on that account the better adapted to the uncouthness of the holy Word. Harsh though it be we feel, however, that it is tending towards improvement; the meaning of the words becomes more precise, owing to the necessity of giving to the sacred phrases their exact signification; the effort is not always successful, but it is a continued one, and it is an effort in the right direction. It was soon perceived to what need the undertaking answered. Copies of the work multiplied in astonishing fashion. In spite of the wholesale destruction which was ordered, there remain a hundred and seventy manuscripts, more or less complete, of Wyclif's Bible. For some time, it is true, the copying of it had not been opposed by the ecclesiastical authority, and the version was only condemned twenty-four years after the death of the author, by the Council of Oxford.[728] In the England of the Plantagenets could be foreseen the England of the Tudors, under whom three hundred and twenty-six editions of the Bible were printed in less than a century, from 1525 to 1600.

But Wyclif's greatest influence on the development of prose was exercised by means of his sermons and treatises. In these, the reformer gives himself full scope; he alters his tone at need, employs all means, from the most impassioned eloquence down to the most trivial pleasantry, meant to delight men of the lower class. Put to such varied uses, prose could not but become a more workable instrument. True it is that Wyclif never seeks after artistic effect in his English, any more than in his Latin. His sermons regularly begin by: "This gospel tellith.... This gospel techith alle men that ..." and he continues his arguments in a clear and measured style, until he comes to one of those burning questions about which he is battling; then his irony bursts forth, he uses scathing similes; he thunders against those "emperoure bishopis," taken up with worldly cares; his speech is short and haughty; he knows how to condense his whole theory in one brief, clear-cut phrase, easy to remember, that every one will know by heart, and which it will not be easy to answer. Why are the people preached to in a foreign tongue? Christ, when he was with his apostles, "taughte hem oute this prayer, bot be thou syker, nother in Latyn nother in Frensche, bot in the langage that they usede to speke."[729] How should popes be above kings? "Thus shulden popis be suget to kynges, for thus weren bothe Crist and Petre."[730] How believe in indulgences sold publicly by pardoners on the market-places, and in that inexhaustible "treasury" of merits laid up in heaven that the depositaries of papal favour are able to distribute at their pleasure among men for money? Each merit is rewarded by God, and consequently the benefit of it cannot be applicable to any one who pays: "As Peter held his pees in grauntinge of siche thingis, so shulden thei holden ther pees, sith thei ben lasse worth than Petir."[731]

Next to these brief arguments are familiar jests, gravely uttered, with scarcely any perceptible change in the expression of the lips, jests that Englishmen have been fond of in all times. If he is asked of what use are the "letters of fraternity," sold by the friars to their customers, to give them a share in the superabundant merits of the whole order, Wyclif replies with a serious air: "Bi siche resouns thinken many men that this lettris mai do good for to covere mostard pottis."[732]

It is difficult to follow him in all the places where he would fain lead us. He terrified the century by the boldness of his touch; when he was seen to shake the frail holy thing with a ruthless hand, all eyes turned away, and his former protectors withdrew from him.[733] He did not, however, carry his doubt to the extreme end; according to his doctrine the substance of the host, the particle of matter, is not the matter itself, the living flesh of the body that Jesus Christ had on earth; this substance is bread; only by a miracle which is the effect of consecration, the body of Christ is present sacramentally; that is to say, all the benefits, advantages, and virtues which emanate from it are attached to the host as closely as the soul of men is united to their body.[734]

The other sacraments,[735] ecclesiastical hierarchy, the tithes collected by the clergy, are not more respectfully treated by him. These criticisms and teachings had all the more weight owing to the fact that they were delivered from a pulpit and fell from the lips of an authorised master, whose learning was acknowledged even by his adversaries: "A very eminent doctor, a peerless and incomparable one,"[736] says Knighton. Still better than Langland's verses, his forcible speech, by reason of his station, prepared the way for the great reforms of the sixteenth century. He already demands the confiscation of the estates of the monasteries, accomplished later by Henry VIII.; he appeals at every page of his treatises to the secular arm, hoping by its means to bring back humility by force into the heart of prelates.

But he is so far removed from its realisation that his dream dazzles him, and urges him on to defend chimerical schemes. He wishes the wealth of the clergy to be taken from them and bestowed upon poor, honest, brave, trustworthy gentlemen, who will defend the country; and he does not perceive that these riches would have fallen principally into the hands of turbulent and grasping courtiers, as happened in the sixteenth century.[737] He is carried away by his own reasonings, so that the Utopian or paradoxical character of his statements escape him. Wanting to minimise the power of the popes, he protests against the rules followed for their election, and goes on to say concerning the vote by ballot: "Sith ther ben fewe wise men, and foolis ben without noumbre, assent of more part of men makith evydence that it were foli."[738]

His disciples, Lollards as they were usually called, a name the origin of which has been much discussed, survived him, and his simple priests continued, for a time, to propagate his doctrines. The master's principal propositions were even found one day in 1395, posted up on the door of St. Paul's Cathedral, in the heart of London. Among them figure declarations that, at a distance of three centuries, seem a foreshadowing of the theories of the Puritans; one for instance, affirming "that the multitude of useless arts allowed in the kingdom are the cause of sins without number." Among the forbidden arts are included that of the goldsmiths, and another art of which, however, the Puritans were to make a somewhat notorious use, that of the armorers.[739]

At the University, the followers of Wyclif were numerous; in the country they continued to increase until the end of the fourteenth century. Energetic measures were adopted in the beginning of the fifteenth; the statute "De hæretico comburendo" was promulgated in 1401 (but rarely applied at this period); the master's books were condemned and prohibited; from that time Wyclifism declined, and traces of its survival can hardly be found at the period when the Reformation was introduced into England.

By a strange fate Wyclif's posterity continued to flourish out of the kingdom. Bohemia had just given a queen to England, and used to send students every year from its University of Prague to study at Paris and Oxford. In that country the Wyclifite tenets found a multitude of adepts; the Latin works of the thinker were transcribed by Czech students, and carried back to their own land; several writings of Wyclif exist only in Czech copies. His most illustrious disciple, John Hus, rector of the University of Prague, was burnt at the stake, by order of the Council of Constance, on the 6th of July, 1415. But the doctrine survived; it was adopted with modifications by the Taborites and the Moravian Brethren, and borrowed from them by the Waldenses[740]; the same Moravian Brethren who, owing to equally singular vicissitudes, were to become an important factor in the English religious movement of the eighteenth century: the Wesleyan movement. In spite of differences in their doctrines, the Moravian Brethren and the Hussites stand as a connecting link between Wesley and Wyclif.[741]

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VI.

THE STAGE.

I.

Dramatic art, in which the English people was to find one of the most brilliant of its literary glories, was evolved slowly from distant and obscure origins.

In England, as in the rest of Europe, the sources of modern drama were of two sorts: there were civil and religious sources.

The desire for amusement and the craving for laughable things never disappeared entirely, even in the darkest days; the sources of the lay drama began to spring and flow, owing to no other cause. The means formerly employed to amuse and raise a laugh cannot be expected to have shown much refinement. No refinement was to be found in them, and all means were considered good which ensured success; kicks were among the simplest and oftenest resorted to, but not at all among the grossest; others were worse, and were much more popular. Let us not wonder overmuch: some of them have recovered again, quite recently, a part of their pristine popularity. They were used by jugglers or players, "joculatores," nomadic sometimes, and sometimes belonging to the household of the great. The existence of such men is testified to from century to century, during the whole of the Middle Ages, mainly by the blame and condemnation they constantly incurred: and so it is that the best information concerning these men is not to be sought for in the monuments of the gay literature, but rather in pious treatises and in the acts of Councils.

Treatises and Councils, however, might to our advantage have been even more circumstantial; the pity is that they, naturally enough, consider it below their dignity to descend to very minute particulars; it is enough for them to give an enumeration, and to condemn in one phrase all the mimes, tumblers, histrions, wrestlers, and the rest of the juggling troup. Sometimes, however, a few particulars are added; the peculiar tricks and the scandalous practices of the ill-famed race are mentioned; and an idea can thus be formed of our ancestors' amusements. John of Salisbury in the twelfth century alludes to a variety of pastimes, and while protesting against the means used to produce laughter, places them on record: a heavy laughter indeed, noisy and tumultuous, Rabelais' laughter before Rabelais. Of course, "such a modest hilarity as an honest man would allow himself" is not to be reproved, and John did not forbear to use this moderate way of enjoyment; but the case is different with the jugglers and tumblers: "much better it would be for them to do nothing than to act so wickedly."[742]

No doubt was possible. The jesters did not care in the least to keep within the bounds of "a modest hilarity"; nor did their audience, for in the fourteenth century we find these men described in the poem of Langland, and they have not altered in any way[743]; their tricks are the same, the same shameful exhibitions take place with the same success; for two hundred years they have been laughed at without intermission. Many things have come and gone; the nation has got tired of John's tyranny, of Henry the Third's weakness, of the Pope's supremacy, but the histrions continue to tumble and jump; "their points being broken, down fall their hose," (to use Shakespeare's words), and the great at Court are convulsed with laughter on their benches.

Besides their horseplay, jugglers and histrions had, to please their audience, retorts, funny answers, witticisms, merry tales, which they acted rather than told, for gestures accompanied the delivery. This part of the amusement, which came nearest the drama, sharp repartees, impromptu dialogues, is the one we know least about. Voices have long been silent, and the great halls which heard them are now but ivy-clad ruins, yielding no echo. Some idea, however, can be formed of what took place.

First we know from innumerable testimonies that those histrions spoke and told endless nonsense; they have been often enough reproached with it for no doubt to remain as to their talking. Then there is superabundant proof of the relish with which men enjoyed, in the Middle Ages, silly, teazing or puzzling answers; the questioner remaining at the end rolled up in the repartees, gasping as a fly caught in a spider's web. The Court fool or buffoon had for his principal merit his clever knack of returning witty or confusing answers; the best of them were preserved; itinerant minstrels remembered and repeated them; clerks turned them into Latin, and gave them place in their collections of exempla. They afforded amusement for a king, an amusement of a mixed sort, sometimes:

—Why, says the king, are there no longer any Rolands?—Because, the fool answers, there are no longer any Charlemagnes.[744]

Walter Map, as we saw, was so fond of happy answers that he formed a book of all those he heard, knew, or made in his day. The fabliau of the "Jongleur d'Ely," written in England in the thirteenth century, is a good specimen of the word-fencing at which itinerant amusers were expert. The king is unable to draw from the jongleur any answer to any purpose: What is his name?—The name of his father.—Whom does he belong to?—To his lord.—How is this river called?—No need to call it; it comes of its own accord.—Does the jongleur's horse eat well?—"Certainly yes, my sweet good lord, he can eat more oats in a day than you would do in a whole week."[745]

This is a mere sample of an art that lent itself to many uses, and to which belonged debates, "estrifs," "disputoisons," "jeux-partis," equally popular in England and in France. Some specimens of it are as old as the time of the Anglo-Saxons, such as the "Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus."[746] There are found in the English language debates or dialogues between the Owl and Nightingale, thirteenth century; the Thrush and Nightingale; the Fox and Wolf, time of Edward I.; the Carpenter's Tools, and others.[747] Collections of silly answers were also made in England; one of them was composed to the confusion of the inhabitants of Norfolk; another in their honour and for their defence.[748] The influence of those estrifs, or debates, on the development of the drama cannot be doubted; the oldest dramatic fragment in the English language is nothing but an estrif between Christ and Satan. The author acknowledges it himself:

says he in his prologue.[749]

Debates enjoyed great favour in castle halls; impromptu ones which, as Cathos and Madelon said, centuries later, "exerçaient les esprits de l'assemblée," were greatly liked; they constituted a sort of society game, one of the oldest on record. A person among those present was chosen to answer questions, and the amusement consisted in putting or returning questions and answers of the most unexpected or puzzling character. This was called the game of the "King who does not lie," or the game of the "King and Queen."[750] By a phenomenon which has been observed in less remote periods, after-dinner conversations often took a licentious turn; in those games love was the subject most willingly discussed, and it was not as a rule treated from a very ethereal point of view; young men and young ladies exchanged on those occasions observations the liberty of which gave umbrage to the Church, who tried to interfere; bishops in their Constitutions mentioned those amusements, and forbade to their flock such unbecoming games as "ludos de Rege et Regina;" Walter de Chanteloup, bishop of Worcester, did so in 1240.[751] Some of that freedom of speech survived, however, through the Middle Ages up to the time of Shakespeare; while listening to the dialogues of Beatrix and Benedick one wonders sometimes whether they are not playing the game "de Rege et Regina."

Parody also helped in its way to the formation of the drama. There was a taste for masking, for the imitation of other people; for the caricaturing of some grave person or of some imposing ceremony, mass for example, for the reproduction of the song of birds or the noise of a storm, gestures being added to the noise, the song, or the words. Some jugglers excelled in this; they were live gargoyles and were paid "the one to play the drunkard, another the fool, a third to imitate the cat." The great minstrels, "grans menestreus," had a horror of those gargoyles, the shame of their profession;[752] noblemen, however, did not share these refined, if not disinterested, feelings, and asked to their castles and freely rewarded the members of the wandering tribe who knew how to imitate the drunkard, the fool, or the cat.

On histrionic liberties introduced even into church services, Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx in the twelfth century, gives some unexpected particulars. He describes the movements and attitudes of certain chanters by which they "resembled actors": so that we thus get information on both at the same time. Chanters are found in various churches, he says, who with inflated cheeks imitate the noise of thunder, and then murmur, whisper, allow their voice to expire, keeping their mouth open, and think that they give thus an idea of the death or ecstasy of martyrs. Now you would think you hear the neighing of horses, now the voice of a woman. With this "all their body is agitated by histrionic movements"; their lips, their shoulders, their fingers are twisted, shrugged, or spread out as they think best to suit their delivery. The audience, filled with wonder and admiration at those inordinate gesticulations, at length bursts into laughter: "It seems to them they are at the play and not at church, and that they have only to look and not to pray."[753]

The transition from these various performances to little dramas or interludes, which were at first nothing but tales turned into dialogues, was so natural that it could scarcely attract any notice. Few specimens have survived; one English one, however, is extant, dating from the time of Edward I., and shows that this transition had then taken place. It consists in the dramatising of one of the most absurd and most popular tales told by wandering minstrels, the story, namely, of the Weeping Bitch. A woman or maid rejects the love of a clerk; an old woman (Dame Siriz in the English prose text) calls upon the proud one, having in her hands a little bitch whom she has fed with mustard, and whose eyes accordingly weep. The bitch, she says, is her own daughter, so transformed by a clerk who had failed to touch her heart; the young woman at once yields to her lover, fearing a similar fate. There exist French, Latin, and English versions of this tale, one of the few which are of undoubted Hindu origin. The English version seems to belong to the thirteenth century.[754]

The turning of it into a drama took place a few years later. Nothing was easier; this fabliau, like many others, was nearly all in dialogues; to make a play of it, the jongleur had but to suppress some few lines of narrative; we thus have a drama, in rudimentary shape, where a deep study of human feelings must not be sought for.[755] Here is the conversation between the young man and the young maid when they meet:

After some more supplications, the clerk, who is a student at the University, goes to old Helwis (Siriz in the prose tale) and then the author, more accustomed, it seems, to such persons than to the company of young maidens, describes with some art the hypocrisy of the matron. Helwis will not; she leads a holy life, and what is asked of her will disturb her from her pious observances. Her dignified scruples are removed at length by the plain offer of a reward.

In this way, some time before Chaucer's birth, the lay drama came into existence in Shakespeare's country.

Other stories of the same sort were also turned into plays; we have none of them, but we know that they existed. An Englishman of the fourteenth century calls the performance of them "pleyinge of japis,"[756] by opposition to the performance of religious dramas.

Other amusements again, of a strange kind, helped in the same early period to the formation of the drama. A particularly keen pleasure was afforded during the Middle Ages by songs, dances, and carols, when performed in consecrated places, such as cemeteries, cloisters, churches. A preference for such places may seem scarcely credible; still it cannot be doubted, and is besides easily explainable. To the unbridled instincts of men as yet half tamed, the Church had opposed rigorous prescriptions which were enforced wholesale. To resist excessive independence, excessive severity was needful; buttresses had to be raised equal in strength to the weight of the wall. But from time to time a cleft was formed, and the loosened passions burst forth with violence. Escaped from the bondage of discipline, men found inexpressible delight in violating all prohibitions at once; the day for the beast had come, and it challenged the angel in its turn.

The propelling power of passions so repressed was even increased by certain weird tastes very common at that period, and by the merry reactions they caused. Now oppressed by, and now in revolt against, the idea of death, the faithful would at times answer threats with sneers; they found a particular pleasure in evolving bacchanalian processions among the tombs of churchyards, not only because it was forbidden, but also on account of the awful character of the place. The watching of the dead was also an occasion for orgies and laughter. At the University, even, these same amusements were greatly liked; students delighted in singing licentious songs, wearing wreaths, carolling and deep drinking in the midst of churchyards. Councils, popes, and bishops never tired of protesting, nor the faithful of dancing. Be it forbidden, says Innocent III. at the beginning of the thirteenth century, to perform "theatrical games" in churches. Be this prohibition enforced, says Gregory IX. a little later.[757] Be it forbidden, says Walter de Chanteloup, bishop of Worcester, to perform "dishonest games" in cemeteries and churches, especially on feast days and on the vigils of saints.[758] Be it forbidden, says the provincial council of Scotland in 1225, "to carol and sing songs at the funeral of the dead; the tears of others ought not to be an occasion for laughter."[759] Be it forbidden, the University of Oxford decrees in the same century, to dance and sing in churches, and wear there disguises and wreaths of flowers and leaves.[760]

The year was divided by feasts; and those feasts, the importance of which in everybody's eyes has dwindled much, were then great events; people thought of them long before, saw them in the distance, towering above the common level of days, as cathedrals above houses Everyday life was arrested, and it was a time for rejoicings, of a religious, and sometimes of an impious, character: both kinds helped the formation of drama, and they were at times closely united On such great occasions, more than ever, the caricature and derision of holy things increased the amusement. Christmas-time had inherited the licence as well as it occupied the date of the ancient Roman saturnalia; and whatever be the period considered, be it early or late in the Middle Ages, it will be found that the anniversary was commemorated, piously and merrily, by sneering and adoring multitudes For the one did not prevent the other; people caricatured the Church, her hierarchy and ceremonials, but did not doubt her infallibility; they laughed at the devil and feared him. "Priests, deacons, and sub-deacons," says the Pope, are bold enough, on those mad days, "to take part in unbecoming bacchanals, in the presence of the people, whom they ought rather to edify by preaching the Word of God."[761] In those bacchanals parodies of the Church prayers were introduced; a Latin hymn on the Nativity was transposed line for line, and became a song in honour of the good ale. Here, as a sample, are two stanzas, both of the original and of the parody, this last having, as it seems, been composed in England:

"You will see; the ale will make us sing, Alleluia! all of us, if the ale is as it should be, a wonderful thing! (Res miranda). Drink of it when you hold the jug; 'tis a most proper thing, for it is a good long way from sun to star (Sol de Stella); drink well! drink deep! it will flow for you from the tun, ever clear! (Semper clara)."[762]

So rose from earth at Christmastide, borne on the same winds, angels and demons, and the ancient feast of Saturn was commemorated at the same time as Christ's. In the same way, again, the scandalous feasts of the Fools, of the Innocents, and of the Ass, were made the merrier with grotesque parodies of pious ceremonies; they were celebrated in the church itself, thus transformed, says the bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste, into a place for pleasure, amusement, and folly: God's house was defiled by the devil's inventions. He forbade, in consequence, the celebration of the feast of Fools, "festum Stultorum," on the day of Circumcision in his cathedral, and then in the whole diocese.[763]

The feast of the Innocents was even more popular in England. The performers had at their head a "boy bishop," and this diminutive prelate presided, with mitre on his head, over the frolics of his madcap companions. The king would take an interest in the ceremony; he would order the little dignitary to be brought before him, and give him a present. Edward II. gave six shillings and eight pence to the young John, son of Allan Scroby, who had played the part of the "boy bishop" in the royal chapel; another time he gave ten shillings; Richard II., more liberal, gave a pound.[764] Nuns even were known to forget on certain occasions their own character, and to carol with laymen on the day of the Innocents, or on the day of Mary Magdalen, to commemorate the life of their patroness, in its first part as it seems.[765]

The passion for sightseeing, which was then very keen, and which was to be fed, later, mainly on theatrical entertainments, was indulged in during the Middle Ages in various other ways. Processions were one of them; occasions were numerous, and causes for them were not difficult to find. Had the Pui of London awarded the crown to the writer of the best chanson, a procession was formed in the streets in honour of the event. A marriage, a pilgrimage to Palestine, a patronal feast, were sufficient motives; gilds and associations donned their liveries, drew their insignia from their chest, and paraded the streets, including in the "pageant," when the circumstance allowed of it, a medley of giants and dwarfs, monsters, gilt fishes, and animals of all sorts. On grand days the town itself was transformed; with its flower-decked houses, its tapestries and hangings, it gave, with some more realism about it, the impression we receive from the painted scenery of an opera.

The town at such times was swept with extraordinary care; even "insignificant filth" was removed, Matthew Paris notes with wondering pen in 1236.[766] The procession moved forward, men on horseback and on foot, with unfurled banners, along the decorated streets, to the sound of bells ringing in the steeples. At road-crossings the procession stopped; after having been a sight, the members of it became in their turn sightseers. Wonders had been prepared to please them: here a forest with wild beasts and St. John the Baptist; elsewhere scenes from the Bible, or from knightly romances, the "pas de Saladin," for example, where the champion of England, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, fought the champion of Islam. At times it was a dumb-show, a sort of tableau vivant, at others actors moved but did not speak; at others again they did both, and complimented the king. A day came when the compliments were cut into dialogues; such practice was frequent in the fifteenth century, and it approached very near to the real drama.

In 1236, Henry III. of England having married Aliénor of Provence made his solemn entry into his capital. On this occasion were gathered together "so many nobles, so many ecclesiastics, such a concourse of people, such a quantity of histrions, that the town of London could scarcely hold them in her ample bosom—sinu suo capace.—All the town was adorned with silk banners, wreaths, hangings, candles and lamps, mechanisms and inventions of extraordinary kinds."[767]