Note 121 — FABLES.

"The Ploughman's Tale" is now generally accounted spurious. In speaking of it, Dryden inadvertently confounds it with the work of Robert Langland, a secular priest, well known to collectors by the title of "Pierce Plowman's Visions." Both poems contain a bitter satire against the clergy; but that which has been falsely ascribed to Chaucer, is expressly written in favour of Wickliffe's doctrine. Dryden probably was sufficiently ready to adopt any authority which seemed to countenance severity against the churchmen,—a subject upon which he always flies into declamation.