TALK X. TELLING OF SOME OF THE MEN WHO WROTE IN CHAUCER'S TIME; AND OF THE VISION OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 1327 to 1377 I THINK We have now an idea of the way in which literature began in England, and of its struggles to be heard in the language native to the people, from the coming of the English to the islands of Britain, down to the reign of Edward III. In this reign appeared a group of writers who firmly established the language in literature." These men are GEOFFREY CHAUCER, JOHN WYCLIFFE, JOHN MANDEVILLE, JOHN GOWER and WILLIAM LONGLAND. From the time of these authors, written English took on such I can read it to-day with little difficulty. Be form that fore their time you would find even Robert of Brunne, who Isaid he wrote no strange English, rather hard to under stand. You have seen that since the coming of the first Christian priests to England, literature owes its life to the Church and to the labors of the churchmen, who, from the venerable Beda onward, had devoted themselves to the spread of learning and literature. They seem to have been pure and pious men in these early days of the church, who, sincerely religious, devoted themselves to good works. But during the years that followed the establishment of the religion of Rome in England the Christian Church was gradually growing corrupt. What leaven there was in it of corruption and hypocrisy had spread through the whole body, and at the time we have now reached, many of the religious teachers of the people had become so bad that the good men among the priests, and the more intelligent part of the people had their eyes open to the abuses practiced by the clergy, and not frowned upon by the church. And in the beginning of the 14th century the discontent felt on account of these abuses made itself heard through two powerful mouth-pieces, the poem of William Longland and the preaching of John Wycliffe. Let me tell you first about William Longland's poem called the Vision of Piers Ploughman, which up to the end of the 14th century was the most popular poem— perhaps we might call it the first great popular poemever written in English. William Longland was a priest, but one who loved goodAbout ness and hated hypocrisy, and his lines are full of 1362 satire against the falsehood and the vices of the religious teachers. The Vision of Piers Ploughman is a dream, or a succession of dreams in the course of which the writer wakes up, goes about his business, then falls into another nap and takes up the thread of his dream again. The poem is an allegory, which will remind you a little of Pilgrim's Progress. At the opening of it the writer sees the world in his dream like a great vanity fair, in which mingle priests, merchants, soldiers and husbandmen, each busy in his own way. Conscience, Pity, Reason, Law and other abstract qualities, are also represented as persons, and form some of the chief characters in the dream, but as in most other allegories, if you leave the story only to follow the meaning that lies underneath, the brain will be bewildered and the interest lost. In the second sleep Piers Ploughmana type of the poor and simple of the earth to whom God reveals himself rather than to the rich and mighty-comes upon the scene. Ploughman was a happy name to catch the ear of the classes among whom it was meant this poem should be heard. Those who study Piers Ploughman will find in its lines the dawn-gleams of democracy, the recognition of certain rights belonging to the lowest man, which first found expression in poetry. Remember this and the utterance of Longland will take on a fresh interest, and a new life. poem begins thus: In the Summer Season, Went Wide in this World, And on a May Morning, I was Weary with Wandering, And as I beheld unto the east I saw a tower on a hill In hopes to have after I found there friars- As it seemed good to them. The You may get some idea by these few lines of the style of the poem, but you cannot, from so brief an extract, form any idea of the influence it exercised against the corruption of priests and pardoners who sold absolutions for sins which they committed themselves without caring to be absolved. And you can hardly imagine, even if you read it entire, what an interest this old poem was capable of exciting in its day. The Vision was followed, in the opening of the 15th century by Piers Ploughman's Crede, which was written by *I have given these extracts from Piers' Ploughman in modern spelling, sometimes modernizing words that they be readily understood. † It swayed so mury-The waters flowed on with such a murmuring sound. |