placebo, dirige, and seven psalms for the good of men's souls. He says he was married, and this may perhaps explain why he never rose in the church. He has many allusions to his extreme poverty. Lastly, he describes himself as being in Bristol in the year 1399, when he wrote his last poem. This is the last trace of him, and he was then about sixty-seven years of age, so that he may not have long survived the accession of Henry IV. (September 1399.) In personal appearance he was so tall that he obtained the nickname of Long Will, as he tells us in the line:

I have lyved in londe, quod I, my name is Long Wille.*

Langland's poem is one of the most importannt works that appeared in England previous to the invention of printing. It is the popular representative of the doctrines which were silently bringing about the Reformation, and it is a peculiarly national poem, not only as being a much purer specimen of the English language than Chaucer, but as exhibiting the revival of the same system of alliteration which characterised the Anglo-Saxon poetry. It is, in fact, both in this peculiarity and in its political character, characteristic of a great literary and political revolution, in which the language as well as the independence of the Auglo-Saxons had at last gained the ascendency over those of the Normans. Piers is represented as falling asleep on the Malvern Hills, and seeing in his sleep a series of visions; in describing these, he exposes the corruptions of society, and particularly the dissolute lives of the religious orders with much bitterness. The first part of the work was written about 1362; it was enlarged in 1370, and still further enlarged after 1378. Its great popularity induced some unknown writer to give a supplement in the same alliterative verse, entitled Pierce the Ploughman's Crede,' being a satire on the friars. Langland in his poem versifies the curious fable of the rats conspiring to bell the cat, which figures in Scottish history of the time of James III. The alliterative style of the work will be seen from the opening lines:

In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne,
I shope me in shroudes as I a shepe were, (1)
In habite as an heremite, unholy of workes,
Went wyde in this world, wondres to here.
Ac (2) on a May mornynge, on Maluerne hulles,
Me byfel a ferly (3) of fairy, me thouhte;
I was wery forwandered, and went me to reste
Vnder a brode bank by a bornes (4) side;

And as I lay, and lened, and toked in the wateres,
I slombred in a stepyng, it sweyued so merye. (5)

Warton and Ellis quote the following as a remarkable prediction of the Reformation (spelling simplified):

* Introduction to Piers the Ploughman, edited by the Rev. W. W. Skeat [Oxford 1860]

4 A brook or burn.

2 But.

1 Shepe, shepherd; it oftener means sheep. 3 A wonder. that the late editors of Piers the Ploughman' divide the lines in the middle, where a pause is naturally made.

5 Sounded so merry or pleasant. We may add

Ac now is Religion a rider, a roamer about,
A leader of lovedays, and a loud-buyer,

A pricker on a palfrey from manor to manor.

An heap of hounds [behind him] as he a lord were:

And but if his knave kncel that shall his cope bring,

He loured on him, and asketh him who taught him courtesy ?
Little had lords to done to give lond from her heirs

To religious, that have no ruth though it rain on her altars.
In many places there they be parsons by hemself at ease;
Of the poor have they no pity and that is her charity!
And they letten hem as lords, her lands lie so broad.

Ac there shall come a King and confess you, Religious,
And beat you, as the Bible telleth, for breaking of your rule,
And amend monials [nuns], monks, and canons,

And put hem to her penance

And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon, and all his issues for ever
Have a knock of a King, and incurable the wound.

Of the allegorical personification of Langland, we subjoin some short specimens:

Envy and Avarice.

Envy, with heavy heart, asketh after shrift,'

And greatly his gustus (1) beginneth to shew,

As pale as a pellet in a palsy he seemed;

I-clothed in a caramauri, (2) I could him not descrive,`
As a leek that had i-lain long in the sun,

So looked he with lean cheeks; loured he foul.

His body was bolled, (3) for wrath he bit his lips,
Wroth-like he wrung his fist; he thought him to wreak
With works or with words when he seeth his time.
And then came Covetise; can I him nought descrive,
So hungrily and hollow Sir Hervy (4) him looked;
He was beetle-browed and babber-lipt also,

With too bleared een as a blind hag,

And as a leathern purse lolled his cheeks,

Well syder (5) than his chin, they shrivelled for eld.

And as a bondman of his bacon his beard was bedravelled. (6)
With an hood on his head, a lousy hat above,

And in a tawny tabard of twelve winter age,

Alto-torn and baudy, and full of lice creeping;

But if that a louse could have loupen the better,

She should nought have walked on the welt, it was so threadbare.
Mercy and Truth.

Out of the west, as it were, a wench, as methought,
Came walking in the way, to helle-ward she looked;
Mercy hight that maid, a mild thing withal,

A full benign burd, (7) and buxom of speech.
Her sister, as it seemed, came softly walking
Even out of the east, and westward she looked,

A full comely creature, Truth she hight,

For the virtue that her followed afeard was she never.
When these maidens metten, Mercy and Truth,
Either axed of other of this great wonder,

Of the din and of the darkness.

1 Gustus, gestes, deeds.

2 A worm-eaten garment.

3 Swollen. 4 Mr. Skeat points out that Skelton has the same name for a covetous man: 'And Harry Hafler, that well could pick a meal. 5 Hanging lower.

6 As the mouth of a bondman or rural labourer is with the bacon he eats, so was his beard bedaubed or smeared. 7 Maiden.

These are vivid pictures, and there are many such in Langlandstrong repulsive delineations of vice, misery, and corruption. Ile was an earnest moral teacher, not an imaginative poet. He had none of the chivalrous sentiment or gay fancy of his great contenporary Chaucer.

Langland thus closes his vision of Piers the Plowman, Passus vii. (language modernised):

Now hath the Pope power pardon to grant the people,
Withouten any penance, to passen into heaven ?

This is our belief, as lettered men us teacheth

(Quodcumque ligane, is super terram, erit ligatum et in celis, &c.) (1) And so I leave it verily (Lord forbid else!)

That pardon and penance and prayers don save

Souls that have sinned seven sins deadly.

But to trust to these triennales, (2) truly me thinketh

Is nought so sicker (3) for the soul, certes, as Do-well.

Forthwith I rede you, renkes, (4) that rich ben on this earth,

Upon trust of your treasure triennales to have,

Be ye never the balder to break the ten behests,

And namely the masters, mayors, and judges

That have the wealth of this world, and for wise men ben holden,
To purchase you pardon and the Pope's bulls.

At the dreadful doom when dead shallen rise,

And comen all before Christ accounts to yield,

How thou leddest thy life here and his laws kept'st,

And how thou didest day by day, the doom will rehearse;

A poke full of pardons there, ne provinciales letters,

Though they be found in the fraternity of all the four orders, (5)

And have indulgences double-fold; but if Do-well you help

I set your patents and your pardons at one pie's heel! (6)
Forthwith I counsel all Christians to cry God mercy,
And Mary his mother be our mene (7) between,
That God give us grace here ere we go hence,

Such works to work while we ben here,

That after our death-day, Do-well rehearse
At the day of doom, we did as he hight. (8)

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

Although our mixed language had now risen into importance, and a period of literary activity had commenced, it required a genius like that of Chaucer-who was familiar with continental as well as classic literature, and with various modes of life at home and abroad, besides enjoying the special favour of the court—to give consistency and permanence to the language and poetry of England. Henceforward, his native style, which Spenser terms the pure well of English undefiled,' formed a standard of composition.

6

GEOFFREY CHAUCER could not boast of any high lineage—his father

1 Matthew xvi. 19.

2 Masses said for three years. 3 Sure. 4 Men; Anglo-Saxon rinc, a warrior [SKEAT], 5 The four orders of Friars.

6ie's heel, magpie's heel, a curious expression. But the Cambridge manuscript has Pee hule, that is, a pea's hull, a pea-shell, husk of a pea.-SKEAT. The Cambridge manuscript is surely the correct reading.

7 Mene. medium, Mediator.

E. L. v. 1-2

8 Hight, commanded.

and grandfather were London vintners.* The date of his birth is uncertain. He died in 1400, and there is an old tradition that he was then seventy-two years of age; consequently, born in 1328. The poet's own testimony, however, seems at variance with this statement. In the famous controversy in 1386 between Richard, Lord Scrope, and Sir Robert Grosvenor, concerning their coat of arms, Chaucer was examined as a witness, and in the deposition he is stated to be 'of the age of forty years and upward, and to have borne arms twenty-seven years.' This would place his birth about 1345, instead of 1328. The earliest notice of the poet occurs in some fragments of the Household Book of the Lady Elizabeth, wife of Prince Lionel, son of Edward III., of the date of 1357. From these it appears that payments were made for articles of dress and 'necessaries' to Chaucer-a suit of clothes and hoes, 7s., with a donation of 3s. 6d. He was then probably a page to the Lady Elizabeth. In 1359 he accompanied the royal army to France, doubtless in the retinue of Prince Lionel. If we take the 'forty years and upwards' to signify fortythree or forty-four, he was then sixteen or seventeen-an age not too early for a youth in the royal household to enter military service. There is no evidence as to the education of the poet, though he is said to have studied both at Cambridge and Oxford. Having joined Edward III.'s army which invaded France in 1359, he was taken prisoner, but was soon set free, the king giving, in March, 1360, £16 towards his ransom. A blank of six years occurs, but when the name of Chaucer reappears in the public records, he is found attached to the court and engaged in diplomatic service. About 1366, he married Philippa, one of the ladies of the chamber to the queen, daughter of Sir Payne Roet, and sister of Katherine Swynford, the mistress, and ultimately the wife of John of Gaunt. In 1367 the king granted Chaucer an annuity of 20 marks by the title of valettus noster, our yeoman, so that he then stood in the intermediate rank between squire and groom. In 1369 he was on a second invasion of France. In 1872 he was appointed envoy, with two others, to Genoa, and he was then styled scutifer, or squire. It is supposed that on this occasion he made a tour of the northern states of Italy, and visited Petrarch, who was at Arqua, near Padua, in 1873. The poet's mission to Italy was to confer with the Duke and merchants of Genoa, for the purpose of choosing some port in England where the Genoese might form a commercial establishment; and he had discharged his duty satisfactorily, for next year, on the celebration of St. George's

*This point has been settled by the researches of Mr. F. J. Furnival, editor-in-chief of the Cancer Society. Richard Chaucer, vintner of London, in April 1349, bequeathed his tenement and tavern to the Church of St. Mary, Aldermary. His son, John Chaucer, 'citizen and vintner,' Thames Street, in July 134, executed a deed relating to some lands. The poet, by deed, in 1383, released all right in his father's house in Thames Street to Henry Herbury vintner. This pedigree confirms Fuller's joke, that some wits had made Chancer's arms (argent and gules) the dashing of white and red wine, as 'nicking his father's profession. (FULLER'S Church History, Book iv.).

day, 23d April, at Windsor, Chaucer received a grant of a pitcher of wine daily (commuted in 1378 for a yearly payment of 20 marks), and in June was appointed comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wool, skins, &c., in the port of London. The duties of his office he had to perform personally, writing the rolls with his own hand; and in his 'House of Fame' he refers to this period, stating that when his labour was all done, and his reckonings' all made, he used to go home to his house, and sit at his books till he appeared dazed or lost in study. The same year (1374) Chaucer received a pension of £10 from the Duke of Lancaster, and the city authorities of London granted him for life a lease of the dwelling-house above the gate of Aldgate. Next year he was appointed guardian of a certain Edmond Staplegate of Kent, and received for wardship and marriage fee a sum of £104. In 1377 we find him joint-envoy on a secret mission to Flanders, and afterwards sent to France to treat of peace with Charles V, and to negotiate a secret treaty for the marriage of Richard, Prince of Wales, with Mary, daughter of the king of France. Richard succeeded to the throne by the death of Edward III., June 21, 1377, and Chaucer was reappointed one of the king's esquires. In May 1378 he was sent with Sir Edward Berkeley to Lombardy on a mission 'touching the king's expedition of war.' The prosperous poet was now allowed to discharge his duties as comptroller of customs by deputy, and he thus had greater leisure to devote himself to the composition of his 'Canterbury Tales.' Shortly after his return from Italy, Chaucer appears in a questionable light. By a deed, dated 1st of May 1379, enrolled on the Close Roll of 3 Richard II, Cecilia Chaumpaigne, daughter of the then late William Chaumpaigne and Agnes his wife, released to Geoffrey Chaucer all her rights of action against him for his abduction of her, 'de raptu meo.' The poet may have carried off the young lady, as Mr. Furnival suggests, to marry her to one of his friends, or the charge may have been dismissed as unfounded. In 1386 Chaucer sat in parliament as one of the knights of the shire for Kent. But the Duke of Gloucester succeeding to the government in place of the Duke of Lancaster, then abroad, and with whom he was at enmity, the poet, as friend and protégé of the latter, may have shared in the ill-will of the duke. It is certain that on the 4th of December 1386, Chaucer was superseded in his office of comptroller of customs, and is found raising money on his two pensions of twenty marks each. His wife died in 1387 (after June of this year there is no mention of the pension of ten marks given yearly to Philippa Chaucer), but King Richard having dismissed his council, and restored the Lancastrian party to power, the old poet regained, for a brief space, a share of the royal favour. In July 1389 he was appointed clerk of the king's works at Westminster, the Tower of London, and Windsor.* His salary was two shillings a day, with power

As clerk of the royal works, riding about with money to pay wages, &c., Chaucer was exposed to danger. On September 3, 1330, he was robbed at the Foul Oak' of £20,