A Literary History of the English People Part 45

He is worse than Judas that giveth a j.a.per silver.[659]

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, a.s.sumes 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 impa.s.sioned, 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 ma.n.u.scripts of the poem, more or less complete. "Piers Plowman" soon became a sign and a symbol, a sort of pa.s.sword, a personification of the labouring cla.s.ses, of the honest and courageous workman. John Ball invoked his authority in his letter to the rebel peasants of the county of Ess.e.x in 1381.[665] The name of Piers figured as an attraction on the t.i.tle 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 a.s.signed 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, pa.s.sionate, 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:

[629] Further details on Langland and his Visions, and in particular the elucidation (as far as I have been able to furnish it) of several doubtful points, may be found in "Piers Plowman, a contribution to the History of English Mysticism," London, 1894. Some pa.s.sages of the present Chapter are taken from this work.

[630] Mr. Skeat has given two excellent editions of these three texts (called texts A. B. and C.): I "The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, together with Vita de Dowel, Dobet et Dobest, secundum Wit et Resoun," London, Early English Text Society, 1867-84, 4 vols. 8vo; 2 "The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, in three parallel texts, together with Richard the Redeless," Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1886, 2 vols. 8vo.

[631] The reasons in favour of these dates are given in "Piers Plowman, a contribution to the history of English Mysticism," chap, ii., and in a paper I published in the _Revue Critique_, Oct. 25th, and Nov. 1, 1879.

Mr. Skeat a.s.signs the date of 1393 to the third text, adding, however, "I should not object to the opinion that the true date is later still."

I have adduced proofs ("Piers Plowman," pp. 55 ff.) of this final revision having taken place in 1398 or shortly after.

[632] B. xv. 48.

[633] A. xii. 6.

[634]

_Concupiscencia carnis_ colled me aboute the nekke, And seyde, "Thou art yonge and yepe and hast yeres yn Forto lyve longe and ladyes to lovye.

And in this myroure thow myghte se myrthes ful manye That leden the wil to lykynge al thi lyf-tyme."

The secounde seide the same "I shal suwe thi wille; Til thow be a lorde and have londe." (B. xi. 16.)

[635] C. vi. 42.

[636] C. vi. 45.

[637] On which see W. S. Simpson, "St. Paul's Cathedral and old City life," London, 1894, 8vo, p. 95: "The chantry priests of St. Paul's." A list of those chantries in a handwriting of the fourteenth century has been preserved; there are seventy-three of them. _Ibid._, p. 99.

[638] C. beginning of pa.s.sus vi.; B. beginning of pa.s.sus xv.: "My witte wex and wanyed til I a fole were."

[639] B. x. 181.

[640] B. x. 420.

[641]

... None sonner saved ne sadder of bileve, Than plowmen and pastoures and pore comune laboreres.

Souteres and shepherdes suche lewed jottes Percen with a _pater-noster_ the paleys of hevene, And pa.s.sen purgatorie penaunceles at her hennes-partynge, In-to the blisse of paradys for her pure byleve, That inparfitly here knewe and eke lyved. (B. x. 458.)

And thow medlest with makynges and myghtest go sey thi sauter, And bidde for hem that giveth the bred for there ar bokes ynowe To telle men what Dowel is.... (B. xii. 16.)

[642] He seems to have written at this time the fragment called by Mr.

Skeat: "Richard the Redeless," and attributed by the same with great probability to our author.

[643] C. iii. 211 ff.

[644] B. iii. 328.

[645] B. iv. 3.

[646] Daughter of Piers Plowman:

Hus douhter hihte Do-ryght-so- other-thy-damme-shal-the-bete.

(C. ix. 81.)

[647] See in particular Gloton's confession, with a wonderfully realistic description of an English tavern, C. vii. 350.

[648] "Paradise Lost," canto vi. 601; invention of guns, 470.

[649] B. Prol. 112.

[650] B. xix. 474.

[651] "Rotuli Parliamentorum," vol. iii. p. 419. See above, p. 253.

[652] Good Parliament of 1376.

[653] B. Prol. 95.

[654] B. Prol. 49.

[655] B. Prol. 46; xii. 37; v. 57; C. v. 122.

[656] B. vi. 71; C. ix. 122.