altar, absolution, he does not reject, though they are all nought in comparison with holiness and charity; on Transubstantiation and the Real Presence and the Sacraments he is almost silent', but his silence is that of submission, not of doubt. It is in his intense absorbing moral feeling that he is beyond his age: with him outward observances are but hollow shows, mockeries, hypocrisies without the inward power of religion. It is not so much in his keen cutting satire on all matters of the Church as his solemn installation of Reason and Conscience as the guides of the self-directed soul, that he is breaking the yoke of sacerdotal domination; in his constant appeal to the plainest, simplest Scriptural truths, as in themselves the whole of religion, he is a stern reformer. The sad serious Satirist, in his contemplation of the world around him, the wealth of the world and the woe, sees no hope, but in a new order of things, in which if the hierarchy shall subsist, it shall subsist in a form, with powers, in a spirit totally opposite to that which now rules mankind. The mysterious Piers the Ploughman seems to designate from what quarter that Reformer is to arise 2. . . .

'With Wycliffe, with the spiritual Franciscans, Langland ascribes all the evils, social and religious, of the dreary world to the wealth of the Clergy, of the Monks, and the still more incongruous wealth of the Mendicants. With them, he asserts the right, the duty, the obligation of the temporal Sovereign to despoil the hierarchy of their corrupting and fatal riches. . . With the Fraticelli, to him the fatal gift of Constantine was the doom of true religion; with them. he almost adores poverty, but it is industrious down-trodden rustic poverty; not that of the impostor beggar, common in his days, and denounced as sternly as by the political economy of our own, still less of the religious mendicant. Both these are fiercely excluded from his all-embracing charity.

'Langland is Antipapal, yet he can admire an ideal Pope, a general pacificator, reconciling the Sovereigns of the world to universal amity. It is the actual Pope, the Pope of Avignon or

1 But see C. xx. 82-88.

2 A sentence here follows, which is based on a misconception. The phrase 'Peers pardon the Plouhman' (C. xxii. 187) involves a very curious grammatical construction (not uncommon in Early English), and signifies the pardon of (or given by) Piers the Ploughman.' But Dean Milman treats it as a proper name, 'Piers-Pardon-Ploughman,' which it cannot possibly be. Elsewhere we have 'Peers bern the plouhman,' meaning Piers the Ploughman's barn (C. xxii. 360).

of Rome, levying the wealth of the world to slay mankind, who is the subject of his bitter invective. The Cardinals he denounces with the same indignant scorn; but chiefly the Cardinal Legate, whom he has seen in England riding in his pride and pomp, with lewdness, rapacity, merciless extortion, insolence in his train. Above all, his hatred (it might seem that on this all honest English indignation was agreed) is against the Mendicant orders. Of the older monks there is almost total silence. For St. Benedict, for St. Dominic, for St. Francis he has the profoundest reverence. But it is against their degenerate sons that he arrays his allegorical Host; the Friars furnish every impersonated vice, are foes to every virtue; his bitterest satire, his keenest irony (and these weapons he wields with wonderful poetic force) are against their dissoluteness, their idleness, their pride, their rapacity, their arts, their lies, their hypocrisy, their delicate attire, their dainty feasts, their magnificent buildings, even their proud learning; above all their hardness, their pitilessness to the poor, their utter want of charity, which with Langland is the virtue of virtues.

'Against the clergy he is hardly less severe; he sternly condemns their dastardly desertion of their flocks, when during the great plague they crowded to London to live an idle life; that idle life he describes with singular spirit and zest. Yet he seems to recognise the Priesthood as of Divine institution. Against the whole host of officials, pardoners, summoners, Archdeacons, and their functionaries; against lawyers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, he is everywhere fiercely and contemptuously criminatory.

'His political views are remarkable. He has a notion of a king ruling in the affections of the people, with Reason for his chancellor, Conscience for his justiciary. On such a king the commonalty would cheerfully and amply bestow sufficient revenue for all the dignity of his office, and the exigencies of the state, even for his conquests. No doubt that commonalty would first have absorbed the wealth of the hierarchy. He is not absolutely superior to that hatred of the French, nor even to the ambition for the conquest of France engendered by Edward's wars and his victories. And yet his shrewd common sense cannot but see the injustice and cruelty of those aggressive and sanguinary wars.'

After some remarks upon the language and the allegory of the poem (some of which require to be slightly modified to make them absolutely accurate), and a slight sketch of the general plan of the

poem considered as a whole, Dean Milman sums up the whole matter in the following just words :

"The poet who could address such opinions, though wrapt up in prudent allegory, to the popular ear, to the ear of the peasantry of England; the people who could listen with delight to such strains, were far advanced towards a revolt from Latin Christianity. Truth, true religion, was not to be found with, it was not known by, Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Clergy, Monks, Friars. It was to be sought by man himself, by the individual man, by the poorest man, under the sole guidance of Reason, Conscience, and of the Grace of God, vouchsafed directly, not through any intermediate human being, or even Sacrament, to the self-directing soul. If it yet respected all existing doctrines, it respected them not as resting on traditional or sacerdotal authority. There is a manifest appeal throughout, an unconscious installation of Scripture alone, as the ultimate judge; the test of everything is a moral and purely religious one, its agreement with holiness and charity.'

It should be remembered that several of the above remarks apply in particular to the C-text, which Dr. Milman seems to have examined the most attentively, doubtless because it is the longest and fullest.

§ 13. FURTHER OBSERVATIONS.

There are several points about the poem which render caution on the reader's part very necessary, if he would avoid being misled. One is, that the effect of its double revision has been to introduce apparent anachronisms. Thus, when the poet speaks of Reason being set on the bench between the king and his son (A. iv. 32), he referred originally to Edward III. and the Black Prince, as the remark was made in 1362; but when the line was allowed to stand without change in the later versions (B. iv. 45, C. v. 43), as occurring in a part of the poem which was not very much altered, the allusion was lost, and it must be taken merely as a general expression signifying that Reason was placed in a seat of dignity. The usual date assigned to the poem, 1362, is very misleading; for all depends upon which form of the poem is in question. It was in hand and subject to variation during at least twenty or thirty years, the date 1362 expressing merely the time of its commencement. Hence Langland was, in fact, very much more nearly contemporaneous

with Chaucer than has been supposed, and cannot fairly be said to have preceded him. A comparison between these two great writers is very instructive; it is soon perceived that each was, in a great measure, the supplement of the other, notwithstanding the sentiments which they had in common.

Chaucer describes the rich much more fully than the poor, and shews the holiday-making, cheerful, genial phase of English life; but Langland pictures the homely poor in their ill-fed, hard-working condition, battling against hunger, famine, injustice, oppression, and all the stern realities and hardships that tried them as gold is tried in the fire. Chaucer's satire often raises a good-humoured laugh; but Langland's is that of a man who is constrained to speak out all the bitter truth, and it is as earnest as the cry of an injured man who appeals to heaven for redress.

The reader should beware also of being much influenced by the mention of the Malvern Hills. One great merit of the poem is, that it chiefly exhibits London life and London opinions, which are surely of more interest to us than those of Worcestershire. He does but mention Malvern three times, and those three passages may be found within the compass of the first eight Passus of Text A (prol. 5, 88; viii. 130). But how numerous are his allusions to London! He not only speaks of it several times, but he frequently mentions the law-courts of Westminster; he was familiar with Cornhill, Cheapside, Cock Lane in Smithfield, Shoreditch, Garlickhithe, Stratford, Tyburn, and Southwark, all of which he mentions in an off-hand manner1. He mentions no river but the Thames, which is with him simply synonymous with river; for in one passage he speaks of two men thrown into the Thames, and in another he says that rich men are wont to give presents to the rich, which is as superfluous as if one should fill a tun with water from a fresh river, and then pour it into the Thames to render it wetter2. To remember the London origin of a large portion of the poem is the true key to the right understanding of it.

It is impossible to give here an adequate sketch of that portion of English history which the poem illustrates, but it is very important that its close connection with history should be ever borne in mind. I will merely adduce one instance of this, one to which Mr. Wright has well drawn attention, and upon which I would lay even more stress than he has done. I allude to the rebellion under Wat Tyler. 1 See Index to Proper Names, p. 474. 2 B. xii. 161; xv. 332.

It is most evident that Langland himself was intensely loyal; if he would not reverence men whom he saw going about in rich clothing, he had a most profound reverence and even affection for the king. In the Prologue to his poem upon Richard II., whom he rates soundly and spares not, he commences with words of most tender and even touching remonstrance; it evidently goes to his heart that he should be compelled by a sense of duty to administer a severe reproof to his sovereign, whose subject he ought to be '.' He nowhere recommends or encourages revolutionary ideas, but the contrary, and he never could have intended his words to have roused the flame of rebellion. But the outspoken manner of them was just that which delighted the populace; his exaltation of the ploughman was gladly seized upon, and his bold words were perverted into watchwords of insurgency. He had but lately elaborated his second text of the poem, when John Balle, 'the crazy priest,' wrote the following remarkable letter to the commons of Essex.-' John Schep, som tyme Seynt Marie prest of 3orke, and nowe of Colchestre, greteth welle Johan Nameles, and Johan the Mullere, and Johan Cartere, and biddeth hem that thei ware of gyle in borugh, and stondeth togiddir in Goddis name, and biddeth Peres Plouzman go to his werke, and chastise welle Hobbe the robber, and taketh with you Johan Trewman, and alle his felaws, and no mo, and loke schappe2 3ou to on heued, and no mo.

Johan the Muller hath ygrownde smal, smal, smal;
The Kyngis sone of hevene shalle paye for alle.

Be ware or ye be wo,

Knoweth 3our frende fro 30ure foo,

Haveth ynowe, and seythe "Hoo";3

And do welle and bettre, and fleth synne,

And seketh pees, and holde therynne;

And so biddeth Johan Trewman and alle his felawes.'

For writing which, John Balle was drawn, hung, and quartered, July 15, 1381, just one month after Wat Tyler had been cut down by Sir William Walworth. See Thomæ Walsingham Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, vol. ii. p. 33. The reader will remark the mention, not only of Peres Plouzman, but of dowelle and bettre;

1 Rich. the Redeless, prol. 77; see vol. i. p. 605.

2 I.e. draw together under one leader; lit. look (that ye) shape you to one head. The double pin schappe is written (as not unusually) in an abbreviated form. It has been misread as scharpe, and some not very clever people have held it up as an example of the use of the phrase 'look sharp' in the fourteenth century. 'Say 'stop!' i. e. desist.