Anglo-Saxon Poetry, prefixed to Hazlitt's edition of Warton's English Poetry, my own Essay prefixed to vol. iii. of the edition of the Percy Folio MS. by Hales and Furnivall, &c.; whilst a great deal more than was known to Whitaker can be learnt from the since-published editions of the Ormulum, the Moral Ode, the Pistill of Susan, and the like. The date of the Poem he put down as 1362, though that is really the date of the A-text only; and, in considering his own text as of earlier date than Crowley's, he is now easily seen to have been wrong. His remarks on the extreme obscurity of Langland's diction are of a piece with his own evident difficulty in understanding it, and were caused, in a great measure, by his misreadings of the MS. The passages that are really obscure are singularly few. His concluding remarks contain the following interesting passage :—

'He [the editor] wishes to conciliate no favour to the work, by lamenting that it was undertaken in the languor of bad health, or that it was only prosecuted in the intervals of leisure which an active and occupied life allowed: both the facts, indeed, are true; but these, if likely to have injured the work in any material degree, were reasons why it ought not to have been begun; if otherwise, they will not contribute to lessen its actual defects. In short, he is ready to confess that, for the space of two years, it has received from him attention sufficient to have rescued it from very gross imperfections, and consequently, that its faults of this degree, whether more or fewer in number, are to be ascribed to a cause more humiliating than the indolence or carelessness of the editor.'

The marks of an evident anxiety to represent the MS. with extreme exactness are indeed most apparent on every page; how then are we to account for the frequent amazing variations from the true text of the old scribe? Only, I believe, by the old observation that the eye only sees that which it has been trained to see. It is clear that, as a scholar, he frequently misunderstood his author; and that, as a transcriber, he often failed in deciphering the not very difficult characters in which the MS. is written. The two causes together are quite sufficient to account for such mistakes as, despite all his care, are certainly to be found in his edition.

The most valuable passages in this Introductory Discourse have already been quoted above; see p. xxxix.

(h) The Early English Text Society's edition. Edited by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat. Part I. (A-text); 1867. Part II. (B-text); 1869. Part III. (C-text, together with Richard the Redeless, and

the Crowned King); 1873. Part IV. § 1 (Notes); 1877. Part IV. § 2 (Glossary, Indices, and General Preface); 1884.

(i) The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman. B-text; Prologue and Pass. i.-vii. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. First edition; 1869. Second edition; 1874. Third edition; 1879.

This small volume, being intended for beginners, contains the Vision concerning Piers Plowman only, exclusive of the additional poem entitled 'Do-wel, Do-bet, and Do-best.'

§ 19. RICHARD THE REDELESS.

This poem is now printed for the fourth time. It has already been twice printed by Mr. Wright, viz. for the Camden Society, 1838, and in 'Political Poems and Songs,' 1859, vol. i. p. 368, with the title of a 'Poem on the Deposition of Richard II.' The edition of 1838 is the one which I have most consulted, and is alone referred to in the Notes as 'Mr. Wright's edition.'

The third edition was edited by me for the Early English Text Society in 1873; and is here reprinted; together with the Notes, which have been slightly abridged.

I have purposely altered Mr. Wright's title, because it is somewhat misleading. It is clear from the internal evidence that the poem was written before Richard was formally deposed; whilst the title given by Mr. Wright is calculated to give the impression that it was written afterwards. The title Richard the Redeless' (i. e. Richard devoid of counsel) is simply taken from what is really the first line of the Poem, since the Prologue may be looked upon as a sort of preface. In that line—

'Now, Richard be redeles reweth on 3ou self'—

the poet very happily strikes the keynote of the whole poem, which is entirely concerned with the 'redeless' character of the king and his favourites.

The MS. from which the text is printed is, unfortunately, unique. It is MS. XIX. of the 'Piers Plowman' MSS., i. e. MS. Ll. 4. 14 in the Cambridge University Library. On observing the striking similarity between this MS. and the Oriel MS., I had at first a slight hope that some trace of another copy of the poem might appear in that MS. also, which is of earlier date. But the only trace discoverable is the somewhat significant one that a considerable number of leaves have been torn out of the MS., just where the poem

ought to have appeared. There remained therefore nothing to be done but to reproduce the text of the Cambridge MS. as carefully as possible, although it is, unfortunately, a rather late copy, written, perhaps, towards the middle of the fifteenth century. A few obvious corrections have been made, but the actual readings of the MS. have been always recorded in the footnotes in such cases. I have also carefully collated Mr. Wright's edition of 1838 with the MS., in order to correct the few errors which appear there. I have also inserted the five Latin quotations (viz. at i. 8; ii. 52, 139; iii. 32, 128) which Mr. Wright unfortunately omitted, owing to a peculiarity in the arrangement of the text by the scribe which requires careful attention, as will appear from the following explanation.

The copies of Piers the Plowman and of Richard the Redeless in MS. XIX. are in the same handwriting, and are similarly arranged; and this arrangement can only be rightly understood by examining the former carefully. By turning to it, we at once perceive that the scribe adopts the singular plan, apparent in no other copy of the poem, of writing the Latin quotations in the margin of the MS., instead of leaving them in their proper place in the text. They thus have the appearance of being supplementary, or added as a commentary; they look like detached annotations instead of forming an integral part of the text. Not observing this peculiarity, Mr. Wright unfortunately considered them as comments, and omits to mention any but one, which he quotes in his Preface with a misreading that led him to take a wrong view of the scribe's sentiments, as noted below, p. lxxxiv. If, however, these five quotations be considered, it will be seen that they all suit the context, and drop into their right places. Such appeals to Scripture or to the writings of 'clerks' are exactly in Langland's usual manner, and the quotations are to be ascribed to the author, and not to the scribe. There are, however, a few marginal notes in a later hand, such as 'Overwatchynge' against iii. 282; 'Kew-kaw' against iii. 299, and the like. But all these were written in many years afterwards, and have nothing to do with the original text except as valueless

comments.

DATE OF RICHARD THE REDELESS (1399).

The internal evidence enables us to settle the date of the poem almost within a fortnight. Lines 23-29 in the Prologue shew clearly that it was written after Richard had been taken prisoner,

18, 1399, and before he had been formally deposed, Sept. 30 in the same year. Other indications of date are in the allusion to the execution of Lord Scrope at Bristol, July 29, and to the release of the Earl of Warwick, who almost immediately after is heard of at Newcastle-under-Lyne, August 25; see Notes to ii. 152 and iii. 94. Allowing a few days for news to travel, and observing the author's boldness in rebuking Richard, as if his chances of escape seemed but small, we see that the date is restricted very nearly to the first three weeks in September. We must therefore suppose it to have been partly written in September, 1399, without fear of error. However, the course of events must have considerably interfered with the poet's plans, and it is almost certain that some lines were supplied at a later period. He begins by addressing the poem to Richard personally, whose hand he intended it to reach (prol. 53), declaring that he would not publish it till it had been approved of (prol. 61); but he afterwards declares that a day of reckoning had come, and that God had judged evil-doers and restored peace (iii. 352-371). I here throw out the suggestion for what it is worth, that the unfinished state of the existing copy of the poem may be due to the fact that the poem itself never was finished; that the course of events, in fact, cut it short in the middle. The news of Richard's formal deposition would naturally put an end to it.

AUTHORSHIP OF RICHARD THE REDELESS.

As to the authorship of the poem, I have not the slightest hesitation in ascribing it to William, the author of Piers the Plowman. That it must be his, and his only, was suggested to me years ago, on the first perusal of it; and after considering the question with the utmost care, from every point of view, not once only, but many times, I am not only entirely satisfied on this point in my own mind, but considerably surprised to think that there could ever have been a moment's doubt about it, or any place for a contrary opinion. Yet it is well known that Mr. Wright, though the editor both of Piers the Plowman and of the present poem, failed to see their common authorship, and has, indeed, given his opinion on the other side. But I have shewn (in my edition for the Early English Text Society) how he came to be misled upon this point; viz. by mistaking a quotation to be a scribe's comment, which really forms an integral part of the text; and by misreading and misconstruing that quotation.

I have shewn, further, that the internal evidence on this subject is fully sufficient; and the only argument I shall adduce here is by appealing to the evidence of originality in the poem of 'Richard.' An imitator of William might have copied his phrases, but how was he to attain to his genius? It is a great satisfaction to find, moreover, that William's power did not fail him in his old age. There are some passages in his last poem which exhibit him almost at his best. I shall merely give the references to some of these; the reader may then form his own opinion. See, e. g. Pass. i. 1-19; 25-59; ii. 162-167; 186-192; iii. 116-243; 324-337; 352-371; iv. 31-82. In particular, the passage iii. 116-189 is a well-wrought piece of lively and sustained satire, whilst the contrast between the fashionable courtiers and Wisdom in his homely garb of the old shape' (iii. 211-238) is excellent. The supposition of such passages being written by a poet of less power than William is like supposing that there may have been two Shakespeares. Few better things have ever been said than in his marvellous and bold substitution of the fashionable dresses of the courtiers for the courtiers themselves, as if the only part of the courtier that was worth mention was the dress which he wore. When Wisdom's life was threatened, it was not by creatures that could be called men, it was by the sleeves themselves! The severe and supreme contempt of the satire almost evaporates when we analyse it thus critically, but take the passage as it stands, and what could be better? Wisdom attempts to come near Richard's court, and what happens?

He was hallooed [at] and hunted and yhote truss',
And his dwelling ydemed a bow-draught from them,
And each man was charged to chop at his crown,

If he nighed them any nearer ⚫ than they had him named3.
The porter with his pikes then put him outer,

And warned him the wicket whilst the watch dured.

'Let's slay him!' quoth the sleeves that slid upon the earth,
And all the beardless burns bayed on him ever,

7

And scorned him, for his slaveyn was of the old shape.

Thus Malapert was mightful and master of [the] house,

And ever wandered Wisdom without the gates.

Such was the end of Wisdom's

Richard's court.

1 bidden to pack off.

attempt to insinuate himself into

3 him nempned = named for him, assigned for him. forbade him, warned him away from.

5 Alluding to the long sleeves then worn, which even trailed upon the ground.

6

men.

7 mantle, cloak.