lawyers, whom the people hate, of whom the insurrectionists will shout, 'Not till all these are killed will the land enjoy its old freedom again,'-whom Burns will style 'hell-hounds preying in the kennels of justice,'

A heavenly messenger-Holy Church-appears to the dreamer, and shows him in this mortal assemblage a jewelled lady:

'Hire robe was ful riche,
Of reed scarlet engreyned,
With ribanes of reed gold
And of riche stones.

Hire array me ravysshed,
Swich richesse saugh I nevere;
I hadde wonder what she was,
And whos wif she were.'

This lady is Mede (Lucre), to whom high and low, lay and clergy, alike offer homage. She contracts a legal marriage with Falsehood, and the king would marry her to Conscience, but the latter replies:

'Crist it me forbede!

Er I wedde swiche a wif,

Wo me betide!

For she is frele of hire feith,

Fikel of her speche,

And maketh men mysdo

Many score tymes.'

Reason preaches repentance to offenders. Many are converted, among whom are Proud Heart, who vows to wear hair-cloth; Envy, lean, cowering, biting his lips, and wearing the sleeves of a friar's frock; and Covetousness, bony, beetle-browed, bleareyed. The repentant hearers set out on a pilgrimage to Truth. They meet a far-travelling pilgrim, who proves a blind guide, for of such a saint he has never heard. The wanderers put themselves under the direction of a carter, Piers the Plowman. His is a gospel of works, and he puts them to toil in his vineyard. But they become seditious, and are at last reduced by the aid of Hunger, who subdues Waste, leader of the revolt, and humbles his followers. 'Pardons,' or 'indulgences,' are satirized, and with the anxiety of Luther to know what is righteousness the poet goes in search of Do-well. He asks each one to explain where he may be found, and finds him by the description of Wit, in the Castle of the Flesh built by Kind (Nature), who resides there with his bride Anima (Soul). Do-better is her

handmaid, and Do-best her spiritual guide. Thence, for further instruction he is taken to dine with Clergy, and while they refresh themselves with psalms and texts, which are the bill of fare, Clergy gives his pupil a dissertation, in the course of which he refers to one Piers Plowman who had made light of all knowledge but love, and says that Do-well and Do-better are finders of Do-best, who saves men's souls. The pilgrim exclaims,

This is a long lesson,
And litel am I the wiser,'

Vain is the wis

and receives a reproof for his indocile temper. dom of man. Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best are at last identified with the Saviour, who is Love. Of low estate, come to direct the erring and redeem the lost, he appears in the garb of Piers the Plowman, type of the poor and simple. The Immortal dies, descends into Hell, rescues the patriarchs and prophets, triumphs over Death and the Devil. The righteous life is found, and the dreamer wakes in a transport, with the Easter chimes pealing in his ears. Alas, only in a dream is mortal victory complete. Over the beatific vision roll the mists of earth again, and Antichrist -the Man of Sin-with raised banner appears. Bells are rung, and the monks in solemn procession go out to receive with congratulations their lord and father. With seven great giants the seven Deadly Sins'-he besieges Conscience. Idleness leads the assault, and brings with him more than a thousand prelates. Nature sends up a host of plagues and diseases to punish the sacrilegious show:

'Kynde Conscience tho herde,- and cam out of the planetes,
And sente forth his forreyours-feveres and fluxes,

Coughes and cardiacles,-crampes and tooth-aques,

Reumes and radegundes,-and roynous scabbes,

Biles and bocches,- and brennynge aques,
Frenesies and foul yveles,- forageres of kynde...
There was "Harrow! and Help!-Here cometh Kynde!
With Deeth that is dredful-to undo us alle!"
The lord that lyved after lust tho aloud cryde. . .
Deeth cam dryvynge after,- and alle to dust passhed
Kynges and knyghtes,- kaysers and popes, . . .
Manye a lovely lady and lemmans of knyghtes,
Swowned and swelted for sorwe of hise dyntes.'

[lovers

1 Pride, Luxury, Envy, Wrath, a friar, whose aunt is a nun, and who is both cook and gardener to a convent; Avarice, who lies, cheats, lends money upon usury, and who, not understanding the French word restitution, thinks it another term for stealing; Gluttony, who, on his way to church, is tempted into a London ale-house; Sloth, a priest, who knows rhymes about Robin Hood better than his prayers, and who can find a hare in a field more readily than he can read the lives of the saints.

Contrition is implored for aid, but slumbers; and Conscience, hard pressed by Pride and Sloth, rouses himself with a final effort, and seizing his staff resumes his doubtful quest, praying for luck and health 'till he have Piers the Plowman'- till he find the Christ; no clear outlook, no sure hope; like the Wandering Jew, bowed beneath the burden of the curse, weary with unrelieved toil, worn with ceaseless trudging.

This serious poem, which makes Scripture and deed the test of creed-all outward observances but hollow shows-prepares the soil for the reception of that seed which Wycliffe and his associates are sowing. The imitations-the Plowman's Creed, by a nameless author, and the Plowman's Tale, attributed to Chaucer -bear witness to its popularity and fame. Its wide circulation among the commonalty of the realm is chiefly due to its moral and social bearings. Like the Declaration of Independence, it expresses the popular sentiment on the subjects it discusses,-the vices of Church, State, and Society. A spiritual picture which brings into distinct consciousness what many feel and but dimly apprehend, the solitary advocate of the children of want and oppression.

A part of its interest, at least for posterity, is derived from its antiquated Saxon and its rustic pith. Without artifice of connection or involution of plot, it is an impulsive voice from the wilderness, in the language of the people; and, as such, returns to or continues the old alliterative metre and unrhymed verse se - the recurrence at certain regular intervals of like beginnings, without, as Milton contemptuously calls it, the jingling sound of like endings. Thus:

In a sómer séson-whan sóft was the sónnë,
I shopë me in shroudës - as I a shépë wérë,
In hábite as an héremite-unhóly of wórkës,
Went wyde in this world-wóndres to herë.'

The fashionable machinery of talking abstractions gives evidence of French influence. The satirist, like Bunyan, veils his head in allegory. Perhaps the ideal company who flit along the dreamy scenes of his wild invention, have some distant relationship to the shadowy pilgrimage of that 'Immortal Dreamer' to the 'Celestial City.'

The second main stream of the poetical literature of the period is story-telling. Robert Manning garnishes with rhymes a history

of England beginning with the immemorial Brutus, and calls it a poem. Of a style easier than that of Robert of Gloucester and of diction more advanced, it discourses without developing, and sees moving spectacles without emotion:

So forth and so forth. Loquacious, clear, and insipid, we imagine, as its French original.

But reverie and fantasy are needed to satisfy the pleasant indolence of the chivalric world and the courts that shine upon the heights. The tales that sufficed to allure the attention of a ruder ancestry, now demand more volume, more variety, more color; and all that history and imagination have gathered in the East, in France, in Wales, in Provence, in Italy, wrought and rewrought by the minstrelsy of three centuries, heroics of the North that magnify the valor and daring of the cavalier, lyrics of the South that dwell on the devotion of the knight to his ladylove, serve as the stuff for the looms of the mighty weavers of Before the frivolous unreality of the new chivalry, songs of martial achievement predominated; but the intellectual palate of the gentry now prefers the later poetry of sensuous enjoyment, the trouvère, with its amours and mysticism; or the troubadour, with its romantic follies. The passion of war has degenerated into a pageant, and Romance, from the light fabliaux to the entangling fiction of many thousand lines, tells of little but the ecstasies of love. Love is the essential theme,— love in its first emotions, love happy, jealous; the lover walking,

verse.

sitting, sleeping, sick, despairing, dead. In France they have Floral Games where the assembled poets are housed in artificial arbors dressed with flowers, and a violet of gold is awarded the best poem. The love-courts discuss - and decide affirmativelywhether each one who loves grows pale at the sight of her whom he loves; whether each action of the lover ends in the thought of her whom he loves; whether love can refuse anything to love. A company of enthusiasts, love-penitents, to prove the strength of their passion, dress in summer in furs and heavy garments, and in winter in light gauze. When Froissart presents to Richard his book bound in crimson velvet, guarded by clasps of silver, and studded with golden roses,—

Than the kyng demanded me whereof it treated, and I shewed hym how it treated maters of louc; wherof the kynge was gladde.'

While rowing on the Thames, Gower (1325-1408) meets the royal barge, and is called to the king's side. 'Book some new thing,' says Richard, 'in the way you are used, into which book I myself may often look'; and the request is the origin of Confessio Amantis-the Confession of a Lover. It is a dialogue between an unhappy lover and his confessor, the object of which is to explain and classify the impediments of love. Through thirty thousand weary lines, the lover, like a good Catholic, states his distress, and is edified, if not comforted, by expositions of hermetic science and Aristotelian philosophy, discourses on politics, litanies of ancient and modern legends, gleaned from the compilers for the morality they furnish. Thus a serpent, Aspidis, bears in his head the precious stone called the carbuncle, which enchanters strive to win from him by lulling him asleep with magic songs. The wise reptile, as soon as the charmer approaches, presses one ear flat upon the ground, and covers the other with his tail. Ergo, let us obstinately resist all temptations that assail us through the avenues of the bodily organs. Even as Ulysses stopped his companions' ears with wax and lashed himself to the ship's mast, to escape the enticement of the Sirens' The confession terminates with some parting injunctions of the priest, the bitter judgment of Venus that he should remember his old age and leave off such fooleries, his cure from the wound of Cupid's dart, and his absolution. He is dismissed with advice from the goddess to go 'where moral virtue dwelleth.'

song.