religion back to the simplicity and purity of gospel truth. It is an interesting commentary upon the character of the poem that, written expressly for the people instead of for the court, its language and style are far more rustic and old-fashioned than those of Chaucer's work. Its dialect is a mixture of Southern and Midland English, and the last important poem to be written in this way. -it adheres to the Anglo-Saxon principle of alliteration; as in the opening lines :

In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne
I shope me in shroudes as I a shepe were.1

One other fourteenth century poet deserves passing mention--the Scottish JOHN BARBOUR (1316?-95), who for a time was Archdeacon of Aberdeen. As the real father of Scottish poetry, he holds a certain place in literature. His fame rests on his long poem The Brus, in which the great deeds of Robert Bruce are recorded in spirited narrative.

14. Prose of Chaucer's Age. Under this head there is little to record. Chaucer's own few prose writings—such as his translation of Boëthius and his Treatise on the Astrolabe-are not important. Wyclif's Bible is an interesting example of vigorous artless English, and his controversial pamphlets helped to show the capabilities of the vernacular at a time when Latin was deemed the only fitting vehicle for theological discussion. But the great prose work of this period is the singular volume which goes by the title of The Travels of Sir John Maundeville. According to the specific statement of the preface, this Maundeville was born at St. Albans, and set out on his journey in 1322; and his book purports to give a circumstantial account of what he had seen and heard

1I arrayed myself in garments as if I were a shepherd.

C

during many years of wanderings in the Holy Land and the far east. It is now established, however, that no such person as the alleged author ever existed; that the work is a translation from the French of a certain Jean de Bourgogne; and that, instead of being a genuine record of travel, it is simply a compilation of fabulous stories out of Pliny, Friar Odoric, Marco Polo, and other retailers of the marvellous. The fact that the supposed Maundeville describes a bird which could carry an elephant away in its claws, a phoenix, and a weeping crocodile, a valley in which devils were jumping about like grasshoppers, and rocks of adamant which drew the nails out of passing ships, will show that his book is at least amusing; while, even though it is only a translation, it keeps its place as the first English prose classic.

CHAPTER IV.

FROM CHAUCER TO TOTTEL'S MISCELLANY.

(1400-1557).

15. The Fifteenth Century. With Chaucer English literature made a brilliant beginning, but it was only a beginning, and after his death we enter upon a long barren period in its history. In trying to explain the unproductiveness of the fifteenth century we have, of course, to remember that there can never in any circumstances be great books unless men are born who are capable of writing them, and that the dearth of great books for a hundred years and more after Chaucer may therefore simply be the result of a dearth of literary talent. It is perhaps noteworthy that the fifteenth century was not in England an age of great men in any field of activity. But we must also recognise that even when talent exists it depends upon favourable conditions for its expression, and in the fifteenth century conditions were the reverse of favourable. Little affected by the labours of Wyclif, religion continued to degenerate, and persecution was employed to stamp out all efforts towards reform. The free movement of thought was thus checked. The country was distracted by political conflicts, which culminated in the thirty years' struggle for power (1455-86) between the Houses of York and Lancaster. In these Wars of the Roses many of the great nobles were killed,

and the old order of feudalism severely shaken at its foundations. The low state of education has also to be emphasised. Such mental activity as still was to be found in the universities was wasted in endless and profitless controversies over the dry abstractions of mediaeval philosophy; while outside these centres of learning, and especially among the fast rising middle classes, a mercenary and sordid spirit prevailed, which was hostile to intellectual interests of any kind. In fifteenth century England, therefore, there was little enough to inspire, and much to repress literary genius. We shall indeed see presently that signs of new life became increasingly apparent as the century ran its course. But we may conveniently postpone the consideration of these till we come to deal with the revival of the early sixteenth century.

16. Poetry of the Fifteenth Century. The poor quality and general lifelessness of fifteenth century verse is at once suggested by the fact that the greater part of it is imitative. Nearly all the poets tried to walk in Chaucer's footsteps and, with little of his genius, laboured to reproduce his matter and style. Here and there real sympathy of mind and a touch of genuine power gave birth to work having a distinct merit of its own, as in the beautiful The Flower and the Leaf, a poem long ascribed to Chaucer himself, but now referred to some anonymous writer of his school. But on the whole, like all merely imitative things in art, such productions are of slight permanent value. Of these Chaucerians, who were numerous, the best known are THOMAS OCCLEVE, or HOCCLEVE (1370 ?1450 ?), and JOHN Lydgate (1370 ?-1451), both of whom were very voluminous. Hoccleve wrote a long poem called The Governail of Princes, in Chaucer's seven-line stanza (riming ababbcc) and in the prologue, in which he