gious opinions. Moreover, the movement which it inaugurated led finally, in a later day, to the formation of the Version now in common use; and, though not directly and avowedly, yet really, it contributed a good deal to the language of our present version. Before the time of Henry VIII. and of James I., when our present Version was made, the English of Wyckliffe had indeed become, to a considerable extent, obsolete. Yet many of its homely and expressive phrases found their way into the new version, and are a part of our present literary inheritance. When Printed. As Wyckliffe's Version was made before the invention of printing, its original circulation was of course in manuscript. The New Testament was first printed in 1731. The whole Bible was not printed until 1850, when a sumptuous edition, in 4 vols., 4to, was issued by the Oxford University press. This work contains the Original text of 1382, and Purvey's Revision of 1388, in parallel columns; and it is edited with critical accuracy by the Rev. Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederick Madden. Wyckliffe at Oxford. - Wyckliffe was educated at Oxford, and in 1361 he was Master of Baliol Hall in that University. He was skilled beyond most of his English contemporaries in scholastic divinity, and in his knowledge of the subtleties of logic. He is said to have known the more difficult parts of Aristotle by heart. He was also conversant with the civil and canon law, and was profoundly read in the Latin Fathers. Such learning, combined with great vigor and acuteness of understanding, and a sturdy Saxon independence of character, would have made him distinguished in any age. He received various appointments at the University, and at the age of forty-eight read lectures on divinity there with great applause. Wyckliffe as a Reformer. - Wyckliffe's attention was first called to the irregularities of the religious orders by the bickerings and intrigues of those connected with the University. Having taken an active part in resisting the encroachments of the friars resident at Oxford, he was afterwards led to extend his inquiries into the state of the Church generally, until by degrees he reached and boldly published conclusions not much behind those proclaimed by Luther at a later day. Wyckliffe not only advanced these opinions freely in his sermons and lectures, and in public treatises, but he had a large number of followers-pupils who imbibed from him their views of theology and ecclesiastical polity, and then diffused them throughout the kingdom, wherever they themselves were scattered. One of his pupils carried these opinions into Bohemia, on the continent, where they resulted in awaking the zeal of Huss and of Jerome of Prague. Wyckliffe is regarded by historians as the earliest instance of an open and direct attack by a learned clergyman upon the authority of the Church and of the supreme Pontiff. Earnest discussions ensued, and grave ecclesiastical censures, foreshadowing penalties of a still more serious character. But Wyckliffe was sustained by some of the powerful nobles of England, and especially by John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. He continued, therefore, to propagate his opinions, preaching, lecturing, and writing, till the day of his death. He died of a palsy, while celebrating mass, on the 30th of December, 1381, aged sixty years. "Wyckliffe was a subtile schoolman and a popular religious pamphleteer. He addressed the students of the University in the language and in the logic of their schools; he addressed the vulgar-which included, no doubt, the whole laity and a vast number of the parochial clergy in the simplest and most homely vernacular phrases. Hence he is, as it were, two writers: his Latin is dry, argumentative, syllogistic, abstruse, obscure; his English rude, coarse, but clear, emphatic, brief, vehement, with short, stinging sentences, and perpetual hard antithesis." - Henry Hart Milman. Mandeville. Sir John Mandeville, 1300-1372, is the earliest notable instance of the genuine English Traveller, "The Bruce of the fourteenth century." His Travels. Mandeville left home at the age of twenty-seven, and travelled for thirty-four years, going first to Jerusalem, and then on eastward into the remotest parts of Asia. On returning, he wrote a book describing some of the marvellous things that he had seen. His Book.This book of Voyage and Travel was written by him at first in Latin, then in French, then in English. It was translated into Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and German. Books of travel were not so common then as they are now, and this work of Mandeville's, giving an account by an eye-witness of remote regions and nations, the very existence of which was almost unknown among the people of Europe, was read with the greatest avidity. With the credulity of the age, he embodied in his work every grandam tale that came in his way; yet, on the whole, he is worthy of credit when describing what came under his own observation. It is not uncommon to find him in one page giving a sensible account of something which he saw, and in the next repeating with equal seriousness the story of Gog and Magog, and of men with tails, or the account of the Madagascar bird which could carry elephants through the air. The work is interesting as one of the earliest specimens of English prose. EXTRACTS. From Piers Plowman. In a somer seson, Wondres to here. Ac on a May mornynge, Of fairy, me thoughte; And went me to reste By a bornes side, And loked in the wateres, The Same Modernized. Unholy of works, Wonders to hear. Good Counsel of Chaucer. This little poem is said to have been made by Chaucer "upon his death-bed, lying in his anguish." In printing it, a diæresis is used to show that a vowel which b become silent, was once sounded, and must now be sounded, in order to make out rhythm; as, sufficë, pronounced suf-fi-ce. The accent is used for a like purpose, *„ show when the accent has been changed; as, envy, savour, pronounced with the accent on the last syllable. Flee from the press, and dwell with soothfastness; Painë thee not each crooked to redress," In trust of her that turneth as a ball,8 Beware also to spurn again a nall,10 Strive not as doth a crockë with a wall; That thee is sent receive in buxomness,12 Forth, pilgrim! forth, beast, out of thy stall! 1. Be satisfied with the good thou hath. 2. Wealth brings hate. 3. A crowd of followers makes you envied. 4. "Blent," blinded; wealth or prosperity, more than all else, makes one blinded. 5. “Savour,” taste; be not greedy to taste more pleasure than shall properly belong to thee. 6. "Rede," counsel. 7. Do not fret yourself by undertaking to reform all that goes wrong. 8. The goddess Fortune. 9. The way to secure rest is to have not too much to do. 10. "Nall," nail; take care not to kick against a nail. 11. "Deeme," judge. 12. Receive civilly whatever lot is sent you. 13. Life being a wrestling-match, you must expect a fall now and then. 14. "Weive," restrain. 15. "Ghost," spirit; let thy spirit, not thy inclination lead thee. CHAPTER III. EARLY SCOTCH POETS. FROM the time of Chaucer's death (1400) to the year 1500, when Sir Thomas More began to enter upon public life, there was an interval of an entire century, 1400–1500, during which the current of literature in England seems to have dried up. But during this century and during the half century preceding it and the half century following it, there was a continuous succession of Scotch minstrels of note, who deserve a separate and distinct consideration. The period of these Early Scotch Poets, according to this statement, covers two whole centuries, namely, the half century constituting the Chaucerian period (1350-1400), the vacant century following (1400– 1500), and the half century constituting the ante-Spenserian age (1500-1550). These early Scotch poets are BARBOUR, WYNTOUN, JAMES I. of Scotland, BLIND HARRY, HENRYSON, DUNBAR, Gawin DougLAS, and LINDSAY. Barbour. John Barbour, 1320 (?)-1396, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, and a contemporary of Chaucer's, was a poet of considerable note. NOTE.- Barbour seems not to have been acquainted with the writings of Chaucer, though contemporary with him. His writings accordingly, and most of those who have been grouped with him, are of quite a different type from any of those mentioned in the previous chapter, and belong to a different school of poetry, though running partly through the same period. Barbour wrote two extended poems, The Brute, a metrical chronicle, tracing the Scottish kings back to Brutus of Troy, and The Bruce, recounting the warlike deeds of the Scottish hero, Robert Bruce. NOTE.-The Brute was in existence in the next century, being often quoted, but has since been lost. The Bruce still exists, and has several times been printed. The best edition is that by Dr. Jamieson, in 4to, 1820. Character of the Poem.—Barbour calls The Bruce a Romaunt. By this we are not to understand that the work is a fiction, but that the deeds of the hero are in themselves romantic. Barbour's work, though in verse, is an important historical document, being a metrical chronicle of the great Scottish hero, written soon after his death, and while the facts were still fresh in the minds of all. It is indeed a complete history of the memorable transactions by which Robert I. asserted the independence of Scotland; at the same time, it has no little of poetic fire and of rhythmical harmony. The poem consists of more than 12,500 lines, of which more than 2,000 are occupied with the battle of Bannockburn. Rank as a Poet. — Barbour's poetry carries us back to the age of the metrical romances. In its form, it is very much like that of Robert of Brunne, who wrote only half a century previous. It is in the same kind of verse, the eight-syllable iambic, rhyming in couplets. In fire and spirit, however, it is far superior to anything in the old romances and troubadours. Barbour is far from being equal to Chaucer. He has not the abounding humor, the fine sense of the beautiful, the wonderfully delicate appreciation of character, which mark the writings of the latter. He is, however, unquestionably superior to Gower. His diction is clear, strong, and direct, and sometimes highly animated and picturesque; he is everywhere warmed, and he warms his readers, with a feeling of generous patriotism; withal, he has for his subject, not a mere metaphysical abstraction, some frigid and chilling conceit about the rhapsodies and the pangs of Platonic love, but the wrongs of his brother Scots, oppressed by a foreign yoke, the exploits of the hero who, next to Wallace, has always been the idol of Scotchmen - the glorious field of Bannockburn! No wonder that, while the Confessio Amantis was quietly consigned to the archives of the curious, The Bruce was enshrined in the heart of the million, and continued for several centuries to be the national epic of Scotland. Wyntoun. Andrew Wyntoun, 1350 (?)-1430 (?), Prior of St. Serf's, Lochleven, wrote a Chronicle of Scotland. Character of the Chronicle.- Wyntoun's Chronicle, more ambitious than those founded upon the Brutus of Troy, gives the story of the Scotch kings, in regular descent, from the birth of Cain. It is in the eight-syllable rhyming couplets. Though far inferior to the Bruce of Barbour, it is not without its value, both as a specimen of the language, and as a representative of ancient manners and ideas. The later portions of the Chronicle also are of considerable value as an historical record. The exact title is An Originale Kronykil of Scotland. James I. of Scotland. James I. of Scotland, 1395-1437, was a poet of no little worth and consideration, and was the first of the Scottish poets whose writings show signs of the influence of Chaucer. |