between the dashing brilliancy of genius and the plodding respectability of talent. Gower worked laboriously and devotedly in the cause of the Muses and achieved, at best, only a kind of poetical respectability. He wrote three huge poems, Speculum Meditantis in French, dealing with the virtues and vices of men, and presenting incidentally vivid pictures of the social conditions of London; Vox Clamantis in Latin, a criticism of political and social conditions in which the Peasants' War of 1381 is described; and Confessio Amantis in English, a series. of tales woven together somewhat in the manner of the Canterbury Tales. There are more than a hundred stories, all serving to illustrate the Lover's experiences in the service of the goddess of love, written in fluent verse and occasionally exhibiting the gift of the true story-teller. Some of these tales are still readable and all are interesting as an expression of the culture and taste of the period, for Gower was an aristocrat in his verse and a glass of fashion for his days. But his fame has shrunk to the limits of a paragraph, and in strict justice this is all that can be done for him.

PROGRAM OF WORK

CLASS READING. Selections from Piers Plowman (Ward, P. and S., Bronson, Manly, Morris); selections from Mandeville's Travels and Wyclif's Bible (Maynard's Eng. Classics, Manly, Morris, Craik).

CHAUCER: Prologue, Knightes Tale, Nonne Prestes Tale; Boke of the Duchesse, 291-343, 448-485 (Ward); Prologue to Legende of Goode Women, 29-96 (Ward); Compleynt of Chaucer to his Purse; Good Counseil of Chaucer (Ward).

ANNOTATED TEXTS. Prologue, Knightes Tale, Nonne Prestes Tale (Clarendon Press, Riv. Lit. Series, Maynard's Eng. Classics, Pocket Classics); Piers Plowman (Cl. Press); Mandeville and Wyclif (Maynard's Eng. Classics).

The most satisfying complete edition of Chaucer is Pollard's Globe Chaucer, with Introduction and Glossary. Excellent also is Skeat's Oxford Chaucer.

BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. Ward's Chaucer (English Men of Letters); Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer; Pollard's Chaucer Primer; Tuckwell's Chaucer; Lowell's My Study Windows; Mackail's Springs of Helicon; Kittredge's Chaucer and His Poetry; Root's The Poetry of Chaucer; Legouis's Chaucer.

LITERARY HISTORY. Cambridge History, vol. 1, ch. ii (Wyclif), ch. iii (Mandeville), ch. vii (Chaucer); Jusserand; Ten Brink; Taine; Courthope; Jusserand's Piers Plowman; Snell's Age of Chaucer; Coulton's Chaucer and His England; Jenks's In the Days of Chaucer; Schofield's Chivalry in English Literature; Morley's English Writers, vols. IV, v.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND.

Green's Short History, ch. v; Traill; Gardiner; Sergeant's Wyclif (Heroes of the Nations); Trevelyan's England in the Age of Wyclif.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH

1. Historic outline of the reign of Edward III. 2. Changes in methods of living. 3. Condition of the church.

4. Plan and purpose of Piers Plowman. 5. Features of the poem showing that it was intended for the common people. 6. Wyclif's personal character. 7. The beginning of English Protestantism. 8. Compare Wyclif's translation of the Bible with the latest revised version. 9. Account for the popularity of Mandeville's Travels.

10. Collect the evidence of a meeting between Chaucer and Petrarch in Italy. 11. Was Chaucer a poet laureate? 12. Characterize Chaucer's three literary periods. 13. Explain the dream device for constructing poems.

14. Purpose and plan of the Canterbury Tales. 15. Compare Chaucer's treatment of church characters with Langland's. 16. Illustrate Chaucer's love of nature, love of books, kindliness of spirit. 17. Typical examples of his humor; of his satire. 18. Discuss Chaucer's realism, and his apology for its occasional vulgarity.

19. Mention modern story-tellers in verse who have been influenced by Chaucer. 20. Compare Dryden's "translations" of Chaucer; Wordsworth's; Percy Mackaye's. 21. The three English dialects (Consult Champneys, chs. xvi, xviii; Lounsbury, ch. vi; Cambridge History, vol. 1, 451–454).

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CHAPTER IV

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

THE fifteenth century is generally regarded as a desert waste in the annals of English literature. The voices of genius were silent. For more than a hundred years not a single author of distinguished original power appeared. The nation was exhausted by the disastrous war with France and by the civil Wars of the Roses, in which feudalism was destroyed in England and the great families of the nobility were almost exterminated. It was a period of transition, a century of decline and of regeneration. The forces and ideals of the medieval world were crumbling away, and beneath the ruins new forces were working at the foundations of the modern world; it was the quiet preparation for the great Renaissance that was to fill the next century. But in the literary desert there were here and there charming oases, bright spots of color with the promise of flowing springs and sweet flowers.

An Unproductive Century

During this barren period Chaucer's poetry was the main literary influence, and many imitators appeared who were happy in thinking themselves the equals of their master. To

Chaucer's
Successors

these aspiring poets Chaucer was, in Dunbar's phrase, the "rose of rethoris all"; that is, he was their chief rhetorician, or teacher. But about equally they praised the "sugarit lippis and tonges aureate" of Gower and Lydgate. As is usual in periods of decay, faults were repeated and exaggerated as much as merits were imitated.

So we find a prevailing confusion of meter and of grammatical construction, and grotesque affectations in diction, a straining for "mellifulate" words and "aureate" phrases that were accepted by the bad taste of the period as evidences of genius.

John Lydgate, c. 1370c. 1451

Most conspicuous among the English imitators of Chaucer were Lydgate and Occleve, or Hoccleve, both of whom deserve respect for the strenuous exercise of their good intentions. John Lydgate, a worthy monk of Bury St. Edmund's, wrote prodigiously, one hundred and forty thousand verses at least, and in almost every manner. His Storie of Thebes was written as an additional Canterbury Tale, in which he represents himself as joining the pilgrims on the homeward journey and telling the story. The Troye Book, a vast display of the Trojan War in fifteen thousand couplets, was composed to please Henry V. In the third book, the story of Troilus and Cressida is introduced, with a tribute of fervid admiration for Chaucer, his "Maister, Chaucier, chief poete of Britagne." The Falls of Princes, adapted from Boccaccio and suggested by Chaucer's Monk's Tale, depicts the "Tragedies of all such Princes as fell from theyr Estates throughe the Unstability of Fortune since the Creation of Adam"!

Lydgate uses the pentameter rhymed couplet of the Canterbury Tales, but his meter is as jolting as a corduroy road, and it is often difficult to determine whether a verse is intended to stand on four feet or five. Of this and other defects he is not entirely unaware, but pleads in excuse that his good master Chaucer would "not pynche nor grutche at every blot"; so why should we? He is most original and readable in his short, lively, satirical pieces, such as the London Lickpenny, which describes vividly and humorously the experiences of a countryman in the London streets, each stanza ending with the convincing refrain

But for lack of mony I could not spede.

Thomas Occleve, c. 1365

Thomas Occleve, inseparably linked with Lydgate, and if possible a poorer poet, has an imperishable claim upon our gratitude for the portrait of Chaucer with which he illuminated one page of his principal work De Regimine Principum. In the prologue to this poem occurs the celebrated passage mourning the loss of his "maister Chaucer, floure of eloquence, mirrour of fructurous entendement."

Here foloweth the Interpretacoin of thena in this trètyle folowonge as Poetes woryte

Printed about 1500. The woodcut was also used earlier in Caxton's second edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

A belated Chaucerian was Stephen Hawes, whose Pastyme of Pleasure is one of the last expressions of medieval literary taste. He was a connecting link between Chaucer and Spenser, and his elaborate allegory, celebrating the vanishing glories of chivalry, undoubtedly furnished many hints