What needeth it thereof to sermon more? For right as they had cast his death before, Right so they have him slain, and that anon. And when that this was done thus spake that one: 'Now let us sit and drink, and make us merry, But certés I suppose that Avicenne [The Good Parson.] * A true good man there was there of religion, As proven oft; to all who lack'd a friend. Wide was his cure; the houses far asunder, This noble ensample to his flock he gave, He never set his benefice to hire, Tho holy in himself, and virtuous, Him would he sharply with reproof astound. He waited not on pomp or reverence, [An Ironical Ballad on the Duplicity of Women.1 This world is full of variance In everything, who taketh heed, That faith and trust, and all constance, Exiléd be, this is no drede,1 And save only in womanhead, But for all that yet, as I read, Also that the fresh summer flowers, The crooked moon, (this is no tale), The lusty freshé summer's day, The sea eke with his sterné wawess Each day yfloweth new again, Fortunés wheel go'th round about What man ymay the wind restrain, At every haven they can arrive That Solomon was not so sage 1 Fear. Surety, steadfastness. 8 Doubtlesa. 4 Shining. 5 Truth. 6 Pleasant. 7 Entire, whole, sours 8 Waves. 9 Complete. 10 Change. 12 Novelty, inconstancy. 15 Manage. 11 Natural right. 14 Steering, pilotage. 18 Guide : ۱۰ 1 1 Therefore whoso doth them accuse Of any double intentión, Te speaké rown, other to muse,1 So well fortunéd is their chance, Sampson yhad experience That women were full true yfound; When Dalila of innocence With shearés 'gan his hair to round ;4 To speak also of Rosamond, And Ch opatra's faithfulness, The stories plainly will confound Men that apeach their doubleness. Single thing is not ypraised, Nor of old is of no renown, In balance when they be ypesed,6 Most love exchange and doubleness. [Last Verses of Chaucer, written on his Deathbed.] Fly from the press, and dwell with sothfastness;10 Sufice unto thy goodil though it be small; For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness, Press12 hath envy, and weal is blent13 o'er all; | Savcurls no more than thee behoven shall; | Rede well thyself, that otherfolk can'st rede, And truth thee shall deliver 't is no drede.16 Pain thee not each crooked to redress That20 thee is sent receive in buxomness;21 Either in whispering or musing. To find a flaw in. Though clerks, or scholars, represent women to be like ambs for their truth and sincerity, yet they are all fraught, filled with doubleness, or falsehood.' -Urry. 4 To round off, to cut round. & Impeach. Ypesed, Fr. pese-weighed. 7 Justice. 8 Security. 11 Be satisfied with thy wealth. Waiveth thy lust and let thy ghost1 thee lead, And truth thee shall deliver 't is no drede. However far the genius of Chaucer transcended that of all preceding writers, he was not the solitary light of his age. The national mind and the national language appear, indeed, to have now arrived at a certain degree of ripeness, favourable for the production of able writers in both prose and verse.* Heretofore, Norman French had been the language of education, of the court, and of legal documents; and when the Normanised Anglo-Saxon was employed by literary men, it was for the special purpose, as they were usually very careful to mention, of conveying instruction to the common people. But now the distinction between the conquering Normans and subjected Anglo-Saxons was nearly lost in a new and fraternal national feeling, which recognised the country under the sole name of England, and the people and language under the single appellation of English. Edward III. substituted the use of English for that of French in the public acts and judicial proceedings; and the schoolmasters, for the first time, in the same reign, caused their pupils to construe the classical tongues into the vernacular.† The consequence of this ripening of the national mind and language was, that, while English heroism was gaining the victories of Cressy and Poitiers, English genius was achieving milder and more beneficial triumphs, in the productions of Chaucer, of Gower, and of Wickliffe. JOHN GOWER. JOHN GOWER is supposed to have been born some time about the year 1325, and to have consequently been a few years older than Chaucer. He was a gentleman, possessing a considerable amount of property in land, in the counties of Nottingham and Suffolk. In his latter years, he appears, like Chaucer, to have been a retainer of the Lancaster branch of the royal family, which subsequently ascended the throne; and his death took place in 1408, before which period he had become blind. Gower wrote a poetical work in three parts, which were respectively entitled Speculum Meditantis, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis; the last, which is a grave discussion of the morals and metaphysics of love, being the only part written in English. The solemn sententiousness of this work caused Chaucer, and subsequently Lyndsay, to denominate its author "the moral Gower;" he is, however, considerably inferior to the author of the Canterbury Tales, in almost all the qualifications of a true poet. Crowd. Striving. Counsel. Judge. 10 Truth. 13 Prosperity has ceased. 14 Taste. 16 Without fear. 17 Nail. 18 Earthen pitcher. 1 Spirit. * It is always to be kept in mind that the language employed in literary composition is apt to be different from that used by the bulk of the people in ordinary discourse. The literary language of these early times was probably much more refined than the colloquial. During the fourteenth century, various dialects of English were spoken in different parts of the country, and the mode of pronunciation also was very far from being uniform. Trevisa, a historian who wrote about 1380, remarks that, Hit semeth a grete wonder that Englyssmen have so grete dyversyte in their owin langage in sowne and in spekyin of it, which is all in one ilonde.' The prevalent harshness of pronunciation is thus described by the same writer: 'Some use straunge wlaffing, chytryng, harring, garrying, and grys byting. The langage of the Northumbres, and specyally at Yorke, is so sharpe, slytting, frotyng, and unshape, that wa sothern men maye unneth understande that langage.' Even in the reign of Elizabeth, as we learn from Holinshed's Chronicle, the dialects spoken in different parts of the country were exceedingly various. + Mr Hallam mentions, on the authority of Mr Stevenson, sub-commissioner of public records, that in England, all letters, even of a private nature, were written in Latin till the beginning of the reign of Edward I., soon after 1270, when a sudden change brought in the use of French.-Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth c turies, i. 63. Gower. Mr Warton has happily selected a few passages from Gower, which convey a lively expression of natural feeling, and give a favourable impression of the author. Speaking of the gratification which his passion receives from the sense of hearing, he says, that to hear his lady speak is more delicious than to feast on all the dainties that could be compounded by a cook of Lombardy. These are not so restorative As bin the wordes of hir mouth; He adds (reduced spelling) Full oft time it falleth so That when her list on nights wake,4 Whon she chooses. 2 Physician. 3 A dainty dish. [Episode of Roriphele.] [Rosiphele, princess of Armenia, a lady of surpassing beauty, but insensible to the power of love, is represented by the poet as reduced to an obedience to Cupid, by a vision which befell her on a May-day ramble. The opening of this episode is as fol lows:-] When come was the month of May, The saddles were of such a pride, Might not have bought, after the worth: [In the rear of this splendid troop of ladies, the princess beheld one, mounted on a miserable steed, wretchedly adorned in everything excepting the bridle. On questioning this straggler why she was so unlike her companions, the visionary lady replied that the latter were receiving the bright reward of having loved faithfully, and that she herself was suffering punishment for cruelty to her admirers. The reason that the bridle alone resembled those of her companions was, that for the last fortnight she had been sincerely in love, and a change for the better was in consequence beginning to show itself in her accoutrements. The parting words of the dame are-] Now have ye heard mine answer; [It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the hard heart of the princess of Armenia is duly impressed by this lesson.] 1 Few of her women knew of it. A grove. [The Envious Man and the Miser.] And for that cause down he sent So it befel upon a day, That one of them was covetous, And thus when he hath knowledging, The Covetous was wonder glad; This word was not so soon spoke, Tho was that other glad enough: The language at this time used in the lowland districts of Scotland was based, like that of England, in the Teutonic, and it had, like the contemporary English, a Norman admixture. To account for these circumstances, some have supposed that the language of England, in its various shades of improvement, reached the north through the settlers who are known to have flocked thither from England during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Others suggest that the great body of the Scottish people, apart from the Highlanders, must have been of Teutonic origin, and they point to the very probable theory as to the Picts having been a German race. They further suggest, that a Norman admixture might readily come to the national tongue, through the large intercourse between the two countries during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Thus, it is presumed, 'our common language was separately formed in the two countries, and owed its identity to its being constructed of similar materials, by similar gradations, and by nations in the same state of society. Whatever might be the cause, there can be no doubt that the language used by the first Scottish vernacular writers in the fourteenth century, greatly resembles that used contemporaneously in England. that office in 1357. Little is known of his persona. history: we may presume that he was a man of political talent, from his being chosen by the bishop of Aberdeen to act as his commissioner at Edinburgh when the ransom of David II. was debated; and of learning, from his having several times accompanied men of rank to study at Oxford. Barbour probably formed his taste upon the romance writers who flourished before him in England. A lost work of his, entitled The Brute, probably another in addition to the many versions of the story of Brutus of Troy, first made popular by Geoffrey of Monmouth, sug gests the idea of an imitation of the romances; and his sole remaining work, The Bruce, is altogether of that character. It is not unlikely that, in The brute, Barbour adopted all the fables he could find: in writing The Bruce, he would, in like manner, adopt every tradition respecting his hero, besides searching for more authoritative materials. We must not be surprised that, while the first would be valueless as a history, the second is a most important document. There would be the same wish for truth, and the same inability to distinguish it, in both cases; but, in the latter, it chanced that the events were of recent occurrence, and therefore came to our metrical historian comparatively undistorted. The Bruce, in reality, is a complete history of the memorable transactions by which King Robert I. asserted the independency of Scotland, and obtained its crown for his family. At the same time, it is far from being destitute of poetical spirit or rhythmical sweetness and harmony. It contains many vividly descriptive passages, and abounds in dignified and even in pathetic sentiment. This poem, which was completed in 1375, is in octo-syllabic lines, forming rhymed couplets, of which there are seven thousand. Barbour died at an advanced age in 1396. Thon. 2 Say. What thing he was most disposed to crave. * Ellis. [Apostrophe to Freedom.] [Barbour, contemplating the enslaved condition of his country, breaks out into the following animated lines on the blessings of liberty.-Ellis.] A! fredome is a nobill thing! [Death of Sir Henry De Bohun.] [This incident took place on the eve of the Battle of Bannockburn.] And when the king wist that they were Caused, ordered. * In this and the subsequent extract, the language is as far possible reduced to modern spelling. And by the crown that was set Saw him come, forouth all his fears, Sae smartly that gude knicht has slain, [The Battle of Bannockburn.] When this was said 1 Haste. 2 Openly, clearly. 8 They sprang forward at once, against each other, in a line. 4 Reached. 5 Earth. 6 Destruction. 7 Lamented. 8 Sir Ingram D'Umphraville. Fear of death. |