_WILLIAM LANGLAND AND HIS VISIONS._
Gower's books were made out of books. Chaucer's friend carries us in
imagination to the paradise of Eros, or to a Patmos of his own
invention, from whence he foretells the end of the world; but whatever
he does or says we are always perfectly aware of where we are: we are in
his library.
It is quite different with another poet of this period, a mysterious and
intangible personage, whose very name is doubtful, whose writings had
great influence, and that no one appears to have seen, concerning whom
we possess no contemporaneous information. Like Gower, strong ties bind
him to the past; but Gower is linked to Angevin England, and William
Langland, if such be really his name, to the remote England of the
Saxons and Scandinavians. His books are not made out of books; they are
made of real life, of things seen, of dreams dreamt, of feelings
actually experienced. He is the exact opposite of Gower, he completes
Chaucer himself. When the "Canterbury Tales" are read, it seems as
though all England were described in them; when the Visions of Langland
are opened, it is seen that Chaucer had not said everything. Langland
is without comparison the greatest poet after Chaucer in the mediaeval
literature of England.[629]
I.
His Visions have been preserved for us in a considerable number of
manuscripts. They differ greatly among each other; Langland appears to
have absorbed himself in his work, continually remodelling and adding to
it. No poem has been more truly lived than this one; it was the author's
shelter, his real house, his real church; he always came back there to
pray, to tell his sorrows--to live in it. Hence strange incoherencies,
and at the same time many unexpected lights. The spirit by which
Langland is animated is the spirit of the Middle Ages, powerful,
desultory, limitless. A classic author makes a plan, establishes noble
proportions, conceives a definite work, and completes it; the poet of
the Middle Ages, if he makes a plan, rarely keeps to it; he alters it as
he goes along, adding a porch, a wing, a chapel to his edifice: a
cathedral in mediaeval times was never finished. Some authors, it is
true, were already touched by classic influence, and had an idea of
measure; such was the case with Chaucer, but not with Langland; anything
and everything finds place in his work. By collecting the more
characteristic notes scattered in his poem, sketch-books full of
striking examples might be formed, illustrative of English life in the
fourteenth century, to compare with Chaucer's, of the political and
religious history of the nation, and also of the biography of the
author.
Allusions to events of the day which abound in the poem enable us to
date it. Three principal versions exist,[630] without counting several
intermediate remodellings; the first contains twelve cantos or _passus_,
the second twenty, the third twenty-three; their probable dates are
1362-3, 1376-7, and 1398-9.[631]
The numerous allusions to himself made by the author, principally in the
last text of his poem, when, according to the wont of old men, he chose
to tell the tale of his past life, allow us to form an idea of what his
material as well as moral biography must have been. He was probably born
in 1331 or 1332, at Cleobury Mortimer, as it seems, in the county of
Shrewsbury, not far from the border of Wales. He was (I think) of low
extraction, and appears to have escaped bondage owing to the help of
patrons who were pleased by his ready intelligence. From childhood he
was used to peasants and poor folk; he describes their habits as one
familiarised with them, and their cottages as one who knows them well.
His life oscillated chiefly between two localities, Malvern and London.
Even when he resides in the latter place, his thoughts turn to Malvern,
to its hills and verdure; he imagines himself there; for tender ties,
those ties that bind men to mother earth, and which are only formed in
childhood, endear the place to him. A convent and a school formerly
existed at Malvern, and there in all likelihood Langland first studied.
The church where he came to pray still exists, built of red sandstone, a
structure of different epochs, where the Norman style and perpendicular
Gothic unite. Behind the village rise steep hills, covered with gorse,
ferns, heather, and moss. Their highest point quite at the end of the
chain, towards Wales, is crowned by Roman earthworks. From thence can be
descried the vast plain where flows the Severn, crossed by streams
bordered by rows of trees taking blue tints in the distance, spotted
with lights and shadows, as the clouds pass in the ever-varying sky.
Meadows alternate with fields of waving grain; the square tower of
Worcester rises to the left, and away to the east those mountains are
seen that witnessed the feats of Arthur. This wide expanse was later to
give the poet his idea of the world's plain, "a fair feld ful of folke,"
where he will assemble all humanity, as in a Valley of Jehoshaphat. He
enjoys wandering in this "wilde wildernesse," attracted by "the layes
the levely foules made."
From childhood imagination predominates in him; his intellectual
curiosity and facility are very great. He is a vagabond by nature, both
mentally and physically; he roams over the domains of science as he did
over his beloved hills, at random, plunging into theology, logic, law,
astronomy, "an harde thynge"; or losing himself in reveries, reading
romances of chivalry, following Ymagynatyf, who never rests: "Idel was I
nevere." He studies the properties of animals, stones, and plants, a
little from nature and a little from books; now he talks as Euphues will
do later, and his natural mythology will cause a smile; and now he
speaks as one country-bred, who has seen with his own eyes, like Burns,
a bird build her nest, and has patiently watched her do it. Sometimes
the animal is a living one, that leaps from bough to bough in the
sunlight; at others, it is a strange beast, fit only to dwell among the
stone foliage of a cathedral cornice.
He knows French and Latin; he has some tincture of the classics; he
would like to know everything:
Alle the sciences under sonne | and alle the sotyle craftes,
I wolde I knewe and couth | kyndely in myne herte![632]
But, in that as in other things, his will is not on a par with his
aspirations: this inadequacy was the cause of numberless
disappointments. Thou art, Clergye says most appropriately, one of those
who want to know but hate to study:
The wer lef to lerne | but loth for to stodie.[633]
Even in early youth his mind seems to lack balance; being as yet a boy,
he is already a soul in trouble.
His dreams at this time were not all dark ones; radiant apparitions came
to him. Thou art young and lusty, said one, and hast years many before
thee to live and to love; look in this mirror, and see the wonders and
joys of love. I shall follow thee, said another, till thou becomest a
lord, and hast domains.[634] But one by one the lights faded around him;
his patrons died, and this was the end of his ambitions; for he was not
one of those men able by sheer strength of will to make up for outside
help when that fails them. His will was diseased; an endless grief began
for him. Being dependent on his "Clergye" for a livelihood, he went to
London, and tried to earn his daily bread by means of it, of "that
labour" which he had "lerned best."[635]
Religious life in the Middle Ages had not those well-defined and visible
landmarks to which we are accustomed. Nowadays one either is or is not
of the Church; formerly, no such obvious divisions existed. Religious
life spread through society, like an immense river without dykes,
swollen by innumerable affluents, whose subterranean penetrations
impregnated even the soil through which they did not actually flow. From
this arose numerous situations difficult to define, bordering at once on
the world and on the Church, a state of things with which there is no
analogy now, except in Rome itself, where the religious life of the
Middle Ages still partly continues.
Numerous semi-religious and slightly remunerative functions were
accessible to clerks, who were not, however, obliged to renounce the
world on that account. The great thing in the hour of death being to
ensure the salvation of the soul, men of fortune continued, and
sometimes began, their good works at that hour. They endeavoured to win
Paradise by proxy; they left directions in their will that, by means of
lawful hire, soldiers should be sent to battle with the infidel; and
they also founded what were called "_chantries_." A sum of money was
left by them in order that masses, or the service for the dead, or both,
should be chanted for the repose of their souls.
The number of these chantries was countless; every arch in the aisles of
the cathedrals contained some, where the service for the dead was sung;
sometimes separate edifices were built with this view. A priest
celebrated masses when the founder had asked for them; and clerks
performed the office of choristers, having, for the most part, simply
received the tonsure, and not being necessarily in holy orders. It was,
for them all, a career, almost a trade; giving rise to discussions
concerning salaries, and even to actual strikes. These services derived
the name under which they commonly went from one of the words of the
liturgy sung; they were called _Placebos_ and _Diriges_. The word
"dirge" has passed into the English language, and is derived from the
latter.
To psalmody for money, to chant the same words from day to day and from
year to year, transforming into a mere mechanical toil the divine gift
and duty of prayer, could not answer the ideal of life conceived by a
proud and generous soul filled with vast thoughts. Langland, however,
was obliged to curb his mind to this work; _Placebo_ and _Dirige_ became
his _tools_:
The lomes that ich laboure with | and lyflode deserve.[636]
Like many others whose will is diseased, he condemned the abuse and
profited by it. The fairies at his birth had promised riches, and he was
poor; they had whispered of love, and an unsatisfactory marriage had
closed the door on love, and debarred him from preferment to the highest
ecclesiastical ranks. Langland lives miserably with his wife Catherine
and his daughter Nicolette, in a house in Cornhill, not far from St.
Paul's, the cathedral of many chantries,[637] and not far from that
tower of Aldgate, to which about this time that other poet, Chaucer,
directed his steps, he, too, solitary and lost in dreams.
Langland has depicted himself at this period of his existence a great,
gaunt figure, dressed in sombre garments with large folds, sad in a
grief without end, bewailing the protectors of his childhood and his
lost illusions, seeing nothing but clouds on the horizon of his life. He
begins no new friendships; he forms ties with no one; he follows the
crowded streets of the city, elbowing lords, lawyers, and ladies of
fashion; he greets no one. Men wearing furs and silver pendants, rich
garments and collars of gold, brush past him, and he knows them not.
Gold collars ought to be saluted, but he does not do it; he does not say
to them: "God loke yow Lordes!" But then his air is so absent, so
strange, that instead of quarrelling with him people shrug their
shoulders, and say: He is "a fole"; he is mad.[638] Mad! the word recurs
again and again under his pen, the idea presents itself incessantly to
his mind, under every shape, as though he were possessed by it: "fole,"
"frantyk," "ydiote!" He sees around him nothing but dismal spectres:
Age, Penury, Disease.
To these material woes are added mental ones. In the darkness of this
world shines at least a distant ray, far off beyond the grave. But, at
times, even this light wavers; clouds obscure and apparently extinguish
it. Doubts assail the soul of the dreamer; theology ought to elucidate,
but, on the contrary, only darkens them:
The more I muse there-inne | the mistier it seemeth,
And the depper I devyne | the darker me it thinketh.[639]
How is it possible to reconcile the teachings of theology with our idea
of justice? And certain thoughts constantly recur to the poet, and shake
the edifice of his faith; he drives them away, they reappear; he is
bewitched by them and cannot exorcise these demons. Who had a more
elevated mind than Aristotle, and who was wiser than Solomon? Still they
are held by Holy-Church "bothe ydampned!" and on Good Friday, what do
we see? A felon is saved who had lived all his life in lies and thefts;
he was saved at once "with-outen penaunce of purgatorie." Adam, Isaiah,
and all the prophets remained "many longe yeres" with Lucifer, and--
A robbere was yraunceouned | rather than thei alle![640]
He wishes he had thought less, learnt less, "conned" fewer books, and
preserved for himself the quiet, "sad bileve" of "plowmen and
pastoures"; happy men who can
Percen with a _pater noster_ | the paleys of hevene![641]
In the midst of these trials and sorrows, Langland had one refuge: his
book. His poem made up for those things which life had denied him. Why
make verses, why write, said Ymagynatyf to him; are there not "bokes
ynowe?"[3] But without his book, Langland could not have lived, like
those fathers whose existence is bound up in that of their child, and
who die if he dies. When he had finished it, and though his intention
was never to touch it again, for in it he announced his own death, he
still began it over again, once, twice; he worked at it all his life.
What was the end of that life? No one knows. Some indications tend to
show that in his later years he left London, where he had led his
troubled life to return to the Western country.[642] There we should
like to think of him, soothed, healed, resigned, and watching that sun
decline in the west which he had seen rise, many years before, "in a
somere seyson."
II.
In this summer season, in the freshness of the morning, to the musical
sound of waters, "it sowned so murrie," the poet, lingering on the
summit of Malvern hills, falls asleep, and the first of his visions
begins. He contemplates
Al the welthe of this worlde | and the woo bothe;
and, in an immense plain, a "feld ful of folke," he notices the bustle
and movements of mankind,
Of alle maner of men | the mene and the riche.
Mankind is represented by typical specimens of all sorts: knights,
monks, parsons, workmen singing French songs, cooks crying: Hot pies!
"Hote pyes, hote!" pardoners, pilgrims, preachers, beggars, janglers who
will not work, japers and "mynstralles" that sell "glee." They are, or
nearly so, the same beings Chaucer assembled at the "Tabard" inn, on the
eve of his pilgrimage to Canterbury. This crowd has likewise a
pilgrimage to make, not, however, on the sunny high-road that leads from
Southwark to the shrine of St. Thomas. No, they journey through abstract
countries, and have to accomplish, some three hundred years before
Bunyan's Christian, their pilgrim's progress in search of Truth and of
Supreme Good.
A lady appears, who explains the landscape and the vision; she is
Holy-Church. Yonder tower is the tower of Truth. This castle is the
"Castel of Care" that contains "Wronge." Holy-Church points out how
mankind ought to live, and teaches kings and knights their duties with
regard to Truth.
Here comes Lady Meed, a lady of importance, whose friendship means
perdition, yet without whom nothing can be done, and who plays an
immense part in the world. The monosyllable which designates her has a
vague and extended signification; it means both reward and bribery.
Disinterestedness, the virtue of noble minds, being rare in this world,
scarcely anything is undertaken without hope of recompense, and what
man, toiling solely with a view to recompense, is quite safe from
bribery? So Lady Meed is there, beautiful, alluring, perplexing; to get
on without her is impossible, and yet it is hard to know what to do with
her. She is about to marry "Fals"; the friends and witnesses have
arrived, the marriage deed is drawn up; the pair are to have the
"Erldome of Envye," and other territories that recall the worst regions
of the celebrated map of the Tendre. Opposition is made to the marriage,
and the whole wedding party starts for Westminster, where the cause is
to be determined; friends, relations, bystanders; on foot, on horseback,
and in carriages; a singular procession!
The king, notified of the coming of this _cortege_, publicly declares he
will deal justice to the knaves, and the procession melts away; most of
the friends disappear at a racing pace through the lanes of London. The
poet hastens to lodge the greatest scoundrels with the people he hates,
and has them received with open arms. "Gyle" is welcomed by the
merchants, who dress him as an apprentice, and make him wait on their
customers. "Lyer" has at first hard work to find shelter; he hides in
the obscure holes of the alleys, "lorkynge thorw lanes"; no door opens,
his felonies are too notorious. At last, the pardoners "hadden pite and
pullede hym to house"; they washed him and clothed him and sent him to
church on Sundays with bulls and seals appended, to sell "pardons for
pans" (pence). Then leeches send him letters to say that if he would
assist them "waters to loke," he should be well received; spicers have
an interview with him; minstrels and messengers keep him "half a yere
and eleve dayes"; friars dress him as a friar, and, with them, he forms
the friendliest ties of all.[643]
Lady Meed appears before the king's tribunal; she is beautiful, she
looks gentle, she produces a great effect; she is Phryne before her
judges with the addition of a garment. The judges melt, they cheer her,
and so do the clerks, the friars, and all those that approach her. She
is so pretty! and so kind! Anything you will, she wills it too; no one
feels bashful in her presence; she is indeed so kind! A friar offers her
the boon of an absolution, which he will grant her "himself"; but she
must do good to the brotherhood: We have a window begun that will cost
us dear; if you would pay for the stained glass of the gable, your name
should be engraved thereon, and to heaven would go your soul. Meed is
willing. The king appears and examines her; he decides to marry her, not
to Fals, but to the knight Conscience. Meed is willing; she is always
willing.
The knight comes, refuses, and lays bare the ill-practices of Meed, who
corrupts all the orders of the kingdom, and has caused the death of
"yowre fadre" (your father, King Edward II.). She would not be an
amiable spouse; she is as "comune as the cart-wey." She connives with
the Pope in the presentation to benefices; she obtains bishoprics for
fools, "theighe they be lewed."
Meed weeps, which is already a good answer; then, having recovered the
use of speech, she defends herself cleverly. The world would fall into a
torpor without Meed; knights would no longer care for kings; priests
would no longer say masses; minstrels would sing no more songs;
merchants would not trade; and even beggars would no longer beg.
The knight tartly replies: There are two kinds of Meed; we knew it;
there is reward, and there is bribery, but they are always confounded.
Ah! if Reason reigned in this world instead of Meed, the golden age
would return; no more wars; no more of these varieties of tribunals,
where Justice herself gets confused. At this Meed becomes "wroth as the
wynde."[644]
Enough, says the king; I can stand you no longer; you must both serve
me:
"Kisse hir," quod the kynge | "Conscience, I hote (bid)."
--"Nay bi Criste!"[645]
the knight answers, and the quarrel continues. They send for
Reason to decide it. Reason has his horses saddled; they have
interminable names, such as "Suffre-til-I-see-my-time." Long before
the day of the Puritans, our visionary employs names equivalent
to sentences; we meet, in his poem, with a little girl, called
Behave-well-or-thy-mother-will-give-thee-a-whipping,[646] scarcely a
practical name for everyday life; another personage, Evan the Welshman,
rejoices in a name six lines long.
Reason arrives at Court; the dispute between Meed and Conscience is
dropped and forgotten, for another one has arisen. "Thanne come Pees
into Parlement;" Peace presents a petition against Wrong, and
enumerates his evil actions. He has led astray Rose and Margaret; he
keeps a troup of retainers who assist him in his misdeeds; he attacks
farms, and carries off the crops; he is so powerful that none dare stir
or complain. These are not vain fancies; the Rolls of Parliament, the
actual Parliament that was sitting at Westminster, contain numbers of
similar petitions, where the real name of Wrong is given, and where the
king endeavours to reply, as he does in the poem, according to the
counsels of Reason.
Reason makes a speech to the entire nation, assembled in that plain
which is discovered from the heights of Malvern, and where we found
ourselves at the beginning of the Visions.
Then a change of scene. These scene-shiftings are frequent, unexpected,
and rapid as in an opera. "Then, ..." says the poet, without further
explanation: then the scene shifts; the plain has disappeared; a new
personage, Repentance, now listens to the Confession of the Deadly Sins.
This is one of the most striking passages of the poem; in spite of their
abstract names, these sins are tangible realities; the author describes
their shape and their costumes; some are bony, others are tun-bellied;
singular abstractions with warts on their noses! We were just now in
Parliament, with the victims of the powerful and the wicked; we now hear
the general confession of England in the time of the Plantagenets.[647]
That the conversion may be a lasting one, Truth must be sought after.
Piers Plowman appears, a mystic personage, a variable emblem, that here
simply represents the man of "good will," and elsewhere stands for
Christ himself. He teaches the way; gates must be entered, castles
encountered, and the Ten Commandments will be passed through. Above
all, he teaches every one his present duties, his active and definite
obligations; he protests against useless and unoccupied lives, against
those who have since been termed "dilettante," for whom life is a sight,
and who limit their function to being sight-seers, to amusing themselves
and judging others. All those who live upon earth have actual practical
duties, even you, lovely ladies:
And ye lovely ladyes | with youre longe fyngres.
All must defend, or till, or sow the field of life. The ploughing
commences, but it is soon apparent that some pretend to labour and
labour not; they are lazy or talkative, and sing songs. Piers succeeds
in mastering them by the help of Hunger. Thanks to Hunger and Truth,
distant possibilities are seen of a reform, of a future Golden Age, an
island of England that shall be similar to the island of Utopia,
imagined later by another Englishman.
The vision rises and fades away; another vision and another pilgrimage
commence, and occupy all the remainder of the poem, that is, from the
eleventh to the twenty-third passus (C. text). The poet endeavours to
join in their dwellings Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest; in other terms:
Good-life, Better-life, and Best-life. All this part of the book is
filled with sermons, most of them energetic, eloquent, spirited, full of
masterly touches, leaving an ineffaceable impression on the memory and
the heart: sermon of Study on the Bible and on Arts and Letters; sermons
of Clergye and of Ymagynatyf; dialogue between Hawkyn (active life) and
Patience; sermons of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Several visions are
intermingled with these sermons: visions of the arrival of Christ in
Jerusalem, and of the Passion; visions of hell attacked by Jesus, and
defended by Satan and Lucifer with guns, "brasene gonnes," a then recent
invention, which appeared particularly diabolical. Milton's Satan, in
spite of having had three hundred years in which to improve his tactics,
will find nothing better; his batteries are ranged in good order; a
seraph stands behind each cannon with lighted match; at the first
discharge, angels and archangels fall to the ground:
By thousands, Angel on Archangel rolled.
They are not killed, but painfully suffer from a knowledge that they
look ridiculous: "an indecent overthrow," they call it. The fiends,
exhilarated by this sight, roar noisily, and it is hard indeed for us to
take a tragical view of the massacre.[648]
In the Visions, Christ, conqueror of hell, liberates the souls that
await his coming, and the poet awakes to the sounds of bells on Easter
morning.
The poem ends amid doleful apparitions; now comes Antichrist, then Old
Age, and Death. Years have fled, death draws near; only a short time
remains to live; how employ it to the best advantage? (Dobet). Advise
me, Nature! cries the poet. "Love!" replies Nature:
"Lerne to love," quod Kynde | "and leve of alle othre."
III.
Chaucer, with his genius and his manifold qualities, his gaiety and his
gracefulness, his faculty of observation and that apprehensiveness of
mind which enables him to sympathise with the most diverse specimens of
humanity, has drawn an immortal picture of mediaeval England. In certain
respects, however, the description is incomplete, and one must borrow
from Langland some finishing touches.
We owe to Chaucer's horror of vain abstractions the individuality of
each one of his personages; all classes of society are represented in
his works; but the types which impersonate them are so clearly
characterised, their singleness is so marked, that on seeing them we
think of them alone and of no one else. We are so absorbed in the
contemplation of this or that man that we think no more of the class,
the _ensemble_, the nation.
The active and actual passions of the multitude, the subterranean lavas
which simmer beneath a brittle crust of good order and regular
administration, all the latent possibilities of volcanoes which this
inward fire betokens, are, on the contrary, always present to the mind
of the visionary; rumblings are heard, and they herald the earthquake.
The vehement and passionate England that produced the great rising of
1381, and the heresy of Wyclif, that later on will give birth to the
Cavaliers and Puritans, is contained in essence in Langland's work; we
divine, we foresee her. Chaucer's book is, undoubtedly, not in
contradiction to that England, but it screens and allows her to be
forgotten. In their anger Chaucer's people exchange blows on the
highway; Langland's crowds in their anger sack the palace of the Savoy,
and take the Tower of London.
Langland thus shows us what we find in none of his contemporaries:
crowds, groups, classes, living and individualised; the merchant class,
the religious world, the Commons of England. He is, above all, the only
author who gives a sufficient and contemporaneous idea of that grand
phenomenon, the power of Parliament. Chaucer who was himself a member of
that assembly, sends his franklin there; he mentions the fact, and
nothing more; the part played by the franklin in that group, amid that
concourse of human beings, is not described. On the other hand, an
admirable picture represents him keeping open house, and ordering
capons, partridges, and "poynant sauce" in abundance. At home, his
personality stands out in relief; but yonder, at Westminster, the
franklin was doubtless lost in the crowd; and crowds had little interest
for Chaucer.
In two documents only does that power appear great and impressive as it
really was, and those documents are: the Rolls wherein are recorded the
acts of Parliament, and the poem of William Langland. No one before him,
none of his contemporaries, had seen so clearly how the matter stood.
The whole organisation of the English State is summed up in a line of
admirable conciseness and energy, in which the poet shows the king
surrounded by his people:
Knyghthod hym ladde,
Might of the comunes | made hym to regne.[649]
The power of the Commons is always present to the mind of Langland; he
observes the impossibility of doing without them. When the king is
inclined to stretch his prerogative beyond measure, when he gives in his
speeches a foretaste of the theory of divine right, when he speaks as
did Richard II. a few years after, and the Stuarts three centuries
later, when he boasts of being the ruler of all, of being "hed of lawe,"
while the Clergy and Commons are but members of the same, Langland stops
him, and through the mouth of Conscience, adds a menacing clause:
"In condicioun," quod Conscience, | "that thow konne defende
And rule thi rewme in resoun | right wel, and in treuth."[650]
The deposition of Richard, accused of having stated, nearly in the same
terms, "that he dictated from his lips the laws of his kingdom,"[651]
and the fall of the Stuarts, are contained, so to say, in these almost
prophetic words.
On nearly all the questions which agitate men's minds in the fourteenth
century, Langland agrees with the Commons, and, as we follow from year
to year the Rolls of Parliament, petitions or decisions are found
inspired by the same views as those Langland entertained; his work at
times reads like a poetical commentary of the Rolls. Langland, as the
Commons, is in favour of the old division of classes, of the continuance
of bondage, and of the regulation of wages by the State; he feels
nothing but hatred for Lombard and Jew bankers, for royal purveyors, and
forestallers. In the same way as the Commons, he is in favour of peace
with France; his attention is concentrated on matters purely English;
distant wars fill him with anxiety. He would willingly have kept to the
peace of Bretigny, he hopes the Crusades may not recommence. He is above
all _insular_. Like the Commons he recognises the religious authority of
the Pope, but protests against the Pope's encroachments, and against the
interference of the sovereign-pontiff in temporal matters. The extension
of the papal power in England appears to him excessive; he protests
against appeals to the Court of Rome; he is of opinion that the wealth
of the Church is hurtful to her; he shares the sentiments of the Commons
of the Good Parliament towards what they do not hesitate to term the
sinful town of Avignon: "la peccherouse cite d'Avenon."[652] He is
indignant with the bishops, masters, and doctors that allow themselves
to become domesticated, and:
... serven as servantz | lordes and ladyes,
And in stede of stuwardes | sytten and demen.[653]
Going down in this manner, step by step, Langland reaches the strange,
grimacing, unpardonable herd of liars, knaves, and cheats who traffic in
holy things, absolve for money, sell heaven, deceive the simple, and
appear as if they "hadden leve to lye al here lyf after."[654] In this
nethermost circle of his hell, where he scourges them with incessant
raillery, the poet confines pell-mell all these glutted unbelievers.
Like hardy parasitical plants, they have disjoined the tiles and stones
of the sacred edifice, so that the wind steals in, and the rain
penetrates: shameless pardoners they are, friars, pilgrims, hermits,
with nothing of the saint about them save the garb, whose example,
unless a stop is put to it, will teach the world to despise clerical
dress, those who wear it, and the religion, even, that tolerates and
supports them.
At this depth, and in the dim recesses where he casts the rays of his
lantern, Langland spares none; his ferocious laugh is reverberated by
the walls, and the scared night-birds take to flight. His mirth is not
the mirth of Chaucer, itself less light than the mirth of France; not
the joyous peal of laughter which rang out on the Canterbury road,
welcoming the discourses of the exhibitor of relics, and the far from
disinterested sermons of the friar to sick Thomas. It is a woful and
terrible laugh, harbinger of the final catastrophe and doom. What they
have heard in the plain of Malvern, the accursed ones will hear again in
the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
They have now no choice, but must come out of their holes; and they come
forward into the light of day, hideous and grotesque, saturated with the
moisture of their dismal vaults; the sun blinds them, the fresh air
makes them giddy; they present a sorry figure. Unlike the pilgrims of
Canterbury, they derive no benefit from the feelings of indulgence that
softens our hearts on a gay April morn; they will learn to know the
difference between the laugh that pardons and the laugh that kills.
Langland takes them up, lets them fall, and takes them up again; he
never wearies of this cruel sport; he presents them to us now
separately, and now collectively: packs of pilgrims, "eremytes on an
hep," pilgrims that run to St. James's in Spain, to Rome, to Rocamadour
in Guyenne, who have paid visits to every saint. But have they ever
sought for St. Truth? No, never! Will they ever know the real place
where they might find St. James? Will they suspect that St. James should
be souht | ther poure syke lyggen (he)
In prisons and in poore cotes?[655]
They seek St. James in Spain, and St. James is at their gates; they
elbow him each day, and they recognise him not.
What sight can comfort us for these sad things? That of the poor and
disinterested man, of the honest and courageous labourer. Langland here
shows himself truly original: the guide he has chosen differs as much
from the Virgil of Dante as from the Lover that Guillaume de Lorris
follows through the paths of the Garden of the Rose. The English
visionary is led by Piers Plowman; Piers is the mainspring of the State;
he realises that ideal of disinterestedness, conscience, reason, which
fills the soul of our poet; he is the real hero of the work. Bent over
the soil, patient as the oxen that he goads, he performs each day his
sacred task; the years pass over his whitening head, and, from the dawn
of life to its twilight, he follows ceaselessly the same endless furrow,
pursuing behind the plough his eternal pilgrimage.
Around him the idle sleep, the careless sing; they pretend to cheer
others by their humming; they trill: "Hoy! troly lolly!" Piers shall
feed every one, except these useless ones; he shall not feed "Jakke the
jogeloure and Jonet ... and Danyel the dys-playere and Denote the baude,
and frere the faytoure, ..." for, all whose name is entered "in the
legende of lif" must take life seriously.[656] There is no place in this
world for people who are not in earnest; every class that is content to
perform its duties imperfectly and without sincerity, that fulfils them
without eagerness, without passion, without pleasure, without striving
to attain the best possible result and do better than the preceding
generation, will perish. So much the more surely shall perish the class
that ceases to justify its privileges by its services: this is the great
law propounded in our own day by Taine. Langland lets loose upon the
indolent, the careless, the busybodies who talk much and work little, a
foe more terrible and more real then than now: Hunger. Piers undertakes
the care of all sincere people, and Hunger looks after the rest. All
this part of the poem is nothing but an eloquent declaration of man's
duties, and is one of the finest pages of this "Divine Comedy" of the
poor.
IV.
Langland speaks as he thinks, impetuously; a sort of dual personality
exists in him; he is the victim and not the master of his thought. And
his thought is so completely a separate entity, with wishes opposed to
his desires, that it appears to him in the solitudes of Malvern; and the
melody of lines heard not long ago occurs to the memory:
Je marchais un jour a pas lents
Dans un bois, sur une bruyere;
Au pied d'un arbre vint s'asseoir
Un jeune homme vetu de noir
Qui me ressemblait comme un frere ...[657]
Filled with a similar feeling, the wandering dreamer had met, five
hundred years before, in a "wilde wildernesse and bi a wode-syde," a
"moche man" who looked like himself; who knew him and called him by
name:
And thus I went wide-where | walkyng myne one (alone),
By a wilde wildernesse | and bi a wode-syde ...
And under a lynde uppon a launde | lened I a stounde ...
A moche man, as me thoughte | and lyke to my-selve
Come and called me | by my kynde name,
"What artow," quod I tho (then) | "that thow my name knowest?"
"That thow wost wel," quod he | "and no wyghte bettere."
"Wote I what thow art?" | "Thought," seyde he thanne,
"I have suwed (followed) the this sevene yere | sey thow me no rather
(sooner)?"[658]
"Thought" reigns supreme, and does with Langland what he chooses.
Langland is unconscious of what he is led to; his visions are for him
real ones; he tells them as they rise before him; he is scarcely aware
that he invents; he stares at the sight, and wonders as much as we do;
he can change nothing; his personages are beyond his reach. There is
therefore nothing prepared, artistically arranged, or skilfully
contrived, in his poem; the deliberate hand of a man of the craft is
nowhere to be seen. He obtains artistic effects, but without seeking for
them; he never selects or co-ordinates; he is suddenly led, and leads
us, from one subject to another, without any better transition than an
"and thanne" or a "with that." And "thanne" we are carried a hundred
miles away, among entirely different beings, and frequently we hear no
more of the first ones. Or sometimes, even, the first reappear, but they
are no longer the same; Piers Plowman personifies now the honest man of
the people, now the Pope, now Christ. Dowel, Dobet and Dobest have two
or three different meanings. The art of transitions is as much dispensed
with in his poem as at the opera: a whistle of the scene-shifter--an
"and thanne" of the poet--the palace of heaven fades away, and we find
ourselves in a smoky tavern in Cornhill.
Clouds pass over the sky, and sometimes sweep by the earth; their
thickness varies, they take every shape: now they are soft, indolent
mists, lingering in mountain hollows, that will rise towards noon, laden
with the scent of flowering lindens; now they are storm-clouds,
threatening destruction and rolling with thunder. Night comes on, and
suddenly the blackness is rent by so glaring a light that the plain
assumes for an instant the hues of mid-day; then the darkness falls
again, deeper than before.
The poet moves among realities and abstractions, and sometimes the first
dissolve in fogs, while the second condense into human beings, tangible
and solid. On the Malvern hills, the mists are so fine, it is impossible
to say: here they begin and here they end; it is the same in the
Visions.
In the world of ethics, as among the realities of actual life, Langland
excels in summing up in one sudden memorable flash the whole doctrine
contained in the nebulous sermons of his abstract preachers; he then
attains to the highest degree of excellence, without striving after it.
In another writer, the thing would have been premeditated, and the
result of his skill and cunning; here the effect is as unexpected for
the author as for the reader. He so little pretends to such felicities
of speech that he never allows the grand impressions thus produced to
last any time; he utilises them, he is careful to make the best of the
occasion. It seems as if he had conjured the lightning from the clouds
unawares, and he thinks it his duty to turn it to use. The flash had
unveiled the uppermost summits of the realm of thought, and there will
remain in our hands a flickering rushlight that can at most help us
upstairs.
The passionate sincerity which is the predominant trait of Langland's
character greatly contributed to the lasting influence of his poem. Each
line sets forth his unconquerable aversion for all that is mere
appearance and show, self-interested imposture; for all that is
antagonistic to conscience, abnegation, sincerity. Such is the great and
fundamental indignation that is in him; all the others are derived from
this. For, while his mind was impressed with the idea of the seriousness
of life, he happened to live when the mediaeval period was drawing to its
close; and, as usually happens towards the end of epochs, people no
longer took in earnest any of the faiths and feelings which had supplied
foregoing generations with their strength and motive power. He saw with
his own eyes knights preparing for war as if it were a hunt; learned men
consider the mysteries of religion as fit subjects to exercise one's
minds in after-dinner discussions; the chief guardians of the flock busy
themselves with their "owelles" only to shear, not to feed them. Meed
was everywhere triumphant; her misdeeds had been vainly denounced; her
reign had come; under the features of Alice Perrers she was now the
paramour of the king!
At all such men and at all such things, Langland thunders anathema. Lack
of sincerity, all the shapes and sorts of "faux semblants," or
"merveilleux semblants," as Rutebeuf said, fill him with
inextinguishable hatred. In shams and "faux semblants" he sees the true
source of good and evil, the touchstone of right and wrong, the main
difference between the worthy and the unworthy. He constantly recurs to
the subject by means of his preachings, epigrams, portraits,
caricatures; he broadens, he magnifies and multiplies his figures and
his precepts, so as to deepen our impression of the danger and number of
the adherents of "Fals-Semblant." By such means, he hopes we shall at
last hate those whom he hates. Endlessly, therefore, in season and out
of season, among the mists, across the streets, under the porches of the
church, to the drowsy chant of his orations, to the whistle of his
satires, ever and ever again, he conjures up before our eyes the
hideous grinning face of "Fals-Semblant," the insincere. Fals-Semblant
is never named by name; he assumes all names and shapes; he is the king
who reigns contrary to conscience, the knight perverted by Lady Meed,
the heartless man of law, the merchant without honesty, the friar, the
pardoner, the hermit, who under the garment of saints conceal hearts
that will rank them with the accursed ones. Fals-Semblant is the pope
who sells benefices, the histrion, the tumbler, the juggler, the adept
of the vagrant race, who goes about telling tales and helping his
listeners to forget the seriousness of life. From the unworthy pope down
to the lying juggler, all these men are the same man. Deceit stands
before us; God's vengeance be upon him! Whenever and wherever Langland
detects Fals-Semblant, he loses control over himself; anger blinds him;
it seems as if he were confronted by Antichrist.
No need to say whether he is then master of his words, and able to
measure them. With him, in such cases, no _nuances_ or extenuations are
admissible; you are with or against Fals-Semblant; there is no middle
way; a compromise is a treason; and is there anything worse than a
traitor? And thus he is led to sum up his judgment in such lines as
this:
He is worse than Judas | that giveth a japer silver.[659]
If we allege that there may be some shade of exaggeration in such a
sentence, he will shrug his shoulders. The doubt is not possible, he
thinks, and his plain proposition is self-evident.
No compromise! Travel through life without bending; go forward in a
straight line between the high walls of duty. Perform your own
obligations; do not perform the obligations of others. To do your duty
over-zealously, to take upon you the duty of others, would trouble the
State; you approach, in so doing, the borderland of Imposture. The
knight will fight for his country, and must not lose his time in fasting
and in scourging himself. A fasting knight is a bad knight.
Many joys are allowed. They are included, as a bed of flowers, between
the high walls of duty; love-flowers even grow there, to be plucked,
under the blue sky. But take care not to be tempted by that wonderful
female Proteus, Lady Meed, the great corruptress. She disappears and
reappears, and she, too, assumes all shapes; she is everywhere at the
same time: it seems as if the serpent of Eden had become the immense
reptile that encircles the earth.
This hatred is immense, but stands alone in the heart of the poet.
Beside it there is place for treasures of pity and mercy; the idea of so
many Saracens and Jews doomed wholesale to everlasting pain repels him;
he can scarcely accept it; he hopes they will be all converted, and
"turne in-to the trewe feithe"; for "Cryste cleped us alle.... Sarasenes
and scismatikes ... and Jewes."[660] There is something pathetic, and
tragic also, in his having to acknowledge that there is no cure for many
evils, and that, for the present, resignation only can soothe the
suffering. With a throbbing heart he shows the unhappy and the lowly,
who must die before having seen the better days that were promised, the
only talisman that may help them: a scroll with the words, "Thy will be
done!"[661]
The truth is that there was a tender heart under the rough and rugged
exterior of the impassioned, indignant, suffering poet; and thus he was
able to sum up his life's ideal in this beautiful motto: _Disce, Doce,
Dilige_; in these words will be found the true interpretation of Dowel,
Dobet, and Dobest: "Learn, Teach, Love."[662]
The poet's language is, if one may use the expression, like himself,
above all, sincere. Chaucer wished that words were "cosyn to the dede;"
Langland holds the same opinion. While, in the mystic parts of his
Visions, he uses a superabundance of fluid and abstract terms, that look
like morning mists and float along with his thoughts, his style becomes
suddenly sharp, nervous, and sinewy when he comes back to earth and
moves into the world of realities. Let some sudden emotion fill his
soul, and he will rise again, not in the mist this time, but in the rays
of the sun; he will soar aloft, and we will wonder at the grandeur of
his eloquence. Whatever be his subject, he will coin a word, or distort
a meaning, or cram into an idiom more meaning than grammar, custom, or
dictionary allow, rather than leave a gap between word and thought; both
must be fused together, and made one. If the merchants were honest, they
would not "timber" so high--raise such magnificent houses.[663] In other
parts he uses realistic terms, noisy, ill-favoured expressions, which it
is impossible to quote.
His vocabulary of words is the normal vocabulary of the period, the same
nearly as Chaucer's. The poet of the "Canterbury Tales" has been often
reproached with having used his all-powerful influence to obtain rights
of citizenship in England for French words; but the accusation does not
stand good, for Langland did not write for courtly men, and the
admixture of French words is no less considerable in his work.
The Visionary's poem offers a combination of several dialects; one,
however, prevails; it is the Midland dialect. Chaucer used the
East-Midland, which is nearly the same, and was destined to survive and
become the English language.
Langland did not accept any of the metres used by Chaucer; he preferred
to remain in closer contact with the Germanic past of his kin. Rhyme,
the main ornament of French verse, had been adopted by Chaucer, but was
rejected by Langland, who gave to his lines the ornament best liked by
Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and Scandinavians, namely, alliteration.[664]
While their author continued to live obscure and unknown, the Visions,
as soon as written, were circulated, and acquired considerable
popularity throughout England. In spite of the time that has elapsed,
and numberless destructions, there still remain forty-five manuscripts
of the poem, more or less complete. "Piers Plowman" soon became a sign
and a symbol, a sort of password, a personification of the labouring
classes, of the honest and courageous workman. John Ball invoked his
authority in his letter to the rebel peasants of the county of Essex in
1381.[665] The name of Piers figured as an attraction on the title of
numerous treatises: there existed, as early as the fourteenth century,
"Credes" of Piers Plowman, "Complayntes" of the Plowman, &c. Piers'
credit was made use of at the time of the Reformation, and in his name
were demanded the suppression of abuses and the transformation of the
old order of things; he even appeared on the stage; Langland would have
been sometimes greatly surprised to see what tasks were assigned to his
hero.
Chaucer and Langland, the two great poets of the period, represent
excellently English genius, and the two races that have formed the
nation. One more nearly resembles the clear-minded, energetic, firm,
practical race of the latinised Celts, with their fondness for straight
lines; the other resembles the race which had the deepest and especially
the earliest knowledge of tender, passionate, and mystic aspirations,
and which lent itself most willingly to the lulls and pangs of hope and
despair, the race of the Anglo-Saxons. And while Chaucer sleeps, as he
should, under the vault of Westminster, some unknown tuft of Malvern
moss perhaps covers, as it also should, the ashes of the dreamer who
took Piers Plowman for his hero.
FOOTNOTES:
[629] Further details on Langland and his Visions, and in particular the
elucidation (as far as I have been able to furnish it) of several
doubtful points, may be found in "Piers Plowman, a contribution to the
History of English Mysticism," London, 1894. Some passages of the
present Chapter are taken from this work.
[630] Mr. Skeat has given two excellent editions of these three texts
(called texts A. B. and C.): Iº "The Vision of William concerning Piers
Plowman, together with Vita de Dowel, Dobet et Dobest, secundum Wit et
Resoun," London, Early English Text Society, 1867-84, 4 vols. 8vo; 2º
"The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, in three parallel
texts, together with Richard the Redeless," Oxford (Clarendon Press),
1886, 2 vols. 8vo.
[631] The reasons in favour of these dates are given in "Piers Plowman,
a contribution to the history of English Mysticism," chap, ii., and in a
paper I published in the _Revue Critique_, Oct. 25th, and Nov. 1, 1879.
Mr. Skeat assigns the date of 1393 to the third text, adding, however,
"I should not object to the opinion that the true date is later still."
I have adduced proofs ("Piers Plowman," pp. 55 ff.) of this final
revision having taken place in 1398 or shortly after.
[632] B. xv. 48.
[633] A. xii. 6.
[634]
_Concupiscencia carnis_ | colled me aboute the nekke,
And seyde, "Thou art yonge and yepe | and hast yeres yn
Forto lyve longe | and ladyes to lovye.
And in this myroure thow myghte se | myrthes ful manye
That leden the wil to lykynge | al thi lyf-tyme."
The secounde seide the same | "I shal suwe thi wille;
Til thow be a lorde and have londe." (B. xi. 16.)
[635] C. vi. 42.
[636] C. vi. 45.
[637] On which see W. S. Simpson, "St. Paul's Cathedral and old City
life," London, 1894, 8vo, p. 95: "The chantry priests of St. Paul's." A
list of those chantries in a handwriting of the fourteenth century has
been preserved; there are seventy-three of them. _Ibid._, p. 99.
[638] C. beginning of passus vi.; B. beginning of passus xv.: "My witte
wex and wanyed til I a fole were."
[639] B. x. 181.
[640] B. x. 420.
[641]
... None sonner saved | ne sadder of bileve,
Than plowmen and pastoures | and pore comune laboreres.
Souteres and shepherdes | suche lewed jottes
Percen with a _pater-noster_ | the paleys of hevene,
And passen purgatorie penaunceles | at her hennes-partynge,
In-to the blisse of paradys | for her pure byleve,
That inparfitly here | knewe and eke lyved. (B. x. 458.)
And thow medlest with makynges | and myghtest go sey thi sauter,
And bidde for hem that giveth the bred | for there ar bokes ynowe
To telle men what Dowel is.... (B. xii. 16.)
[642] He seems to have written at this time the fragment called by Mr.
Skeat: "Richard the Redeless," and attributed by the same with great
probability to our author.
[643] C. iii. 211 ff.
[644] B. iii. 328.
[645] B. iv. 3.
[646] Daughter of Piers Plowman:
Hus douhter hihte Do-ryght-so- | other-thy-damme-shal-the-bete.
(C. ix. 81.)
[647] See in particular Gloton's confession, with a wonderfully
realistic description of an English tavern, C. vii. 350.
[648] "Paradise Lost," canto vi. 601; invention of guns, 470.
[649] B. Prol. 112.
[650] B. xix. 474.
[651] "Rotuli Parliamentorum," vol. iii. p. 419. See above, p. 253.
[652] Good Parliament of 1376.
[653] B. Prol. 95.
[654] B. Prol. 49.
[655] B. Prol. 46; xii. 37; v. 57; C. v. 122.
[656] B. vi. 71; C. ix. 122.
[657] Musset, "Nuit de Decembre."
[658] B. viii. 62.
[659] B. ix. 90.
[660] B. xi. 114.
[661]
But I loked what lyflode it was: that Pacience so preysed,
And thanne was it a pece of the _Pater noster_ | "_Fiat voluntas tua_."
B. xiv. 47.
[662] B. xiii. 137.
[663]
Thei timbrede not so hye.
(A. iii. 76.)
[664] Langland's lines usually contain four accentuated syllables, two
in each half line; the two accentuated syllables of the first half line,
and the first accentuated syllable of the second half line are
alliterated, and commence by the same "rhyme-letter:"
I _sh_ope me in _sh_roudes | as I a _sh_epe were.
(B. Prol. 2.) It is not necessary for alliteration to exist that the
letters be exactly the same; if they are consonants, nothing more is
wanted than a certain similitude in their sounds; if they are vowels
even less suffices; it is enough that all be vowels.
[665] Walsingham, "Historia Anglicana," vol. ii. p. 33. Rolls.